Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 04, 2010

Shabbat Shalom, welcome Suzanne open thread

OK, I'm wiped.

81 posts this week. Over 32,000 hits. An overwhelming number of links, stories, and videos.

I need help!

I asked Suzanne if she wants to be a co-blogger. Suzanne has been commenting on this blog for a long time and has contributed a great deal of good pointers to stories. She is an exceptional researcher who was instrumental in getting much of the data in our research on dead terrorists who were considered "civilians" in Gaza.

She lives in the Netherlands, and has uncovered some great stories in the European press that would have gone unnoticed otherwise, including the extraordinarily popular post from this week from the Danish journalist who visited Gaza. I don't know how many languages she knows, but I have a feeling it is a lot! In addition, she has shown that she is better than I am at finding stories in the Arabic media and navigating the entire auto-translation jungle.

In addition, she has shown in her communications with me that she is very devoted to truth, and she has chided me for occasionally spinning stories in ways that might not be 100% accurate. That is a fantastic quality.

I know nothing else about her, but the beauty of cyberspace is that people can be judged purely by their words and nothing else. By that standard, Suzanne is a gem.

She hasn't quite formally accepted my invitation but I saw her log in and start writing a post, so this is my way to encourage her to officially join, and become become the first Eldress.

(I still have the open invitation to Zvi to join the blog as well. Nu?)

Anyway, here is a Shabbat open thread.

A bunch of flotilla-related links and other stuff (updated)

Too many things to blog!

Barry Rubin notes that the leader of the humanitarian flotilla really seems to like jihad and death.

He has another good piece as well.

Krauthammer nails it.

The Jerusalem Post reveals more details of the operation.

Eric Posner, expert on international law, says that Israel could have sunk the ships legally!

Yid With Lid on Helen Thomas' polite suggestion that Jews get the hell out of "Palestine" and go to where they came from. On video!

MEMRI has a compilation of relevant Arab videos:

From Firas Press.- the Muslim Brotherhood supports Mohamed ElBaradei in his possible run for president of Egypt. Fun.

I need to relax this Shabbat. Badly.

"Peace activists" tell Jews to go back to Auschwitz

Latest from the IDF:

Anti-Israel propaganda disguised as a backgrounder

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/want_to_know_more_about_israel.htmlForeign Policy has what appears to be a well-sourced, fact-based article called "What exactly is the blockade of Gaza?" Ezra Klein at the WashPo raves about it (from Memeorandum.)

Unfortunately, the article does nothing to answer its titular question. It just uses statistics and, in one case, an outright lie to show how Gazans' lives are not great, and by implication is blames Israel's blockade on all of these things. it doesn't say a word as to why there is a blockade, whether it is legal, what Israel does to help Gazans nor whether Egypt shares any responsibility for the blockade. It is meant to anger, not inform.

Written by Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center, it starts off talking about Gaza's electricity woes. What he doesn't mention is that Israel does not limit fuel shipments to Gaza for its power plant - that limitation is mostly from the Palestinian Arab ability to pay the fuel bills. He doesn't mention that Israel has shipped plenty of equipment to maintain the electrical grid - hardly a "blockade." He doesn't mention that 70% of Gaza's Elecricity is supplied directly by Israel.

In other words, he chooses some facts and lets the reader draw the wrong conclusion.

Next, he says "Israel has not permitted supplies into the Gaza Strip to rebuild the sewage system." This is, simply, a lie. Israel's MFA site says

During the first quarter of 2010, the UN coordinated with Israel the transfer of equipment for UNWRA to upgrade the sewage pumping station.... Moreover, 48 trucks of equipment for improving the sanitation infrastructure led to a substantial reduction in the Beit Lahya facility's waste levels.

Munayyer mentions that the health sector was damaged by Cast Lead, but doesn't mention that nearly 5000 tons of medical equipment and medicine has somehow been allowed through Israel's blockade. Israel shipped wheelchairs, crutches, first aid kits, heart-monitors, baby feeding tubes, dental equipment, medical books, ambulance emergency equipment, artificial limbs and infant sleeping bags. Much more has arrived this year.

He says that "1103 individuals applied for permits to exit the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing for medical treatment in 2009" of which 20% were delayed or denied. This is a nicely deceptive statistic, since the number of Gazans went to Israel for medical purposes was over 10,000.

He doesn't mention how many patients didn't make it to Egypt.

In other words, this is a pure propaganda piece disguised as a fact-based backgrounder. To see real numbers, all you have to do is go to Israel's MFA site.

