Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Dueling Wall Fatwas

Last week, noted pro-terror sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa saying that Egyptians are forbidding from building an iron wall to stop smuggling between Gaza and Egypt. Yemeni sheikh Abdul Majid agreed.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is planning legal action to stop the construction of the wall as well.

But Al Azhar University held a sharia council to discuss the matter, and announced that Egypt is perfectly within its rights to build the wall, and even said that those opposing the wall are going against Islamic law.

Notable

A right of return to what? (h/t Yaacov Lozowick)

British surgeon ostracized by supporting Israel

Famed pianist decries BBC bias against Israel (h/t AE)

Anniverary of Maqadmah Mosque episode

Ma'an is providing a series of articles about Operation Cast Lead that looks at events through the prism of the Goldstone Report one year after they occurred. Today they are reproducing and embellishing Goldstone's extremely flawed analysis of the incident at the Al Maqadmah Mosque from January 3rd, 2009.

All of the news stories from the time claimed that Israel bombed the mosque itself, although a careful reading of the Goldstone report and other sources shows that the IDf bombed the entrance to the mosque and that most of the casualties occurred on the outside.

I have already noted some severe problems with Goldstone's account. Besides the fact that it appeared that the countthat Goldstone used of 15 victims may be an exaggeration,

Goldstone doesn't bother to point out that 6 of the dead were actually terrorists: (numbers are PCHR list numbers)

458 ‘Umar Abdul Hafez Mousa al-Silawi Al Qassam Brigades
459 Ra’ed Abdul Rahman Mohammed al-Msamha
462 Sa’id Salah Sa’id Battah Al Qassam Brigades
478 Muhannad Ibrahim ‘Ata al-Tannani Al Quds Brigades member
484 Ibrahim Mousa Issa al-Silawi Al Qassam Brigades
987 Ahmed Hamed Hassan Abu ‘Eita Al Qassam Brigades

It seems to be very unlikely that 6 of the 15 known dead in a mosque crowded with hundreds of civilians would be terrorists. Either the mosque itself had a hundred terrorists or so, or something else is going on.

And where exactly did the blast hit? Apparently, it hit outside the mosque, not inside as Goldstone implies. So it seems more likely that the IDF hit a gathering of terrorists outside the mosque rather than a few hundred worshipers.

Unfortunately, fairness does not seem to have been a part of the Goldstone mandate, and when the evidence supports the commissions preconceived notions of the truth, they have had little incentive to look beyond the biased testimonies they eagerly accepted.

Testimony from people like the sheikh of the mosque - who happens to share the same last name as two of the Al Qassam Brigades members listed above.

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi has a more detailed analysis: (he came up with a slightly different list than mine.)

An examination of freely accessible Palestinian sources shows that the casualties in this incident were terrorist operatives and included members of the al-Silawi family, who were represented to the commission as innocent civilians.
The terrorists killed in the attack included:

Ibrahim Moussa Issa al-Silawi, an operative in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military-terrorist wing. Born December 1, 1946, in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip. According to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades website, Ibrahim "received his love of jihad and hatred for the Zionist enemy with his mother's milk." In 1984 he joined the Islamic Movement (which later became Hamas) and was a Muslim Brotherhood operative. He had close relations with Nizar Riyyan, a senior Hamas terrorist operative, and joined the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades in 2003, at the age of 38. He was posted to the northern Gaza Strip brigade and participated in military missions: manning front-line positions in Jabaliya, fighting IDF forces, and digging and preparing tunnels for Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades use.³

Omar Abd al-Hafez Moussa al-Silawi (Abu Souheib), an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative. Born in Saudi Arabia on September 29, 1981, and joined Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2004 he joined the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and was posted to front-line positions on the eastern border of Jabaliya. He also prepared and planted IEDs, participated in fighting the IDF, and launched mortar shells and Kassam rockets at Israeli towns and villages.⁴

Sayid Salah Sayid Batah, an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative. Born on April 7, 1986, in Jabaliya. A Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood operative, he joined the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and was deployed in the northern Gaza Strip brigade. He was posted to front-line positions in Jabaliya, prepared and planted IEDs, and dug and prepared tunnels for Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades use.⁵

