Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Gaza infighting update

A bomb was detonated in the car of the Gaza police operations chief on Monday morning, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said.

“At approximately 06:00 on Monday, 01 March 2010, unknown persons detonated a bomb in a car belonging to Talal Banat, 44, chief of police operations in Gaza, when it was parked near his house in al-Nasser Street in the north of Gaza City,” PCHR said in a statement.

There has been a big increase in bombings of cars belonging to Hamas leaders this year, especially police.

English-language media still silent on Dubai anti-semitism

Earlier today I reported that the Arabic-language Al Khaleej (The Gulf) newspaper quoted the head of the Dubai police as ranting about how "Israelis" have been hated since the time of Pharaoh, how "Israelis" have had mental problems for thousands of years and how UAE authorities will now start looking for Jewish facial features and names to stop them from entering the UAE.

Every single English-language news outlet has been reporting his comments as saying that he was slamming "Israelis," not Jews, and some saying that he would be looking for "Israeli" facial features, not Jewish ones.

The Arabic American paper Al Watan tells it like it is in its headline:

Dubai announces prevent the entry of Israelis and Jews, holders of foreign passports after the assassination of Mabhouh

The Western media is simply not willing to accept that Arab anti-semitism is a regular fact of life, and they work overtime to portray it is simply anti-Zionism. A man that they have been quoting for weeks as their main source for the investigation into the Mabhouh assassination has been revealed to be a conspiracy-theorist nutjob and the English-language media are censoring his comments.

Is it because they do not want the world to believe that Arabs hate Jews, or is it because it would retroactively make their reporting of police work in Dubai look too credulous?

Hamas leader disowns his son

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, in a letter written from prison in Israel, has disowned his son Mosab.

Mosab is the person who famously converted to Christianity and just wrote a book saying that he helped Israeli security services foil many terror attacks.

Dubai police chief: UAE to stop Jews from entering country

Dubai police chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim said today that the UAE will "deny entry to anyone suspected of having Israeli citizenship."

But his Arabic remarks went way beyond any English-language news agency that quoted him into naked Jew-hatred. From an Arabic interview in the Khaleej Times:

Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Commander in Chief of Dubai Police, said Israel is a rogue state, and that goes beyond international legitimacy and laws. Its leaders have sick mentalities, and they need psychologists, saying that its use of passports shows great arrogance and contempt for the world.

(Tamim said hat) the leaders of "Israel" have blood on their hands the blood of others throughout history, pointing out that the "Israeli" people are human beings like any other people who want to be loved and open to others but that the successive governments, the Governments of bloodshed and assassinations, and wars and the Governments of the occupation and aggression, are not interested in peace in the world at all.

He added that the vanity which haunts the "Israeli" mentality stems from the time of Pharaoh, and their hate comes up to this day and age.

He said that the entire world should study the mentality of the "Israeli" leaders throughout history. Their sick psyches needs to be analyzed by psychology professors, who need to examine why they launch crises, and why they brought on themselves hate from others, since the time of Moses, peace be upon him.

He said we will train our personnel in the passport of the forms and features of the Jewish people and their names, noting that no one can hide their features of Jewishness. He asked the appropriate departments to prepare nationality and residency sessions to familiarize the staff with [Jewish] forms and names, especially since most Jews hold dual passports [with Israel.]

He pointed out that the number of Jews, compared with the Europeans, is nothing, and even within Palestine itself.

This is the clown that is being quoted soberly by Western news agencies. One can only wonder why they didn't mention these other parts of his rant.

Fox Business pushing investment in Syria

Fox Business Network is spending a week in Syria, trying to convince businesses that Syria is the next big place to invest.

See here and here.

Later this week they plan to visit the PA as well.

Bizarre Mabhouh sideshow

Muhammed Nasser, one of the Hamas members who some reported (apparently mistakenly) as having been arrested in Syria as a potential collaborator in his assassination, has just muddied the waters a little more.

Nasser is saying that Mabhouh was being tracked by Arab national intelligence agencies who fear the growth of Islamist movements. He says that Mabhouh would complain to him about how they are following him, "haunting him day and night."

The commenters at Firas Press are astonished that a Hamas leader would say anything to deflect the blame towards Israel.

In general, the rumors about Mabhouh are now far outstripping the facts that are being reported in the Arab press.

Hamas claims yesterday's bomb was no big deal

The large blast that I mentioned yesterday in the Shati camp in Gaza was just a big misunderstanding, according to Hamas.

It wasn't aimed at any Hamas leader or anything like that. Just that a youth, unaffiliated with any of the many militant groups in Gaza, decided to put together his own bomb and it exploded prematurely...but caused no damage or injuries.

Because any kid in Gaza can pick up some TNT and explode a bomb large enough to force entire blocks to be cordoned off, and yet not get hurt or cause any damage.

The original story mentioned that the Hamas police kept everyone - including reporters -away from the site.

A perfectly rational explanation!

How PalArab press translates an AFP article

AFP reports on Purim in Hebron, and Palestine Press Agency translates it to Arabic. Some of the interesting differences, with the Arabic in italics:

"The Tomb of the Patriarchs is all we have," declared rabbi Baruch Marzel, who heads the 600 Jewish settlers installed in an enclave in the heart of the Palestinian city. "If we do not have rights to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, (then) we do not have the right to be a nation."
Said Rabbi Baruch Marzel, leader of the 600 Jewish settlers living in Hebron, told AFP that "Tomb of the Patriarchs is all we have... If we do not have the right in the Ibrahimi Mosque, we would have no right to be a nation."
Amazingly, there were no disturbances aside from occasional volleys of stones thrown by small groups of Palestinian youths.
There was no incident yesterday with the exception throwing some stones at Palestinians.