Who cares about Gazans? Not the flotilla!

Today, Jordan sent 52 trucks of aid to Gaza.

More will arrive tomorrow, including medical supplies.

The goods are being sent by the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization.

Two weeks ago, another aid convoy from Jordan arrived in Gaza - including aid from Saudi Arabia.

Also this week, Egypt's Red Crescent sent aid to Gaza, including blankets and tents, via the Rafah crossing.

Quietly, Arab countries and Israel cooperate in ensuring that Gaza's needs are fully met. Even Syria has sent trucks filled with aid to Gaza.

What do the "humanitarians" from the West think Arab nations, quietly cooperating with the Zionist enemy, helping Gazans? According to them, isn't this a model for peace and goodwill?

Not at all.

An internal Free Gaza email from last November complained about how too many of their potential donors preferred to send aid to Gaza rather than support their blockade-busting boats. And they said explicitly that "We firmly believe that activists and people who care about Palestine should not be raising money for humanitarian aid."

In other words, the flotilla supporters don't care at all about getting aid to Gazans. They don't want Jordan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or the UAE or any of the other Arab states to send supplies. They refuse to deal with Israel - as opposed to Israel's implacable enemies.

They hate Israel more than the Arabs do!

This is the fundamental truth about Free Gaza, Viva Palestina, IHH and the other groups that mount very public shows of sending aid to Gaza. The supposed victims are just pawns - they are targeting the supposed oppressors.

The ones who cooperate with their enemies to get aid to Gazans.

The hate is palpable. Almost all of the interviews with these supposed humanitarians show them suffused with intense anger towards Israel, and very little love towards Gazans. The only Gazans they show real solidarity with are their Hamas dictators, as the "humanitarians" love to remind the world that Hamas was democratically elected - as if that somehow makes the terrorists less reprehensible.

No, there is only one thing that binds these "activists" together, and that is a desire to see Israel disappear. Free Gaza's Greta Berlin said as much to the New York Times:

[S]he says that her detractors in Israel are right, that she does not accept Israel as a Jewish state, though she contends that is part of a larger philosophy which opposes all national borders.

It just so happens that the only national borders she spends time opposing are Israel's.

In the final analysis, based on how they behave and their words, the so-called "humanitarians" are the exact opposite of human rights workers. They explicitly excuse every Hamas or Islamic Jihad atrocity and they oppose everything Israel does for the defense of its citizens.They don't even take advantage of Egypt's opening of the Rafah border to send aid to Gazans. They are hypocrites of the highest order.

Most of all, the flotilla supporters care less about the quality of life of Gazans than Israel does.

YouTube takes down my video of IHH beating IDF soldiers

YouTube has taken down one of my two videos that showed Israeli news footage- using the activists cameras! - of the initial seconds when the IDF soldiers were being beaten. Obviously pro-terror groups complained in order to stifle the evidence that showed them to be hypocrites when they say they are "peace activists."

My video was, as far as I can tell, the first one on YouTube that showed the actual attack. I copied it from an Israeli news site. I also captioned it, describing what was happening.

Luckily, the original video is all over the place, even on YouTube:

How long will they allow the video of the IDF soldier being stabbed to remain?

Will they allow the IDF to keep their videos up?

I appealed, but don't have a great track record with YouTube.

This is of course outrageous - the video has been shown on American and British TV newscasts, and YouTube is not more prudish than American network TV. It is just them caving to those who do not want the truth to be exposed.

Reporters need to ask follow-up questions of "eyewitnesses"

From Gulf News:

"We were witnesses to premeditated murders," said historian Mattias Gardell, who was on the Mavi Marmar.

From DN.se (translated):

The Israelis committed premeditated murder. Two people were killed by shots in the forehead, one was shot in the back of the head and chest, said Gardell.

He did not see the killings with his own eyes. His information is based instead on what he asked others in prison.

Reporters are treating these "witnesses" with kid gloves. From the excellent site Just Journalism:

The most widely quoted British activist, who was on board the Mavi Marmara, is Sarah Colborne, director of campaigns at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. She has been quoted in four of today’s broadsheets, the BBC News website and also featured on last night’s Channel 4 News.

She was generally presented as horrified and dismayed over the Israeli army’s deployment of lethal force. The Times reported her as saying, ‘Everyone’s just in shock. It was a massacre that took place there.’ The BBC’s Peter Jackson’s website article, ‘UK Gaza activist Sarah Colborne - ship raid 'surreal'’ described Colborne’s account as one of ‘stunned surprise’ and quoted her at her press conference, insisting: ‘It felt surreal, I couldn't quite believe they were doing what they were doing - none of us anticipated it’....

