Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 14, 2010

The Mamilla Cemetery: Arab hypocrisy at its worst

The Arabs have a new alleged war crime that they are making waves about: the supposed desecration of the Mamilla Cemetery in order to build a new Museum of Tolerance for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

They are claiming that the museum is being built on ancient graves, while the Simon Wiesenthal Center says that they are only building on top of the site of an existing parking lot and not touching the remaining part of the cemetery.

So, let's see how much respect Muslims themselves had for their own sacred cemetery 65 years ago. From the Palestine Post, November 22, 1945:

An area of over 450 dunams in the heart of Jerusalem, now forming the Mamilla Cemetery, is to be converted into a business centre. The townplan is being completed under the supervision of the Supreme Moslem Council in conjunction with the Government Town Planning Adviser. A six-storeyed building to house the Supreme Moslem Council and other offices, a four-storeyed hotel, a bank and other buildings suitable for it, a college, a club and a factory are to be the main structures. There will also be a park to be called the Salah ed Din Park, after the Moslem warrior of Crusader times.

...In an interview with "Al-Wihda." the Jerusalem weekly, a member of the Supreme Moslem Council stated that the use of Moslem cemeteries in the public interest had many precedents both in Palestine and elsewhere....

So, when Muslims build on top of a Muslim cemetery it is fine, but when Jews do the exact same thing (even when they are not!) it is a major crime.

Any questions?

(If you want to see how the Times-UK bought the Palestinian Arab narrative hook line and sinker, see here. The Wiesenthal Center response is here.)

A potential export market for PalArabs shut down

From Ma'an:

alestinian Authority Preventative Security Services in Hebron confiscated 1 million pills advertised as sexual stimulants, worth an estimated 20 million Shekels, from a warehouse in the city. According to the Ministry of Health, the pills originated from China and entered the West Bank without a required permit from the ministry.

Khaled Seder, Ministry of Health manager in Hebron, said the pills confiscated were unusual, a variety he has not encountered before during his 28-year career as a doctor, he said.

"We estimate the real value of these stimulants, of which 15 varieties were discovered, if sold on the black market could obtain about 20 million shekels" he added.

Seder added that the Palestinian market would not be able to absorb the large quantity of pills discovered, and speculated that they were intended for export to neighboring countries like Jordan.

Butane wars in Egypt

From The Majlis:

Cooking gas riots -- or, as Al-Masry Al-Youm has dubbed them (عربي), "the butane war" -- have killed at least one person in Egypt and sent the mayor of Tanta to prison.

Cylinders of butane gas are ubiquitous in Egypt: they're used in homes, in restaurants, and by street vendors hawking fuul and roasted nuts. But the country is going through a severe butane shortage right now, brought on by last month's deadly flooding, which disrupted supply lines from major ports on the Mediterranean coast. (Government officials say illegal businesses are also contributing to the shortage by using large amounts of subsidized butane.)

The shortage has sent prices skyrocketing -- from LE10-15 (US$2-3) per cylinder, the official price, to as much as LE60 (US$11) on the burgeoning black market. Smugglers are getting their gas cylinders direct from the distributors: Al-Masry Al-Youm published some photos this week (not available online, sorry) of two trucks, owned by Dakahlia governorate, selling butane cylinders to black market vendors.
The suppliers are trying to turn a profit, too: Two butane factories in Damietta were caught underfilling the cylinders they ship to retailers.
Egyptians who can't afford the higher prices have been queuing up in long lines across the country. One of those lines, in Imbaba -- a neighborhood in Giza governorate -- turned into a riot yesterday. A group of men attacked each other with chains and knives; one of them was killed, and two more were injured. Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that elderly people have been fainting in lines in several cities.
The independent newspaper Al-Wafd reported yesterday that six men were injured in a gunfight over butane cylinders in Tanta. The town's mayor shot six people -- two of them, ironically, were his cousins -- after they accused him of hoarding cylinders. The mayor was arrested.

The Daily News Egypt's Al Khan cartoon savagely describes the violence over butane this way today:

And, of course, there is an anti-Israel angle. Israel already has an agreement with Egypt to receive natural gas supplies for a low price over the next 15 years, and Egyptians are complaining “We export natural gas at a low price [to Israel] and import butane gas for a high price."

