Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The best counterproof to charges of Israeli discrimination

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Tuesday expressed confidence Israel would join the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] this year even though certain corruption issues have yet to be resolved.

"It is important for us to join the OECD, the most prestigious organization from an economic point of view, but also because of our international status," he said.

However the move met with opposition. MK Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al) called on the OECD not to accept Israel as a member during a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian journalists at the Knesset.
Tibi claimed that Israel does not meet the organization's regulations of equality in respect to its treatment of Arab citizens.

So we have a member of Knesset who is actively trying to hurt the nation he ostensibly serves. He's not just criticizing - he is telling an outside entity that his own country is rotten and should be punished.

Not only that, but he claims that the horrible crime that his country is guilty of is discrimination against its Arab citizens.

And he is an Arab member of Knesset!

Unreal.

In other discrimination news, the number of Bedouin who have joined the IDF has increased by more than 200% in the past two years, and the bigoted Israeli government is working hard to make sure that these Arab soldiers get jobs after their discharge.

Israel blamed for flooding Gaza

From YNet:

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip accused Israel on Monday of being responsible for making flooding worse. According to their claims, the IDF opened a dam between the city of Gaza and the central Gaza Strip, which caused flooding in dozens of houses.

In the Eshkol regional council, which borders the Strip, the claims were dismissed. The council said it knew nothing of such a dam.

Well, the Israelis should ask the Palestine Telegraph, which knows all about this dam!

Many Palestinian houses were under water in Central Gaza after Israel opened a closed dam on Tuesday.

Israeli authorities opened the "Al-Wadi" dam without prior notice after heavy rainfall on the area.

Or ask Iran's PressTV, which gives it a different name:

The locals say Israel intentionally caused the floods, the Press TV correspondent said.

The waters from the dam, called the Valley of Gaza, flooded houses in Johr al-Deek village, which is southeast of Gaza City, and Nusirat in the eastern part of the territory, where the Al-Nusirat refugee camp is also located.

I'm just having a hard time finding any mention of the "Al Wadi" ("Wadi" means "valley") dam on the Internet before yesterday. The Gaza Wadi is along the Mediterranean coast.

It's curious that Israel controls a dam fully in Gaza between Gaza City and the central Strip. I suppose that Israelis must retain an electronic connection to this dam just so they can torture Palestinian Arab civilians, which is of course their hobby.

(h/t sshender)

March 13th is Palestine Culture Day!

The PA weekly cabinet meeting declared March 13th to be Palestine Culture Day, where they can celebrate the many examples of historical Palestinian Arab culture that come to mind.

For example....um.....

To be fair, various cities in Palestine did create their own cultural niches before the 20th century.

Hebron is known for glass blowing. Bethlehem is known for olive wood carving. Nablus is known for soap. Different towns were known for their distinctive clothing.

But none of these examples are "Palestinian," rather they were local arts that are now labeled "Palestinian" because historically there was no Arab idea of Palestine as a distinct nation. Today's Palestinian Arabs, very aware that they have no distinct cultural history as a people, work very hard to brand any local cultural variations as "Palestinian" even though the word was all but meaningless to local Arabs a mere hundred years ago. They certainly didn't consider themselves "Palestinian."

This is why the PA must keep pushing such festivals. They are trying to retroactively create a people, and to be a people you must have a culture.

American doctors in Haiti jealous of Israeli field hospital

From CNN (h/t Jameel):

At a U.S. medical facility, doctors were asking why they didn't have critical equipment or the ability to perform surgeries, while a field hospital set up by Israel did.

"The disaster was the quake. This is the disaster that's following in its wake," said Dr. Jennifer Furin of Harvard Medical School, referring to the lack of better medical care on the ground. Medical operations were under way off the coast on a U.S. ship for some patients who could be flown there.

Families were "with their loved ones who they were so excited to see alive, only now to watch them die a slow, painful death from their rotting flesh because the infections are out of control and they need surgery," Furin said.

"I've been here since Thursday. No one except the Israeli hospital has taken any of our patients," she told CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

Cohen visited the Israeli hospital and said it was "like another world," with imaging equipment and other machinery. "They have actual operating rooms, and it's just amazing."

