Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Model Zionist

It's been a while since I gratuitously posted pictures of beautiful women, while tenuously finding a connection between them and the themes of this blog.

So...meet Alanna Drasin:

From The Justice, the student newspaper at Brandeis University:

Alanna Drasin '13 is a midyear from Beverly Hills, California. While the 5-foot, 9-inch, slender, long haired brunette Politics major may appear to be a normal first-year who just happens to have impeccable style, she in fact has made her own part-time career out of fashion modeling for American Apparel and other companies. At Brandeis, Drasin is involved with the Sundeis film festival and is an active member of the Brandeis Zionist Alliance.

Honor killing in Gaza

A woman who was murdered yesterday in Gaza was he apparent victim of an "honor killing," according to PCHR:

At approximately 11:50 on Monday, 12 April 2010, the body of Sherin Khamis Zayed (al-‘Attar), 32, was brought to Martyr Kamal ‘Edwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, as she was hit by several bullets to the head and the chest. The chief of police in Beit Lahia town, Sameh al-Sultan, told a PCHR fieldworker that the police opened an investigation into the incident and arrested a number of the victim’s relatives, including her father. The father told the police that five masked gunmen raided his house on Monday morning and pulled his daughter outside the house and fired at her. Data provided by the police indicates that this crime was committed allegedly to “maintain family honor.”

In a related story, PA police announced that they managed to crack a three-year old "family honor" murder, where a man killed his brother for reasons of honor. (That usually means that the victim was gay, or raped.)

Hamas police also arrested two people for the murder of a 65-year old woman last year.

Earthquake fears in Tehran

From AFP:

At least five million Tehran residents need to relocate elsewhere because Iran's capital sits on several fault lines and is threatened by earthquakes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday.

"We cannot order people to evacuate the city... but provisions have to be made. At least five million should leave Tehran so it is less crowded and more manageable in case of an incident," Mehr news agency quoted him as saying.
Tehran province has nearly 14 million inhabitants, eight million of whom live in the city which straddles several fault lines. Experts warn that a strong quake in Tehran could kill hundreds of thousands of people.

"We cannot predict when an earthquake will happen. But if anything happens to Tehran province's 13.8 million residents how can we manage that?" he asked.

Ahmadinejad always has plan B: start a war to hasten the Mahdi's return, and he will fix everything!

More financial woes for Hamas

Al Arabiya has more about Hamas' financial woes that I mentioned yesterday:

Hamas has begun taxing Gaza street vendors and shopkeepers, raising speculation the ruling Islamist group is in a financial crisis fuelled partly by Egypt's building of a border wall to stop smuggling tunnels.

Experts said on Monday that perhaps only a few dozen of the hundreds of tunnels are still functional as a result of the steel wall being pounded deep into the ground along the 14-km (8-mile)-long frontier.
For Gaza's Hamas government, which takes a cut from Palestinian merchants who move items ranging from cars to fuel to food along the subterranean route, that means lower revenues in an impoverished enclave under an Israeli-led blockade.

Weapons, and it is widely believed cash, also come in via the tunnels.
"There is a real financial crisis," Palestinian economist Omar Shaban said.

The Hamas administration, he said, employed 34,000 people in the Gaza Strip and had put much of its liquidity into the purchase of buildings and land.

"The crisis may also indicate either a lack of foreign financial support, Arab and Islamic, or a difficulty to get that support into the territory for some reasons," Shaban said.

For the first time since Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from the rival Fatah movement of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, it has begun to collect taxes from street merchants and small business owners.

"They asked me to pay 1,100 shekels ($290) a month. How much did I earn to give them what they asked for?" asked the owner of a shop selling falafel (fried chickpea) snacks.

"Instead, I asked them to take the store and pay me the 1,100 shekels every month. It would be a better deal for me," he joked.
A Hamas lawmaker confirmed that the Islamist group ruling Gaza was facing a financial "crisis" because of Egypt's moves to seal its border and a boycott by local banks.