No strawberries on cakes for Valentine's Day in Saudi Arabia

Another article about how the Saudi religious police crack down on red items on Valentine's Day:

It’s that time of the year again when the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia) “sees red” at shopkeepers selling Valentine things — or even strawberries on cakes.
“Customers ask us for cakes with strawberries on them, which we sell throughout the year,” said Samir, a sales clerk at a well-known Riyadh patisserie. “Then we are ordered not to sell them (around Valentine’s Day).”
Marth Sanluis, a Philippine worker at a flower shop on Jeddah’s Rawdah Street said his shop is avoiding any possible conflict by keeping red stuff off the shelves.
“If they (the Haia) see one heart-shaped item or red rose they will take the stuff and close the shop,” he said.
Another flower shop also in Rawdah however had many red teddy bears, roses, cards and heart shaped items. The worker at the shop, Aamir Habib, said that the commission had not visited them yet but if they did they would confiscate all red items.
For those who do indulge in the annual cat-and-mouse game, some simply wear red fashion items or accessorize in red as a small gesture of defiance.
On Saturday in a posh Jeddah boutique, young men were seen snapping pictures of red fashion items and sending the pictures by SMS, presumably to their dear ones to ensure they’re buying the right gift.
One local newspaper lampooned the crackdown on red by questioning whether it was OK to wear the red-and-white Saudi man’s headdress, prompting the Haia to reply that the shemagh is allowed.

Why there will never be peace, reason #27

Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today quotes unnamed sources as claiming that Israeli police sprinkled urine on various sections of the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

Making up lies is easy, and there are no consequences for the liars. Certainly no one in the Arab world would dare publicly disagree or repudiate these accusations for fear of looking like Israeli lackeys.

And absurd lies like these are not made intermittently - they are a constant torrent on Arabic websites, with accusations made literally daily about the latest supposed outrageous plan that Israel has for Al Aqsa (tunnels underneath, building a synagogue on top, engineering an earthquake to knock it down....) The major impetus is just pure incitement of hatred against Jews. (This is the picture accompanying the article.)

This cannot be overemphasized: the Palestinian Arabic media shows no interest in living together peacefully with Israel. There are no counterbalancing editorials that call for real peace (as opposed to tactical, short-term truces.) Even the "condemnation" that the most moderate of Palestinian Arab leaders, Salim Fayyad, made for the murder of an Israeli last week didn't even hint that it was morally wrong, merely that it was counterproductive for Palestinian Arab interests.

There are no Palestinian Arab counterparts to Gideon Levy or Amira Hass, people willing to insult their own government and identify fully and publicly with the other side. The hate is endemic, widespread and officially encouraged.

This is the real problem. When one side doesn't really want peace but only complete capitulation, and when that same side spends all its time and efforts in demonizing the other side, there will never be any real peace.

Jenny Tonge fired as health spokeswoman

From The Guardian:

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, has sacked his health spokeswoman in the Lords after she called for an inquiry into allegations that Israeli soldiers were involved in organ trafficking in Haiti.
Clegg described Baroness Jenny Tonge's remarks about Israeli troops sent to the earthquake-stricken country as "wrong, distasteful and provocative".
It is the second time Tonge has been fired as a Liberal Democrat frontbencher for making controversial comments about Israel.
The latest row followed accusations in the online Palestine Telegraph – of which she is a patron – that members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had been harvesting body parts in Haiti.
She subsequently told the Jewish Chronicle: "To prevent allegations such as these – which have already been posted on YouTube – going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti."
Fellow Liberal Democrats were said to have complained to Clegg about her comments.
In a statement last night, the leader said the peer "apologises unreservedly".
"Following discussions with the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, Lord McNally, I have decided that Jenny Tonge will stand down as Liberal Democrat health spokesperson in the Lords following her unacceptable comments suggesting an inquiry into highly offensive allegations against the IDF humanitarian operation in Haiti," Clegg said.
"The comments were wrong, distasteful and provocative and I recognise the deep and understandable distress they have caused to the Jewish community.
"While I do not believe that Jenny Tonge is antisemitic or racist, I regard her comments as wholly unacceptable. Jenny Tonge apologises unreservedly for the offence she has caused."

Is it weird that someone is quoting her as apologizing but she isn't doing it herself?