Freedom of the Press, Hamas-style

From Ma'an:

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) condemned on Tuesday the raiding of Al-Aqsa TV cameraman and news producer Ammar Yasir Altilawy’s home on Thursday.

Altilawy’s home was stormed in the evening by an armed person, working for the National security forces for the de facto Ministry of Interior, a statement issued by MADA said.

"My house was raided in Thursday evening by an armed and military uniformed person who is working in the National Security Forces affiliated to the Ministry of Interior in Gaza under the pretext that he wanted to take pictures of military operation carried out by someone before his martyrdom, so he stole my laptop and he left a message that if he did not find the pictures on the laptop, he will kidnap me by force,” Altilawy told MADA.

"After that I went to the police headquarters and I reported the incident and the testimony of a witness, and they told me that they cannot do anything for because the aggressor is working in the National Security, and that I have to come back to their office later.”

Following which Altilawy went with his father to the police office on Saturday to follow up on his complaint, expressing fear that the aggressors may return to kidnap him. According to his testimony given to MADA, the officer he met with was a sibling of the first officer, who, upon Altilawy’s request for assistance told officers to beat him.

“When I almost finished the sentence, the officer said to his soldiers:" hit him", so they beat me severely with sticks and [their] feet, they were about ten soldiers, and when my father (50 years old) tried to keep them away from me, they also beat him. After that they took me to a room, then the officer came to me after they put me on the wall and raised my hands on it, he severely beat and slapped me, and then ordered the soldiers to put me in the jail. They also confiscated my property and my mobile. After an hour, somebody from the police interfered and tried to convince me to apologize to the officer to release me but I refused because I didn't do anything wrong to him, after that they release me with a pledge.”

Hamas openly threatens the media, and this is the reason why the world doesn't see the true picture from Gaza.

The Second Islamic Solidarity Games competition, meant to be held in Tehran and already postponed once, was canceled.

The reason?

Because Iran insists on using the term "Persian Gulf" while Arab countries, especially the Saudis who organize the competition, insist on calling it the "Arabian Gulf."

The Games were originally scheduled for October and were postponed partially over this very issue.

Isn't Islamic solidarity great?

Canada cuts funding to anti-Israel groups

I had missed this story (h/t jhrhv):

The Canadian government has recently decided to cut back or entirely withdraw the funding to organizations that encourage a boycott of Israel or Israeli products, including pro-Palestinian and Christian groups.

One such organization is the Kairos welfare agency, which lost $7 million – half of its annual budget. Kairos is a social apparatus serving 11 Catholic and Protestant groups and churches promoting the "liberation theology" within the Canadian legal and educational establishments.

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said that the agency's budget was cut back in light of its anti-Semitic positions, adding the group preaches for recognition of such terror organizations as Hamas and Hezbollah while rejecting the Jewish people's right for a state.

Kairos denied Kenney's claims and charged that the Canadian government's decision was motivated by political considerations. It further argued that criticism of Israel should not be regarded as anti-Semitism.

Another organization whose funds were cut back was the Canadian-Arab Federation, which provides aid for immigrants from Muslim countries. The claim against the group was that it promoted hatred and extremism. The Federation claimed in response that by withdrawing funds from its budget, the Canadian government is shunning Arab immigrants.

The Palestine House Educational (PHE), which has enjoyed $750,000 a budget in the last two years, has also been targeted by Canadian authorities.

Between this story and the last one, Canada is cool!

Canada moves money away from UNRWA

From the Philadelphia Bulletin:

A senior Canadian government official has briefed officials in Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the news of Canada’s decision to defund the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) which administers 59 refugee camps for Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents who left their homes in the wake of the 1948 war.

UNRWA maintains Palestinian Arab refugees in their facilities under the premise and promise of return to homes and villages from 1948 that no longer exist.

All other U.N. refugee camps around the world ascribe to the principles of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which mandates that a refugee has a right to be resettled in new conditions.

The Canadian government official who announced that Canada would now defund UNRWA cited a report commissioned by the European parliament, which documented that Hamas terrorists have been chosen by the UNRWA labor union to actually administer UNRWA facilities. The official said that this report played a role in Canada’s new policy towards UNRWA.

