Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 28, 2009

I scoop Arutz-7 by a month

On November 26th, I showed a series of pictures of Gazans celebrating Eid from the Palestine Today website, and looking quite healthy. This is something I have been doing for a while now.

Today, Arutz-7 noticed those same pictures from a month ago.

The Israeli press really needs to read my site more often.

The question that the White House should answer

The White House announced:

The United States opposes new Israeli construction in East Jerusalem. The status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved by the parties through negotiations and supported by the international community. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations.

Earlier today:

Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias said Monday that 500 housing units have recently been authorized in Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood. According to Atias, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat gave the go ahead for the building in order to address the lack of housing in the city, for Jews and Arabs alike.

Atias made these statements on the heels of Palestinian accusations that Israel is not allowing Arabs to build in the city outside of some isolated cases.

According to details gathered so far, out of the 500 housing units authorized in Silwan, only two of them are for Jewish residents living in the neighborhood. Minister Atias presented this figure in response to allegations that Israel is only allowing construction for Jewish housing after 692 housing units were authorized in Jerusalem outskirt neighborhoods Neve Yaakov, Har Homa, and Pisgat Ze'ev.

The White House statement seems to imply that it would be against the 500 Arab houses being built in Silwan as well. If it supports the construction of Arab houses, that means that the White House is only against Jews living in east Jerusalem. If it is against the construction of Arab houses in Silwan, it would be consistent, but it would mean that the President holds that Jerusalem must remain a stagnant city until there is some sort of "peace" agreement, which may never happen.

So does the President support the building of Arab houses in the eastern part of the city?

An enterprising reporter should ask the White House press secretary that very question tomorrow.

(By the way, the White House makes a major error by capitalizing the E in "East Jerusalem," implying that it is the name of part of the city. That very capitalization seems to prejudge the US position on the outcome of those negotiations.)

Comments on comments

The new comment system is a little maddening. I cannot figure out how to change it from placing new comments on top to on the bottom, as it did before. However, when one is replying to other comments, the replies seem to go top-down, making scrolling through the comment threads difficult.

The good news is that the comments are now RSS-compliant, so I can keep track of them that way.

Echo is still adding features and listening to complaints, so the jury is still out.

In a bizarre story in the Arabic media, Lebanese singer Najwa Karam is claiming that she has received death threats from Israel.

Apparently, at a concert in Amman, a number of Palestinian Arabs started singing patriotic PalArab songs. This was considered incitement by Israel and prompted the death threats.

This is not the first time that Ms. Karam has made this claim. In 1996, the she says that the Israelis also threatened her life, and she called on Lebanese security agencies to protect her.

It seems that the Mossad calls up its potential victims before assassinating them, just to give them a sporting chance.

The Firas Press article that covered this story includes four large pictures of the singer, something that one never sees in any other news stories.

This must be the best way to increase album sales in the Arab world.

Palestinian Arab op-ed slams Hamas for Gaza war

Palestine Press Agency has an Arabic op-ed that pulls no punches in blaming Hamas for Gaza suffering. Excerpts:

All this happened a year ago and still Hamas is reopening the wounds of the Gaza Strip. It continues to dance on wounds because Hamas appeared to have become addicted to dancing on the blood and body parts of the victims.

A year ago and is still Hamas is singing of victory, drawing a surreal picture that violates all logic and facts, Hamas still celebrating the victory!!! What kind of victory is this?? We would be the happiest people if there is a real victory against Israel, but when you follow the facts of what happened we find that Hamas was planning the disaster from the beginning. It scrapped the truce and threw a barrage of rockets and ignored all the warnings and incurred this hell and destruction and the huge number of martyrs and wounded of our people, who were left alone by Hamas to face the Israeli military machine. Afterwards Hamas emerged from the shadows to celebrate what it called the victory and danced on the remains of the martyrs and the blood of the wounded and the ruins of houses.

What sort of madness is this? What sort of victory are you talking about?!

A year later Hamas leaders are celebrating the anniversary of that victory with impudence and insolence. Haniyeh and other leaders talk of victory by reviewing an honor guard on the red carpet, pretending that they took the Soldiers of God from heaven to support them and defeated Greater Israel and how this battle has miraculously joined other great victories like the conquest of Makkah and dozens of battles of Islam.