The only journalist to challenge the PSC director’s claims that she was surprised that the Israelis boarded the boat and to press her on who initiated the violence was BBC Today programme anchor Sarah Montague. The journalist repeatedly tried to glean from Colborne, who had started the violence and what she had actually seen. In the following exchange, Colborne revealingly avoids the BBC journalist’s question about whether or not the passengers attacked the soldiers and implies that she did not actually see Israeli commandos open fire:

Sarah Montague:   Are you saying that Israeli soldiers who boarded that ship opened fire and there was no provocation for it?

Sarah Colborne:   That’s what I am saying, yes.

SM:   You saw that. You saw them fire when there was no attack on them.

SC:   I saw them, well, I saw them, what I saw was them coming down from a helicopter onto the roof, I saw them trying to board the boat via dinghies.

SM:   Were they attacked by those on board?

SC:   They – the people on board, as you can see, were trying to stop…

SM:   Hitting them with metal bars.

SC:   Well, we need to see the entire footage. I believe to give a perspective on what was happening. They were shooting, they were shooting civilians, they were using gas bombs on the ship. The truth is we were in international waters, Israel committed a piracy offence.

Sarah Montague also challenged Colborne’s contention she had ‘heard no warnings whatsoever’ that the Israelis were going to raid the ship, saying, ‘How can you not have known or how can those on board the ship… because we know from what the Israeli side is saying that there were plenty of warnings?

The BBC journalist finally broached the subject of the professed desire for martyrdom on the part of some of the participants who had died:

‘Let me, let me put something to you. The Turkish newspapers yesterday quoted family members of two of the dead men as saying that they had wanted to be martyrs.’

Sarah Colborne, once again, flatly denied being aware of any such aspirations of her co-travellers:

‘Well, I – I have no idea. I didn’t speak to anyone who wanted to be a martyr.’

The fact that Israel got the footage out on YouTube so quickly has allowed journalists to ask real questions - when they have a desire to find out the truth, that is.

Arab League meets over flotilla; can't agree on what to do.

An emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo over a response to the flotilla incident resulted in much disagreement over what actions to take, and the wording of the final statement.

The Egyptians were strongly opposed to the wording "break the siege" because it could expose their own citizens to infiltration from Gaza. Qatar threatened Egypt back, and Egypt noted its objections but kept the language.

In the end, the watered down statement did not call on Arab governments to do anything about the blockade - but rather to ask the UN Security Council to pressure Israel.

This was regarded as a major embarrassment in the Arab world.

Apparently, the group also drafted a letter to President Obama but decided unanimously not to publish it.

Going commando

Richard Goldstone was asked how Israel could fight terror without endangering civilians. His answer was "You know, commando actions could have been taken."

Judging from world hysteria over a perfectly legal Israeli commando action meant to support a perfectly legal blockade, it appears that Goldstone is a radical intransigent hard-line Likudnik for even giving a hint that Israel has the right to defend itself in any way, shape or form.

How dare he?

(h/t Isy)

UK government groveling to Islamists

From Douglas Murray at The Telegraph (UK):

I have just been forwarded an email from the UK government which suggests that the new administration does not merely feel blackmailed by Islamists but is also actively trying to placate them....

There is only one reason why this email was sent out: the British government is attempting to placate Muslim pressure groups in the UK by saying, “Look at us, you’re not going to catch us being soft on Israel, we’re as furious and condemning as you are.”

Read the whole thing.
(h/t Guest)

UN actually expresses "concern" over Hamas actions!

Over the past two years, Hamas has routinely raided, closed, arrested the leaders of and taken over news media, political organizations, medical groups, dental unions, schools, teachers' unions, labor unions, and charities.

Throughout all these outrages, the UN has been mostly silent, saving its condemnations for Israel.

However, early this week Hamas raided six different NGOs - and the UN finally, after years, took notice:

A senior United Nations official in the Middle East today expressed deep concern at reports that Hamas has broken into the offices of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the Gaza Strip this week, confiscated materials and equipment, and forced the offices to shut down.
Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said in a statement issued in Jerusalem that reports indicated Hamas had broken into NGO offices in both Gaza City and Rafah.

“This targeting of NGOs, including UN partner organizations, is unacceptable, violating accepted norms of a free society and harming the Palestinian people,” he said.

