Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Mavi Marmara: The Facts (video)

Shown on Israel's Channel 2, this is the most accurate and up-to-date video presentation of what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara.

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog)

Hezbollah planning women's ship to Gaza?

Firas Press and Palestine Today both quote Israeli radio that a new ship is being planned to sail from Lebanon to Gaza that will have only woman passengers.

The ship would be called the "Mary," and is meant to force Israel to make difficult decisions about how to intercept it.

And who is behind this ship?

Why, Israel's peaceful humanitarian neighbors, Hezbollah!

Meanwhile, three more boats are expected to come in coming days. A Lebanese boat, sponsored by Reporters Without Borders and the Free Palestine movement, is expected this weekend. Two boats from the Iranian Red Crescent are also planned.

I find it interesting that Reporters Without Borders, which should be dedicated to the objective reporting of news, is instead choosing to create the news that its members will report.

Cement prices in Gaza plummet

Palestine Today reports that the cost for cement in Gaza, smuggled in from Egypt, has dropped from 1200 NIS to 700 NIS in recent months.

That comes out to about $180 per metric ton, which is about twice what it costs in the US.

The local Gaza cement industry continues to extract materials from destroyed buildings to create new cement clocks, but they are somewhat inferior for construction.

The article stresses that the price of other materials needed for construction remain high, including steel.

Ceramic tiles from Egypt are significantly cheaper than that which can be locally made, which hurts the local industry.

By backing the terrorist group against Israel, western countries are backing Hamas against Fatah and Islamist states against ME moderates.

This is how Caroline Glick summarizes her latest op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, but it was not what immediately got my intention. I was shocked to read this:

"His [Obama's, Suz.) administration’s decision to deport Hamas deserter and Israeli counterterror operative Mosab Hassan Yousef to the Palestinian Authority where he will be killed is the latest sign of its support for radical Islam."

And apparently this might become the case:

Mosab Hassan Yousef is a best-selling author who wrote "Son of Hamas" about his life as a Palestinian who became an informant for Israeli intelligence. He's probably near the top of every Islamist terror hit list, yet the U.S. may soon deport him as a terror threat.

Reason?

According to Mr. Yousef, a letter from Homeland Security attorney Kerri Calcador cites passages in "Son of Hamas" as evidence of his connection to terrorist leaders and suggests that the work he did for Hamas while spying for Israel provided aid to terrorists. "At a bare minimum, evidence of the respondent's transport of Hamas members to safe houses . . . indicates that the respondent provided material support to a [Tier I] terrorist organization," the U.S. lawyer wrote.

But unless Ms. Calcador knows more than she's saying, this is bizarre. As a spy for Israel, Mr. Yousef had to make his colleagues believe he was a loyal member of Hamas. He used that trust to gain information that he provided to Israeli intelligence, which used it to prevent terror attacks and save lives.

Under U.S. immigration law, anyone who is shown to have provided "material support" for terrorist organizations is automatically denied asylum. In the relentless way that bureaucracy works, this is being interpreted as leaving little discretion for deserving exceptions like the case of Mr. Yousef.

Hamas' version of The Wizard of Oz

Here is a public-service advertisement being aired by Hamas in Gaza. It is meant to encourage "collaborators" with Israel to turn themselves in and avoid being executed.

It shows a man about to be hung, and flashbacks on the crimes that caused him to get to this point - looking at porn on the Internet and using Facebook, which leads him into contact with an Israeli handler who provides him with drugs, money and explosives to blow up a terrorist car.

But then he wakes up, and it was all a dream, and he is back in his wonderful home in Gaza.

And, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!

(The deadline of the amnesty program is July 10.)

Settlers are not all from Brooklyn! (Zvi)

Zvi comments on my posting on Elanor Clift's ignorance:

Mizrachi Jews (Jews from Arab or Muslim countries) make up 52-54% of the Israeli Jewish population. This is a much, much larger group than Jews from the entire western hemisphere, much less Brooklyn.

[Possibly much] more than 1/4 of all Israelis today have multi-ethnic parents and that this trend is increasing over time (a plot of the data would probably resemble an S curve). While this statistic does not seem to be available for settlement towns in particular, this statistic is extremely unlikely to be radically different in, say, Maale Adumim, than it is in the rest of Israel.

Settlers all from Brooklyn?

