Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Arab op-ed slams PA corruption

The revelation of corruption and sexual harassment against Rafiq Al Hussieni, an aid to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas last week by a former Palestinian intelligence officer, was not the first charge of corruption against the Palestinian leadership that came to exist in the occupied territories as a result of the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993. Corruption, within this ‘Oslo leadership ordinary Palestinians claim, is endemic.

The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat used corruption as a tool to manage and control his chaotic Palestinian Authority, PA, and thus bred corruption as a way of life and a method of governance in the PA. President Mahmoud Abbas is no different according to many complaints against him by Palestinian intellectuals.

Furthermore, the manner of which the charges of corruption and sexual harassment were revealed on an Israeli TV station resulted in a public revulsion against the PA and its officials. Many commentaries in Arab press described the PA is a decaying corpse that it is better off buried to save the people its stench.

The damage this tainted Palestinian leadership is inflicting on its people due to its wanton corruption is immeasurable. True that Israel is decidedly responsible for the forced displacement and destruction of the Palestinian society and its civic institutions since 1948, but it is also true that this Palestinian leadership has, strange as it may seem, joined the enemy in destroying its own society and people.

Thin Mint Open Thread

I had a whole bunch of interesting, amusing and insightful posts in my head for today, but then an obstacle came up that I could not avoid:

Yes, I saw some Girl Scouts selling the sublime Thin Mints outside a supermarket, and that was that. All the posts flew out of my head as I became fixated on one supreme goal - eating these cookies.

The entire superstructure of the Elders could be toppled by a few thousand well-placed (and chilled) Thin Mint packages, throughout our secret complex.

So while I recover, here's an open thread. If you want to argue that Samoas or Tagalogs are better than Thin Mints, feel free; you are simply wrong.

Book Review: "Start-Up Nation"

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle is a remarkable book by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. It details what has allowed Israel, a besieged nation with few natural resources and under political and military pressure from birth, to become an incubator for a hugely disproportionate number of successful entrepreneurial enterprises compared to any other nation. It also asks what other nations could learn from Israel's success.

Senor and Singer describe how Israeli engineers literally saved Intel by badgering its executives incessantly to change how they create their chips. The book details how a tiny Israeli firm showed PayPal a completely new method of fraud detection that did in a week what PayPal couldn't do with thousands of analysts in years. It reveals little known items such as the fact that Google Suggest, where probable search requests are shown in real time as you type into the Google Search box, was using Israeli ingenuity.

The book uncovers many factors that contribute to Israeli success in creating startups as well as being crucial to the continued success of giants like Microsoft, Cisco and Berkshire-Hathaway.

One major reason is the Israeli army. The IDF gives its soldiers an instant network across different parts of Israeli society, it actively pursues high-achieving students to join its most challenging programs, it provides cross-disciplinary training, it forces young soldiers to take responsibility for split-second, life-or-death decisions, and it does not punish failure as long as everyone can learn from mistakes. The IDF rewards creativity and frowns upon the rigid hierarchical structure that other armies make mandatory. Soldiers are expected to question everything they are told, and not to rely on the attitude that "this is the way it has always been done." Even more importantly, the IDF resume is critical to getting a job in Israel (something that hurts Israeli Arabs and haredim, a topic discussed briefly.)

All of these factors translate into a successful entrepreneurial spirit. While American companies often do not know what to make of a resume that mentions military service, Israeli companies know exactly how the skills learned on a battlefield translate into the business world. And while corporate America tends to punish people who fail in any new venture, Israelis do not look at failure as a negative; rather it is essential experience.

The army is not the only factor behind Israeli success. Other factors include Israel's embrace of immigration as a catalyst for growth, noting that immigrants are natural risk-takers, as well as government encouragement of the nation's start-ups. It took a group of forward-thinking people to create Israel's venture capital industry. The authors even mention that Jews, from centuries of studying the Talmud, naturally ask questions and challenge their teachers.

One factor that permeates the book, that would be more difficult to reproduce in other nations, is a deep-seated patriotism. Israelis don't just want to succeed, they want to davka succeed - they want to succeed despite, and in spite of, the obstacles that the world puts in their way. Israel's defense industries sprung up partially because Charles de Gaulle stopped sending French jet planes to Israel on the eve of the Six Day War. When Saddam Hussein showered Scud missiles on Israel, Intel Israel employees kept all their manufacturing deadlines at a critical time for Intel - even though the government asked people to stay home and employees all came voluntarily. They knew that for Israel to be taken seriously as a major player, it had to be perceived as a reliable partner for major corporations and divorce the reality of war from meeting commitments.