Ahmed Hamad Hassan Abu Ita, an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative. Born in Saudi Arabia on February 15, 1984. A Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood operative, he joined the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades in 2006 and was posted to front-line positions. He fought the IDF in the Jabaliya, al-Salatin and al-Atatra regions, prepared and planted IEDs, was deployed in the suicide bombers' unit, and regularly participated in ambushes against IDF soldiers. The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades website reported that he was one of the operatives who received instructions, after the initial Israeli air attack on December 27, to deploy in accordance with previous instructions. According to the website report, on January 3 he went to the Ibrahim al-Maqadma mosque to meet "young people" and was killed in the IDF attack there.⁶ [Note: The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades version clearly shows that Hamas uses mosques as meeting places for its operatives to coordinate their fighting against the IDF.] His father said that during the first week of the fighting his son launched rockets into Israeli territory every day.⁷

Muhanad Ibrahim al-Tanani (Abu Islam), an operative in the Al-Quds Battalions, the military-terrorist wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, born April 23, 1988. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad website reported that his parents brought him up to love jihad. When the Second Intifada broke out he was 12, and often went to the Erez crossing with other children to throw rocks at the IDF post and confront the soldiers. In 2002 he joined the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and later its military-terrorist wing. He underwent military training and was posted to front-line positions on the northern border of the Gaza Strip. In addition to his military activities he participated in Palestinian Islamic Jihad meetings and events, and led the organization's Internet forums.⁸

Rajah Nahad Rajah Ziyyada, 18, an Al-Quds Battalions operative.⁹

Ahmed Assad Diyab Tabil, 16, a Hamas operative, was a member of the Hamas student organization, which recruited him into the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.¹⁰

Halevi wrote a different article on YNet that looked at the case further:

What really happened at the Ibrahim al-Maqadmah mosque, named for one of the heads of Hamas’ military-terrorist wing? The Goldstone Committee version is problematic because of its many essential failures and weak spots. The committee members relied exclusively on reports from “eyewitnesses” who did not see what was happening outside, especially at the entrance where the missile hit. Moreover, the committee was aware that all the Palestinian witnesses deliberately did not give any information about the activities of the terrorist organizations, because they were afraid of Hamas.

Therefore it is logically impossible to determine unequivocally that the Palestinian statements were “credible and reliable.” Another source of wonder is the dubious methodology used by the Committee in examining the circumstances of the event. The recorded statements of the Palestinian “eyewitnesses” posted on the UN website reveal that Committee members did not ask the Palestinians even one question about armed men or weapons in the mosque, or about what was happening in the open space in front of it.
Without noticing it, Committee member Desmond Travers exposed (harpers.org) the political agenda when he said that the claims regarding the use of mosques for military purposes reflected the Western perception in certain circles that Islam was a violent religion: “We also found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions. Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion… If I were a Hamas operative the last place I’d store munitions would be in a mosque.”
He is apparently saying that it is wrong to even mention the claim without examining the facts. The facts, which he and the rest of the Committee never examined, contradict his position. For Hamas, the most important function of the mosques in the jihad against Israel is repeatedly mentioned, beginning with its charter, through the remarks made by the organization’s senior figures, to the documentation of the military-terrorist activities of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
During the first and second Intifadas the mosques were used to identify and recruit suicide bombers and operatives for the various military-terrorist wings, to store weapons, and as meeting places for terrorist operatives, for pre-attack briefings and as stations from which to attack IDF forces.
Two particular events which were widely covered by the media should have been a heads-up for the members of the Goldstone Committee. In August 2007 Hamas “police” attacked the Ard al-Ribat mosque, located in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City and controlled by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Two years later, and one month before the Report was issued, Hamas “police” and Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operatives attacked the Ibn Taymmiyah mosque in Rafah, where armed operatives of the Jund Ansar Allah, a network affiliated with the global jihad, were located. The two attacks caused the deaths of dozens of Palestinians.
Moreover, the mosques in the Gaza Strip are engaged in a “suicide bombing competition” to determine which one bred the greatest number of bombers. The dubious title is held, apparently, by the Al-Khufla al-Rashidoun mosque in Jabaliya (not far from the Maqadmah mosque), which for years has been called the “fortress of the suicide bombers fighting for the sake of Allah.” According to the official Hamas forum, among the members of the mosque who were killed in 2000, 12 were Hamas suicide bombers and between 50 and 90 were Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operatives. One of the most famous was Ibrahim Nizar Rayyan, who was trained and sent by his father the imam to carry out a suicide bombing attack in Israel. The Goldstone Committee also closed its eyes to that information.
Seven of the 15 Palestinians killed at the mosque were members of terrorist organizations who had participated in fighting the IDF, most of them members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military-terrorist wing, and a few of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Regarding one of them (Ahmed Abu Ita of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades), it was reported that he had gone to the Maqadmah mosque to meet “friends,” i.e., other armed terrorist operatives.
In light of the foregoing information, there is another scenario which can explain the circumstances of the attack on the mosque and bridge the gap between the positions of the IDF and the Goldstone Committee: Israeli intelligence discovered the intention of Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative Ahmed Abu Ita to go to the Maqadmah mosque to meet other terrorist operatives there or nearby. The Israeli Air Force drone located him as he and the others arrived, but did not spot the civilians because they were inside the mosque praying.
During the narrow window of time the decision was made to attack the groups of armed terrorists near the mosque entrance. The missile launched hit them, killing some outright and damaging the mosque wall, killing Palestinians inside.

