Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 14, 2010

Humanitarians aboard ship know what IHH was up to

CiFWatch isolates a fascinating conversation from an early part of the Iara Lee video:

Voice A: “They get held hostage or they get chucked off”
Voice B: “Chucked off?”
Voice A: “They get chucked off – they get thrown off.”

A few minutes later, Voice A explains things further for Voice B:

Voice A: “These guys … these Turks … they’re not like us … [we] come from an easy life … [they are not] just on a boat to Gaza…they’re always ready for these things.”

After a pause, Voice B expresses his concern, which is dismissed by Voice A:

Voice B: “So they’re ready to fight?”
Voice A: “Whatever happens.”

So apparently even the English-speaking "humanitarians" were aware of what the IHH planned to do.

Gaza: The "staggering quality of the very ordinary"

Ethan Bronner in the New York Times introduces a photo essay from a woman who spent two weeks in Gaza.

He writes:

For some, it’s the relative modernity — the jazzy cellphone stores and pricey restaurants. For others, it’s the endless beaches with children whooping it up. But for nearly everyone who visits Gaza, often with worry of danger and hostility, what’s surprising is the fact that daily life, while troubled, often has the staggering quality of the very ordinary.

People who have been observing Gaza closely are not surprised - there is poverty and there is relative wealth; there is want and there is plenty. The photographer captured scenes in Gaza City that would not be out of place in New York City:

Yes, there is an embargo - one that the Quartet agreed to. Yes, there are challenges for Gaza families to get things done.

But there are a number of stories that do not get adequate coverage when reporters like Bronner talk about Gaza.

One is how, despite the troubles that Gazans have, their standard of living is still better than that of many or most in the Arab world at large, let alone the world itself. The number of humanitarians that say they care so much about the lives of Gazans far outweigh the needs of Gazans to get their basic goods. The big argument in Gaza is about how Al Jazeera's initial coverage of the World Cup was interrupted, forcing them to watch it on Israeli TV stations. This is hardly the type of concern one would expect from an area suffering from a humanitarian crisis.

The next underreported story from Gaza is how the murderous Hamas dictatorship has turned Gaza into a place where there is no freedom of speech or freedom of expression, where freedom of religion gets only lip service, and where the rulers prefer to hang on to their sheer hatred of Israel rather than compromise to help their citizens. Any self-respecting liberal - or conservative, for that matter - should be outraged at Hamas' repression of basic human freedoms. Yet such outrage is muted, or non-existent. Humanitarian agencies in Gaza are too frightened to speak negatively about Hamas, which routinely closes charities they do not like. Reporters in Gaza know that they won't have jobs - or they'll end up in prison - if they report facts that Hamas is unhappy with.

Much easier to just toe the Hamas line and blame everything, again, on Israel.

The third story is that almost-forgotten one about Gilad Shalit, being held against all humanitarian law in Gaza - with no family access, no Red Cross access, nothing. If Hamas cared about Gazans, they would be negotiating easing the embargo against Shalit's release. They refuse.

Instead of putting Gaza in context, the media and NGOs have grotesquely twisted the story of Gaza into a parody of objectivity. Gaza is presented as being one of the worst places to live in the planet, and this is simply a lie. Egyptians a few miles away are poorer than Gazans but do not get pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars to make their lives easier. People in sub-Saharan Africa can only dream about the daily caloric intake of the average Gazan, and they are not spending their days emailing letters to the editor about their lack of Arabic World Cup coverage. The idea of a new dress shop opening at a high-end mall, as shown in the second photo above, does not jibe with the the narrative of extreme poverty or of "slow genocide."

Gaza's truth has been perverted by the hatred that many have of Israel. This has strengthened Hamas immeasurably, and it also forces Gazans to live under an unyielding Islamist rule that will not change as long as this status quo exists.

Which brings up another underreported story - the fact that the so-called humanitarian groups are not motivated by love of Arabs, but rather by hate of Israel.

There is only one reason that Gaza gets such exaggerated attention - and that is because it is perceived as being the victim of Jewish aggression, and the majority of people who say they care about Gazans are using that as a cover for their seething hatred of Israel. If so-called humantarians care about Gazans so much they would be working tirelessly to pressure Hamas to work with the PA to bring the situation to what it was before Hamas' coup. The fact that they blame Israel - and only Israel - for Gaza's problems betrays their real agenda.