Meanwhile, the spoof TongeLashing website I may or may not have set up in response to her comments is doing well, with some 2000 hits and dozens of comments. It is also getting hits from the Liberal Democrat Voice website as well.

Interestingly, the article in the Palestine Chronicle that Tonge was referring to seems to have disappeared from that site. Were they embarrassed? A copy can be seen here.

PA minister accuses Israel of "silently massacring" prisoners

Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe has been busy lately spreading blood libels about Israeli prisons.

Palestine Press Agency quotes him as saying that there are 18 prisoners now who are suffering from incurable diseases like cancer, and says that these diseases are being injected by Israelis. He is also quoted as saying that 60 prisoners have died from serious illnesses in Israel prisons - since 1958!

That sounds like a pretty good record to me!

In addition, he calls this supposed policy a "silent massacre."

A different spokesman for the ministry last year accused Israel of "deliberately injecting sick Palestinian prisoners with infected needles, and of giving them poisonous medicines."

As usual, they have no real evidence for these accusations, but they call on the WHO and others to open up investigations. Because they know that they'll always find a Jenny Tonge to back them up.

Saudi religious police ban red items ahead of Valentine's Day

From AP:

The Saudi religious police are cracking down on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to banned celebrations of Valentine's Day.
A Saudi official says policemen are inspecting shops for red roses, heart-shaped products or gifts wrapped in red, and ordering storeowners to get rid of them.

Such items are legal at other times of the year, but as February 14 nears they become contraband.

Saudi Arabia bans celebration of Western holidays such as Valentine's Day, named after a Christian saint said to have been martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.

Most shops in Riyadh's upscale neighborhoods have removed all red items from their shelves.

Red wrapping paper is also forbidden.

The many Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia were warned not to do anything valentine-y in public on February 14th, including blowing kisses.

AP is watering down the reasons that the Saudis are against Valentine's Day. It is not strictly because it is a Christian holiday, but because (as I mentioned in a Saudi Vice episode two years ago)

As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women.

Here's the perfect gift for Saudi Valentine's Day!

PalArab press and politics personified

Mahmoud Abbas did everything he could to stop Israel's Channel 10 broadcast of various sex and financial scandals in his quasi-government, including writing a letter to Binyamin Netanyahu threatening to resign if the show was broadcast. He is also threatening a lawsuit against the channel.

He asked Hamas not to rebroadcast the show on their TV station, and Hamas agreed. Fatah official Hatem Abdel Qader praised Hamas for their "wise decision of personal responsibility," saying that censoring these programs "is in the best interest of the Palestinian people, and reflects the high sense of responsibility."

But Islamic Jihad is not trying to reconcile with Fatah, and their Palestine Today website just published what amounts to a transcript of the Channel 10 broadcast.

With one notable exception: the whistleblower, Fathi Shabaneh, also said that Hamas was corrupt as well, and Islamic Jihad didn't bother to publish that little detail, so as not to upset their Hamas hosts.

In this way, Hamas allows Fatah to be embarrassed but doesn't do it directly, and Islamic Jihad plays its role as the "extremist" group who doesn't follow the rules - but also doesn't embarrass Hamas.

All this goes to show that while there is more freedom of the Palestinian Arab press than in the past, the media is just another propaganda tool.

Ancient Jerusalem street unearthed, PalArabs skeptical

From AP:

Archaeologists say they have unearthed a section of a stone street in Jerusalem that provides new evidence of the city’s commercial life in Byzantine times.
The discovery confirms the shape of the city in the fourth to sixth centuries provided by a map [left] earlier discovered in a Jordanian Church.
Excavation director Ofer Sion of the Israeli Antiquities Authority said Wednesday the discovery shows the current street follows the “same path as the noisy street from 1,500 years ago.”
Archaeologists have uncovered 19 feet (5.8 metres) of the pathway, which lies 14 feet (4.3 metres) below street level and once they complete restoration work, the segment will be covered because of the heavy pedestrian traffic in the area.

Even though this finding is from 1500 years ago, during Byzantine times and not when Jerusalem was under Jewish rule, the Palestinian Authority spokesman is saying that these claims are unfounded and just another lie that the Jews are using to prove the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

For a people with a supposedly ancient tie to the land, Palestinian Arabs really seem to dislike archaeology - the very science that can validate their claims.