When Warren Buffett invested in Iscar, he didn't think that the possibility of the factory being destroyed by Katyusha rockets was a catastrophic risk: factories could always be rebuilt; his main investment was in the people.

Even back before the state was born, Palestinian Jews turned the Arab boycott against them into an advantage, as they opened up export markets and ended up doing better than before the boycott.

When Israelis think about how to solve a problem, they aren't only thinking about how it would help their careers - they are thinking about how it would help Israel itself, how it would help their companies, and, often, how it would help the world.

For Zionists, this is an exhilarating book to read; it shows how Israelis turn adversity into advantage. For businesspeople, it gives insight into how to reward risk-takers and innovators.

A look at a child marriage in Yemen

IRIN reports:

It was every little girl’s dream - she was to get a new dress, jewellery, sweets and a party for all her friends.

What 10-year-old Aisha* did not know was that after the wedding party she would have to leave school, move to a village far from her parents’ home, cook and clean all day, and have sex with her older husband.

“He took out a special sheet and laid me down on it,” Aisha told IRIN, wringing her small plump hands. “After it, I started bleeding. It was so painful that I was crying and shouting, and since then I have seen him as death.”

After a week of fighting off her husband every night, Aisha’s father was called. He had received 200,000 Yemeni Rial (US$1,000) for his daughter in `shart’, a Yemeni dowry, which he could not pay back.

“My Dad made a cup of tea and put some pills in it, which he gave me. The pills made me feel dizzy,” said Aisha. “My Dad told me to sleep with my husband, or he would kill me, but I refused.”

Instead Aisha broke a glass bottle over her head in a desperate attempt to stay awake. “My Dad hit me badly. I was bleeding from my mouth and nose,” she said.

After spending a few months in her husband’s home, where she said he would regularly drug her and beat her, Aisha managed to escape. Now, two years later, aged 12, she is unable to divorce him.

A bill passed in parliament in February 2009 setting the minimum age for marriage at 17 was rejected by the Islamic Sharia Codification Committee which said it was un-Islamic, according to local women’s rights organizations.

So, for now, there is no law protecting children against early marriages in Yemen.

”I don’t call it marriage, but rape,” said Shada Mohammed Nasser, a lawyer at the High Court in Sanaa. She has represented several child bride divorce cases in court, but admits she has lost most of them. Only a handful of child brides have successfully managed to divorce their husbands.

“The law on marriage stipulates that a girl should not sleep with her husband until she is mature,” said Nasser, which according to the law is the age of 15. “But the law is not enforced.”

A girl can be married at just nine, but cannot legally seek a divorce until she is 15 or older. The money paid by the husband for his “wife” is a further obstacle to divorce, while the case can only be heard in a court in the governorate where the marriage took place.

Just under half of Yemeni girls, 48 percent, are married before they turn 18, according to the Washington DC-based International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW). This is classified as underage, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In some governorates as many as half of all girls under the age of 15 are married, according to an unpublished study from 2007 on early marriage by Sanaa University’s Gender Development Research and Study Centre.

”These are our traditions,” said Aisha’s father. However, he admits that Aisha might have been too young for marriage. Though she now has a lawyer, Aisha cannot divorce until the two men who control her (her father and husband) agree on how much money each will receive.

What Aisha wants is clear: “I’d rather die than go back to him,” she said, wiping a tear from behind her veil.

Terror supporters violently protest Israeli ballet

From YNet:

Pro-Palestinian groups headed by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel*, staged a protest rally outside an Israeli Ballet performance in the Flynn Theater in Burlington, Vermont, on Friday.

According to an Israel Radio report, four demonstrators eventually forced their way into the theater, waving signs saying that anyone who watched the performance was "supporting Israel's apartheid policy."

Company director Dan Rudolf alerted the theater's security personnel, as well as the local police, who promptly arrived at the scene and escorted the demonstrators outside.

The show resumed after a short intermission.

Actually, the protest was by Adalah-NY, a different group that happens to support terror and the total destruction of Israel. As their website says, " We also affirm the right of all people to resist occupation and oppression," which are codewords for terror attacks.

They are planning a protest of the same dance troupe in Brooklyn tomorrow.