"The government is facing a crisis," MP Jamal Nassar said in a statement. "The siege on the (Hamas-run) Palestinian government has been tightened recently and because of this it has been unable to bring in funds from abroad."

Neo-Nazi site returns again to Google AdWords

As I reported a few times last year, Google AdWords has resumed once again accepting ads from NSM88 Records, a purveyor of neo-Nazi and "white power" paraphernalia.

It seems that they have scaled back on selling the most egregiously racist items, such as this one:

This may be the reason that Google no longer considers them offensive enough to ban from advertising.

But they still have lovely items like this one:

Which they claim is anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish.

They also sell a full reproduction of Julius Streicher's edition of Der Sturmer that accuses Jews of ritual murder, a few Holocaust denial books, and other virulently anti-semitic books from the Nazi era translated into English.

Google must consider Jew-hatred acceptable but black hatred to be over the line.

HRW's former "military expert" Marc Garlasco would also feel at home with the many "militaria collectables" they have for sale, which all center on Nazi-era items, just like Garlasco's collection.

Complaints to Google should be sent here, and the URL of the offending ad is http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=CSfLDxFDES7neJ5aYlQeJxdzMApTzxnXY-4mxCIHd9gcIABABIMm4rQtQzt--lgdgyZ7yirSk2A_IAQGqBBlP0Hl8kFUQvermac_LZwV5nAexgkvoLV85&sig=AGiWqtz9fXFzkxN6FPfzFMjE7APX2FblfA&q=http://nsm88records.com/theshop/product_info.php%3Fproducts_id%3D1664 .

Gaza power woes continue - but not because of Israel

Gaza experienced blackouts over the weekend as money to pay for fuel for the power plants ran out again.

The Gaza Electricity Company transferred 3 million US dollars to the Palestinian Authority treasury in Ramallah on Sunday, after Palestinian factions met to discuss the means to bring an end to blackouts experienced across the Gaza Strip.

The sole power generator in the Gaza Strip was completely closed down on Saturday, the head of the electric company announced , following a day of unheeded warnings that a humanitarian crisis was at hand.

Shortly after the announcement, both the PA and the Gaza government launched accusations at each other over responsibility for Gaza's ongoing fuel shortage, with Hamas alleging the Ramallah-based leadership had used EU funds intended for diesel transfers to increase civil servants' salaries.

Some Gaza residents have discovered power inverters as a better alternative to dangerous gasoline-powered generators that many have been using. The power inverters can be connected to car batteries of they can be charged during the times that electricity is available, or even with solar panels, to provide electricity when needed.

"Siege" news: Wood and aluminum for Gaza

Palestine Press Agency and Ma'an report that Israel plans to resume shipments of wood and aluminum to Gaza, with the first shipment of wood scheduled for Thursday.

It is unclear whether that this is related to Hamas' recent reported actions to stop other terror groups from attacking Israel, or rather if this is in response to US pressure.

Another news item says that Hamas has allowed its own government engineers to visit Israel to learn more about maintenance and repair for Gaza's waste treatment plants. Hamas denied the story as just more rumors meant to destroy its reputation.

UK KFC tries to please Muslims, fails badly

From News of the World:

[KFC], Britain's second biggest fast food chain hoped to woo the Islamic market by opening 86 trial outlets selling halal-only meat - that's from animals slaughtered under strict religious guidelines.
But KFC's target diners insist the chickens are not being killed in the right way and say they will stay away.
And furious non-Muslim customers have set up Facebook groups protesting that the trial branches, which also ban pork, have dropped their favourite bacon-topped Big Daddy burger from menus.
Groups with names such as "Against the KFC Halal Trial" and "No Halal at Colne KFC" - referring to a branch in the Lancs town - are rapidly attracting members. For meat to be halal, the animal must be alive when its throat is cut as a verse from the Koran is recited.
KFC insists their methods meet the approval of the Halal Food Society. But Islamic leaders disagree, saying the pre-stunning of animals in the chain's mechanical process means a third are already dead at the point of slaughter.
And the fact the prayer is played over a speaker means each bird it not blessed individually as it is killed.
They have now threatened to warn the UK's 2.4million Muslims not to eat KFC meat, and will meet with the fast food giant on Wednesday to question how it is killing chickens sold as halal.
Imam Yusuf Shabbir of the Lancashire Council of Mosques said: "If KFC confirms to us that it has no intention of changing the mechanical method of slaughter we will advise members of the Muslim community this."
But a KFC spokesman said: "We've worked with animal welfare organisations and the Halal Food Authority to ensure our processes fully comply.
"And wherever possible we've made sure our trial stores are near non- halal restaurants, to provide customers with a choice."

Mads Gilbert and his love of terrorists

From the Norway, Israel and the Jews blog (h/t Zvi):

NRK journalist Øyvor Bakke hosts the program ”Middagselskapet” (The Dinner Party), where the guest is invited to present three people he or she would have liked to invite to a dinner party. On April 9^th the guest of the evening was Mads Gilbert, a maoist physician who became famous when he covered the 2009/2010 war between Hamas and Israel from the safe spot of Shifa hospital, where Gilbert served as a NORWAC doctor and which Hamas fighters used as a base. See the clip on NRK.

Mr.Gilbert’s imaginary guests turned out to be Charlie Chaplin, Author of “The elegance of the Hedgehog” Muriel Barbery and Abu Jihad, who masterminded the worst terrorist act in Israel’s history in which 37 civilians were murdered in a bus hijacking led by Dalal Mughrabi in 1978. Program host Øyvor Bakke does not bat an eyelid at Gilbert’s dream-cast of guests, but introduces Abu Jihad to her audience with the words: “Next man out is what must say is… a powerful man…”

The following then ensues:
Øyvor Bakke: Abu Jihad as he is also known is a powerful political figure…

Mads Gilbert: Yes, and I would love to invite him… and it might as well have been a woman from the Palestinian liberation movement or from one of the other liberation struggles in the third world, against occupation, against colonization. Abu Jihad was a special person in the Palestinian struggle, he was a great teacher, a philosopher, he was an analyst, he was very knowledgeable about language, culture, and so forth, knew the Palestinian history inside out, and many Palestinians still say today that if Abu Jihad had been alive we would have had a different situation. He was liquidated by the Israelis in 1988 in Tripoli. The Israelis call him a terrorist, and that brings us into the interesting discussion, the liberator of one is the terrorist on another. The Palestinians say that the Israelis are the terrorists, while the Israelis say that it is the Palestinians who are the terrorists…

Øyvor Bakke: Is it true that you have met with him?

Mads Gilbert: I met Abu Jihad in Lebanon in 1981, while we were there with the first surgical team from the Palestine Committee… it was a significant meeting.

Øyvor Bakke: What was he like?
Mads Gilbert: The silent type, wise, very dignified, very.. in many ways a representative for the Arab culture but also for Palestinian pride… a listener, and at the same time an inexhaustible source of knowledge, so I learned a lot from that, it was not a long meeting, a couple of hours, but it was… it stuck.

Abu Jihad was, of course, the person behind the Savoy Hotel murder of 8 Israeli civilians and the Coastal Road Massacre where 35 civilians were killed.

Gilbert has been on the record for supporting terrorism for a long time, however. After 9/11, he told a Norwegian newspaper that he would have supported the attacks as a legitimate reaction to US actions in the Middle East.

