Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 09, 2010

Syria asks Britian to apologize for Balfour Declaration

Palestine Today reports that Syrian politician and former adviser to Hafez al-Assad, George Jabbour, is asking the UK to apologize for the 1917 Balfour Declaration that promised a Jewish national home in Palestine.

Jabbour is asking British political parties, ahead of the upcoming elections, to put this apology in their platforms.

He says that Britain, through the Balfour Declaration, was "responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians and of depriving the people of their Palestinian identity."

This is amusing because at the time of the declaration, there was no political entity called "Palestine" and practically no Arabs who identified themselves as "Palestinian." Palestine was simply part of Southern Syria and, until France took over Syria, the Arab nationalists in the area worked towards a pan-Arab nation, not an independent Arab "Palestine."

In other words, Great Britain didn't destroy the Palestinian Arabs' identity as such - they helped create it from scratch.

Egyptians sue to change name of "Tel Aviv Street"

Palestine Today reports that a lawyer from Ras Gharib, a town on the western shore of the Red Sea, is suing the local government to change the name of a "Tel Aviv Street."

He says that the street, termed a main street in the city, reminds residents of Israeli war crimes in the 1956 and 1967 wars. Even if the street signs are changed, he wants to make sure that residents are not subject to seeing the words "Tel Aviv" on their mail and bills.

I could not find this street, major or otherwise, in the town listed on Google Maps, although there are a lot of areas that have very small, winding streets that Google does not name.

View Larger Map

Ma'ariv: US not giving visas to Israeli nuclear techs (updated)

Ma'ariv is reporting that every nuclear technician at Israel's Dimona reactor who had submitted visa requests to visit the United States for ongoing science education has had their visa applications rejected, specifically because of their association with the Dimona reactor.

Up until recently, it was routine for Israeli nuclear scientists and technicians to receive such visas and to study at US universities.

Israeli security officials have confirmed that these technicians are being denied visas solely because of their employment at the Dimona reactor.

More details here.

UPDATE: Pajamas Media seems to have mistranslated Ma'ariv; the original article does not say that every nuclear tech was denied nor does it blame the administration.

Al Mezan Center upset at Qassams - that injure Gazans

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights has condemned Qassam rockets - but not those against Israel:

Al Mezan Condemns the Injury of Four Palestinians by a locally Made Rockets in Beit Hanoun

On Tuesday 6 April 2010, four Palestinians, including a father and two children, were injured when a locally made rocket fell on Beit Hanoun town.

Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights asserts the government is legally obliged to provide protection to civilians and civilian objects under the international humanitarian law (IHL). Therefore, Al Mezan calls on the Gaza government and law enforcement persons to take necessary procedures to protect civilians and their properties.

Since the Al Mezan Center has no similar press releases when Israelis are injured or killed by Qassam rockets, it is apparent that they are only asking the Hamas government to make sure that the rockets hit their intended targets, not to stop firing them altogether.

Al Mezan does make noises in English about how rockets are not legal under international law, but at least one of their reports includes a large BUT:

There is no legal or moral justification for firing rockets at civilian targets, and such behavior violates both IHL and international human rights norms associated with the rights to life, health and adequate housing, among others, as well as constituting a war crime. At the same time, the nature of the offence should be evaluated within the context of its occurrence.

Hamas troubles detailed in secret internal memo

The anti-Hamas Palestine Press Agency quotes an Algerian News Agency report on a letter sent to Khaled Meshal, Hamas' political leader in Damascus, from a Gaza Hamas committee, that reveals serious flaws and problems within the terrorist organization/pseudo government.

The memo warned of "tremors of violent internal organizational stability" within Hamas. It complains of a lack of "unity of intellectual and organizational discourse" between parts of Hamas as different Hamas leaders say different things to the media.It mentions a widening gap between Hamas' stated goals of resistance and its more recent policies to try to rein in rocket fire and other terrorist acts.

The document further calls Hamas' attempts at establishing relationships with Arab countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and the UAE a failure, as was its attempts to leverage its relationship with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah into leverage with Russia and Turkey. These failures are causing some in Hamas to question the wisdom of continued "resistance" even though no progress has been made on reconciliation or Gilad Shalit.