It is too bad that European leftists cannot get to read such articles in their cafes as they protest Israel and trendily support Hamas.

One year later: Emotions versus facts in Gaza reporting

I just looked at a CNN interview of Taghreed El-Khodary, a New York Times reporter in Gaza, on December 28th, 2008.

She describes the chaos and fear of Gazans in the first days of Cast Lead, as well as her own fear. Superimposed over her interview are images from Arab TV of rubble and fires.

El-Khodary begins by talking about how Hamas places its facilities in residential areas, but does not ascribe any blame whatsoever on Hamas for doing so. On the contrary, she says that Israel is trying to make Gazans turn against Hamas but that she has only heard anger against the US, Egypt, the PA and Israel, but none against Hamas by ordinary Gazans. This appears to be her way of saying that she herself is angry at Israel and not at Hamas, as this is an old reporter's trick of finding others who confirm the reporter's already preconceived notions.

Video, as a whole, is a much more emotional medium than print. While El-Khodary's written reports are edited and polished to New York Times standards of seeming objectivity and distance, her live report shows her understandable frustration and fear, which is far more visceral and powerful.

She describes how close she herself lives to a police station that was targeted as well as to a mosque that Israel had warned residents would be bombed.

Most emotionally, El-Khodary also talks about walking outside a hospital over the bodies of unrecognizable students, many still in school uniforms, waiting to be identified.

Finally, she says flatly that Israel is engaging in "collective punishment against the people of Gaza. "

This is a purely emotional statement, not a factual one, but live television does not have editors and a statement like that carries more weight than any number of carefully-written newspaper articles that may add caveats and context.

At the time of the report, El-Khodary said that over 290 were killed. According to PCHR, by the end of December 28th, some 362 had been killed.

Out of those 362, only 21 were under the age of 18. Out of those 362, only nine were women (one of those a policewoman.)

Every civilian casualty is tragic. But by any objective measure, in an area where over 75% of the residents are women or children, a rate of about 8% of the deaths being in those categories is unbelievable and unprecedented for an urban area in wartime. It indicates an almost superhuman effort to minimize civilian casualties on the part of the IDF.

The sad fact is that video cannot capture the hundreds of civilians who remain alive because of IDF policy to minimize civilian casualties, to drop thousands of flyers and send thousands of SMS messages warning civilians about upcoming strikes. A frightened reporter's live, flat statement of Israel's intentions is more visceral than any number of opposing IDF statements backed up with verifiable data.

This is not specifically CNN's fault - it is the nature of TV. Video producers are trained to look at the "human side" of the story, and to get as much live and unfiltered coverage as possible. It would be nice if 24-hour news channels would contextualize each Gaza report with the information that Israel was reacting after years of incessant rocket attacks against its citizens; that Israel went to the UN to stop the attacks and the international community did nothing, that Israel withdrew from Gaza and the attacks against southern Negev communities intensified. This is not realistic, but is means that TV coverage of a war is going to be inevitably skewed. In addition, the subtle bias of print media gets turned into a much more obvious bias of live TV.

The inescapable truth is that a single video of a dead or scared child is more powerful than mere facts, and that TV will do far more to influence public opinion than print media. The Al Dura incident showed that most starkly, and the Gaza war coverage proved it anew.

Saudi Vice Squad tackles woman in toilet

From Saudi Gazette:

Passersby on the Corniche in Dammam were stunned to witness members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the Hai’a) drag a young woman out of a public toilet, and hit her and kick her before forcing her into the back of a jeep Sunday morning.

The incident, reported by Al-Hayat newspaper Monday and by chance witnessed by one of its correspondents along with nearly a dozen other people, reportedly occurred in a matter of seconds.

“A group from the Hai’a went into the women’s public toilets on the Corniche and came out dragging a screaming woman toward the parking area,” Al-Hayat reported.

The woman, with “parts of her body exposed after being dragged from the toilets”, was reportedly in a “state of hysteria” pleading with the Hai’a to let her go, and then she fainted.

According to Al-Hayat, once the woman had been dragged several meters from where she fell on the road, the Hai’a then started beating her and kicking until she came to the jeep. As she tried to wriggle her way free and refused to get into the jeep, the Hai’a grabbed her by the arms and legs and “threw her on the back seat.”