"Settlers" in particular are not a homogeneous group. Neither are settlements. The media knowingly and unknowingly distort the image of settlers. Hard-line settlers with American origins make the most "interesting" interview candidates for foreign TV. This may, in part, drive perceptions of settlers. A news crew is not going to interview a mother of Yemeni descent who speaks no English at all if there is an American who speaks perfect English in the room, especially if he "looks the part" of a settler (e.g. he's wearing a kippah, which as all veteran news watchers know, means he's an extremist << ----- SARCASM ALERT). And if he's an American Israeli, and he's wearing a kippah, what are the odds that he has a New York accent? They're a little better than the odds that he sounds as though he's from Nebraska.

Also, the media tends to define "settler" tendencies based on the extremists rather than the vast majority of law-abiding Israelis - Kahanists on the fringe of the Kfar Tapuach population rather than mainstream residents of Maale Adumim. Case in point: we know that a lot of West Bank Arabs work or study in settlements, and that this has contributed to the economic growth of the West Bank. The number of cases in which West Bank Arabs are assaulted by fringe groups within settlements is vanishingly small. But the media portrays settlers as fringe radicals who go around beating up women, burning mosques and cutting own Arab owned olive trees. "Human rights" groups push this agenda and put out press releases every time an incident occurs. They don't refer to "unknown assailants" or "people from Kfar Tapuach" (I don't mean to pick on Tapuach here) but rather use the generic term "settlers" because this jibes with their political agenda. The "human rights" groups craft a perception that is very inconsistent with the reality. The media eat it up.

Where have we seen this recently... ?

One thing that you can say about "settlers" as a whole is that they are people who, for various reasons, are willing to move to a new town and make a life there. Most are just young families trying to buy a home, as opposed to radicals. The electoral results for Maale Adumim show that most "settlers" from Maale Adumim vote for mainstream Israeli parties instead of voting for fringe parties or ethnic parties. The security agenda pushes them to the right.

Also, the average age in "settlement" towns is relatively low. Based on the lack of voting for fringe parties, this tendency is not the result of an ideology. It is simply the result of the fact that settlers are usually young families.

If there were vast demographic gulfs between settlers and other Israelis, Israelis themselves would be widely discussing radical differences between the demographics of the "settlement" towns and those of Israel. And they're not.

The media single out Jewish settlers for blame and ignore Arab settlers who are MUCH more intransigent.

And of course it is important to remember that a percentage of Arabs living in Israel, the WB and Gaza, as well as those who are regarded as "Palestinian refugees" by the UN, are likewise descended from people who moved to the area during the last 100 years from some of the same countries and squatted illegally on government-owned land, which they now claim as "theirs" because they have the keys to houses that were built illegally. Helen Thomas and her supporters don't appear to believe that these people should go home to their countries of origin. Only the Jews are supposed to leave, or die.

UC Irvine's Muslim Student Union recommended for suspension

From the Orange County Jewish Experience:

Many in our community have waited a long time for UC Irvine officials to take action against the ongoing actions by the Muslim Student Union. Some thought it would never happen. Today’s blog is will certainly get your attention.

Jewish Federation Orange County announced this morning it has learned the results of UC Irvine’s judicial process. UCI has suspended the Muslim Student Union (MSU) for one year and placed it on disciplinary probation for an additional year. That’s not all. The MSU is also required to collectively complete 50 hours of community service. As a result, it will not be allowed to conduct organized campus events until at least the fall of 2011.
Here is what Shalom Elcott, the President of the Jewish Federation Orange County had to say about the decision.

“We commend the University for its judicious decision in support of free speech and civil discourse. The University’s disciplinary action regarding the MSU establishes an important and appropriate precedent and sends a powerful message to other universities across the nation.”

According to a UCI campus document, suspension means that the recognition of the MSU organization has been revoked. Gone. Done. Additionally the document states that no current executive officer listed on the Dean of Students registration application form will be allowed to act as an “authorized signer” for any other student organization at UC Irvine during the suspension. The effective dates pertaining to the suspension are from September 1, 2010 to August 31, 2011.

How did this come to pass. Let’s go back to events that happened earlier this year.

On February 8, 2010, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren visited the Orange County, California, campus for a planned visit and speech to UCI students and community members. During the 90-minute event, Oren was repeatedly interrupted by members of the Muslim Student Union, 11 of whom were arrested. The investigation into this incident revealed the Muslim Student Union’s well-documented and premeditated plan to prevent Oren from delivering his presentation.
The results of the campus judicial reviews regarding the 11 individual students arrested at the Oren event will not be released by the University. Privacy laws protect the student notifications, so we cannot know the outcome at this time. Unless the students step up and make or challenge the announcement themselves, we may never know how the university has punished them.