“The de facto authorities must cease such repressive steps and allow the re-opening of these civil society institutions without delay.”

Notice that the UN representatives in Gaza didn't make this statement - because they are simply too terrified to say anything against Hamas.

Of course, this is not a condemnation - just an expression of "deep concern." Too little, and a couple of years too late. But since the news had reached the Western media, the UN couldn't ignore it completely, like they did for all the previous Hamas outrages - even when they were against the UN itself.

What happened on the ship: Extracting truth from half-truths

It takes a lot of time to extract the truth of exactly what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara, but when you get lots of testimonies that contradict each other from both sides, seeing what is in common can shed light.

For example, in the article I quoted previously from the Australian journalist Paul McGeough:

There were conflicting accounts of the first commando landing – some activists said he was injured and was being carried inside the ship for treatment by the flotilla doctors.

From Al Jazeera:
The organisers [of the flotilla] swapped the four Israelis kidnapped, or caught, by the people on the ship, and because they were beaten up, because it's kind of resistance from our side, we swapped the Israeli soldiers to [get] to treat our injured.

From Ha'aretz: :

During Israel's takeover of a Turkish ship in the Gaza-bound aid flotilla this week, some passengers tried to take captive three commandos who lost consciousness as a result of the activists' blows, according to early findings of a navy investigation. The three were dragged into one of the passenger halls below deck and were held there for several minutes.

After dozens of other commandos began searching the ship, the Mavi Marmara, the three soldiers regained consciousness and managed to join their comrades.

So, beyond merciless beatings, the Turks tried to kidnap the soldiers - and later claimed that they were simply treating their injuries!

From McGeough:

Matthias Gardel, a leader of the Swedish Palestinian support group, confirmed the soldiers had been beaten, but insisted those involved were unarmed and in keeping with the ship's non-violent charter, the soldiers' weapons were thrown overboard.

From Ha'aretz:

The soldiers reported that the activists had fired on them during the confrontation and that at least two commandos suffered gunshot wounds. After the incident, 9mm bullet casings were found - a kind not used by the naval commandos.

The Israel Defense Forces says that during the operation a number of pistols and an M-4 rifle were taken from soldiers, but they believe that the Turkish activists had other weapons. The captain of the ship told the naval commando chief that the guns were thrown overboard before the ship was completely taken over.

Which explains the lack of weapons found, even though there were live video and audio reports from the soldiers as they heard and saw the gunshots.

Free Gaza claims that the ship raised a white flag almost immediately.

From Al Jazeera:

It was 14 ships which approached us, nearly at 4.30 in the morning. Fourteen ships that I could count and one helicopter....It ended at six, when a voice from the microphone said the ship was controlled by the Israelis, 'please enter the rooms'.

So it took some ninety minutes of fighting before the Marmara surrendered.

(h/t Alexander)

They prayed before they lynched

The Sydney Morning Herald has a reporter's account of the commando operation that is so unbelievably biased as to be laughable. Written by Paul McGeough, it is titled "Prayers, tear gas and terror."

The Israeli attack was timed for dawn prayers – when a good number of the men aboard the Mavi Marmara were praying on the aft deck of the big Turkish passenger ferry, as it motored steadily through international waters in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The call to prayer could be heard across the water – haunting chords made tinny by the ship's PA system, yet haunting enough amid tension sparked several hours earlier when the six ships' captains in the Free Gaza Flotilla rejected a demand radioed by the Israeli navy – change course away from the Gaza Strip or be confronted with lethal force.

Don't you love the imagery of innocent Muslims at prayer being surprised by stealthy evil Zionist killers? The fact that we have video of them waiting for the Israelis, with clubs and knives and slingshots and broken bottles in hand, is not mentioned. No, all night they were praying. (By the way, the Muslim times for prayer are almost literally all day and night - Isha'a is dusk until dawn, Fajr from dawn to sunrise.)

We have heard the warnings given by the Israelis and they never warned that they would use "lethal force." This is simply a lie.

They hunted like hyenas – moving up and ahead on the flanks; pushing in, then peeling away; and finally, lagging before lunging. But as they came alongside the Mavi Marmara, the dozen or so helmeted commandos in each assault craft copped the full force of the ferry's fire hoses and a shower of whatever its passengers found on deck or could break from the ship's fittings.

Suddenly sound bombs and tear gas were exploding on the main aft deck, where prayers were held five times a day.