The newspaper said it was in possession of the number of the vehicle.

Stunned onlookers wondered what offense the woman could have been accused of, and repeated attempts by Al-Hayat to contact two regional Hai’a heads and a spokesman were met with switched off mobile telephones and, in the case of the Hai’a chief in the Eastern Province, unanswered calls.

Text messages to all three also went unanswered.

I have no idea what that was about either. Although one letter writer to the Saudi Gazette suggested that perhaps she was really a man....

"Honor killing" in Gaza

I had missed this at the time. From PCHR:

On Friday afternoon, 27 November 2009, Rifqa Ghazi 'Abdullah Salama, 29, from al-Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, was killed allegedly "to maintain family honor."

According to police sources in al-Shati, at approximately 13:30 on Friday, 27 November 2009, the woman's brother, two uncles and two cousin strangled her using a wet towel while she was sleeping at home near Hmaid intersection in al-Shati refugee camp. The police initiated an investigation into the murder and arrested the 5 accused persons. Initial investigations indicate that the woman was killed allegedly to "maintain family honor."

Sources of the forensic medicine department at Shifa Hospital reported that the woman was strangled by a wet towel.

According to PCHR's documentation, the number of people killed allegedly "to maintain family honor" since the beginning of 2009 has amounted to 10 (7 women, two men and a child) in 8 crimes. One of these crimes was committed in the West Bank, whereas the rest of the crimes were committed in the Gaza Strip.

I cannot find this mentioned in the Ma'an archives, and I do not recall seeing it in the Gaza Arab media like Palestine Today, so it appears that some murders are not being reported.

Hamas accused of closing down another NGO

Palestine Press Agency is reporting that Hamas has shut down the Cooperative Housing Foundation NGO in the Gaza Strip.

According to the article, the CHF has been heavily involved in construction, reconstruction, food supplies, and micro-credit for Gazans in need, supporting some 150,000 Gazans with 200 employees.

The CHF suffered a break-in in Gaza a couple of weeks ago.

Nothing on the CHF website about this yet.

Hamas, as usual, seems to be prioritizing its own needs ahead of those of Gazans.

"Siege" update

From Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

Humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip has increased by close to 900 percent in 2009 compared to the previous year (Col. Moshe Levi, head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, Nov. 16, 2009).

Since the beginning of 2009, the IDF has allowed over 4,000 Palestinians from Gaza, together with 3,600 escorts, to enter Israel (or via Israel to the West Bank) for medical treatment.The IDF has also issued over 18,500 permits for Palestinians to leave Gaza and enter Israel or travel overseas (statistics as of November 16, 2009).

The IDF permitted the transfer of building materials to the Gaza Strip to facilitate the construction of a covered corridor (which opened the first week of November) to shelter Palestinians walking from the outskirts of Gaza City to the Erez Crossing.

COGAT announces the successful transfer of six water desalination systems to the Gaza Strip: On Dec. 21, 2009, six advanced water desalination systems were transferred to the Gaza Strip. The transfer was coordinated by the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) in accordance with the civil state policy toward the Gaza Strip, which aims to give a continuous response to the humanitarian needs of the Gazan civilian population.

The systems are planned to supply good quality drinking water to 40,000 citizens, and were installed as part of a sewage water treatment project in the northern Gaza Strip, which is coordinated by the Gaza CLA in collaboration with the international bodies working in the Gaza Strip and the relevant Palestinian authorities.

Also, it was announced today that a shipment of strawberries will be exported from Gaza this week. In addition, a hundred truckfuls of window glass and water filters are going into Gaza this week.

This is exactly how Arabs would treat Jews if the situation was reversed, right? Like in 1948 (from Wikipedia):

Starting in early 1948, the Arab forces had severed the supply line supply line to Jewish Jerusalem (especially to the Old City). In response, the mayor of Jerusalem, Dov Yosef, introduced a draconian system of food rationing during the siege.^[10] The mallow plant played an important role in Jerusalem history at this time. When convoys bearing foodstuffs could not reach the city, the residents of Jerusalem went out to the fields to pick mallow leaves, which are rich in iron and vitamins. The Jerusalem radio station, Kol Hamagen, broadcast instructions for cooking mallow. When the broadcasts were picked up in Jordan, they sparked victory celebrations. Radio Amman announced that the fact that the Jews were eating leaves, food for donkeys and cattle, was a sign that they were dying of starvation and would soon surrender.^[11]

I would like to add, once again, that I have yet to see reports of a single Gazan starving to death, despite literally years of stern warnings of an imminent humanitarian crisis.