UPDATE: In the comments someone is claiming that Adalah had nothing to do with this. Adalah-NY was in the forefront of publicizing the tour, so it doesn't seem like a very important distinction. Also someone from Adalah-NY took credit for the protest in the comments at YNet.

There is also a claim that the protesters weren't violent and they paid for the tickets. I saw another person who was there claimed that they did break in, and they did interrupt the performance (can't find that link now and, frankly, it isn't that important to me.)

Shahar Peer loses match, wins respect

From The Times (UK):

In the end Shahar Peer’s fervent determination to prove her point that sport and politics should not mix produced a noble effort but it was not sufficient to unsettle somebody she reveres as a true legend of tennis.

Peer had collected an impressive array of scalps as she moved into the semi-final; world no 3 Caroline Wozniacki, Australian Open semi-finalist Li Na and the controversial young Belgian Yanina Wickmayer who was initially banned from tennis for a year after missing drug tests but returned courtesy of her lawyers to win her first tournament back in Auckland.
All that counted for nothing as Williams, so supportive a year ago when the Israeli was denied the necessary visa for entrance into the United Arab Emirates, staged an initial onslaught of aggression that effectively intimidated Peer for the entirety of the first set.

Within just 22 minutes Williams was a set to the good with Peer’s serve broken three times in succession. Getting through to the finals depends so much on mental toughness and it suddenly seemed that so much of the 22 year-old’s had been spent dealing with the issues of the last week.

“I have to say that I was really focused on the match,” maintained the third seeded victor. “Really focused on trying to win. I definitely started well, and I felt like I was playing very aggressively and just basically taking a lot of time away from her.”

Things changed a little in the second set and Peer began to show the fighting qualities that had been so prevalent all week. She fought back from an initial two game deficit and then warded off five Williams break points in a marathon game that featured nine deuces and last almost as long as the opening set.

Williams certainly appeared to be tiring under the sweltering sun but finally Peer hit two impetuous forehands that proved costly, giving the experienced American the break that proved crucial.

“I’m sure I will learn and benefit from this experience,” insisted Peer. “This time last year I remember being at home in Israel watching Venus win the final. This week I have beaten some really good players and had to deal with a lot of things. I am really happy with the way I came through it and now I hope to come back next year.”

Now, that's Hasbara.

Israel and its supporters spend so much time being on the defensive, but Shahar Peer shows how it should be done. Unapologetically fight for your principles, take all of the obstacles as mere bumps in the road and ignore all the distractions.

New Israeli drone to be delivered to the IDF

From YNet:

The IDF is about to receive what is considered the world's best unmanned aircraft – the Eitan.
"The Eitan can stay in the air for more than 20 hours; it can carry very large cargo and fly very far, much further than any other unmanned drone in Israel," said Air Force Lt. Col. A. "Only few aircraft in the world approach such capabilities."
On Sunday, the Air Force will be receiving the Israeli-made drone, which had already been tested on several occasions, including during operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.

For the time being, Air Force officials only have praise for the new aircraft.

The Eitan is physically larger than any other drone and can fly at higher altitudes. It can also carry more weight – several hundred kilos, compared to the 250-kilogram maximum currently carried by Israel's most advanced drone.
"The Eitan gives us very broad intelligence capabilities," Lt. Col. A. said. "It is the world's most advanced unmanned aircraft and it was especially adapted to missions which the Air Force needs."
In addition, the new drone is equipped with more advanced technological systems than its predecessors. Until recently, these systems were tested by the Israel Aircraft Industry, yet as of Sunday Air Force personnel will be taking over.

The Eitan's role would be to operate in the highest altitudes, along with other aircraft flying at lower altitudes. The new drone will be providing an effective means at all theaters, with an emphasis on distant ones – including Iran.

Arab analysts are calling this announcement a psy-ops war against Iran, because the Eitan was announced years ago and they are saying that this news is recycled.

Well, if that was the intent, it worked, as Iran's PressTV covers the story today.

(Of course the Eitan was known about, but this week is the first time it was formally given over to the IAF. )

There were rumors that the Eitan was used in the attack against the smuggling convoy in Sudan last year as well.

Palestine Today's "proof" of US involvement in Mabhouh hit

Classic example of how conspiracy theories are started, from Palestine Today, which quotes the Wall Street Journal as saying that the suspects in the Mabhouh hit in Dubai were using credit cards from American banks.

