Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Jordanians aghast at "Made in Israel" graduation gowns

Firas Press reports that students at Hashemite University in Jordan were upset when they saw the words "Made in Israel" on the outside of their graduation gowns.

The university investigated and claims that maybe the plastic bags the gowns were in were made in Israel, but not the robes, as Israeli clothing is much more expensive than Jordanian. The investigation continues.

This is the second blow that the university has suffered vis a vis Israel in the past year. It was also accused of cooperating with Ben Gurion University on a water desalination project. University officials defended themselves, saying that it was really a Cornell University project and that they never met with their Ben Gurion counterparts, and it was merely a technical project and not political.

A small victory: Hamas TV yanked from European satellite

Today, the European Noorsat satellite will stop relaying programs from Hamas' Al Aqsa TV.

From the Al Qassam website:

Al-Aqsa Satellite channel has announced that it would stop broadcasting via the French Noorsat satellite as of 8 pm Thursday after failure of negotiations with the French government.

Samir Mohsen, director of programs in Al-Aqsa, told the PIC on Wednesday evening that the channel would continue to broadcast on the Arabsat satellite.

The bureau urged Egypt to host Al-Aqsa on Nilesat in its capacity as a committed national, Arab channel.

The decision was made last week, as AP reported:

A France-based satellite provider is halting broadcasts of the Hamas TV channel to Europe and parts of the Arab world because of concerns that it spreads incitement, a station official said Tuesday.

The decision will deprive Gaza-based al-Aqsa TV of most of its viewers, said the channel's head, Hazem Sharawy.

The Hamas station — best known for its children's programs glorifying violence against Israel — is the centerpiece of a growing media operation of Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers. Losing the satellite provider will hamper the group's attempts to spread its message and raise funds abroad.

The decision to cut off the Hamas station came six years after a similar move by France and the U.S. against al-Manar, the channel of Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

In Paris, Eutelsat spokeswoman Vanessa O'Connor said that last week the French broadcasting regulator CSA ordered it to stop beaming the Hamas channel into Europe by June 26. Al-Aqsa TV is part of a package of channels transmitted by Bahrain-based satellite operator Noorsat, which passes them in a single signal to Eutelsat, O'Connor said.

Since this was written by AP's Ibrahim Barzak, you can expect that the story would downplay how bad Al Aqsa TV is:

In the past, Israel and others have repeatedly accused al-Aqsa TV of inciting against Israel, especially in children's programs.

One of its most criticized programs, Tomorrow's Pioneers, once featured a high-pitched Mickey Mouse rip-off called "Farfour" who encouraged children to fight against the occupiers of Muslim countries, while taking calls from kids who were praised for singing about fighting Israel.

After a wave of criticism, the station killed off Farfour with mock-Israeli soldiers beating him to death. But it has not toned down the message of its children's programs.

Al Aqsa TV was more than just inciting against Israel - it was blatantly anti-semitic, as it broadcasted many Friday sermons talking about how evil Jews were.

And the children's Pioneers of Tomorrow show also had no compunction about talking about Jews. I made a satirical video about it once, which showed some of the things broadcast:

AP goes on:

Hamas sees media outreach as a vital part of the movement's success.

It has another television channel that broadcasts from Lebanon, several affiliated Web sites, a radio station, a glossy magazine for its military wing and two newspapers printed in Gaza. The militant group has also produced a movie glorifying one their militants and created animations boasting about their capture of an Israeli soldier held for the last four years in Gaza.

Why does Israel not have a satellite channel that broadcasts to Europe and the US?

UNRWA's fascinating 1950 report

UNRWA's first report on its progress, A/1451/Rev.1, is a fascinating document on many levels. It describes its progress in the first six months of its existence.

Here are some excerpts:

HISTORY

6. When UNRPR was set up by the General Assembly, it was presumably with the idea that the problem would be resolved in a matter of months. During the summer of 1949 it became obvious that some other approach was needed, and the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East was dispatched to study and report on conditions and to make recommendations concerning future activity. After three months of exhaustive study in the field, the Mission's interim report to the General Assembly in November 1949(1) recommended the creation of a new agency, which would not only carry out relief on a diminishing scale, but would inaugurate a works programme in which able-bodied refugees could become self-supporting and at the same time create works of lasting benefit to the refugees and the countries concerned. The recommendations of the report were embodied in resolution 302 (IV) which provided for the setting up of UNRWAPRNE. The final report signed in Paris in December covered the subject comprehensively and has been accepted by the Agency as its guide.2

UNRWA did not intend at first to be a permanent agency. It really tried to provide jobs for the Palestinian Arabs and to work with Arab governments to help integrate them. The Arabs' recalcitrance is the single major reason we still have so many "refugees" today, and after a few years UNRWA gave up and turned into a giant, self-perpetuating welfare system.