Jewish students at UCI, whose campus experience is largely a positive one, have been the target of the Muslim Student Union’s anti-Israeli campaigns and anti-Semitic slurs for years. The MSU, while publicly denying its student programming as being anti-Semitic, brought fringe speakers to the campus just last month. One speaker, Malik Ali, said during a campus speech just steps from the UC Irvine administration building, “Ya’ll (Jews) are the new Nazi’s.” Ali also confirmed his public support for terrorist organizations Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

This is a very rare acknowledgment of the fact that many campus Muslim organizations routinely cross the line into pure hate.

Here's some background about MSU at Irvine.

According to the LA Times blog, the suspension has been recommended but has not yet been implemented, and the MSU is appealing.

(h/t Faith)

A great example of the media's willful blindness

From Newsweek's Eleanor Clift: (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

Google “good riddance to Helen Thomas,” and you get 41,700 results, more than enough to get the gist of the blogosphere’s general disdain for the 89-year-old doyenne who was a fixture in the White House press room going back to the Kennedy administration. Much of the commentary reflects revulsion at Thomas’s characterization of the Palestinian issue as something that could be solved if Jews left the Palestine territories and went back to where they came from.

She was talking about the settlers, and if she had said they should go back to Brooklyn, where many of them are from, she probably wouldn’t have made news. But suggesting they return to Germany and Poland touched a nerve that led to an abrupt ending of Thomas’s storied career. She apologized, saying “I made a mistake.” But there was no forgiveness

Was Thomas only speaking about "settlers"? Let's look at Thomas' words:

"Any comments on Israel?"

HT "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, not Poland."

"So where should they go?"

HT "Home. Poland. Germany. America. And everywhere else.

Exactly what percentage of "settlers" have immigrated to Israel from Poland and Germany? Oh, approximately zero.

If Clift had even the slightest clue, she would know that Thomas' words were impossible to misinterpret. She regards all of "Palestine" as occupied, exactly as Hamas does, exactly as the PA does when they are not speaking in English. She is old enough to have already been an adult for a while when Israel was created, when no one referred to Arabs of the area as "Palestinians," when Arabs were crystal clear that Jews should all leave Palestine - just as Thomas still believes.

Clift's ignorance does not stop at her willful misinterpretation of Thomas' call for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East. She fully accepts the idea that most settlers are from Brooklyn - when in fact there are plenty of native-born Israelis in the territories, as well as Russians and people from other places. There are secular Israelis as well as religious ones over the Green Line.

Moreover, Clift accepts Thomas' apology as actually meaning something beyond a last-minute plea to save her career. Yet anyone who has followed that storied career that Clift goes on to praise knows that Thomas meant exactly what she said.

The last implicit mistake that Clift and others make is that the vast majority of Israelis have European ancestors. In fact, one of the great under-reported facts about Israel is that probably more than half of today's Israelis have great-grandparents who were born in an Arab country.

Clift has been a reporter for a couple of decades herself. It is one thing to hear college students talk confidently and ignorantly about Israel, but to see someone like Clift repeat stereotypes about Israel without having a clue of the truth shows either a serious case of laziness or of lying.

I'm not sure which is a worse habit for a journalist to have.

Newest terror group: "The Flotilla Martyrs"

From YNet:

A group by the name of "The Freedom Flotilla's Martyrs" claimed responsibility for Monday's Hebron shooting attack, in which Command Sergeant Major Yehoshua (Shuki) Sofer was killed, and three other police officers were injured.

The group, which is unknown, issued a statement saying the attack was pat of a series of steps it plans to take in response to what it called "the Israeli crime" of the deadly raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

"Our mujahedeen group in south Hebron ambushed an Israeli police car near Beit Hagai at 7:15 am and opened heavy fire at it from close range," the statement said.

The statement went on to say, "Our fighters managed to withdraw from the scene peacefully. Our response will continue, we will not forsake our weapons as long as the Zionist military is in our lands, and we will not acknowledge any ceasefire."

Command Sergeant Sofer served in the Hebron District Police for 14 years, and planned to wed this September. He was hit by three bullets that were fired at him. Another officer was seriously injured and two others sustained lights wounds in the incident.

Will the organizers of the flotilla dissociate themselves from this act of terror?

By the way, this attack came just a couple of weeks after Israel dismantled a checkpoint in the area - one that would have blocked the attackers' escape route. And, as David Bogner notes, every single time a checkpoint is removed, terror attacks increase. Not that you would hear about most of them in the media. (The PA never condemns these attacks.)

Why Arab countries don't meet their UNRWA pledges

Financial Times has an article that mentions that Arab nations are being criticized for not coming close to meeting their pledges to pay for UNRWA's budget:

Figures show that members of the Arab League have consistently provided less funding than promised to the United Nations agency charged with supporting the Palestinian refugee community.

