Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 06, 2010

The false choice

The New York Times has an article about how more and more people are talking about Israel as a strategic liability for the US. The number of problems with the article are numerous.

Among other things, it includes the false use of the term "Arab East Jerusalem" - which include neighborhoods that are wholly Jewish, neighborhoods that are not in the eastern part of Jerusalem, and implies that "East Jerusalem" is a different city than "West Jerusalem," as if the aberration of 19 years of a divided city, which ended 43 years ago, where the eastern part was Judenrein is the status quo ante that must be adhered to forever.

It invokes the tired and absurd idea of "linkage" where supposedly Israeli actions are behind the worldwide Muslim and Arab anger at the West, an idea that is equally ridiculous, easily rebutted and yet well-entrenched in the current administration.

It ends off with a quote from Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation and a member of J Street - a representative of the liberal, anti-Israel stream of Jews emboldened by Obama's policies of conciliation with those who hate us.

He says,

America has three choices. Either say, it’s politically too hot a potato to touch, and just pay the consequences in the rest of the world. Or try to force through a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, so that the Palestinian grievance issue is no longer a driving force or problem.” The third choice, he said, “is for America to say, we can’t solve it, but we can’t pay the consequences, so we will distance ourselves from Israel. That way America would no longer be seen, as it has been this week, as the enabler of excesses of Israeli misbehavior.

From his perspective, these are indeed the only choices America has. That is because the most obvious and effective choice has been all but shouted down by the left and center-leaning media.

The real option is none of the above.

America is the only superpower and as such it must be the leader, not the follower. To appease those whose philosophies are against American values is not to lead but to be held hostage to extremists. Anyone who makes enough noise now has veto power over US decisions, because the desire to be loved is outweighing the mandate to do what is right.

Levy makes a fatal assumption: that if a peace deal is forced through, the "the Palestinian grievance issue" would go away or be greatly reduced. History shows that the exact opposite is the case, and making that assumption is wishful thinking replacing real thought.

Israel withdrew from Lebanon, completely. Hezbollah was not weakened by that move - on the contrary, it has stayed at least as radical as ever, and based on its rhetoric, maybe more so.

Israel withdrew from Gaza. The vacuum was not replaced by an America-loving moderate Arab government, but by an Iranian-leaning radical terror organization. It did not reduce friction - it increased it, although it made Westerners very happy.

Today's Pearls Before Swine comic strip helps show the absurdity of the new realism that demands real compromises from only one side, in the name of "peace". (Whether Stephen Pastis' use of the name "Potus" was an intentional dig at Obama or not is open to question.)

It is too bad that so many, including so many Jews, cannot see the obvious truths and replace it with their hopes and dreams - disregarding the dangers of their wishful thinking.

Reuters crops out knife in picture of wounded soldier

Earlier today I mentioned that in the Turkish press pictures of wounded and captured Israeli soldiers were published. I added a picture on which a knife can be clearly seen:

Reuters decided to do some cropping on this one:

and also decided not to mention that the soldier is injured:

Pro-Palestinian activists hold down an Israeli commando on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in the international waters of Mediterranean sea early May 31, 2010. Israeli marines stormed the Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza on Monday and nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed, triggering a diplomatic crisis and an emergency session of theU.N. Security Council. Picture taken May 31, 2010.

(I blurred the face on both pictures)

Arabs upset at "We Con the World"

The Palestinian Arab Firas Press angrily notes how popular the "We Con the World" video is on YouTube (over 890,000 views so far.)

But it also embeds it in the article!

Act of piracy?

The accusations that what Israel did could be defined either as piracy or as an illegal act of war are spread all over the internet.