NUMBERS OF REFUGEES

16. The Agency has accepted as realistic the figures set forth in appendix B of the first interim report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission, but recognizes that the numbers have increased in conformity with the extremely high birthrate of the refugees. There is reason to believe that births are always registered for ration purposes, but deaths are often, if not usually, concealed so that the family may continue to collect rations for the deceased.

17...The figures for Lebanon (128,000) are confused due to the fact that many Lebanese nationals along the Palestinian frontier habitually worked most of the year on the farms or in the citrus groves of Palestine. With the advent of war they came back across the border and claimed status as refugees. Only an exhaustive and expensive census, now under way although ardently opposed by those concerned, will divide worthy from false claimants.

18. The former Trans-Jordan and the portion of Palestine remaining in Arab hands and now annexed to the Hashimite Kingdom of the Jordan received the greatest influx of refugees of any of the countries adjacent to Israel -- probably more than half of all the refugees. For various reasons, the largest number of fictitious names on the ration lists pertain to refugees in this area. All earlier attempts at a close census of those entitled to relief have been frustrated, but a comprehensive survey, now under way, is achieving worthwhile results in casting up names of dead people for which rations are still drawn, fraudulent claims regarding numbers of dependents (it is alleged that it is a common practice for refugees to hire children from other families at census time), and in eliminating duplications where families have two or more ration cards. The census, though stubbornly resisted, will eliminate many thousands from the lists of refugees now in receipt of rations.

19. Unauthorized movement between camps, and sometimes across international boundaries, as well as deep-rooted reluctance of refugees to reveal personal information to census-takers, make it very difficult to obtain accurate statistics concerning them.

As far as I know, the census was never completed and the problems of exaggerated numbers of refugees remain, even today. A sense of entitlement will turn many people into lazy opportunists, and if they have no disincentive to act that way this behavior gets passed on to the next generation, and the following ones as well.

MORALE

26. Strangely enough the general morale of the refugees is higher than might be expected after spending more than two years in exile under most trying conditions. Real trouble-makers are confined to a very small proportion of the total number of refugees, and food strikes and work stoppages are generally considered to be the result of organized pressure groups.

27. During August, a campaign of bitter criticism of the Agency, its motives and personnel, was carried on in a large section of the Arab Press. The rather unvaried monotony of the charges gave indication of central inspiration. An organized series of work stoppages occurred in Lebanon in early September wherein small groups threatened the workers in such a manner that they declined to work for a time. The Syrian office of the Agency, located in Damascus, was destroyed by explosives and a bomb was thrown at a truckload of workers in Lebanon. Threats of violence have been made against individual employees of the Agency. It seems likely that the two campaigns--denunciations in certain sections of the Arab Press and violence--are closely related and spring from the same source which fostered the food strikes in the early days of the Agency.

Arab governments in general considered UNRWA the enemy, and they did everything possible to thwart any chance of solving the refugee crisis, instead wanting to use the refugees as pawns to pressure Israel. This attitude has not changed in sixty years.

REFUGEES IN ISRAEL

30. In Israel, the Agency has provided relief to two types of refugees, Jews who fled inside the borders of Israel during the fighting, and Arabs in most instances displaced from one area in Palestine to another. Jewish refugees at first numbered 17,000 but, during the current summer, all but 3,000 of these have been absorbed into the economic life of the new State. Arabs on relief were first numbered at 31,000 but many have been placed in circumstances in which they are self-supporting, so that it was possible to reduce the number to 24,000 at the end of August 1950.

31. Recent discussions with the Israel Government indicate that the idea of relief distribution is repugnant to it, and the Agency was informed that already many of the 24,000 remaining refugees were employed and that all able-bodied refugees desiring employment could be absorbed on works projects if they would register at the government registry offices for that purpose. It was stated that they all have status as citizens of Israel and are entitled to treatment as such. It was claimed that after cessation of relief, aged and infirm refugees would be cared for under the normal social welfare machinery of Israel. The Agency was requested to share financially in a programme of re-establishment of displaced Arabs now within the boundaries of Israel.

How great a contrast is there between how Israel treated its Arab refugees and how the Arab nations did! Within a short time after the war, Israel managed to fully integrate every single Arab refugee as citizens (and they eventually allowed tens of thousands more to come into Israel for family re-unification.) Not only did Israel inform the UNRWA that its services would not be needed for long, but said that the very idea of an outside agency taking responsibility for its Arab citizens is repugnant!

So while the number of Arab claimants for UNRWA services went down from 31,000 to zero in a relatively short time, in every Arab country those numbers only increased.

Fully half of the report deals with specific works projects that were attempted to allow the refugees to find jobs. As we now know, most of these projects went nowhere because of fears by Arab countries that their Palestinian Arab brethren would want to actually stay in their countries as equal citizens.