Chris Gunness of the UN Relief and Works Agency says: “The oil boom has seen the coffers of many Arab states swell to the tune of billions of dollars. Surely, it is now payback time to help fund education and healthcare for some of the most disadvantaged people living on their own doorstep.”

The agency provides schooling, healthcare and financial aid to millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. But it is faced with a budget shortfall of $90m this year and is seeking more funds urgently, not least from the Arab world.

Speaking in New York this year, Filippo Grandi, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, pointed to an Arab League resolution that member states should provide at least 7.7 per cent of the agency’s general budget. Mr Grandi said that in spite of the pledge, Arab states’ contributions stand at only 1.5 per cent.

The 7.7 per cent commitment is for the general budget, which accounts for core activities such as schools and hospitals, and was made as early as 1987. It has been reiterated since, most recently last September.

Based on that pledge, Arab League states are currently about $450m in arrears to UNRWA, with Saudi Arabia accounting for $150m of the shortfall.

Then, at the end of the article, FT.com explains why funds earmarked for Gaza reconstruction by Arab nations have not been forthcoming - and it has nothing to do with Israel:

Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, visited Gaza on Sunday, one of only a few high-level politicians from abroad to travel there.

Mr Moussa stressed that the funds earmarked for reconstruction could only find their way into Gaza after a reconciliation agreement between Fatah, the more pro-western group that controls the West Bank, and Hamas.

Arabs know very well that Hamas is the problem. They know that they do not want Hamas to gain more power. Even the PA is happy to see Hamas pressured by the embargo (as Ha'aretz reported yesterday.)

Why hasn't the mainstream media caught up to the plain facts that Arabs know all too well?

Because they are so heavily invested in the "Israeli blockade stopping aid" mantra that they refuse to report anything that contradicts their received wisdom of the past three years.

Bill Maher: "Media way too stupid to understand Gaza"

As an interesting followup to my posting about the Gaza stories that the media ignores, Newsbusters notices what Bill Maher said recently(h/t Soccer Dad via email):

On the June 11 Web portion of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" called "Overtime," Newsweek editor Jon Meacham offered the argument there is not a pro-Israel bias in the media, which is often alleged.

"The idea that there is a pro-Israeli bias in the broad media - whatever ‘the media' means at this point, I strongly disagree with," Meacham said. "I think if anything you run into a very strong feeling on the Palestinian side."

That led another panelist on Maher's show, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow to protest by asking who is pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel in politics or media.

"Who speaks out publicly in a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli way in mainstream American politics, or media?" Maddow asked.

Aside from the obvious answer - Helen Thomas, the media have attacked Israel time and time and time again. (One might suggest Maddow spend some time reading NewsBusters if she is looking for answers.) However, that prompted Maher to say the media are anti-Israel, pro-Palestine. And he offered a reason why. [Emphasis added]

"I think most of them do because I think the media, to take up your point, mostly - is way too stupid to understand the issues," Maher said. "So what they do is they go toward, ‘Oh, who's a victim?' And yes, their situation in Gaza is tragic. But partly it is tragic of their own making."

The question is: how much of it is stupidity and how much is mendacity?

"Honor killing" news from Jordan

From the Jordan Times:

Two brothers were charged on Saturday charged with the premeditated murder of their married sister in the latest so-called honour murder to occur this year, official sources said.

The 19-year-old victim, who was not identified by officials, was reportedly shot in the head by her 20-year-old brother in a bus on the way back to Amman from her husband’s house in Irbid, one official source said.

The victim’s 20-year-old brother claimed family honour as his motive because his sister married a man against her family’s wishes.

A second source told The Jordan Times that the victim wanted to marry her 19-year-old cousin but her family refused.

“After the family repeatedly turned down his marriage proposal, the two decided to marry on their own and moved to Irbid almost 10 days ago,” the source said.

The family knew where their daughter resided and on Saturday night, they took her from her home in Irbid and on the way back, her brother reportedly drew a gun and shot her to death, the source added.

The victim was the second woman to be killed for reasons related to family honour during the month of June, and the seventh since the beginning of the year, according to medical sources.

On June 1, two men were ordered detained after allegedly stabbing their female relative to death in the street after learning that she was pregnant out of wedlock.

Another article about a sentencing for an "honor killing" in Jordan is illuminating:

The Criminal Court on Sunday sentenced a 31-year-old security guard to 10 years in prison for shooting his niece to death in an Amman neighbourhood in November 2009.