The piracy-accusation bases itself on the pirate act of attacking civilian ships in international waters. (but pirates do not not operate under the auspices of a government)

And then there is this Craig Murray who is being quoted all over the place. He argues that it is illegal to attack a foreign flagged vessel in international waters and the event should be regarded as an act of illegal warfare. (Oddly, he seems terrified at the idea that all those damn zionists are visiting his blog)

Based on the above accusations I can only conclude that the Dutch:

The Dutch navy seized 1.32 tonnes of cocaine from a ship off the Dutch Antilles islands, the defence ministry said Saturday, a day after France announced a record bust in the region. The Dutch frigate Van Speijk discovered the cocaine wrapped in 66 individual bags on board a Panamanian-flagged commercial vessel on May 24, some 56 kilometres (35 miles) from the island of Aruba. The navy arrested the five crew Honduran crew and with Panama's permission sent them to the United States where the fight against drug trafficking in the region is being centralised, a navy spokesperson told AFP.

the Spanish and English:

In 2006, the Spanish and the British navies operating in international waters seized a record volume of cocaine departing from African ports, with a total of 9,852 kg seized on 5 ships, compared to 3,700 kg on one ship in 2005 (+ 166%). All seizures took place in international waters close to the Western African coasts, as shown on the map on the next page. [.pdf!]

and the French are pirates or war criminals as well:

A barrage of naval gunfire in the Atlantic, authorised by the French and Cambodian prime ministers, may have finally sunk one of the most controversial maritime developments of recent years - the "super flags of convenience" shipping registers run by tiny states in return for hard cash.

The Winner, a 32-year-old merchant ship flying the Cambodian flag, is due to arrive under military guard in the port of Brest tomorrow after being seized by the French navy, reportedly with two tonnes of cocaine on board.

But where is the outrage?

Must-read op-ed in Arabic blasts flotilla, Hamas

A Palestinian Arab newspaper asks about the motives of the Free Gaza flotilla.

The op-ed, by Fouad Sobhi, says

The Arab and Muslim world is very angry after the fall of some of victims when the Turks tried to sail some small boats carrying aid to break the siege imposed on Gaza and access to the Gaza Strip by sea. Demonstrations went out as usual to the streets of some Arab and Islamic slogans condemning what happened and demand an international trial of Israel and its leaders and the expulsion of ambassadors in Cairo and Jordan ... At the same time called the Muslim Brotherhood called upon the Egyptian government to open the crossings between Egypt and Gaza Strip - not to send food or fuel for the necessary needs of the Palestinians, but to send fighters to Israel to punish them for their response to vessels seeking to break the embargo on Hamas.

Many of the angry protesters don't know that it had been possible to avoid the victims and wounded at sea if the organizers of these vessels accepted the offer of Egypt and Israel to give such assistance to the Egyptian authorities to convey the aid to residents of the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing. This offer was rejected completely, because the scenario that was written and planned carefully by Hamas and the Turks was to create a clash with the Israeli navy and to provoke the soldiers of the Israeli army and engage with them to the degree that they will not escape, only shoot to defend themselves and then [Hamas can] exploit the incident, a major world media event to show Israel as a monster predator perpetrating aggressions against the innocent unarmed civilians who were seeking to achieve a noble humanitarian goal is to help the Palestinians.

My question here is why did the the organizers of the vessels refuse to accept the Egyptian offer to transfer their aid through the Egyptian border?? Why did they insist on moving towards Gaza despite the dozens of warnings issued to them by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities?? Is there a relationship between what has happened in the Mediterranean Sea and conflicts and internal disputes in Turkey between Prime Minister on the one hand, the army and the opposition on the other?? Did the system in Turkey want to dismiss what is happening inside with their internal conflicts and divisions by playing the religious feelings of Muslims and Arabs and criticism of Israel with guns and try to become the Savior of the Palestinian cause??

There is no doubt that I sympathize with all my senses and my heart with the good Palestinian people in Gaza and I hope to lift their siege the day before tomorrow, and I hope with all my heart for an immediate end to their suffering and the inhumane conditions, but at the same time, we must say that I find an excuse and justification for Israel and Egypt to continue this ban in the presence of the current leaders of the extremist Hamas who impose - Hamas themselves - the maximum blockade and more cruelty and viciousness, hundreds of times worse than the Egyptian and Israeli blockade.

I think it is appropriate to condemn the world's first siege of the extremist Hamas leadership of the Palestinian people in Gaza, religiously, socially, intellectually, politically, morally and economically .. But must also be strong demand to dismiss the Hamas leadership, extreme power and the rule of the sector and bring it back to the rule of the legitimate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abu Abbas to unify the Palestinians again.