PalPress also quoted this part of the AFP article:

But Abdelaziz, a 49-year-old grocer watching the procession go by, was hard-pressed to conceal his disgust.

"They make fun of us each year. They are even happier than the previous years because of the announcement by Netanyahu," he seethed.

"It is a provocation," said Adnan al-Jaabar, an 18-year-old Palestinian. "The sanctuary is ours, not the Israelis'."

Gaza tunnels on sale!

Palestine Today reports that Gaza is suffering a glut of smuggled items, so much so that Rafah tunnels are closing down as the demand is now outstripped by supply.

You can now buy a smuggling tunnel itself for $20,000, down from the $150,000 it cost during the heyday of smuggling.

The industry, which used to employ 10,000 workers, is down to a mere thousand, according to the article. And the wages for a successful shipment has gone down from 100 shekels to 40.

The tunnel owners are also wanting to sell because Egypt has stepped up its destruction of the tunnels, and they fear that the new Egyptian wall will close all of them fairly shortly anyway.

From Ma'an:

A 19-year-old rabbit raiser in Jenin said he was "shocked and terrified" when his newest animal gave birth to what he described as a tiny baby elephant on Sunday.

Muhammad Alawna raises rabbits as a hobby on his small farm north of Jenin, and works construction in Israel during the week.

“I was concerned when I saw a black baby elephant next to nine white baby rabbits," Alawna told Ma'an, adding that the creature died only five hours after it was born. He said he was baffled as to how the elephant was produced.

The mother rabbit, Alawna explained, is a Dutch breed which he bought six months ago from a farmer in the northern West Bank village of Jaba in Jenin district.

I haven't yet figured out the Mossad connection, but you just know that they are behind this somehow.

Open Purim thread

No time to post.

A freilichen Purim!

Report of large explosion near Hamas leader's home

More evidence of Hamas infighting....

Palestine Press Agency is reporting that a large explosion occurred Saturday night in the Shati refugee camp.

Witnesses said it targeted Abu Anas Hammoudeh, one of the top leaders of the Qassam Brigades in the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza.

Sources in Gaza said that the secrity forces of Hamas on Thursday arrested two members of the armed wing of Hamas against the backdrop of bombings that rocked a few days ago near the house of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh story beach camp west of Gaza.

Arab News insanity

Arab News published a ridiculous article,that stated in part:

Check this out. Here's a story of two countries from the Middle East. One is an ancient civilization with a rich history that goes back five thousand years. It's a functioning democracy with free elections held at regular intervals.

It's a huge country of 70 million people. It has remained within its borders and hasn't attacked any country in the last 100 years. It is pursuing a nuclear power program, which it insists is for peaceful purposes.
The second country also claims to be a democracy. In this democracy though you get citizenship and voting rights not on the basis of your origins even if you were born in this land but on your ancestry. This country was founded on the land stolen and forcibly taken from its original inhabitants. It has fought at least three wars and is locked in permanent conflict with its neighbors on all sides. It has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and other state-of-the-art killing machines. It pursues assassination as a state policy and regularly sends death squads around the world to take out people it doesn't like.
Which country do you think is a real threat to world peace? The first country that has no history of aggression or the second state that has killed tens of thousands of innocent people in wars of aggression against neighbors and in cold-blooded executions?
And no prizes, dear readers, for guessing that the two countries in question are Iran and Israel.
If anyone had any doubts about the evil and criminal nature of the State of Israel, they should have been cleared after what happened in Dubai.

I wrote as a comment:

Let's see..."Peaceful" Iran is a state sponsor of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups; it has used its Syrian proxy to try to turn Lebanon into a Shiite state, it develops "peaceful" missiles that can reach most of Europe, and it is working overtime to build nuclear weapons-something that even the IAEA is belatedly admitting, it was involved in a war only a couple of decades ago that killed more Arab civilians than Israel could dream of, and its "free elections" were proven to be a sham only a few months ago.

Oh, and it is headed by a group of messianic nutcases who are itching to do whatever it takes to bring the Mahdi back.

I guess the author forgot to mention those things. Instead he believes that the killing of a known terrorist leader is much worse than anything Iran has done.

The previous times I wrote comments on Arab News they didn't get published, but I can always hope...

Arab papers jumping on the passport bandwagon

Kuwait's Al Rai newspaper is reporting that the assassins of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, killed in Syria in 2008, used fake passports as well.

According to the paper, quoted by Palestine Today, Mughniyeh's killers had passports from Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium.

In my experience, Kuwaiti news scoops of this nature are rarely confirmed and are often fictional. The "analysis" that follows pretty much proves it.

Using peerless logic, the paper then asserts that this is proof that European governments work together with the Mossad and provide the Israelis with necessary paperwork.

The logic gets more bizarre as the claim is then made that the reason that Israel doesn't use US passports is because it doesn't want to embarrass its American ally when it gets caught, and it shows how much contempt Israel has for Europeans.

What's in a name?

The New York Times' Ethan Bronner reports, in an article about a dispute between Jerusalem's mayor and Jerusalem Arabs:

[N]o utterance escapes politics. All labels and names here are contested. The mayor calls the neighborhood not by its Arabic name of Al Bustan but by a Hebrew one — Gan Hamelech, or the King’s Garden, a reference to the spot some believe King David wrote psalms.

The implication is that the Arabic term for the neighborhood is the ancient, correct one, and that the Hebrew name has been retrofitted to erase Arab history.

But as the My Right Word blog notes, the truth is the exact opposite. Bustan is the Arabic word for garden or grove. The place name is Biblical. It was the Arabs who stole the name and Arabicized it, not the other way around.