Zvi adds:

And yet he gets face time in he media to fabricate blood libels about Israel, with nobody mentioning his long-time worship of - and collaboration with - people who live to slaughter civilians. He was responsible for making the claim that among Gazan casualties, women and children comprised 25% of the dead and 45% of the wounded. [He also said that over 90% were civilians. - EoZ]
A doctor who is a radical extremist who knowingly encourages terrorist attacks against innocent civilians must NOT be granted automatic credibility in the press. When someone like Gilbert is used as a supposedly professional "witness for the prosecution," the press has an absolute responsibility to identify their prior sociopathic statements, their prior demands that doctors practice politics during conflicts (rather than focusing on life-saving and truth), and their claims that medicine is mostly politics. Politicians are judged in an entirely different light than doctors. The press has a responsibility to identify someone who begs to be judged as a politician.

Radovan Karadzic was a psychiatrist before he becae a mass murderer and war criminal. Josef Mengele was a doctor. Just because someone is a doctor does not mean that they are professionals who are above lying, or that they have any moral authority whatsoever.
When Gilbert was subsequently criticized as a propagandist and politician by journalists, Norwegian FM Store has come to Gilbert's defense. This says a lot about Store and the Norwegian government as a whole.

17,000 still missing in Lebanon

Today there was a rally in central Beirut to demand answers about the estimated 17,000 people who have been missing since the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war.

Almost all of them were abducted by rival Muslim and Christian militias during the war, and some 600 were taken by Syria, which now denies having any of them in custody. Many of the warlords who kidnapped these victims later entered the government and hushed up any information about them.

Correction: Ma'ariv story on nuclear scientists wrong

From Pajamas Media:

On April 8, 2010, I wrote an article in this space implying that the Obama administration had instituted a new policy restricting entry to the United States for Israeli nuclear scientists who worked at the Dimona reactor. I based my article on a report from the Israeli website/newspaper Maariv, which quoted the nuclear engineering professor Zeev Alfassi as its primary source.
This morning (Pacific time) I was able to reach Dr. Alfassi in his office at Ben Gurion University in the Negev. Apparently, my report — and the newspaper’s — was inaccurate. The professor informed me that while it was extremely difficult for scientists who worked at Dimona to obtain U.S. visas, this was not a new policy of the Obama administration. This problem has been going on since 9/11.

Alfassi explained that formerly he and other scientists were able to go through travel agents to obtain visas to the U.S. Now they have to go personally to the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv. He knows of at least one case of a scientist who was not able to attend a conference in this country because of this system. European scientists, he said, did not have this problem.

Shin Bet pretending to be pollsters?

Palestine Today reports that Gazans have been receiving mysterious phone calls, whose origin appears to be from centers of international studies or from Arab groups abroad.

According to the article, the callers pretend to be asking questions for surveys, but they are really an attempt by Israeli security to gather intelligence.

The questions have included asking whether the people being polled witnessed rocket attacks, or how they would react if fighters asked to use their house.

Even though this seems a little heavy-handed, it is plausible. Corporate espionage often uses such techniques to elicit information from competitors, and even if most of the people refuse to answer such questions, you only need a few to get valuable information.

Freedom of assembly, Gaza-style

From the Palestinian Center for Human Rights:

PCHR commemorates the Palestinian Prisoners Day on 17 April each year...

As part of PCHR’s preparations to organize these activities, PCHR’s Public Relations Officer in Khan Yunis, Mr. Abdul Halim Abu Samra, wanted to book the hall of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and make other necessary preparations. However, PCHR was surprised by the PRCS's refusal to book the hall for PCHR without an official permission from security services to organize the planned seminar. ... Abu Samra phoned the PRCS managing director who said that they received verbal orders from the Internal Security Service not to book any of the PRCS's halls to organize any activities without presenting permits issued the chief of police and that they would be held responsible in case of violating these orders.

In other words, no meeting can occur in Gaza for any reason without Hamas' explicit permission. Also, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society happily complies with Hamas' demands not to allow its facilities to be used without police permission.

And this is for a meeting meant to bash Israel!