It concludes "This proves beyond any doubt the participation of the United States of America in the assassination."

Another Arab murdered in a posh hotel

But this one is a little different:

A Saudi prince was charged last night over the murder of a servant in a five-star London hotel.
Saud Bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir Bin Abdulaziz al Saud, 33, is due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court today.
The multi-millionaire is accused of murdering 32-year-old Bandar Abdullah Abdulaziz at the Landmark Hotel in central London on Monday.
He is also charged with assaulting Mr Abdulaziz on January 22.
The international playboy is believed to have travelled the world with his servant, who slept at the foot of his bed, and had spent up to £100,000 during a three-week stay at the Landmark, hiring five rooms including a £1,000-a-night suite.
A maid discovered Mr Abdulaziz's battered body in a third floor room at 4.45pm on Monday.
Detectives believe that the murder happened during a row at the hotel and that the assailant may not have intended to kill the victim.

The French Halal burger kerfuffle

From AP:

A French town filed a legal complaint Thursday accusing a branch of a mainstream fast food chain of discrimination because it only serves burgers prepared according to Islamic dietary law.
The mayor of the northern town of Roubaix, Rene Vandierendonck, told The Associated Press that he wants the Quick burger restaurant to "propose a new, diversified" menu that satisfies a broader clientele.

Quick is a Belgium-based chain popular in Europe that offers low-priced hamburgers, french fries and other standard fast-food fare. There are Quick restaurants in towns all over France.

The Quick restaurant in Roubaix is among seven in France that since November have been serving halal-only food. Burgers once served with bacon now come with smoked beef instead of pork.

The company has said the goal of the halal-only restaurants is "to validate the commercial interest and technical feasibility of introducing such a selection of products based on halal meat."

The Independent adds more context:

Quick, which is almost entirely owned by a French state investment arm, began its experiment in towns with large Muslim populations last November. Not a single customer, or politician, complained until the far- right politician, Marine Le Pen, claimed this week that the "halalburgers" amounted to an "Islamic tax" on French consumers.

The Socialist mayor of Roubaix, in northern France, and centre-right members of President Nicolas Sarkozy's party have since protested against Quick's decision as "un-Republican", "discriminatory" and "sectarian". There are regional elections in France next month.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with what Quick did, and the politicians that are against it are using arguments that have been used by anti-semites for decades.

Right across the channel, Subway offers Halal franchises, and there are both Halal and kosher Subways in the US. Walmart customizes its items for local communities, offering kosher sections in the Catskills and Halal sections in the US and Canada. This isn't discrimination; this is good business.

There are a lot of things to be concerned about from political Islam, but this is not one of them. Those who rail against it are on the slippery slope between justified concern and true bigotry.

UNRWA soccer tounament named after terrorist

From Palestinian Media Watch (h/t Bubbe):

An UNRWA educational program in Ramallah has honored the terrorist Abu Jihad with a football tournament in his name. The tournament was organized by the Fatah Students' Youth Movement at UNRWA's Women's Training Center and Faculty of Educational Sciences in Ramallah:

"The Student Union Council and the Shabiba [Fatah] Students' Movement at UNRWA's Faculty of Educational Sciences has launched a football tournament under the name, 'The Shahid (Martyr) Abu Jihad Tournament.'"

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 17, 2010]
Dedicating sports tournaments and summer camps for Palestinian youth to terrorists who have killed Israelis is Palestinian Authority policy. Palestinian Media Watch has regularly documented the PA's glorification of terrorists.

The fact that UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees) is hosting a tournament honoring a terrorist is not the first time that the UN has supported the PA's policy of honoring terrorists. In the past, the UN has supported summer camps named after terrorists, including a UNICEF-sponsored camp in 2003 named after "the Shahida (Martyr) Wafa Idris." For examples of camps named after terrorists, click here.

Abu Jihad was one of the founders of the Fatah Movement and the orchestrator of the organization's terror activities from the mid-1960s. Second in command to Yasser Arafat, he headed the military wing of the PLO and served as deputy supreme military commander of Fatah. Abu Jihad planned many of the major Fatah terror attacks, including the worst terror attack in Israel's history, in which 37 civilians were murdered in a bus hijacking led by Dalal Mughrabi in 1978. He also planned the hostage taking at the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv in 1975 in which eight hostages and two Israeli soldiers were killed. Abu Jihad was killed in 1988 in an operation attributed to Israel.