An Irish "friend" of the Jews calls Israel "anti-semitic"

The Irish Independent newspaper publishes an open letter from Tim Pat Coogan to the Israeli ambassador in Ireland.

It is a perfect example of how Pslestinian Arab propaganda is accepted, even by intelligent people, as facts. The sheer repetition of lies has concretized them as factual over the years - a remarkable accomplishment, and a remarkable failure on the part of Israel and its friends.

Coogan's historic complaints about Israel rests in this single, counter-factual, paragraph:

In 1948, when Israel declared the independence which the Israeli embassy celebrated recently, more than 90 per cent of the land of present day Israel was in Palestinian hands. Today Palestinians barely hold 10 per cent and illegal Jewish settlements proliferate almost hourly. Israel has, in fact, implemented an unacknowledged policy of ethnic cleansing.

That these three bolded statements are considered so self-evident by people who pride themselves as being knowledgeable about the history of the area is stunning.

The first statement is simply a lie. It is based on the clever manipulation of data by today's Palestinians of a 1946 British map showing land ownership in Palestine. They accurately say that Jews privately held less than 10% of Palestine's lands before 1948 - but they purposefully conflate public and British lands with Arab lands to imply that Arabs owned over 90% of the land. In fact, the British controlled the vast majority of Palestine's lands, and those public British lands became public lands in Israel. It is hard to know the exact numbers, but it appears that privately Arab-owned land was only about 20% of Palestine, not the 90% that Coogan wrongfully assumes. If you want to go into details about the different categories of land that existed before 1948, read this article, in which you will discover that Jews paid twice as much taxes on their private land in Palestine than Arabs did - a feat which would be difficult if Arabs owned 90% of the land!

The second statement is also an assumption of Palestinian Arab propaganda as fact. Israel has frozen the borders of the Jewish towns in the West Bank for years now; essentially all building has been done within the borders of existing towns. Not that Palestinian Arabs are happy about that, but the fact is that these buildings do not make the settlement boundaries any larger. Some settlements have appeared in recent years but these have not been part of Israeli policy, and Israel has destroyed more than a few. The legalities of those settlements is also not nearly as clear as Coogan assumes, but that's an entirely different and much lengthier discussion.

The third statement, that Israel's is a policy of ethnic cleansing, is not only a lie but a slander. The only people ethnically cleansed in the boundaries of British Mandate Palestine are Jews - from Area A, from Gaza, and (some would argue) from Jordan itself. Compare the number of Arabs in Israel with the number of Jews under Palestinian Arab rule and this libelous assertion is shown to be an exact inversion of truth. It is a lie that is repeated so often that someone like Coogan accepts it as fact without the slightest hesitation or fear of contradiction. This is, again, a failure of Israel's public relations.

Most egregious, however, is Coogan's statement that Israel's policies are "anti-semitic," an absurd calumny that the article uses for its title:

But I have to tell you, Dr Evrony, that my earlier enthusiasm has been sadly dampened by having to acknowledge that Israel has become the most actively anti-Semitic government in the world -- the Palestinians are a Semitic people.

As any educated person knows, the term "antisemitism" was specifically coined to put a scientific patina on its real meaning, "anti-Jewish." To say that Jews are anti-semites is to again accept a ridiculous and false attack on etymology. It is akin to saying that "terrific" and "terrible" are synonyms because of their shared Latin roots. It is nothing more than an attempt at placing irony where there is none, as well as to minimize the horrendous history of Jew-hatred in the Arab world.

In short, Coogan is demonstrating the ability of lies to infect the minds even otherwise sympathetic and intelligent people. It is a shame that this disease of lies is so contagious as to make him a carrier to infect another set of victims who read his article and accept his statements as truth.

(h/t Callie)

"Flotilla Facts" website

A very good resource called Flotilla Facts has become a one-stop shop for the latest on the events. It is also a good reference site, something that blogs cannot do as well as more generalized websites.