IHH is an extreme example, but Free Gaza, and Viva Palestina, and Code Pink and many others show little to no concern about any other people besides those they consider victims of policies of the Jewish state. The media ignores this dimension of their political activity. They believe their claims of being aid groups or humanitarian groups, when in fact they are dedicated to destroying Israel and denying the Jewish people the right of self-determination. At least UNRWA has a little oversight and published rules; at least Amnesty and HRW show some concern about other areas of the globe; at least PCHR and Al Mezan will quietly criticize Hamas for some of their more egregious crimes against Gazans. But there is no daylight between the positions of the Al Aqsa terror brigades and those of Free Gaza and the other flotilla members. They all agree that Israel must be destroyed, and their pretense of charity work is a cover for that very inhumanitarian goal. Yet the press simply believes their claims, without any real investigation of their history, their funding and even their own words.

This is the problem. It is not that there is a dearth of coverage about Gaza - it is that there is a huge deficit of coverage of Gaza that goes beyond the most basic, incorrect memes.

The latest hour of footage aboard the Mavi Marmara

I saw this expanded footage last night but it didn't add too much to what we already knew. Still, it adds a little:

From this video we learn:

* Even though the Australian reporter said that the IDF timed the raid for Muslim prayers, the Muslims on board prayed well beforehand
* The "bloodstains" that were mentioned on the ladder were from paintballs
* The helicopter caught on the video is almost certainly the third one
* Even though the top deck had the hardcore IHH jihadists, the "humanitarians" on the lower deck still were prepared with slingshots and at least a few with metal poles
* At 50:30 we see people still waiting to ambush soldiers with metal bars and chains, in full view of all the "peace activists." No one says a word against this. One person opens up a package or something (pepper spray?) with a fairly large knife.
* There is an intriguing edit at about the 1:00:40 mark where someone starts saying what sounds like "Stupid Jews, stupid Zionists, to try to (unitelligible) soldiers" - then he gets edited out.

IDF Powerpoint summary of flotilla history

Here is a PowerPoint presentation created by the IDF, which I converted to video. You might need to watch it in hi-def (and use the pause button a lot) to read it all :

Here is it in Scribd:

Summary of Flotilla - Final Version

(h/t Joel)

Israel eases restrictions on Gaza; Hamas increases them

Israel is today allowing, for the first time in years, cars to be imported to Gaza over Israeli crossings, for the use of Gaza's water treatment authorities.

It also is allowing a greater variety of items into Gaza, like ketchup, mayonnaise, and sewing materials.

Meanwhile, Hamas not only is stopping many of the new goods from entering, but it is also feeling more emboldened to tighten its restrictions on its political opponents.

According to Fatah, Hamas arrested 16 Fatah members this morning, a marked increase in such arrests over the past few months.

Hamas is confident that the world won't notice what it is doing.

German TV exposes IHH for what it is

Barry Rubin summarizes:

The three German leftist activists interviewed claimed all participants were from humanitarian organizations and talked about all the fun they'd had. They had no interest in knowing that they were being used.

The show then contrasts this with material about the extremism of the IHH, which organized the trip. Those about to depart on the ship—who shortly thereafter would be attacking the arriving Israeli soldiers—chanted, “Oh, you Jews.…the army of the prophet Muhamad will return–just like in Kaibar [where Jewish men were massacred and women and children forcibly converted and sold into slavery]....Intifada until victory!”

For the militants, this was a revolutionary act, a raid, not a humanitarian mission. Of course, the vast majority of those on the ships were just trying to do a good deed, but they were not the ones who determined that the outcome would be a violent confrontation.

Mete Cubukcu, editor-in-chief of NTV, one of Turkey’s largest television networks, explains how the IHH, which organized and led the flotilla, is linked to radical groups and Jihad fighters, including those who murdered a beloved Armenian journalist.

Then there’s the interview with IHH and flotilla leader Yildrim on board the Mavi Marmara (3:40). He says they know Israel will stop the ship and that when this happens, there will be huge demonstrations throughout the world.

The show then interviews Michael Kiefer, a left-wing expert on Islam from Erfurt University. He says that the Turks on board were not peace activists as this term is understood in the West, but people advocating violence and revolutionary activity.