A Saudi problem, and a potential solution

From Arab News:

The only clinic for visually impaired people in Saudi Arabia has been closed since last month because there is no trained optometrist or ophthalmologist to help run it.
The clinic’s last optometrist, who was there for the last two years, left as she received a better job offer elsewhere.
Mohammad Tawfiq Bellow, who is the founder and general manager of Ebsar Foundation which runs the clinic, says getting the right person is not easy as special training is required. Those who are trained prefer to work in hospitals because of better perks and financial security.
“Working in a voluntary organization like Ebsar requires commitment to society, which is difficult to find,” said Bellow, who founded Ebsar in 2001 after losing his job because of low vision.
“This is the missing part of our medical education system. It fails to motivate our professionals to perform community service.”

I bet that if he asks Israeli ophthalmologists to volunteer, he would not only find someone willing to work there but also a bunch of Jewish philanthropists who would happily bankroll the clinic in the interests of peace and goodwill.

The only downside is that he would probably get death threats and the clinic would likely be bombed.

Jenny Tonge asks Israel to investigate Haiti organ stealing

From TheJC:

Baroness Tonge, the Liberal peer, said this week that Israel should set up an inquiry to disprove allegations that its medical teams in Haiti “harvested” organs of earthquake victims for use in transplants.
The organ theft claims were published last week in the Palestine Telegraph, an online journal based in Gaza of which Baroness Tonge is a patron.

In a statement to the JC, she said the Israel Defence Forces were “to be commended for their fantastic response to the Haitian earthquake”.

But she added: “To prevent allegations such as these — which have already been posted on YouTube — going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti.”

Ed Fordham, the Lib Dem candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, said: “It’s abhorrent that anyone should suggest that something as perverse and sick as this should be investigated.”

Monroe Palmer, chairman of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, added: “Whilst I welcome Tonge’s approval of Israeli actions in Haiti, she is misguided to call for any investigation. On this basis, there could be calls for an investigation to discover the ‘truth’ in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Matthew Harris, Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Hendon, called it “perverse in the extreme to suggest that there needs to be an investigation of allegations to which she gives no credence”.

Baroness Tonge’s position on Israel has in the past caused embarrassment to the Liberal Democrats, but leader Nick Clegg has consistently refused to discipline her.

An Israeli Embassy spokesman dismissed the allegations as “not fit to grace even the sickest of publications”.

The allegations came in an article titled Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs by an American researcher, Stephen Lendman, who accused Israel of a “crime against humanity”.
Mr Lendman referred to a “damning” YouTube video cited by Al Manar, the pro-Hizbollah Lebanese TV station. The video offers no evidence to support the claims against Israel.

I have an idea! I'll start a new blog, called TongeLashing, and write up some made-up "facts" that Jenny Tonge is a secret child pornographer who also likes to whip Palestinian Arab children.

Then I will find some pictures of her with such children, or photoshop them, and make a YouTube video adding to the accusations.

After that, the world needs to demand that she come clean in an independent investigation that would need to be done to clear her name. She would have to open her house for "independent researchers" to enter and take apart every molecule of her residence. Afterward, she can claim that she was exonerated, but some questions will of course remain.

After all, if there is smoke, there must be fire, right?

Visit the "relaxed seaside atmosphere" of Gaza

From Al Arabiya:

For your next getaway, you might consider this: four nights and five days in sunny "Palestine: land of miracles."

It's a tough sell for a place that has become synonymous with Middle East violence, for a country not yet a country which does not even control all of its territory, let alone its major tourist attractions.

And yet the figures are up for the third year running. Palestinian tourism ministry records show that some 2.6 million tourists visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2009.

Bethlehem, home to the Church of the Nativity built on what tradition holds to be the birthplace of Jesus, is the prime attraction.

Still, despite its "Palestine: land of miracles" slogan, the Palestinian tourism ministry says it has more to offer than just holy sites.

Brochures even advise travelers to take in the sites of the Gaza Strip, renowned for its "relaxed seaside atmosphere."

Yes, Gaza is a wonderful, relaxed place to visit.