The Gaza public is also apparently losing confidence in Hamas, as the report warns that its early success of maintaining law and order has been disintegrating lately. In addition, Hamas' taxes and extortion has not improved the lot of average Gazans, causing increased displeasure with the Hamas government.

In addition, it warns of increased influence of the Salafist Islamist groups who are against Hamas from an ideological, religious viewpoint, causing the Islamist Hamas some discomfort as they have to defend their actions against those who are even more extreme.

Finally, the report mentions that the previous "blind obedience" that Hamas fighters had exhibited is disappearing. The report mentions some semi-autonomous Hamas gangs who are taking the law into their own hands.

The document gives a number of recommendations. A couple of them:

Concentrating the media discourse is much more important than the concessions we offer so as not to provoke the body [Israel] to attack us, particularly since the end of the resistance is for tactical reasons, to serve the big strategic goal to make Gaza a base for breakthroughs to restore the glories of the Caliphate. We must try to persuade the [other Islamic] factions of this tactic, so we cannot be accused of protecting the borders [on behalf of Israel.]

Beat with an iron hand all aspects of security chaos ...

We must eradicate the Salafi Jihad from Gaza, because the process of containment and reconciliation has failed. They are dangerous; a broad campaign to finish them, no matter how much blood, because silence means disaster the more time passes.

If this is legit, it means that the much maligned policy of containment is paying dividends - right at the time that the West is getting more uncomfortable with it.

New Arab myth: "1936 strike was non-violent"

Alex Kane, a MondoWeiss blogger, writes in the Indypendent:

[I]n fact Palestinians have been nonviolently resisting Zionist colonization even before the State of Israel was founded, and well after. The 1936-1939 revolt against British colonial rule and Zionist colonization began with a “six-month general strike” that involved “work-stoppages and boycotts of the British-and Zionist-controlled parts of the economy” and was the “largest anticolonial strike of its kind until that point in history, and perhaps the longest ever,” as Rashid Khalidi writes on page 106 in The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. The revolt did have an armed component, though, that followed the general strike.

According to Kane, for six months the Arabs of Palestine engaged in a non-violent strike, and only afterwards it became violent.

Khalidi, in the book being quoted, implies that he "armed revolt" only started in September 1937. I exposed some of Khalidi's dishonesty in that same book here and here.

When was the exact beginning of the Arab strike? According to some Arab sources, it started on April 3rd, but the Palestine Post didn't notice any announcement until April 20, the day after a massacre of Jews in Jaffa.

Here is what the Palestine Post looked like on Tuesday, April 22, the day after the strike was announced publicly:

By Friday, some 6000 Jaffa Jews had evacuated their homes for Tel Aviv because of the "nonviolent" demonstrations:

The next few days saw no fatalities but much violence - arson, beatings, gunshots and threats against both Arabs and Jews by the strikers and demonstrators.

The following week was also largely quiet, although Arabs who were forced to strike were becoming increasingly upset at their loss of income. Many Jaffa dockworkers clandestinely started working in Haifa.

The week of May 10th saw increasing acts of arson and bombs being thrown at businesses that stayed open, as well as fires set at Jewish farms. The British police enforced curfews.

By Wednesday, there were three people murdered - two Jews and an Arab strike-breaker.

And that weekend, a bomb was thrown at the Edison Cinema in Jerusalem, killing three more.

This was just the first month of the "nonviolent" 1936 protest that Palestinian Arab admirers are now mooning over.

The facts are clear - the "strike" was the background of the violence, but the violence was prevalent throughout Palestine during what was euphemistically described in the English-language press at the time as the "disturbances."

Palestinian Arab supporters, however, are fond of rewriting history in whatever fashion they find convenient. While the Arabs congratulate themselves over the violence of the 1936-39 riots (which resulted in the death of thousands, mostly Arabs,) their Western allies are trying to reclassify them as a Gandhi-style set of peaceful demonstrations - to appeal to a different constituency.