Canada heads the “Refugee Working Group (RWG),” a subgroup of the Middle East negotiation process which was established in the wake of the Madrid Middle East Summit in October 1991, to oversee Palestinian refugee policy for the 38 nations that contribute to UNRWA.

The fact that Canada has used its position as the head of the RWG to defund UNRWA will most likely not go unnoticed by the 38 countries that contribute to the half a billion-dollar UNRWA budget.

JTA adds:

Canada is not reducing the amount of money it gives to the Palestinian Authority, "but it is now being redirected in accordance with Canadian values," Toews said. The move "will ensure accountability and foster democracy in the PA."

In the past, Canadian aid earmarked for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, went into a general operating fund in the PA's treasury. The U.N. agency runs 59 Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

In a meeting in Ramallah, Toews refused a request by the PA's minister of planning and administrative development, Ali al-Jarbawi, for aid to be given "directly" to the PA treasury, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Among the projects receiving the redirected aid are those training prosecutors, judges and police, and shoring up the Palestinian judicial sector by building courthouses.

"If we train people properly, we will have the emergence of proper institutions necessary for a state," the Post quoted Toews as saying. "It is obviously more difficult to monitor the use of money sent into general funds than specific projects."

A statement from Toews' office said Canada is "on track" to deliver on its pledge of $300 million over five years to the PA.

Toews said Ottawa needed "to ensure that [the Palestinian Authority] has less wide discretion."

I'm not certain how funds that went straight to the PA made it to UNRWA anyway.

Either way, it is refreshing to see Western nations insist on accountability from the recipients of billions of dollars.

Which newspaper was hacked again?

The London-based Jewish Chronicle was hacked by a group that called itself "Palestinian Mujaheeds" over the weekend. The hackers left anti-semitic and anti-Zionist messages. Some called Jews the "killer of children" and called Jews "racists."

Note that the newspaper is not called the "Zionist Chronicle."

How many Gaza civilians were killed by Hamas rockets?

Palestine Press Agency reports that the house of Ibrahim Naji Sumairi was damaged by a Qassam rocket that fell short in the southern Gaza town of Qarara, and that his family was saved from a "certain death" by sheer luck. The rocket sprayed shrapnel all around the home.

Which brings up a question that the PCHR and B'Tselem and Goldstone did not try to answer: How many of the civilians killed in Gaza were actually killed by fire from Palestinian Arab armed groups? In the days before Cast Lead, two girls were killed in Gaza, and others were injured in separate rocket attacks.

These were not isolated incidents. In fact, in the month before Cast Lead began about 6% of the rockets fired landed in Gaza itself. During Cast Lead, some 800 Qassams were fired towards Israel, and the percentage that landed in Gaza itself is unknown, but we can safely assume that the number would have been even greater than 6% as the people launching the rockets were in a greater hurry than usual.

This indicates that between 40 and 50 rockets meant for Israel may have landed in Gaza itself, maybe more.

Every civilian killed by these rockets were counted as casualties of Israeli fire.

This does not include any civilians killed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad bullets, mortars or anti-tank missiles that were meant for the "Zionist enemy." Nor does it include those killed by secondary explosions from weapons caches purposefully placed in civilian areas.

No "human rights" organization cares enough to do the research and find out the details, though. It is much easier just to attribute all of these deaths to Israel and wash their hands of the issue.

This is what happens when truth is less important than furthering an agenda.

Details on Gaza strawberry and carnation exports

Ma'an sheds some light on the recent allowances for strawberry and flower exports from Gaza:

For export, two truckloads of strawberries will leave Gaza under the auspices of a program headed up by the Dutch government. The program supports strawberry and carnation farmers in the Strip, and as of 10 December secured permission from Israeli crossings officials for the regular export of both goods.

According to Consul General for the Netherlands in Jerusalem Jack Twiss Quarles van Ufford, the strawberries are transported to the French port of Marseilles, from where they enter French and German markets via three major grocery chains there.

Carnations, Twiss told Ma'an, are transported from the Tel Aviv to the Shipool Airports in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from where they travel by conveyor belt to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction, the largest flower auction house in the world.

There, Gaza carnations compete with other producer in the world market and are sold globally.

I wonder if the strawberries are labeled in the French and German supermarkets as having come from Gaza?