Upgrading comments, expect some problems

Haloscan is forcing me to upgrade to a new comment system called Echo (and to pay for it!) While the features look good, I fully expect that the transition will not be smooth. It is even possible that I will lose my entire archive of comments.

Let me know what you think.

Abbas doesn't want any Israeli Arabs in "Palestine"

In an interview in Asharq al-Awsat, Mahmoud Abbas says something interesting about his negotiations with Ehud Olmert:

[Asharq Al-Awsat] Would it have been possible to reach an agreement with Olmert alone?
[President Abbas] I believe it would have been possible that I go up a little, and he comes down a little. It was possible to find a solution. He said that he would give me 100 percent.
[Asharq Al-Awsat] This is important and fundamental?
[President Abbas] He said 100 percent. He would take from this side, and I would take from that side. He presented maps to me. The maps included that he would take the settlements blocs (in the West Bank) in exchange for territories in the north, west, and south of the West Bank, in addition to territories to the east of Gaza.
[Asharq Al-Awsat] To the north and west of the West Bank?
[President Abbas] Yes.
[Asharq Al-Awsat] In which region in the west?
[President Abbas] In a distant region (from the triangle region), because I explained from the beginning that I would not accept anyone (from the Palestinians of Israel). We were doing well. God is my witness, he was all right; he said to me: You will not find anyone other than me; and I said to him: But you will find someone other than me.
(The triangle region is at the border strip of the West Bank; it is a region that is populated by a majority of Palestinians within the green line.)

If Abbas wants a Palestinian Arab state to live side-by-side with Israel in peace, why would he not eagerly want to incorporate the majority of Israeli Arabs in his state? Notwithstanding the fact that most or all of them have no desire to become citizens of "Palestine," it is telling that Abbas specifically excludes the possibility of adding an already developed region that has a population of Palestinian Arabs that would strengthen his state.

This indicates, yet again, that Abbas is thinking long-term that Israel would also become another Arab state demographically, or at the very least he wants to keep a destabilizing force of Arabs in Israel who would follow the orders of the PalArab leadership . He'll take strategic land from within the 1949 armistice borders and keep a potential fifth column of Arabs in Israel.

If what he is saying is true, Olmert is an even bigger idiot than I thought.

One other salient point from the interview that shows yet again that elections do not a democracy make:

[Asharq Al-Awsat] Some people consider that the Salam Fayyad Government is exceeding its authority by announcing its project or program that includes declaring the Palestinian State within two years, i.e. by the middle of 2011. This is a program that is supposed to be the responsibility of the PLO, which is the political reference point of the Palestinian Authority and its government. Was this announcement made, as it is said, in coordination with you? What is the aim of this announcement at a time when you are trying to reach the UN Security Council in order to determine the borders of the Palestinian State?
[President Abbas] The government is the executive authority that works to build the institutions under our guidance in order that we become prepared for statehood. My executive authority is the government; it is the government that builds and brings in the money. This is the government program.
[Asharq Al-Awsat] But its project has a political aspect, and it talks about the establishment of the state within two years or a year and a half?
(Al-Ahmad [of the Fatah Centra Committee]: There is no political aspect for the government work).
[President Abbas] The government work has no political aspect. Politics and the negotiations, which are part of the political issue, are one of my responsibilities, together with the Negotiations Department and the PLO. From the day we started signing (agreements), I am the one who signed most of them in the name of the PLO.
(Al-Ahmad: Abu-Mazin is the one who brought Saeb to the Negotiations Department, and made us elect him to the PLO Executive Committee).
I am the one who brought Saeb to the Negotiations Department to replace me.

The real power is still the PLO, not the PA, and the PLO members are not elected in any real sense - Abbas even admits that he appointed Erekat to be his successor and "made" Fatah elect him.

Finally, Abbas again tries to play both sides in the "armed struggle" game. He tells Asharq Al Awsat:

As I said (in the opening address to the PLO Central Council) I am against aggression, violence, and terrorism...