Rep. Rothman details Israel's value to the US

From Bloomberg via Business Week, by US Rep. Steve Rothman:

The argument that American military aid to Israel is damaging to the U.S. is not only erroneous, it hurts the national security interests of this country and threatens the survival of Israel.

U.S. support for Israel is essential, not only for Israel's national security, but for America's. Every bit of that support -- and more -- withstands all reasonable scrutiny.

Under the 2010 U.S. budget, about $75 billion, $65 billion and $3.25 billion will be spent on military operations and aid in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan during this fiscal year, respectively. Israel will receive $3 billion, in military aid only. There is no economic aid to Israel, other than loan guarantees that continue to be repaid in full and on time.

There isn't enough space here to discuss the relative merits of the expenditures in these other countries, but we already know the critically important return the U.S. gets for helping its oldest, most trusted ally in the strategically important Middle East -- the most powerful military force in that region, the pro-U.S., pro-West and democratic Jewish state of Israel.

Here's how.

First, it's important to remember that about 70 percent of the $3 billion aid must be used by Israel to purchase American military equipment. This provides real support for U.S. high- tech defense jobs and contributes to maintaining our industrial base. This helps the U.S. stay at the very top in the manufacturing of our own cutting-edge military munitions, aircraft, vehicles, missiles and virtually every defensive and offensive weapon in the U.S. arsenal -- with the added contribution of Israel's renowned technical know-how.

Second, the U.S. and Israel are jointly developing state- of-the-art missile defense capabilities in the David's Sling and Arrow 3 systems. These two technologies build on the already successful Arrow 2, jointly developed by our two countries, which is already providing missile defense security to Israel and U.S. civilians and ground troops throughout the region. The knowledge the U.S. gains from these efforts also has a positive multiplier effect on applications to other U.S. military and non-military uses and U.S. jobs.

Third, given Israel's strategic location on the Mediterranean, with access to the Red Sea and other vital international shipping and military lanes of commerce and traffic, it is critically important to the U.S. that Israel continues to serve as a port of call for our troops, ships, aircraft and intelligence operations.

Israel also has permitted the U.S. to stockpile arms, fuel, munitions and other supplies on its soil to be accessed whenever America needs them in the region.

Fourth, America's special relationship with Israel provides the U.S. with real-time, minute-to-minute access to one of the best intelligence services in the world: Israel's. With Israeli agents gathering intelligence and taking action throughout the Middle East and, literally, around the world, regarding al- Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran and Hamas, among others, the U.S. receives invaluable information about anti-U.S. and terrorist organizations and regimes.

Fifth, imagine the additional terrible cost in U.S. blood, and the hundreds of billions more of American taxpayer dollars, if Saddam Hussein had developed nuclear weapons, or if Syria possessed them.

Then remember that it was Israel that destroyed the almost- completed nuclear reactor at Osirak, Iraq, in 1981 and Syria's nuclear facility under construction at Deir-ez-Zor in 2007.

And think about the many operations that Israel's Defense Forces and intelligence agents have undertaken to foil, slow and disrupt Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability. A nuclear-armed Iran would threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the region, all of Iran's Arab neighbors, the world's largest oil supplies and those who rely on that oil. It also would provide anti-U.S. terrorists with access to the most lethal Iranian technology and probably set off a nuclear arms race in the region.

For about 2 percent of what the U.S. spends in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan this year, Americans can take pride in the return on our investment in aid to Israel.

And with Israel's truly invaluable assistance to America's vital national security, we can take comfort that -- in actions seen in Tehran and Damascus and noticed by al-Qaeda and other anti-U.S. terrorists everywhere -- the U.S. is safer and made more secure because of the mutually dependent and beneficial relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

Al Qaeda threatens World Cup

From CBS:

The North African terror group al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has threatened to attack this summer's World Cup games in South Africa.

"How amazing could the match United States vs. Britain be when broadcasted live on air at a stadium packed with spectators when the sound of an explosion rumbles through the stands, the whole stadium is turned upside down and the number of dead bodies are in their dozens and hundreds, Allah willing," reads a statement the group published in a recent issue of the Jihadi online magazine Mushtaqun Lel Jannah (Longing to Paradise).