Iranian gov't buys software from...Israel?

From JPost (h/t Suzanne):

An Israeli IT company has sold an online business management system to the Teheran Chamber of Commerce.

Yehoshua Meiri, a spokesman for the Ramat Gan-based company DaroNet, said his company had sold Teheran's Chamber of Commerce more than 70 licenses providing for the use of DaroNet's signature business Web site management software.

The $1 million deal, signed last month at DaroNet's European headquarters in Belgium, involved a down payment of $200,000, to be followed by 10 payments throughout the year.

"The deal is signed and delivered," Meiri said. "They can't go back on it now."

Both direct and indirect trade between Israel and Iran is illegal in both countries.

Meiri said his company only realized it was selling the system to an Iranian entity when it was asked to translate the system into Farsi. The contract was signed with a European businessman from the Netherlands representing the Teheran Chamber of Commerce.

"Once we realized, we decided to lower our profile a bit on this issue," he said. "I have no idea if they know we are Israeli, but anyway the deal is done and they know now."

"Lots of Israelis do business with Iran," he added. "From cherry tomatoes to high tech, it's a $250m. trade."

Officials at the Teheran Chamber of Commerce denied knowledge of the deal.

"As far as I know, we have not bought anything from this company and our team has developed our own content management system," said Hassan Ramazani, director of the Chamber of Commerce's IT department. "But I must look into this matter and get back to you."

According to Germany's N-TV, which broke the story on Friday, says that many DaroNet employees are "ultra-orthodox" Jews in Elad, including 120 religious women.

The N-TV story also adds the intriguing claim that Tehran recently approached an Israeli firm to obtain detailed plans of Tehran's sewage system that Israel helped build under the Shah, as well as the fact that "plans of many large and public buildings in the Iranian capital are still lying in the archives of Solel Boneh, another Israeli company with international projects" that worked in Iran before the revolution.

According to another story, Daronet already had sales of its software to chambers of commerce in Jordan and Oman.

80 year old Saudi marries 11 year old girl

From Al Arabiya:

News of a Saudi octogenarian marrying an eleven-year-old girl has outraged human rights activists amid calls on the government to regulate the marriage of underage girls, local media reported Saturday.

The Saudi National Human Rights Commission formed a committee to investigate the marriage, which activists consider a flagrant violation of human and children rights, the Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh said.

The father, who took 85,000 riyals (more than $22,000) in dowry, defended his decision to marry off his 11-year-old daughter even though his wife vehemently objected.

"I don't care about her age," he told the paper. "Her health and her body build make her fit for marriage. I also don't care what her mother thinks."

The father added that marriage at such an early age has been a custom in the Saudi society for a very long time and that he saw no reason why it should be a problem now.

"This is a very old custom and there is nothing wrong with it whether religiously or socially."

On the other hand, the groom said that the father, who is also his cousin, was the one who offered him his daughter and that the mother was totally against the marriage.

"He told me 'I have a girl and she will marry no one but you,'" the groom told the paper. "So, we got the witnesses and summoned the registrar. I paid the dowry and we held the ceremony and that was it. "

The groom expressed his surprise at how the media leveled harsh criticism against him and his family for marrying the girl.

"It is very simple. We didn’t do anything wrong. It is a valid contract that meets all the conditions for marriage? What's the point of all this fuss?"

The groom has three other wives, all much younger, and they all have kids.

As for the bride, she just called for help as she burst into tears.

"Save me. I don't want him," she cried.

Israelis helping Haiti; Arabs mostly absent (corrected)

Religious ZAKA volunteers worked through Shabbat to save victims of the Haiti earthquake and managed to save 8 students from a collapsed building.

The IDF arrived in Haiti and managed to save one man after four days in the rubble:

So far, I have seen the following countries give aid to Haiti:

The United States, Canada, Ireland, Britain, France, Spain, Iceland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, Israel, Italy, the EU, China, Denmark, Venezuela, Germany, Mexico, Taiwan, and Cuba. Other reports include Belize, Brazil, Guiana, Japan, Morocco, Russia and Chile.

The only Arab country in that list is Morocco. The oil-rich Gulf states are certainly following the news from Haiti but their newspapers don't go beyond that with any news that I could find about offers to help.