See - it was a holy spot! Just like the Jews took away the Al Aqsa Mosque, now they took away the holy Mavi Marmara!

[A]ctivists on the upper decks rushed to the top level of the ship – grabbing the commandos even before they landed, disarming them; beating them until, according to some who were present, leaders demanded the Israelis not be harmed; but in one case, one of the Israelis was hurled from one deck of the ship to the next.

Wait - it gets better:

There were conflicting accounts of the first commando landing – some activists said he was injured and was being carried inside the ship for treatment by the flotilla doctors. However, a Serbian cameraman, Srojan Stojiljkovic, said some of the activists had armed themselves with lengths of chain and metal posts that had served as cordons around the ship's lifeboats.

"Some of the people caught the first commando before he touched the deck – a few started to hit him, but a lot of people moved in to shelter him with their bodies," the cameraman said. "Another soldier with a bleeding nose was brought in ... a few people threw punches, but not as many as I would have expected."

The brutal and merciless beatings caught from at least three different camera angles, including the cameras on the Mavi Marava itself, are ignored by this intrepid reporter who so loves Muslim prayer as to invoke it multiple times in the story. Instead, he takes utterly inconsistent and conflicting reports - which any decent reporter would question based on the video evidence - and takes them at face value.

It is not believable that McGeough had not seen the videos by now that show nothing at all corroborating his fanciful tale of caring Turkish aid workers nursing injured Israeli soldiers to health.

Another of the dead was said to be an Indonesian cameraman, Sura Fachrizaz, shot in the chest. Also among the dead was a Malaysian doctor who, activists said, was shot while treating the wounded.

Funny - the news today said that all of the dead were from Turkey (the one American citizen was from Turkey as well.) The reporter is again reporting rumors without checking the facts - just as he repeats the discredited flotilla lie that

Four of the ships carried 10,000 tonnes of emergency supplies for Gaza

...not quite true, closer to 1000 tons of useless supplies that Hamas has spurned.

But his characterization of the violent Hamas coup that killed hundreds of Gazans deserves perhaps the most derision of all:

Hamas retained control of Gaza in the face of an Israeli- and US-backed bid to oust the Islamist movement from power.

McGeough is not a reporter, he is an advocate. And - no surprise - his girlfriend is Palestinian Arab.

(h/t jk)

"We Con the World" (Latma TV)

h/t Bubbe

Yemen does a blockade. People die. World yawns.

When Arabs blockade, they really do it right. No food, water, medicine, or press - so no criticism, either. And it only takes them three weeks to start starving people!

From The Examiner, May 30:

As Yemen’s blockade on southern Yemen enters its third week, stocks of food, medicine and oil have dwindled to dangerous levels. Prices have skyrocketed and already malnourished children bear the brunt of the military action.

The blockade began 17 days ago when the Western Armored Division established new checkpoints on roads and at city entrances preventing the flow of persons and commerce including food, medicine, oil and water. The blockade has cut off Radfan, Yafea, al Dhala, al Melah, al Habeelan, al Shaib, Gahaf, Lazarik, and parts of Shabwah.

The main road between Aden and al Dahlie is closed. Al Habaleen, Lahj was indiscriminately shelled three days ago after two soldiers were killed in an ambush. Another ambush in al Melah killed one soldier, and authorities have accused renegade elements of the southern independence movement with the attacks.

Nearly one thousand have fled Radfan, al Habaleen and al Bilah seeking safety. Like the 250,000 internally displaced by the Sa’ada War, these are mostly women and children. On May 24, a pregnant woman en route to a hospital in Aden was stopped at a military checkpoint and later died in childbirth.

Reports indicate a heavy military mobilization including tanks and armored personnel carriers. As during the Saada war, a total media blackout is in place, often accomplished by the arrest of southern journalists. An American journalist was expelled from Yemen last week after visiting Yafee, a center of southern resistance.

Yemen’s conduct of the Saada war generated 250,000 internal refugees with arbitrary aerial bombing of civilian areas and a strict blockade of food, medicine and international aid.

Assuming this is true, then the world is ignoring a real, illegal blockade (actually, two of them - one was last year) - blockades that do not let anything through and are designed to literally starve out the population.

But Arabs killed and starved by other Arabs is no big deal. No protests or flotillas against Yemen - because the protesters know that they would be killed on the spot, without any media attention.

If the world doesn't know about it, then how bad could it be?

Of course, the Yemenis vociferously protested Israel's blockade. While people in southern Yemen would gladly trade places with any Gazan.