"Al Qaeda, who managed to deliver 50 grams of explosives to the Detroit plane, after infiltrating dozens of U.S. security barriers, al Qaeda, who enabled brother martyr Abul Kheir (Abdullah Asiri) to get into the palace of Mohammed bin Nayef, al Qaeda, who humiliated the world's greatest intelligence apparatus through the operation of Mujahid Abu Dujana al-Khorassani (Humam al-Balawi), who shattered the pride of the CIA and the Jordanian intelligence combined," the statement says. "Al Qaeda will have a presence in the games, Allah willing."

In addition to the U.S. and U.K. teams, the teams representing France, Germany and Italy are also on the group's list of targets.

"All those countries are part of the Zionist-Crusader campaign against Islam," the statement says.

I'm sure that Al Qaeda will change their tune when they find out that President Obama no longer specifies Islamic terrorism as a threat to the US.

Saudi preacher chickens out under fire

The Saudi TV preacher who promised to visit Jerusalem has chickened out under pressure from many Muslim leaders and Saudi officials.

Palestine Today reports that Sheikh Mohammed Al-Areefi was pressured by "Muslim scholars" who say that no Muslim leader should visit Jerusalem while it is under Israeli control.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad also told him not to go, claiming that it would be a type of normalization with the Zionist enemy. A Hamas cleric said that he shouldn't go while Israel was in its "orgy of Judaizing the city." Islamic Jihad cited the precedent of the current head of Al Azhar University who has vowed never to visit Jerusalem while it is under Israeli control.

The Director of Passports in Saudi Arabia also said that Areefi might be subject to arrest upon his return.

Arab News reports that his next show will be broadcast from Jeddah, with "some reports" filed from Jerusalem and other places.

If Muslims are not allowed to visit Jerusalem under Islamic law, then why should Palestinian Muslims be allowed to visit? I think it is time we got a definitive fatwa as to why the PA is not equally considered guilty of "normalizing" relations with the Zionists.

The dishonesty of Dalia Mogahed

Dalia Mogahed is an adviser to President Obama who was one of the two people behind a poll on worldwide Muslim attitudes in 2008 that spawned a very flawed book, "Who Speaks for Islam?"

She responds to a Lee Smith piece in Tablet that portrays her as very influential in the White House and also criticizes the poll. While I am not qualified to comment on her influence with Obama, the other part of her response is interesting to me.

She cuts and pastes from a Gallup FAQ about her book:

In the book Who Speaks for Islam?, we define the "politically radicalized" as respondents who A) answered a "5" when asked to rate the extent that 9/11 could be morally justified on a 5-point scale, where "1" is "cannot be justified at all" and "5" is "completely justifiable," and B) said they view the United States unfavorably. A population-weighted average of 7% fit these criteria. We labeled those who said 9/11 could not be completely justified as "moderates." We further broke this group down into those who were pro-United States and those who were anti-United States.
The decision as to where to break out the "politically radicalized" from the rest was data-driven. It was based on several analyses of where the data clustered for a natural breaking point. The analyses showed that the people who responded with a "5" (completely justifiable) to the question on the justifiability of 9/11 as a group were distinctly different from the groups who responded with a "1", "2", "3" or "4." The idea here is not that we are judging who or what a "moderate" or "radical" is, but rather assigning labels to statistical groups that we clearly define.
The term "moderate" is more of a placeholder label than a value judgment. It is similar to calling one clustering in the data "group A" and another "group B." We simply used labels that a broad audience can easily understand and remember.

This is how Gallup justified calling people who thought that the 9/11 attacks were "mostly" or "partially" justified as "moderate."
It is the bolded sentence that is dishonest. Mogahed and Gallup are claiming that the word "moderate"is not a value judgment, and that they could have just as easily called the groups "group A" and "group B."
In fact the way that the poll was publicized in press releases shows that it was used exactly as a value judgment. Look at how Gallup synopsizes the research in its web page:

What Makes a Radical?