The Goldstone Committee, which did not accuse Hamas of war crimes (rather, it mentioned “Palestinian armed groups”) and rocket attacks, also did not examine the aforementioned scenario , which can easily be found in open sources, and did not even try to ask Palestinians witnesses if such a possibility could exist. Based on partial, biased information and without making an attempt to reach the truth, the Committee accused Israel of the deliberate murder of Palestinian civilians.

Ma'an, whose reporters do read Yediot Aharonot, doesn't bother to look for any evidence that could contradict the deeply flawed Goldstone fact-finding procedures. And of course it does not mention any of the victims as being known terrorists.

Gaza's $2 billion a year budget

From AP:

Gaza's Hamas parliament approved a government budget of $540 million for 2010, legislators said Saturday, suggesting that a tight border blockade isn't stopping the cash flow to the Islamic militants.

Up to $60 million stems from local taxes and the rest from "gifts and outside assistance," said legislator Jamal Nassar. Iran is believed to be one of Hamas' main financial backers, with cash assistance hauled through smuggling tunnels under Gaza's border with Egypt.

...The Abbas government's budget for 2009 was $2.78 billion, funded in large part by foreign aid. Abbas' Palestinian Authority continues to pay the salaries for tens of thousands of Gaza civil servants and security officers who were sent home after the Hamas takeover. It also pays for fuel to run Gaza's power plant and supports hospitals and schools.

The Hamas government is also relieved of much responsibility because the United Nations runs dozens of schools, health clinics and gives food aid to around 1 million Gazans.

So Hamas has a budget of over a half billion dollars, mostly from Iran.

But we already know from numerous statements by Mahmoud Abbas that 58% of the PA budget goes to...Gaza.

That means that poor, impoverished Gaza is getting over $2 billion annually, not counting the money and other aid it gets from UNRWA and other NGOs.

And Hamas' hundreds of millions are free for buying weapons because they have never taken financial responsibility for the actual running of Gaza's infrastructure. The West still does that via the PA.

I wonder if those people who claim they hate Israel because it is a drain on their tax dollars are equally concerned with Gaza?

Iran's soccer team wishes Israel a happy New Year

From Al Arabiya:

The Iranian Football Federation accidentally sent a New Year’s greeting to its Israeli counterpart, which responded wishing “all of the good people in Iran a happy new year,” Israeli media reported late on Thursday.

Mohammad Ali Ardebili, head of Iranian football union’s foreign relations, told Israel’s Army Radio he sent the letter to all football unions around the world but he did not intend to send it to the Israel Football Association.

Ardebili sent the greeting letter by email and the Army Radio managed to reach him for comment by phone.

"This is a greeting sent to the entire world," he said, then he inquired quickly, "Are you speaking from Israel? I can't speak to you. This is a mistake, this is a mistake."

The Israeli Football Association (IFA) received the letter with surprise but did not hesitate to send a response, the union’s spokesman Gil Lebanony told the radio station.

The Iranian letter was received by the head of the IFA’s legal department, Amir Navon.

"He came into my office and asked me if it was a mistake. I said, 'I don't know, but let's send a response'," Lebanony said.

"So, we responded, 'We thank you for you Happy New Year greeting and wish all of the good people in Iran a happy new year,' and added a wink in the mail," Lebanony said. "We also expressed our hopes that they will have a good year for soccer."

The first comment on Al Arabiya's English site wishes for Iran to destroy Israel in this new year.

Fewer Arabs in Israeli prisons

A Palestinian Arab agency says that the number of Arab prisoners in Israeli custody has decreased this year to 7350.