Yet his Fatah platform explicitly says:

The right of resistance: stick to the Fatah movement against the Palestinian people to resist occupation by all legitimate means, including the exercise of their right to armed struggle, which is guaranteed by international law, as long as the occupation and settlement, and dispossession of the Palestinian people of their inalienable rights.

Forms of struggle in the current stage: adopting the Fatah movement of all forms of legitimate struggle, with the option of adhering to peace, but not limited to negotiations to achieve it, and it is this struggle between the forms of exercise that can be successful at the current stage of negotiations for the assignment and activated or alternatively that it did not achieve its goals:

Palestine Today calls terror attack a "heroic operation"

The drive-by shooting death of Rabbi Meir Avshalom Hai last Thursday is being hailed in the Palestine Today newspaper as a "heroic operation."

The paper reproduced photos of the scene of the terror attack, apparently from Israeli media, to celebrate the murder.

Palestinian Arabs call Jews "their dogs"

(reposted, I didn't realize that there was no sound in the original video.)

"ck" at Jewlicious posted a great find. In his words:

Every Friday, protesters have been gathering [in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in east Jerusalem] lately to protest the expulsion last August of two families from their apartments after the Israel Supreme Court ruled that the land upon which their homes were built belonged to the Sephardi Jewish community. The evacuated houses were built in the 1950s by the UNWRA in order to house Arab refugees who had fled from West Jerusalem during the 1948 war. In 1967, when Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan and reunited the city, the Palestinian families were permitted to stay on as tenants. Disputing the validity of the ownership of the land, they stopped paying rent. This led to the events that preceded the protests. As you can see, the bulk of the protesters are Jewish and Israeli. What really stood out though was at around 3:19 of the video [already edited here - EoZ.]

One of the middle aged Palestinian women started chanting what sounds like the following: “Falasteene Bladna, al-Yahud klabna” – that would translate into “Palestine is our country! The Jews are our dogs!” – which is kind of odd – I mean the people walking by her in handcuffs were the aforementioned “Jew Dogs” who had been arrested whilst protesting in favor of the Palestinians. Maybe that’s why she was shushed? I mean am I hearing this right?
Sheikh Jarrah is located on the road to Mount Scopus. In 1948, during the War of Independence, local Arabs butchered like dogs 78 doctors, nurses and others who were riding in a convoy on that road on their way to Hadassah hospital. Maybe old habits die hard?

The best part is that this video came from a moonbat site that didn't even realize what the Palestinian Arab heroes were chanting.

This chant is well-known. An example of it can be heard at this rally from 2006 - in San Francisco:

And at 4:05 on this video from January, 2009 in Montreal:

As well as in San Francisco at the end of 2008.

Gaza Islamist group criticizes Hamas over rappers

Ma'an reported:

Seven Palestinian rap groups battled for the top spot in a Norwegian-funded competition in Gaza City on Monday night.

Screaming, fans crammed into a concert hall in the Red Crescent complex for the show, applauding each group on stage. The Norwegian sponsors joined via videoconference.

The competition (titled Riasalatna - Our Message) was organized by young Gazan women as the end product of a number of workshops in Gaza and the Norwegian city of Tromso. The workshops were about how to execute a project supervised by Norwegian specialists.

Norwegian judges were supposed to choose the winner of the rap contest on Monday, but the decision was delayed due to problems with the video link.

Judges said they were thrilled to participate in the event, saying it was an expression of support for the Palestinian people.

The competition’s Gazan coordinator, Nour Afana said she chose to focus on hip hop for her project because it was a point of cultural intersection between Gaza and Norway.

Now, the fundamentalist Hizb ut-Tahrir group is strongly criticizing Hamas for allowing such an event to take place. They consider rap to be a purely Western genre with no Islamic application, and says that such a competition

aims to remove the roots of Islam gradually from the hearts of our sons, and dilute Islamic values and concepts, sometimes with dancing, sometimes with mixed sessions between the sexes, and sometimes advocating the slogans of democracy, freedom and human rights that are meant to replace the legislative source of the Islamic faith.

Even though Hamas didn't sponsor the competition, it will be interesting to see if Islamist Hamas will try to defend itself.