March 13, 2008

The authors of the book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think examine what separates the “politically radicalized” from the moderate majority.

Muslim Radicals: It's Politics, Not Piety

March 13, 2008

Experts react to Gallup findings revealing that views on politics, rather than personal piety, separate radical and moderate Muslims.

Clearly, Gallup is positioning the book as a referendum on who is a "radical" and who is a "moderate" with all the implications of those terms.

In addition, even though the authors and Gallup are claiming otherwise, it is impossible to separate the meanings of words with the purported neutral meanings that the authors claim for them. Using their standards, they could have called the two groups "extremely radical" and "somewhat less radical," or even "people who like daisies" versus "people who like roses." It is a self-serving and ultimately dishonest argument that the choice of appellations is somehow neutral when they have real meanings in the English language.

Perhaps Mogahed would not mind me terming all Muslim women who cover their hair and advise presidents of the United States as being "inveterate liars," as long as I clearly defined my terms ahead of time and say that calling her a liar is in no way a value judgment.

h/t zach

When the Muslims bargained away Jerusalem

An interesting passage in a book I just saw called The Jerusalem Question, 1917-1968, by H. Eugene Bovis.

Bovis was a Foreign Service Officer in the region for many years, and the book was published by the Hoover Institution in 1971.

From pages 114-5:

I guess the "Palestinians" of the 13th century didn't protest when the city that is supposedly their eternal capital was bargained away, just as they didn't protest when Jerusalem was under Ottoman, British and Jordanian control.

Perhaps their "love" of the city is of a more recent vintage.

Ray Hanania lies

Ray Hanania is one of the more moderate Arabs of Palestinian origin - an American-born commentator and sometimes comedian.

Yet he has no less of an urge to make up lies about Israel than his other PalArab comrades.

From the SW News Herald, copied from Palestine Note:

Jerusalem is a closed city. It has been for years. Every conqueror and occupier has restricted access to the city to certain people considered enemies.

The Ottomans did it. The Jordanians did it. And now Israel is doing it. Except that Israel is lying about it.

Israelis insist that Jerusalem is "finally" an open city. Yes, open to Jews from anywhere around the world and to most non-Arabs. But not to Arabs and especially not to Palestinians of the Christian and Muslim faiths.

Jerusalem under Israeli occupation is a closed city and the worst part about it is that most Israelis have closed their eyes and they don't care.

Israel's high powered propaganda machine - something the Arabs may not understand because they have no real professional communications at all - insists the "big lie" that Jews were banned from entering East Jerusalem after the cessation of fighting in the 1948 war and until Israel conquered it in their invasion in 1967.

That is an outright lie, of course. Jordan had the same policy that Israel has today. Exactly. Precisely. There is not a difference. During this Arab-Israeli conflict, ALL Arab countries banned Jews who had Israeli passports or who had visited Israel from entering their countries. They also banned pro-Israel activists. And that included East Jerusalem.

The Israelis focus on that fact without the accuracy, of course.

NOT BANNED, however, were Jews who did not travel to Israel and were from other countries who wished to visit East Jerusalem's Wailing Wall for religious, not political, reasons.

Jews prayed at the Wailing Wall all the time during the Jordanian occupation of East Jerusalem.

The difference is that Jordan didn't spend any time with clever public relations spin or professional communications explaining what they were doing.

Really? Jews prayed all the time at the Wailing Wall between 1948 and 1967??

Since there were approximately zero Jews in Jordan during that time period - they were all kicked out in 1948, including families who lived in Jerusalem for hundreds of years, without asking them if they were there for political or religious reasons - this is an astonishing assertion. Even more so since the newspapers of the 1950s and 1960s mention many, many times that Jews - not Israelis, but Jews - were banned from the Old City under Jordanian rule.