English: "IDF ruthless!" Turkish/Arabic: "IDF crybabies!"

There are three narratives of the first minutes of the raid on the Mavi Marmara: one by Israel, one by the leaders of the flotilla when speaking in English, and a third one - by the people who support the flotilla when speaking in non-Western languages.

The Turkish newspaper that published the pictures of the IDF soldiers today does not use the meme of ruthless IDF soldiers shooting from the helicopter and murdering civilians within seconds of landing on deck - nor do the pictures support that narrative in the least. Rather, they prove Israel's version of events completely. Yet the Turkish press, as we had seen Friday from some of the Arabic press, instead say how weak and ineffectual the IDF soldiers were, all but mocking them for not using lethal force initially.

The newspaper notes, with glee, the fear in the soldiers' faces captured in the photos. It discusses how the brave "humanitarians" fought the mighty IDF with sacks of onions. The article calls the soldiers "amateurish" and "incompetent."

To the supporters of the IHH and its partners, the IDF's reticence in using lethal force is a clear sign of weakness, not a sign of caring about human life.

This also indicates that the version of events that much of the world believes, in which the Free Gaza folks make outlandish claims like

Under darkness of night, Israeli commandoes dropped from a helicopter onto the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began to shoot the moment their feet hit the deck. They fired directly into the crowd of civilians asleep.

are complete fabrications.

Interestingly, the Turkish article claims that the IDF erased these photos from the camera memory cards before returning them to their owners, and that the Turks recovered them with simple unerase software, in an attempt to hide the facts of the IDF failure. It seems equally possible that the photographers quickly deleted the photos before the IDF confiscated the cameras. In fact, as YNet notes, the IDF "expressed its satisfaction with the Turkish newspapers' decision to publish the photos. 'This is clear proof of Israel's repeated claims, that the boat was carrying mercenaries, whose sole purpose was to kill the soldiers.'" Their only problem was with showing the soldiers' faces.

The Turkish newspaper Hürriyet released photographs of the wounded or captured Israeli soldiers on the Mavi Marmara.

h/t Jed

UPDATE: I changed the picture. As Jed pointed out a knife can be seen on the first picture. I encircled it (and blurred the face of the soldier.)

The taking of hostages is illegal under international law

There have been multiple accounts by now of how the people on the Mavi Marmara ship took the first Israeli commandoes hostage, after wounding them.

For example, this description in Reuters:

Andre Abu Khalil, a Lebanese cameraman for Al Jazeera TV, gave an account that backed some of what both sides have said.

In his telling, activists initially wounded and captured four Israelis from a first wave that boarded the ship. A second wave of troops tried to storm the ship after the four were taken below decks.
...

One activist used a loudhailer to tell the Israelis the four captive soldiers were well and would be released if they provided medical help for the wounded activists. With an Israeli Arab lawmaker acting as mediator, the Israelis agreed. Wounded were brought to the deck and were airlifted off the ship.

The International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages starts off this way:

ARTICLE 1

Any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (hereinafter referred to as the "hostage") in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offence of taking of hostages ("hostage-taking") within the meaning of this Convention.

Any person who:
attempts to commit an act of hostage-taking, or
participates as an accomplice of anyone who commits or attempts to commit an act of hostage-taking likewise commits an offence for the purposes of this Convention.

In other words, the "humanitarian activists" performed a textbook definition of hostage taking. Which means that these "humanitarians" violated humanitarian international law by taking the IDF soldiers hostage.

It doesn't matter if it was only for a relatively short time. It doesn't matter that the hostages were soldiers or that the hostage takers were nominally civilians (although I am fairly certain that by acting violently against the soldiers legally enforcing a blockade, and by taking them hostage, they forfeited their status as civilians and became official combatants, waiving their rights as civilians under international law.) All that is irrelevant to the definition here: this was a case of hostage taking.

This treaty was acceded to (accepted as law) by Turkey in 1989.

Not only that, but hostage taking is a form of terrorism.

This Convention is considered by the UN to be one of the "legal instruments and additional amendments dealing with terrorism." Moreover, it is referenced in the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

This means that whoever was involved in the decision to take Israeli commandoes hostage was, effectively, engaged in terrorism, by the UN's definition and under international law.