6124 are from the West Bank, 768 from Gaza and 458 from within Israel.

3600 of the prisoners are affilitated with Fatah, 1840 with Hamas, 1150 from Islamic Jihad, 450 from the PFLP, and 110 from the DFLP.

In July, the group Adalah reported that there were some 13000 Arabs in Israeli prisons. However, looking at their data a little closer it appears that if we only count the prisoners who are classified as security prisoners (as opposed to criminals) the numbers are pretty close. (In fact, Adalah mentions that there are 6500 Jewish prisoners as well.)

In June, 2008, the Israeli Prison Service said that there were 10,000 security prisoners.

The Gazan slave trade

Firas Press has a lengthy article on how Gazans are taking advantage of poor Egyptian families.

Acting as middlemen, Gazans offer to smuggle underage Egyptian girls through tunnels to Gaza to get married to the better-off Gazans. For this service, they charge $1000.

Once the girls come over, more often than not they get married as second or third wives to Gaza men who treat them as maids for their extended families. These are the lucky ones: others are forced into prostitution or to work for drug dealers. One smuggler who was interviewed is getting so wealthy from the slave trade that he has bought a house in Rafah to facilitate the smuggling of more Egyptian girls.

The article claims that hundreds of girls have been taken advantage of this way, and they cannot afford to pay to escape back to Egypt.

Clearly, the poor, starving Gazans are being driven by sheer desperation to resort to taking advantage of even poorer Egyptian girls.

More on the 45th anniversary of Fatah terror

It turns out that the major speech that Abbas was to deliver last night commemorating the 45th anniversary of the first Fatah terror attack had nothing new. He reiterated that peace would be impossible without Jerusalem becoming the capital of a Palestinian state and that "there is now no country in the world, including the United States of America, defending the positions of the Israeli government."

He also again rejected the idea of a Palestinian Arab state with temporary borders and mentioned yet again that 58% of the PA budget goes to Gaza (where it effectively but indirectly bankrolls Hamas.)

In Gaza, meanwhile, Fatah activists who also wanted to commemorate the anniversary were beaten and arrested by Hamas.

I have just been looking over the Time magazine archives, and they mention that what really happened on January 1, 1965 was the creation of a "military wing" of Fatah, called Asifa, or "stormtroopers." As we have seen countless times, history shows that there is no real distinction between Arab terrorist group "political wings" and "military wings" and the fact that Asifa has not existed since the 1960s while Fatah terrorist attacks still happen today shows this to be the case. (It is interesting to note that Asifa was helped by a fifth column of Israeli Arabs called "Al Ard" in 1965.)

Fatah's penchant for lying has not changed either in the past 45 years. Here is how Time described them in 1968:

El Fatah has publicly taken credit for blasting the garage of former Israeli Chief of Staff Itzhak Rabin, even though he has no garage, and for wounding Defense Minister Moshe Dayan last March, who was actually hurt in an archeological cave-in. After Israel's independence day parade last May, El Fatah crowed that "a suicide force managed to reach the rear of the parade and shell it with rockets and mortars. Our forces destroyed a number of tanks that were seen to go up in flames." This remarkable event was entirely invisible to Israelis and foreign dignitaries watching the parade. When a $1,000,000 fire damaged Tel Aviv's Lydda Airport in October, El Fatah promptly took credit for setting it. The Israelis insist that the blaze was started accidentally by a welder's torch.

Martyr inflation

At the end of Operation Cast Lead, Hamas came out with a press release that claimed that only 48 "mujahadeen" had been killed during the fighting, while they estimated that they killed some 80 Zionist fighters.

Since then, they have kept adding more and more Gaza "martyrs" who were members of the Al Qassam Brigades to their website. At last count, Hamas has listed out the biographies of no less than 305 Al Qassam terrorists with details of their careers as fighters. (188 of them were listed as "civilian" by the PHCR.)

So in the end they understated their real casualties by an order of magnitude, and they also overstated Israel's casualties by an order of magnitude.

I'm sure that they are equally trustworthy in other areas.

What does a moonbat feed a starving Gazan?

From San Francisco's local ABC website:

A Watsonville art teacher and her husband are among three dozen people who have reportedly been detained in Egypt on their way to the Gaza strip.
Kathleen Crocetti had hoped to deliver a mural to a community center in Gaza, where a pro-Palestinian freedom march is planned for New Year's Eve.
Crocetti and her husband, Bill Lucas, have been ordered not to leave the hotel where they are staying, about 30 miles from Gaza, without a police escort.