CORRECTION: The YNet article I linked to did mention some people in Haiti from Jordan, Qatar and Egypt. (h/t Womble)

Al-Arabiya details tons of aid en route from Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Lebanon and Iran.

The LA Times blog mentions much aid coming from Arab countries, and notes the conspicuous absence of Saudi Arabia from the list. (h/t Suzanne)

UPDATE: The birth of a baby in Haiti named Israel: (h/t Suzanne again)

Book review: "The Strong Horse"

Lee Smith is a reporter, commentator, author and visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute. Immediately after 9/11, he flew to Egypt to find out "why the Arabs hate us."

His conclusion, after years of living in Cairo and Beirut, is not so much that Arabs hate the West as it is that their own sectarianism is the driving force behind their actions.

The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and the Clash of Arab Civilizations is a combination of memoir and analysis of his time in the Arab world since Al Qaeda's attack. The name of the book is based on a quote by Bin Laden, where he says "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."

Smith's book shows that this is close to the truth in the Arab world. While many Americans tend to support the underdog, Arabs will gravitate - not necessarily like, but gravitate - towards the stronger party.

Smith goes through the history of Arab sectarian violence. He convincingly shows that, to the Arab world, tribalism is still far more important than anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism. The hatred between the many players in the Middle East - Sunnis, Shiites, Salafis, Alawites, Maronites, and many others - is the driving agenda behind most Arab actions. His asides detailing the history of these groups are worth the cost of the book itself.

To Smith, the existence of despotic Arab regimes seems a necessary evil as the Arab world moves into an unknown future, a transition that is still being violently played out. If Syria and Egypt were not so heavy-handed in their treatment of the various Arab groups, the result would be - Lebanon.

It is indeed ironic that the most liberal Arabic-speaking country, the one that the West would think is the closest to a Western-style democracy, is also the most unstable and the possibly most dangerous. Smith believes that the imposition of a strong leadership in most Arab nations not only forces stability from without but also from within, as the Arab people themselves will tend to side with the group - the government - that shows the most power.

Smith tends to blur the differences between Arab thought and Islamism, seeming to put the latter is a specific form of the former, which is not quite true. His organization of the book is a little jumpy as well, and he ignores the Maghreb countries altogether. Nevertheless, his arguments are compelling if not altogether persuasive. For example, he meets with Natan Sharansky at the end of the book, and although much of his argument is that Sharansky is wrong and that the Arab world does not yearn for real democracy, he doesn't attack Sharansky's arguments head-on.

He also touches upon Israel's role as a de-facto strong horse, but doesn't go into much detail on the topic. His final chapter on Israel, meant to be the culmination of his argument, is disappointing.

However, there is no arguing with the fundamental theme of the book. In the days after 9/11, Al Jazeera - representing pan-Arab thought - lionized Bin Laden. As the US and Western allies marginalized went after Al Qaeda, though, Bin Laden's popularity has gone way down. No one is loving the West and they might rail against Western interference in Arab affairs, but their respect for the Western allies has certainly increased.

This attraction to being on the winning side is, in many ways, the real threat from Iran to the Middle East. Whether the US likes it or not, it has become a major player in the Arab world. Its only real counterbalance is Iran, whose leaders are keen on expanding their influence. If the US wavers in its commitment to its Arab allies - and even to Israel - Iran will gain an extraordinary victory.

I am not a big fan of US aid to Israel. I would prefer to see Israel be more economically independent, and freer to act in its own interests. Unfortunately, the truth is that if the US would "punish" Israel by even symbolically withholding aid, the reverberations throughout the Arab world would be far-reaching. If pro-US Arab governments would perceive that the US commitment to Israel's security was not as strong as it has been, they would be extraordinarily nervous about the US commitment to their own security. They would naturally want to look for other patrons to align with - and Iran is the only other game in town (since publicly allying with the Jewish state is unthinkable.)

The Middle East is a mess that many Americans naturally would like to abandon, but the downside of doing so would be catastrophic. Like it or not, America is the "strong horse," and it is not a role to be relinquished without serious thought about its consequences.

This may be the single most important lesson from Lee Smith's thesis.