What's most ironic is that many of the Turks on the ship were from the IHH and an extremist nationalist group, the BBP. Three years ago, the left-wing party to which the three German participants belonged applied to the German government to label these groups as “racist” with a “propensity for violence and totalitarian structures based on the führer principle” equivalent to a German neo-Nazi movement.

When asked by a German television reporter: “You seem not to have bothered from the outset about who would travel with you,” Annette Groth, the left-wing member of parliament who was on the ship angrily ended the conversation. She and her colleagues didn't want to know how they'd served as human shields for violent groups acting in support of a terrorist, racist group, Hamas.

Those in the media who continue to cover up or ignore these facts should be asked why, to paraphrase the German reporter's question to Groth, "You seem not to have bothered by the nature of the extremists, terrorists, and antisemitic groups for whom you're making propaganda.

Why Hamas doesn't allow new foods into Gaza

Firas Press reports that Hamas is refusing to allow shipments into Gaza of cheese, milk, juices, detergents, soft drinks and biscuits - items that up until now had been restricted.

The reason? According to the article, factory owners are pressuring the de facto Hamas government not to allow these items in. because those imports would compete with their factories, hurting the Gaza economy and (they say) forcing them to lay off workers.

My guess is that taxes going to prop up the Hamas government has something to do with this as well...

Peace-activist helps Israelis soldier. Or doesn't he?

In an Italian newspaper a picture of an Israeli soldier and an activist was shown, which I had not seen before. The picture was taken by photographer Sefik Dinc. It clearly shows how well the Israeli soldiers were being treated when they came on board of the ship:

I wanted to see if I could retrieve more pictures or this pictures in an uncropped version (as the size shows it's obviously cropped for the website), and I found this:

Another interesting photograph is on page 5:

Its caption reads:

"Exclusive. Activists on the 'Mavi Marmara' ship in the international waters of the Mediterranean sea as it headed for the blockaded Gaza Strip just before the arrival of the Israeli commando."

They sure were prepared.

(unfortunately I cannot reach the large photographs, nor can I register. So you'll have to do it with this.)

UPDATE: Reader Iva notes that the first photo is from an Italian website of 3 different news papers and it mentions that the photos would be published the next day by an Italian weekly OGGI. Iva was able to log in and provide us with a better resolution picture:

Caption: Israeli solder gets hit with a stick(pole)

Palestinians gather outside an electrical appliances store in Gaza City, to watch a live televised broadcast of the opening match of the World Cup soccer tournament between South Africa and Mexico in Johannesburg, South Africa, Friday June 11, 2010.

Palestinians sit in their tent as they watch the opening match of the World Cup 2010 taking place in South Africa, on June 11, 2010, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. There [sic] home was destroyed during one of the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip:

and a foreigner behind his netbook in Gaza:

Mmm, perhaps Flotilla only wanted to bring them some Vuvuzela's?

UPDATE: Btw, I thought the people in Gaza had no televisions. At least that's what Anne de Jong (Dutch passenger on one of the boats of Flotilla tries to let us believe:

Turkish Journalist Who Took Cropped Pictures Hanging Out with Terrorists

Little Green Footballs has more information on the Turkish journalist who took the cropped pictures:

Adem Ozkose’s connections to Islamists go quite a bit deeper than this. A reader in London emailed a link to the following article about Ozkose published last month at Turkish media site haber5.com: Haber5.com - Gerçek ve Özgürlükçü - Son haberler | Adem Özköse’nin kitapları yolda…

It turns out that Ozkose, as well as working for the Turkish ‘Real Life’ magazine and helping IHH try to run the Gaza blockade, is also a writer of Islamist books with at least one publisher deal and possibly more.

And the article at haber5.com is accompanied by the following picture, showing Adem Ozkose with two of his associates.

Here’s Ozkose interviewing a Hamas spokesman, and openly expressing his support for jihad: Mehraba.com » Özköse Gazze’yi ve Hamas’ı anlattı. (Google Translation.)

Accompanied by this photo:

Here’s Ozkose with a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, spreading the message: “Insurgents who kill civilians is not a killer.”

Accompanied by this photo:

Here’s Ozkose with a very sympathetic article about the Taliban: “The Taliban won the hearts of the Afghan people.”