IHH seems to have been clearly complicit, but the other groups such as Free Gaza may also be implicated in this terrorist act.

Israel would be within its rights to demand extradition of the hostage-takers, those who aided them, and those who know the identity of the hostage takers, to stand trial for these terrorism charges.

(h/t AB)

Elder gets mentioned in the NYT (blog)

One of the things I have been doing in the past week is look for egregious anti-Israel articles and respond to them, especially if they seem to be getting links from other prominent blogs or pundits.

One of them was a propaganda piece in Foreign Policy magazine that billed itself as a "fact sheet" on the blockade. As soon as I read it I saw that it was nothing of the sort, and I responded to it.

Today, the Opinionator blog in the New York Times has a discussion about the blockade, entitled "Is the embargo good for the Jews?" Within the article the author links to a number of discussions about the wisdom and basis for Israel's blockade of Gaza. Part of it was a reference to that same "fact sheet" - and my response.

The NYT blogger than said

"The writer considers Munayyer’s piece “propaganda,” and he certainly has a point.

And if I wouldn't have written what I did, the Foreign Policy piece would have been considered a factual reference piece for other journalists.

Small victories, but victories nonetheless.

IDFs clarifies earlier radio transmission between navy and Flotilla

Recently the IDF distributed a video in which "Peace activists" tell Jews to go back to Auschwitz. Many (including myself) were questioning the authenticity of this video and believed the IDF fabricated this video because of other possible known facts:

On hearing the recording Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, identified the woman's voice as that of his wife Huwaida Arraf, chair of the Free Gaza Movement. However, Arraf was not aboard the Mavi Marmara. She was aboard one of the small passenger vessels in the six-boat flotilla, called Challenger 1.

The IDF spokesperson clarifies now:

"the audio was edited down to cut out periods of silence over the radio as well as incomprehensible comments so as to make it easier for people to listen to the exchange. We have now uploaded the entire segment of 5 minutes and 58 seconds in which the exchange took place and the comments were made.

This transmission had originally cited the Mavi Marmara ship as being the source of these remarks, however, due to an open channel, the specific ship or ships in the “Freedom Flotilla” responding to the Israeli Navy could not be identified. During radio transmissions between Israeli Navy and the ships of the “Free Gaza” Flotilla on 31 May 2010, the Israeli Navy ship attempts to make contact with the ‘Defne Y’ on channel 1-6. Other ships from the flotilla respond on the channel, without identifying themselves. At some point during the radio exchange the Israeli Navy is told by one of the ships to “shut up, go back to Auschwitz” (2:05) and “don’t forget 9-11″ (5:42)."

Here it is, the unedited version:

UPDATE: Defne Y is a cargo ship and it was one of the ships of Flotilla which came from Turkey.

Egyptians married to Jewish Israelis can lose their citizenship

It was mentioned on this blog before that Egyptians married to "Zionists" might lose their citizenship. Then the High Administrative Court had yet to rule on this issue. Back then, the lawyer who took the case to the court, Nabil al-Wahsh, said: "Egyptian nationality law warns against marriage to anyone characterized as Zionist." And: ""The majority are married to Israelis considered Zionist, and only 10 percent are married to Arab Israelis."

Now it turns out that the Egyptian appeals court has upheld the ruling that orders the country's Interior Ministry to strip the citizenship from Egyptians married to Israeli women.

AFP:

Judge Mohammed al-Husseini, sitting on the Supreme Administrative Court, said the interior ministry must ask the cabinet to take the necessary steps to strip Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children, of their citizenship.

Before reading the verdict, Husseini said the case would not apply to Egyptian men married to Arab Israeli women.

"The case for (Egyptian) men married to Israeli Arab women is different to those married to Israeli women of Jewish origin because (Israeli Arabs) have lived under Israeli occupation," Husseini told the court.

I wonder what the next step of the interior and foreign ministries will be as they had appealed to the case, saying it was for parliament to decide on such matters.