The appendix of charity organizations and NGOs that contributed to help the Palestinian Arabs does not mention a single Muslim charity.

UNRWA just had a meeting where they described their financial problems in providing services - works programs are now tiny initiatives run by UNRWA itself, and in many ways UNRWA itself is a Palestinian Arab work program as it employs many descendants of refugees. It has become rabidly anti-Israel and intensely political.Even though there are far more "refugees" today than could ever fit in a nascent "Palestine," UNRWA still refuses to request that Arab governments do their part to reduce the number of stateless Arabs.

Jordan hosts some 41% of all "refugees" today. Yet Jordan was the only Arab country to extend citizenship to non-Jewish Palestinians. One must wonder, why there are still refugee camps in Jordan 62 years after 1948? The vast majority of camp residents are full Jordanian citizens! Yet, because UNRWA is now a mere self-perpetuating technocracy, Jordan has no incentive to integrate these citizens into its population even today - 60 years after Israel did exactly that.

PJTV - Richard Landes interviews Itamar Marcus

Check out this video that describes how Palestinian Arab leaders speak differently in English to Western audiences and in Arabic to their own people.

Richard Landes, of the Augean Stables blog and now also a correspondent for PJTV, interviews Itamar Marcus, director and founder of Palestinian Media Watch.

How many lies can Arab News fit in one article?

The (Saudi) Arab News started up a new section called "Gaza Bleeds," where it throws all pretense of journalist objectivity out the window.

One article it reproduces is a list of "records" that Israel supposedly has broken. Included are some statistics that are complete fiction, like Israel had deported 4 million refugees, or that it was "established upon the ruins of another nation that it destroyed; Palestine," or that Israel uses depleted uranium bombs, or that Israel has developed "abortion efficient, infant killing tear gas"...you get the idea.

Since everyone knows what monsters Israelis are, then all of these "facts" must be true by definition.

Another fictional article on the page quotes Iran's PressTV about a "secret CIA memo" that forecasts Israel's destruction that is equally fictitious.

It is important to read, though, because most Arab news sites try to pretend that they are objective and fact-based. Here, we see what Arabs really say to each other and to ignorant Westerners about Israel when no one is around to call them on it. These are the sorts of "statistics" and "facts" that we can expect are being bandied about in closed-door meetings on European and American college campuses; in private Free Gaza and Viva Palestina mailing lists, and on Arabic message boards and blogs. It is rare for the public face of English-language Arab journalism to be exposed this explicitly, but you can be sure that the anomaly is the exposure, not the dissemination.

The Aish.com sweepstakes to win a trip to Israel is almost over.

Second prize is an Apple iPad, which is now legal to use in Israel.

Click here to enter.

Full disclosure: For every entry done through this blog, I get a chance to win as well.

Egyptian coroner finds dead whistleblower died by "accident"

Suzanne mentioned the case of Khaled Said, the young Egyptian man who was abducted by police from a cafe and then beaten to death in front of witnesses.

Even though we have pictures of him that show he was beaten, the Egyptian coroner had initially pronounced that he died of "asphyxiation."

Well, human rights groups demanded an investigation, and guess what - the coroner agrees with the other coroner!

After performing a second autopsy on the body of 28-year-old Khaled Saeed, the young man from Alexandria allegedly beaten to death by police on 6 June, state coroners concluded that the victim had died of asphyxiation rather than as a result of police brutality, as is claimed by human rights activists.

According to a preliminary report, the second examination of the body--exhumed following demands by human rights watchdogs for a second autopsy--reconfirmed that Saeed had choked to death on a "foreign body." The report goes on to identify the "foreign body" in question as a packet of Marijuana, which had lodged in the victim's throat and prevented him from breathing. The report strongly suggests that the death had been accidental.

According to witnesses interviewed earlier by Al-Masry Al-Youm, Saeed had been forcefully searched by two police officers before being removed from a local Internet cafe in Alexandria. Witnesses say he was subsequently beaten to death on the sidewalk as passersby looked on.

Initial reports said the officers had demanded money from the victim. Members of Saeed's family, for their part, say the young man had been targeted because he possessed video footage of police officers engaging in drug deals.

Like the first examination, ordered by Attorney-General Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, the second autopsy brushed aside claims by human rights groups that the victim had been savagely beaten to death at the hands of police officers.

The second autopsy, performed by an independent, three-man committee appointed by official forensic authorities, "noted" the injuries, but concluded they had been sustained when police officers attempted to "control" the victim as he resisted arrest. "The injuries are light, and were not the cause of death," reads the report, which was sent to Alexandria prosecutors this afternoon. The report goes on to assert that examinations had revealed the presence of the drug Tramadol in Saeed's intestinal organs.