According to the UNRWA website:

..[T]he Commissioner-General has on numerous occasions reminded UNRWA’s area and international staff of their obligations of impartiality as UN employees and officials. In numerous letters to all staff he has recalled that “staff of the Agency are required to conduct themselves in accordance with established principles and practices of the United Nations and must not engage in any activity which is incompatible with their status as independent and impartial civil servants”. He also stated that “whilst UNRWA staff members, like other United Nations officials, are entitled to their political views, such views must not be allowed to come into conflict with the duty of the individual staff member to give loyal service uninfluenced by external political pressures”.

In addition, since the start of the current strife the Agency has employed a group of International Staff as Operational Support Officers one of whom’s main tasks is to ensure the integrity of UNRWA property and installations in the OPT. The Agency enforces all the rules mentioned above in a stringent manner and has initiated disciplinary measures against its staff where necessary. For example, the Agency once disciplined a staff member for attending a political rally in contravention of Staff Rules and Regulations. On another occasion, a staff member was disciplined for having circulated an email with inappropriate political connotations.

So it must not be against UNRWA policy to host events that glorify terrorists. Good to know!

Muslims accuse Jews of drinking, sex in cemetery

The Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation, which is behind a great deal of the incitement against Israel and Jews, has a new accusation that ties together every recent hot-button issue in a nice package:

They are claiming that Zionist Jews were drinking and having sex in the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem on Valentine's Day!

They claim to have pictures of empty and broken alcohol bottles as well as used condoms near the graves. Here is one of them, from their website:

They are saying that "moral degenerate Jews" went into the cemetery on Valentine's Day to copulate.

Of course, they hold the Israeli government responsible for these alleged crimes, adding that this is just part of the same mindset that allows Jews to willy-nilly desecrate major Islamic gravesites.

The foundation said "We will not keep silent about such crimes, and we will try with all our effort to address such violations, and to rein in violators of the sanctity of fallen dead in the cemetery."

If the site is so important, why don't they just hire a guard?

Unless, perhaps, the incitement is far more important to them than the sanctity of the site itself.

Sometimes, auto-translation fails me

Sorry, but I cannot figure out this autotranslated article:

Translating the Arabic words in the headline individually doesn't help much:

The Fleecing
Of constructive
Erotic
Work

Shahar Peer wins again in Dubai; reaches semi-finals

From Sky Sports:

Israel's Shahar Peer continued her remarkable run at the $2m Dubai Championships with a quarter-final victory over Li Na.

Peer was leading 7-5 3-0 against the world number 10 before the Chinese player retired with a lower-back injury.

Peer is the first Israeli to compete in the United Arab Emirates and has caused a huge security concern for officials following the recent Dubai assassination.

The world number 22 has played each of her four games on the outside courts, which provide easier coverage for security officials, and her semi-final clash is also likely to be played away from the 5,000 seat main arena.

"We have to take it day by day," said tournament referee Alan Mills. "The tournament has said that security is paramount. And it is the security and police who dictate what happens.

"So we will have to wait and see. We have already said - if she gets to the final, where are 5,000 people going to sit? It's something that they have obviously got in hand."

Peer will play the winner of the quarter-final between defending champion Venus Williams and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

AFP adds:

Peer extended her career-best sequence to a victory over Li Na, the world number ten from China, who retired while trailing 5-7, 0-3, increasing the possibility that the Israeli will now be scheduled on to the centre court for the first time.

That might afford less protection for Peer than the secluded, tree-lined, limited access outside court on which she has so far played.

And with the political fall-out from last month's Dubai assassination, and the finger being pointed at Israeli agents, the temptation will be not to take this risk.

At the same time, with Venus Williams a favourite to win her quarter-final against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the same half, there will be pressure for new plans to be considered.

About 5,000 people have bought centre court tickets for semi-finals day expecting to see one of the world's leading players - and Williams, the five times former Wimbledon champion, is the only big name left in the tournament.

Increase in West Bank "honor killings"

Firas Press quotes a women's legal advocacy group as saying that so far this year, 7 women have been murdered in the West Bank with five of them likely to have been killed for reasons of "family honor."

This is interesting, not only because this is a huge increase for the past seven weeks, but also because the Palestinian Arab media I monitor did not mention this many deaths. So far this year I only saw 4 women murdered in the territories; if these numbers are correct it indicates that many murders of women are simply not being reported in the Arab media.

Almost as if it isn't newsworthy.