"Peace activist" brags: "We had captured another Shalit"

Waleed al-Tabtabai, a member of Kuwai's national assembly and a Muslim Brotherhood member, was on the flotilla. In the Kuwaiti Al Rai newspaper, quoted by Palestine Today, he said that his group ad captured an Israeli soldier.

"We had a new Shalit; we captured him and he urinated on himself on the Marmala.

"I was on a humanitarian mission risking my self and spirit, and Israel has provided us witha great propaganda service with their barbaric brutality attacking vessels of freedom.

He refused to answer questions from the Zionist interrogator. "I told him you are pirates ..and the killers of prophets."

When humanitarian aid becomes a political game

Hezbollah's television station Al-Manar mentions that Fatah official al-Ahmad said that the Gaza Strip does not need humanitarian food or supplies as the Palestinian Authority secures the needs of the Gaza Strip on a daily basis.

Al-Ahmad:

“I confidently say that Gaza does not need humanitarian or food supplies because the PA is securing all of this. The PA sends 200 trucks into Gaza, not through Rafah but through other crossings,” he told the German News Agency. “These trucks are always full of food supplies, medicaments, and fuel,” he added.

In case of a so-called humanitarian crisis, you would expect that all aid is welcome. But it's not in the Gaza Strip where aid is not always greeted with enthusiasm as the German weekly Der Spiegel points out:

"People who are not in with Hamas don't see any of the relief goods or the gifts of money," Khadar says. On the sand dune where his house once perched, there is now an emergency shelter. The shelter is made of concrete blocks that Khadar dug from the rubble, and the roof is the canvas of a tent that provided the family with shelter for the first summer after the war. "Hamas supporters get prefabricated housing, furnishings and paid work. We get nothing," Khadar complains. (...)

The reason his family receives nothing: Like many of his neighbors, Khadar is a die-hard supporter of the Fatah party, the sworn political enemy of the more radical Islamists in Hamas. That's why Khadar has little hope of seeing any of the 10,000 tons of aid that the activist flotilla heading for the Gaza Strip tried to bring to Gaza's harbor at the start of this week. (...)

The bulk of the goods, which were temporarily confiscated, have since been released by Israel and brought to the Gaza border. But now there's another problem: Hamas is playing politics. The autocratic rulers of the Gaza Strip have placed conditions on aid delivery. The goods are not to be brought into the territory piece by piece, but all at once. All or nothing. By making these demands Hamas wants to ensure the building materials are all handed over. (...)

And he appeals to aid organizations to do everything they can to try and deliver their goods directly to the citizens of Gaza. Hamas should not be allowed to get hold of it. Khadar becomes particularly enraged when he talks about his neighbors behind the dune. The Hamas prime minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, recently gave them a brand new house, complete and ready for them to move in.

And indeed, Khadar's neighbor, Aderauf al-Batsch's front door boasts a commemorative plaque celebrating that memorable event. The 35-year-old homeowner does not dispute his relationship to Hamas, but he does dispute any accusations of preference. "The construction ministry held a lottery to win a new home. And I just happened to be the winner," Batsch explains. Does he think it's a strange coincidence that he, the neighborhood's only Hamas supporter, should have won the contest? No. "Sometimes in life you get lucky," he says.

And guess what? If it is not part of a political game, it's bad for business:

There are people in Gaza though who will never be happy about the arrival of the aid. "Everything that arrives here, and is distributed free of charge, is bad for business," says one Palestinian pharmacist, who studied in Germany but preferred not to give his name for fear of reprisals. Every medicine and every toy that well-meaning Westerners donate endanger the few jobs that still remain in Gaza, he explains. A colleague at another pharmacy agrees. "We are being bred into dependency," he says, repeating the universal adage that guides international aid: "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But if you give him a fishing rod, you feed him for a lifetime."

But even though the internal ideological problems and the oppressive behavior of radical organizations such as Hamas are exposed, they still believe that in order to let the PalArabs to stand on their own feet the Israeli blockade must first end. It is a shame that Der Spiegel did not ask when they think Israel would end its blockade. Because that answer seems obvious: when the hatred and the attacks from Gaza will stop.