I also was a tourist who visited "Palestine" last year. Not only did I go to Jerusalem, but also I visited Bethlehem (Rachel's Tomb) and Hebron (the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which the Palestinian Tourism Ministry calls "Abraham’s Mosque – Tomb of Patriarch.") I even bought some souvenirs from a very friendly Arab shop in Hebron, where the proprietors offered coffee and gave Mrs. Elder a chance to use their pottery wheel, amid much laughter (she didn't do a bad job but we are not quite sure what she made.)

It appears, however, that the tourism ministry is counting every visitor to Jerusalem as being a tourist to "Palestine."

Desmond Travers claims that no one has critiqued Goldstone Report

I just looked at a recent interview of Desmond Travers, one of the four members of the UNHRC "fact-finding mission" to Gaza, after reading the JCPA critique of his positions yesterday. (h/t Tired of Liars)

Besides the lies that others have pointed out, like his assertion that there were only two rockets from Gaza in the month before Cast Lead and they weren't fired by Hamas (there were over 150, most of which were claimed by Hamas), he said this doozy:

The best statement I can make about that is the one that Richard Goldstone made when an American spokesperson for the State Department said it was a very biased, flawed report and he said to them by way of response, “Show us where the bias is and where the flaw is and we’ll do our best to correct it.” That invitation stands. I have subsequently issued the same invitation in a Dutch newspaper and elsewhere; so far, no substantive critique of the report has been received.

Funnily enough, I did get a reply back from a most virulently, anti-Goldstone, pro-Israeli, right-wing, blogspot saying more or less, “Travers doesn’t realise that various academics, politicians and military officers have written magnificent tracts disproving the Goldstone Report…”, but they haven’t. They’ve just written magnificent whinges.

So, what I’m saying is the critiques, if you go through them, would fill several times the volume of material compared to the report and none of them are valid. The tsunami of criticisms that have been slapped against the report funnily enough already started long before the report was published. Such early criticisms suggest, perhaps, an awareness of the guilt of the perpetrators; a question of getting one’s retaliation in first, in a manner of speaking. They are signalling their guilt.

In Travers' twisted mind, the very fact that there are so many criticisms of the Goldstone Report is proof that it must be completely true.

Later, he says

What I found was that the quality of the criticisms was appalling. Nevertheless, they self-perpetuated. If it was from an academic or a political or a senior military figure it would tend to regurgitate every now and then in a different shape or form or in a different blog or email or website or newspaper. So the obvious PR strategy by those who would defend Israel at all costs was to keep slinging mud in the hope that sooner or later the sheer volume of it would stick or wear people down. [But the actual level of the critique was]… zero, non-existent.

So instead of responding to the in-depth criticisms written by Dershowitz, Landes, Matas, Israel itself, Lozowick, CAMERA, the IDF, and over twenty posts by yours truly, not to mention countless others, Travers just dismisses them as being worthless.

He doesn't even deign to describe exactly what is wrong with them, just that their quality is "appalling."

But he still claims that he is more than willing to correct any cases of bias in the Goldstone Report.

Well, he can start by explaining why the conclusions of the report mention Israel hundreds of times and barely mention Hamas at all:

Nah, no bias there!

The explosive Iran/Hamas connection

This morning saw another Hamas "work accident" where a 23-year old Al Qassam Brigades member was "martyred" in a "task of jihad." This was the sixth known such death this year, and the 12th in the past four months.

Ma'ariv has an article this morning that indicates that there has been a lot more cooperation between Hamas and Iran's Revolutionary Guards, that have resulted in a number of explosions, although it is unclear how many of them are so-called "work accidents" and how many were targeted.

For example, according to Palestinian Arab security officials, the Syrian bus explosion last December did not kill "pilgrims" but in fact killed five members of the Revolutionary Guards and three members of Hamas.

Similarly, an explosion in Beirut in December killed two more Hamas terrorists, inside Hezbollah-controlled territory.

The PA security officials say that an explosion last week in a residential basement in Gaza, that was blamed on a gas canister exploding, was really a weapons lab explosion. Immediately after the explosion, Hamas sealed off the area. The names of the victims were not released. The next day, Hamas announced the death of a "martyr" without mentioning the circumstances, and according to these reports he was known as being an explosives expert. In addition, the PA sources say that four Iranian Revolutionary Guard members were killed in the same incident.