Will we be hearing condemnations of Hamas from its left-wing, trendy friends for violating the basic principles of freedom and for pressuring the Red Crescent to comply with illegal orders?

The Magic 8-Ball says "highly unlikely."

Egyptian directors create alternate film festival to exclude Israel

I reported last week about how Egyptians were boycotting a French film festival in Cairo that included a non-political film by an Israeli director.

Since then, the number of boycotting Egyptian filmmakers has increased, so they are launching their own alternative film festival just for the purpose of not allowing any Israeli films.

From Gulf News:

Capping a week of protest against screening an Israeli film at a French festival in Cairo, a group of Egyptian filmmakers have said they will organise a concurrent protest festival starting on Sunday.
Last week, 11 Egyptian filmmakers withdrew from Recontres de L'Image a week-long festival organised by the French Cultural Centre in Cairo in protest against showing a film by an Israeli director.

In their protest festival called The First Festival for Free Image, which runs until April 15, the Egyptian filmmakers will show 40 feature, short and documentary films, say organisers.

The festival was approved by Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni.

"The Egyptian artists have the right to show their films without pressure from anybody or imposing any conditions on them," added Hosni, who last October lost in a race for the top post of the UN's cultural agency the Unesco.

On Thursday, scores of Egyptian artists and intellectuals protested outside the French Cultural Centre in Cairo against what they called the insistence on showing Almost Normal, a film by Israeli director Karen Ben-Rafael.

How Orwellian is it that artists, usually the first people to protest against censorship, use the word "free" to describe an event specifically designed to exclude others?

News from the "world's largest prison"

Israel's critics love to call Gaza the "world's largest prison." (Some prefer "world's largest concentration camp" or the "world's largest prison camp.")

Here are some 2009 statistics from this "prison" from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a report on the Palestinian Arab economy:

- In 2009, 738,576 tons (30,576 trucks) of humanitarian commodities were transferred to the Gaza Strip. In January and February 2010, 92,138.1 tons (4,056 trucks) were transferred.

- In 2009, 22,849 Palestinians exited the Strip, among them 10,544 patients and their companions, exiting for medical treatment in Israel.

- In 2009, 21,200 international organization staff members entered the Gaza Strip.

- In 2009, 4,883 tons of medical equipment and medicine entered the Strip, in 572 trucks.

- In the first two months of 2010, 659.1 tons of medical equipment and medications entered the Gaza Strip, in 92 truckloads.

- In 2009, Israel continued to supply electricity to the Gaza Strip. In addition, 41 truckloads of equipment for the maintenance of the electricity networks were transferred.

- Between April and October 2009, maintenance work was conducted on the power station by Siemens. In 2009, over 105,701,740 liters of diesel were delivered to the station.

- In 2009, 45 truckloads of equipment for communication systems entered the Strip, based on PA requests. In January and February 2010, 25 trucks entered the Strip, carrying inter alia 200,000 SIM cards for the Jawwal Cellular Network.

- 77% of the truckloads entering the Gaza Strip in 2009 were coordinated by the private sector.

- In 2009, 257 Palestinian businessmen (holders of BMC cards) exited the Gaza Strip for Israel, the West Bank and destinations abroad. In January and February 2010, this figure amounted to 148.

- In 2009, over 1.1 billion NIS were transferred to the Gaza Strip to cover the salaries and activities of international organizations, in addition to the PA civil service payroll in Gaza.

- 9,782,076 flowers and 54 tons of strawberries have been exported from Gaza (as of the end of February 2010).

- 374 Christians exited the Strip to celebrate Christmas in Israel and Bethlehem. In addition, 100 Christians exited to participate in the papal visit in May 2009.

- 3,607 tons of glass (103 truckloads) were transferred to the Strip. This project is expected to continue in 2010, and approval has been given for the transfer of wood and aluminum to repair windows and doors.

- In 2009, 10,871 cattle entered the Gaza Strip, mainly for Ramadan and Eid al- Edha celebrations.