I found a single exception. During Christmas week in 1957, the Jewish and Arab mayors of Jerusalem opened up the Mandelbaum Gate and allowed a handful of religious Jews to the Old City. The Canadian Jewish Review mentions the incident, saying that the Jews cried far more for the ruins of the destroyed and desecrated synagogues than for the Temple, and some Arabs took advantage of the commotion to try to free some Arab prisoners from jail, causing the experiment in equal access to be aborted quickly.

Outside of that, the contemporaneous media uniformly mentions that Jews were not allowed to the Old City. Typical was this NYT snippet from January 13, 1957:

And there is the Wailing Wall, where the Jews may come no longer, barred now, as Christians or Moslems were from other shrines in ages past...

The Sydney Morning Herald, December 22, 1951, says

There is only silence to-day at the Wailing Wall, which is the western end of the great platform on which stood the Jewish Temple.

Is there "only silence" at the Al Aqsa Mosque today, Ray?

As far as the ability of Jews to travel to the Old City through Jordan, Dore Gold writes that "Jordan further barred non-Israeli Jews from the Western Wall, demanding that tourists present a certificate of baptism before a visa would be granted."

Hanania is claiming that Israeli policy today exactly mirrors that of Jordan during those infamous 19 years, in not allowing Arabs or Palestinian Christians to visit their holy sites. As I showed previously, not only did Israel hand out over 10,000 permits for Palestinian Christians to visit, but Israel also hosted hundreds of Jordanian and Egyptian Christians during Easter week this year.

To say that this is "exactly, precisely" the same policy that Jordan had when the Old City was Judenrein is nothing short of an absolute lie. If such a policy had existed, there would have been more Jews visiting holy places during Passover than there were Christians during Easter under Jordanian rule.

And, as I also mentioned, the number of religious visitors in Israel's undivided capital Jerusalem during the Passover/Easter season increased from 10,000 in under Jordanian rule in 1967 to over 100,000 this year.

Muslim world freaks over Saudi preacher planned visit to J'lem

From Al Arabiya:

A prominent Saudi cleric announced on his television show that he will visit the occupied Jerusalem next week to support Muslim claims to the city, according to media reports on Monday.

"I will shoot the next episode of 'Put your Fingerprint’ show in Jerusalem," Sheik Mohammed al-Areefi said, adding that Muslims have an obligation to Jerusalem.
Sheikh Areefi promised through the Saudi-based Iqraa TV channel that the next episode of his show would introduce "surprises," including a visit to Jerusalem and reports that would "astonish" the viewers.

AP adds:

A Saudi official says a cleric who announced that he will visit Jerusalem for a TV episode on claims to the city will be punished if he travels there.

The state-owned Al-Watan newspaper on Wednesday quoted the passports office spokesman Lt. Col. Badr Malik as saying visiting Israel is prohibited and any violator is punishable under the law.

Sheik Mohammed al-Areefi told his viewers Sunday on his television show that he will visit Jerusalem next week to support Muslim claims to the city.

Associates of the cleric have since said he was misquoted and does not plan to take the trip.

An Asharq al-Awsat columnist is upset:

It’s not the controversy surrounding the announcement made by the Saudi preacher Dr. Mohammed al Arifi to visit Jerusalem to film an episode of his weekly program there that bothers me. Rather, what worries me is the following question to al Arifi, his supporters and others; what about the Arab journalists who want to cover the Sheikh’s visit and the moment he enters Israel? Will they be held accountable for normalizing [ties] with the enemy or not? Will the [news] agencies and the press of slogans launch attacks against the journalists? Will the satellite channels that broadcast religious preaching programs send their correspondents to Israel to cover the visit?

You see, he is placing other Arab journalists in an uncomfortable position because of their twisted policy not to cover news in Israel, so by definition he is being a childish publicity hound.

Finally, Asharq al Awsat reports:

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that they did not object to the Saudi cleric's visit, and that he could apply for an entry visa from the Israeli consulate in Amman.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman reportedly said "throughout the years many people from countries like Libya, Indonesia and other countries that don't have relations with Israel have visited Jerusalem." He added that "all these visits were naturally coordinated with Israeli authorities."

Sources also informed Asharq Al-Awsat that Saudi cleric Muhammad al-Arifi is currently in the Jordanian capital, where he is delivering religious lectures at the Al-Isra University.

Informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that at the time of publication, Sheikh al-Arifi had yet to complete the procedures to obtain an entry visa to visit Jerusalem.

There is extreme secrecy surrounding the details of this visit, and the Iqra TV officials are refusing to clarify any information on this, saying that all details will be revealed on Friday by Sheikh al-Arifi himself during his next episode of "Da'Basmatak."

The source who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat on the condition of anonymity also said that al-Arifi is not visiting Jerusalem as a propagandist or a media figure; however he refused to clarify the purpose of al-Arifi's visit. The source also denied any coordination with the Hamas movement with regards to this visit.

Al-Arifi's announcement received a lot of criticism, with many considering any visit that includes coordination with Israel to be part of normalizing relations. Sheikh Hamed al-Betawi, head of the Palestinian Scholars League and a preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque has called for Sheikh al-Arifi not to visit Jerusalem. In a statement published by the Muslim Brotherhood website Ikhwan Online, Sheikh al-Betawi, who is also Hamas's Spiritual Guide, said that "with all appreciation and respect towards Sheikh al-Arifi for the role that he has played in the service of Islam and for his support for the legitimate resistance; we object to this visit, because it comes at a time when the Al-Aqsa Mosque remains in the grip of occupation, and rather we hope that such a visit will take place following the liberation of Jerusalem."

Tunisian cleric issues fatwa on soccer prayer

A Tunisian sheikh has issued a fatwa against soccer players prostrating themselves in prayer after they score goals. According to the cleric, they are not appropriately dressed for prayer and it is not an appropriate venue for something that holy. Also, the players are not always appropriately facing Mecca when they do their game-time prostrations.

The practice of a thanksgiving prayer after scoring a goal is widespread in the Arab world, to the extent that the Egyptian team has been nicknamed "the worshippers."

Other clerics disputed this fatwa. An Egyptian cleric from Al Azhar University said that such prayers are appropriate, saying that such prayers are good publicity for Islam in front of the television cameras.

Behind the scenes at the Arab Summit

The Al Arab al-Youm newspaper published a fascinating exchange between Arab leaders behind closed doors at the Arab Summit in Libya late last month. It was reproduced by the Palestine Press Agency.

According to the reports, Mahmoud Abbas listed his demands for Arab support for his positions: use the UN to pressure Israel, support PalArab claims to Jerusalem ("there is no meaning to a Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital"), keep pressuring the US not to allow any Israeli building in Jerusalem, 1967 borders "with slight exchange of land," rejecting any "cosmetic" Israeli moves like moving the separation fence or releasing prisoners, lift the "siege" of Gaza, force Hamas to reconcile with Fatah, and others.

Moammar Gaddafi responded with a demand that the Arab world declare the peace process dead and that they support Palestinian Arab armed resistance - without overt military support of Arab regimes. He also called for Syria to take the Golan back by force.

The Emir of Kuwait said that this was not a wise idea, in light of the diplomatic crisis between Israel and the US, saying that at the very time that the differences between Israel and America are at their widest, to go back to a military option would play into Netanyahu's hands.

The Syrian delegation initially said that they support the option of armed resistance as well, and saif that they have always supported Palestinian Arab military resistance.

Abbas responded that the "popular resistance" (with Palestinian Arabs throwing boulders) will continue as they occur in Nilin and Bilin every week, as he believes that such "resistance" is legal under international law, but the Palestinian Arab people are not yet at a stage that would allow them to use armed resistance, as the second intifada destroyed their ability to fight with weapons.

Abbas also called for a resumption of the official Arab boycott of Israel. He also challenged Gaddafi to say that if he supports a resolution that calls for Palestinian Arab armed resistance, he must also call for one that insists on Arab support for military action to recapture the Golan as well as Lebanese territory allegedly held by Israel. Gaddafi replied that he would send his tanks and planes to Syria to help "liberate" the Golan.

This then forced Syria's Bashir Assad to make a statement that surprised the audience saying that "peace is our choice, war is not our choice."