Accompanied by the following photos:

And here’s Ozkose interviewing Umm Nidal — a Palestinian mother and Hamas parliament member whose three sons were killed while murdering Israeli civilians, some of them children — and treating her as a heroine: “I thank God that seven Israeli soldiers kill Muhammad as my other two sons were killed.”

Accompanied by this photo and translated caption:

It would have been normal if these meetings were part of objective reporting, but it is not. As LGF notes that in all of the cases

the articles written by Ozkose are not merely reporting on terrorist groups — these articles are promoting the jihadist ideology.

Can you expect honest reporting from such a guy?

AP doesn't even try to match the caption to the picture

Here's a picture of a Gazan family going for a ride along the Mediterranean:

How do you think AP captions it?

A Palestinian family rides on a motorcycle at the Gaza City port in Gaza City, Friday, June 11, 2010. Gaza has been mired in poverty for decades, but the embargo by Israel deepened the misery, erasing tens of thousands of jobs and preventing repair of damage from the Israeli offensive.

When one thinks "poverty," this is the exact picture that comes to mind.

By the way, the only time since at least the 1940s that Gaza was not so poverty-stricken was when Israel occupied it. So when wire services complain about how Israeli policies are responsible for Gaza's poverty, are they really advocating that Israel go back in and rebuild farms, greenhouses and an industrial park that were regular targets of terrorists? After all, a great number of Gazans' jobs were working for either Israelis in Gaza or for Israeli factories in Gaza. They lost those jobs not because of the embargo but because Israel withdrew from Gaza and the terror only increased.

Notice also that Hamas actions are not blamed at all for Gazan poverty.

Friday linkdump

The Weekly Standard claims that the US will support an anti-Israel resolution in the UN next week, calling for an international investigation of the flotilla raid. No word on an international probe and war crimes trial for the people responsible for the deaths of 23 civilians killed by a US drone in Afghanistan in February. (UPDATE: The White House denies the story.)

Thousands held a pro-Israel rally in Finland. Finland only has 1500 Jews, total.

The "democratically elected" PA government (well, almost half of them, anyway) decided to postpone local elections indefinitely.

A new study shows that, wow, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews really do all come from the same place in the Middle East. So much for the Khazar theory and Shlomo Sand. The study can be found here, but you have to pay to get the details.

You won't find any articles in the Arab press about Israelis saving Arab lives. And because it happens every day, you won't see too many from Israel either. This one is heartwarming.

Great analysis by Walter Russell Mead.

More on Hamas' siege of Gaza

After pressure from President Obama, discussions have accelerated between Israel, the Quartet, the EU, the PA and Egypt to see if the Rafah crossing can be re-opened under a variation of the rules that were in place before Hamas' coup in Gaza.

These included an international team of European observers called EUBAM-Rafah, PA officers manning the crossing, and cameras that Israel kept an eye on from Kerem Shalom. Israel was never happy with the level of inspections, though.

After the coup, EUBAM went into paid hibernation, waiting to become relevant again and doing the occasional lecture to the PA to justify their paychecks.

How does Hamas look at these attempts to ease the restrictions on movement of people and goods into Gaza?

Why, they are spitting mad, of course.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri lashed out at the PA and Egypt, saying that they were using the Rafah issue as a pretext to weaken Hamas and facilitate the ultimate takeover of Gaza by Fatah.

Gee, do you get the impression that Hamas is more interested in staying in power and having complete control over all of Gaza's crossings than they are in the welfare of the people of Gaza?

More details on why Egypt is banning marriage to Israeli Jewish women

Al Masry al-Youm goes into an interesting detail of the justification for Egypt's new law that bans Egyptian men from marrying Israeli Jews (and, just maybe, Jews altogether):

The higher court's final--and irreversible--June 5 ruling is designed, according to Nabil el-Wahash, the lawyer who first raised the case, to protect Egypt's national security and prevent a new generation of Egyptians "disloyal to Egypt and the Arab world."