"Clueless" is an understatement.

The IDF confirms that weekly demonstrations are always violent

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

A commenter insisted that I was wrong, and said that "The overwhelming majority of demonstrations at both sites you mention have been thoroughly peaceful. Your claim to the contrary is not only not objective, but also not true. "

His evidence for this statement was a heavily edited video that didn't show any demonstrator violence and seemed to show the IDF shooting tear gas for no reason.

Well, I asked the IDF themselves. This response is from the IDF Spokesperson's Office, sent to me via email, and is on the record:

In 2009, there were weekly riots in both Nil'in and Bil'in every Friday, with the exception of 18.12.2009 in Nil'in. Every one of these protests has featured violence on the part of the protesters, for the most part that entails rock throwing, although firebombs, and burning tires are also a frequent occurrence.

These riots have been taking place on a regular basis at both locations for the past two years. In 2009, 57 defense force personnel were injured by rioters. The security forces take standard riot dispersal measures when the riots turn violent and in 2009 they arrested 20 rioters in Nil'in and 20 in Bil'in.

On several occasions during these riots, defense force personnel were seriously injured. In January, a Nil'in rioter hurled a rock, hitting a reservist in the face, causing permanent damage to his eye socket. In another incident during a Nil'in riot in April, both an IDF officer and Border Police officer were seriously injured by hurled rocks and had to be taken to a hospital to treat their facial injuries.

Administrivia open thread

I recently started a new job, and it will not afford me the ability to post as often as I have been. I've been trying to compensate this week by sleeping less, but that is not a very good long-term strategy! I have a couple of other non-blog related projects that I need to be spending some time on. Sorry!

In response to reader requests, I changed the comments to now open up in a new window rather than a pop-up, which messed some people up. Let me know if this is better.

Meanwhile, here is an open thread....

Today's PalArab news 12/31/2009

The PA seized 19,000 shekels worth of nuts that were supposedly grown in Israeli farms in the West Bank. Their goal is to stop all imports of West Bank Jewish products by the end of 2010.

Palestinian Arabs are dismayed at Jimmy Carter's pretend apology to American Jews. After all, they note, he had been such a friend to them; they are hoping that it is just a political move to help his grandson run for office and that it doesn't reflect his real feelings.

Palestinian Arabs are also complaining about an Israeli tourist campaign in China which include pictures of the Temple Mount. They are also upset that Chinese media sometime say that Tel Aviv is a "coastal city" and not the capital of Israel. Some 20,000 Chinese tourists visit Israel annually according to the article.

The 45th anniversary of...what?

Mahmoud Abbas will be giving what is billed as an important speech tonight, marking the 45th anniversary of the "start of the Palestinian revolution."

What momentous event happened 45 years ago?

Yasir Arafat co-founded Fatah in 1954 along with a number of other people, mostly Palestinian Arabs who were working in Gulf states and who went to college in Cairo. The PLO was founded in May,1964 and Fatah did not join it until 1967. There were other, mostly small, Palestinian Arab "liberation" groups that formed in the 1950s and 1960s.

So what, in Mahmoud Abbas' mind, was the seminal event that occurred 45 years ago?

Why, it's the anniversary of Yasir Arafat's first terror attack, an unsuccessful attempt to bomb Israel's national water carrier.

Out of all the events that Abbas could choose, it is notable that he chooses to commemorate the anniversary of a terror attack as the real beginning of the supposedly "national" movement.

Remember, in 1965, the PLO and Fatah's ambitions did not include the West Bank or Gaza at all. The original PLO Charter says:

Article 24: This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area [part of the mandate that Syria seized - EoZ.] Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

In this sense, I agree with Abbas that it is worthwhile to look at the history of the Fatah and PLO organizations that he heads. The goals have not changed, even if the tactics have.

UNRWA/Hamas lovefest

Palestine Today reports that outgoing UNRWA commissioner Karen Abu-Zayd met today with Hamas officials to say farewell.

According to the article, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh praised Abu Zayd in front of other Hamas officials, saying that she was daring in her role for the past nine years. He expressed hope that she would continue to speak out on behalf of Palestinian Arabs even after she leaves office.

Abu-Zayd, on her part, complimented Hamas on facilitating UNRWA's work , especially in the area of security, and she agreed to keep speaking out after she leaves her position.

UNRWA and Hamas - made for each other.