The court first handed the defendant a 15-year prison term after convicting him of murdering his 19-year-old niece at her home on November 29, but immediately decided to reduce the sentence to 10 years because the victim’s father dropped charges.

Court papers said the victim went missing from her family home almost one week prior to the incident, adding that a man spotted the victim at a zoo on the day of the murder and informed her family.

The victim’s father, brother and uncle picked her up from the zoo and took her home… two minutes after they arrived, the defendant drew a gun and shot her 18 times in the head and legs.

Police arrested the uncle shortly after the shooting.

The victim’s father and other relatives testified in court that the teenager “was a troublemaker, would often leave the house without their permission and was once seen in a nightclub”.

“She brought us disgrace with her repeated disappearances from our home and people urged us to preserve our honour,” the victim’s father said in court.

Some witnesses who were present when the shooting incident occurred testified that the victim challenged her uncle by telling him: “I am free to come and go as I wish and you can shoot me if you want.”

Government pathologists testified in court that the victim was neither pregnant nor had she engaged in any sexual activity.

The court rejected the uncle’s claims that he shot his niece in a moment of rage to “cleanse his family’s honour”, adding that the defendant would have benefited from a reduction in penalty if the victim was caught committing adultery, but “clearly, this condition does not apply in this case”.

Too bad for the uncle that his victim was a virgin, because otherwise the court would have agreed that she deserved it (at least in part.)

In Jordan, claiming that a murder was done for "honor" is a valid defense and it is effective for reducing the sentence of the murderer. As a result, during the trials there will inevitably be testimony about how slutty the victim was, because that would have a bearing on the case.

Notice also that the sentence was reduced because her father dropped the charges against his brother or brother-in-law - even though it looks like he was complicit in the murder!

Today is the third anniversary of Hamas' bloody coup

Palestinian Arabs love anniversaries of what they consider their defeats. They annually celebrate the anniversaries of the Balfour Declaration, of the UN Partition resolution, of Israel's Independence Day, of the Six Day War, of Deir Yassin, of Sabra and Shatila, and so on. Each of these events will be heralded by a slew of angry articles and public events, often staged at the UN and European cities.

Today, however, is the third anniversary of the biggest setback that Palestinian Arabs ever had in their alleged quest for independence: the anniversary of Hamas' violent overthrow of the PA in Gaza.

Hundreds were killed, including UN workers, and the reverberations are still being felt as the chance for reconciliation seems as remote as ever. Right now, Hamas' hold on Gaza is not in any jeopardy as it has ruthlessly and violently eliminated all possible opposition.

Yet the commemoration of this anniversary is muted. I see only one angry article about it in the Palestinian Arab press.

No angry rallies in Brussels. No resolutions in Geneva. No human right activists publicly calling on Hamas to lift its siege of Gaza and allow the PA to administer it in an attempt to help Gazans get back to where they were before June, 2007, when there were many more imports and exports, when travel between Egypt and Gaza was administered by the EU. While there is no shortage of angry "humanitarians" who are not at all embarrassed to call for the destruction of Israel in the name of justice for PalArabs, not one publicly calls for the destruction of Hamas.

One gets the impression that maybe all of the people who claim to care about Gaza really have a different agenda.

Hamas minister calls additional goods for Gaza "a joke"

Hamas economic minister Ziad Zaza ridiculed the newest items that Israel is allowing into Gaza as a "joke."

He said that they need building materials like cement and iron, not mayonnaise and thread. You know, the things that they need for rockets and bunkers.

(By the way, Israel allows wood to enter Gaza, and very sturdy houses can be built out of wood. For some reason, though, this is apparently part of the joke.)

Firas Press' (fuzzy) graphic accompanying the article shows illustrates the dire situation in Gaza.

Evil Zionist...searchlights?

Palestine Today exposes the latest dastardly Zionist crime: illuminating the walls of the Old City and the Temple Mount.

It appears that the Zionists have now stooped to new lows. They have installed powerful searchlights, at the Mount of Olives and elsewhere, to beautify the walls of the Old City. Their lights are also shining upon the Temple Mount, making it look like the holiest site in Judaism is actually a Jewish site!

Even more nefariously, the article notes that they do this evil illumination at night. This is, of course, to avoid confrontations with Arab protesters - the ones who would come out in force against using the searchlights during the day, I presume.

The Zionists are also taking pictures of these illuminated objects and using them for tourist materials. The horror!

Even worse, the article darkly warns that some rabbis are involved in this plot.

I think that we are duty bound to inform them that Allah has joined in with this Zionist plot. After all, who else is illuminating the walls for a good 15 hours a day in the summertime?