The case stems from the fact that, in Judaic tradition, religion is passed down through the mother, thus rendering Jewish all children born to Jewish mothers. Since, under Israeli state law, all Jews are eligible to become citizens of Israel--the self-proclaimed "Jewish state"--the offspring of Egyptian men married to Israeli women could theoretically apply for Israeli citizenship, which would oblige them to temporarily serve in the Israeli military. Seeing this as a potential conflict of interest, the Egyptian judiciary upheld the ruling to strip Egyptian men married to Jewish-Israeli women of their citizenship.

Under Egypt's citizenship law, three crimes can lead to the forfeiture of one's citizenship: if he or she is found to pose a threat to national security; is guilty of treason; or if he or she is a Zionist, explained Hafez Abu Saeda, head of the Cairo-based Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.

Discrimination aside, critics of the law say it contains a number of loopholes, including, among other things, the question of Egyptian men marrying Jewish women not carrying Israeli passports. With Jews anywhere in the world eligible to become Israeli citizens, might a new law be enacted to strip the citizenship of all Egyptian men married to Jewish women, Israeli or otherwise?

While this remains highly unlikely, Egypt and Israel remain neighbors--officially at peace since 1979--so Israeli women are therefore set to remain a common factor in Egyptian-Jewish marriages.

The logic of this law is exactly the same as a law that would outlaw Jews from living in Egypt.

Notice that Egypt has a law that makes being a "Zionist" a reason to strip someone of their citizenship. This means that even three decades after the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Egypt still does not fundamentally accept the right of Israel to exist - because that is what Zionism is.

I wonder if Jordan has a similar law.

(The article also quotes the highly exaggerated figure that some 30,000 Egyptians are married to Israeli Jews - a figure that was pretty much plucked out of thin air, and is probably exaggerated by one or two orders of magnitude.)

Israeli plot to steal water from the Nile revealed!

Al Masry al-Youm reports:

The ruling National Democratic Party's policies secretariat has reportedly received a confidential memorandum from a member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs detailing Israeli designs to gain access to the waters of the Nile River in exchange for completing construction of the Gongli Canal project in southern Sudan.

It is estimated that, when complete, the Gongli Canal project would increase Sudan's and Egypt's annual share of Nile water by between 10 billion and 15 billion cubic meters. According to the memorandum, Israel plans to ask for half of these amounts, for which it is prepared to pay US$0.1 per cubic meter.

According to these charges, Israeli expertise can increase the amount of fresh water available to Egypt and Sudan by a huge amount. In exchange, Israel wants to pay low rates to buy some of this water that would not exist without Israeli help.

Egypt would lose nothing, and would gain enormously. Yet the NDP would rather deny their own citizens access to water in order to keep Israelis from getting water!

How's that for hate?

Not only hat, but the NDP is so confident that this idea - of Israelis helping Egyptians and Sudanese get billions more cubic meters of fresh water - is abhorrent to average Egyptian that it leaks this alleged plan as a scandal!

Here is how Palestine Today illustrates the reported water plan - a stereotypical Jew cutting the veins of Egypt in the shape of the Nile river basin.

This is the difference between Arabs and Israelis in a nutshell. Israel keeps trying to find win-win solutions, things that would benefit everyone in the region. This is how they approach the peace process, relations with Arabs, and relations with the rest of the world. They will constantly seek solutions that not only help themselves but everyone else as well.

To Arabs, however, everything involving Israel is a zero-sum game, and if Israel gains anything, then, by definition, the Arabs lose.

This is no exaggeration - in fact, some Arabs will happily admit this fact.

The natural outcome from all this is that Arabs will hurt their own people in order to hurt Israel, and when Israel helps Arabs that is considered a defeat for the Arab nation - because this is what Israelis want to do. Peace itself is considered a loss for Arab honor!

Zionism itself was meant to be a win-win - where the Arabs of Palestine would be enriched and all boats would rise with the huge economic and social benefits that accompany the Jewish return to their homeland. Arab leaders and intellectuals couldn't think in those terms, because being helped by the hated Jews is an affront to their honor. (The ordinary citizens generally had no such problems, and remain today the main victims of their leaders' intransigence and dedication to the zero-sum game.)

The contrast between the two worldviews cannot be starker. One is enlightened and progressive, seeking solutions to problems; the other is primitive and archaic, preferring to exacerbate their own problems in order to inflict damage on a hated enemy.

And Israel has to figure out how to live in a region where "lose-lose" is considered, perversely, a victory.