Leaked pictures of Saeed's dead body show his face bruised and badly shattered after the fatal encounter with police. His lips are cut and bloody, dangling over an obviously dislocated jaw. Eyewitnesses previously confirmed to Al-Masry Al-Youm that the beating Saeed received by police had been "excessive."

Last week, Muhammad Abdel Aziz, a lawyer with the Cairo-based El-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, said that Saeed's head had hit a marble table during an initial assault inside the cafe, after which the young man was subject to an even more savage beating outside. “He screamed at them, saying, ‘I'm dying, leave me,' before falling to the floor,” said Abdel Aziz.

Family denies death of Hezbollah militant in Pakistan

I quoted Earth Times on Monday saying that a UN drone strike in Pakistan killed a Hezbollah member, Mohammed Ali Hamadi.

It turns out that this person is a well-known terrorist. He is (or was) one of the hijackers of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, along with, Imad Mugniyah, when a US Navy diver was killed. He is on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list.

His family is being quoted in Al Quds al-Arabi that he was not killed or that he was even in Pakistan but they are not saying where he is. Hezbollah has been silent on the matter.

World Cup: US vs. Algeria's Jewish goaltender (updated)

The Algerian goaltender in the US/Algeria game being played right now is Raïs M'Bohli, who I mentioned last month was being slammed by Algerian fans for not being a real Algerian - because his Algerian mother is Jewish and he was raised in France.

So far, he has made some nice saves.

UPDATE: The US won, no signs of any riots, M'Bohli did an excellent job, and he denies being Jewish.
(h/t research)

Run of the mill stupidity from NPR

NPR interviews a Gaza expert, Lawrence Wright, about the easing of the closure and background info.

It is not nearly as bad an interview as it could be, but the bias and wishful thinking is typical and needs to be exposed:

In June 2006, a young Israeli solider named Gilad Shalit was abducted from a crossing called Kerem Shalom in southwestern Israel. And since then, he's been held captive. The Israelis surrounded the strip and sealed off the borders and went rummaging through the residential areas looking for him. Four hundred Gazans were killed in the next several months, and the Israelis said they weren't going to leave until they had recaptured Gilad Shalit. But by November [2006], it became pretty obvious that that wasn't going to happen.

Yes, about 400 Gazans were killed in Operation Summer Rains - and two thirds of them were militants.(Actually, another couple of hundred of Gazans were violently killed from mid-2006 - by other Gazans. This bit of context is missing.)

The funniest part of the interview, though, is this one:

Right now I think we have a very ripe moment for change in the relationship between Israel and Gaza in particular. Suddenly the Israelis announce that they are easing the blockade. Well, it would be a good time for Hamas to respond and a great way to do that would be to release Gilad Shalit unconditionally. It would, I think, make a huge impression on the world community and I think it would provide face-saving for the Israeli authorities and also a powerful incentive to respond in kind. That would be the most ideal outcome of this entire flotilla episode.

Yeah, wouldn't that be swell? Wouldn't it be just keen if Israeli confidence-building measures were ever reciprocated by Arabs, rather than being used as a reason to harden their positions because of perceived Israeli weakness?

The fact that soneone who actually spent time in Gaza still believes that Western-style logic might be appealing to Hamas' leadership shows indicates how badly real analysis is being impacted by wishful thinking. Anyone who has spent a half hour looking at the history of the region knows that goodwill gestures are never voluntarily reciprocated by Arabs. They make concessions when their backs are against the wall, not when they have just gained a victory.

But, just for fun, so a quick search to see if any Arab or Arab sympathizer has given the slightest indication hat Israel's announced easing of the blockade is appreciated or even desirable. On the contrary, every single statement I have seen is that it is meaningless, that without a full lifting of the closure it is a joke, that Gazans should have no restrictions whatoever on importing concrete or iron - or, if anyone would bother to ask these people, weapons.

The Fatah/Hamas drama continues....

I have been staying away from blogging about the interminable reconciliation negotiations between Fatah and Hamas, mostly because it has followed the same pattern for years: a spurt of rumors that an agreement is close and then the crushing realization that nothing has changed.

This pattern was repeated this week again, when there was a flurry of hope and rumors that an agreement was "thisclose" to being signed. Then, Hamas speaker Aziz Dweik publicly said that negotiations hit a "dead-end."

But never fear, because Ma'an's editor assures us that there are serious back-channel negotiations, but the window of opportunity is quickly closing...

Sorry, but it closed when Hamas took over Gaza. There is no way they will relinquish a de facto Islamic state to Fatah, and the only way there will be a "reconciliation" is if Hamas manages to take over the West Bank too.

Today's anti-semitic cartoon from Palestine Today

Palestine Today again shows us its universal symbol for Israel - the one inspired by the Third Reich's propaganda.

Details on Morocco terror cell

Asharq al-Awsat gives more details on the terror cell that Morocco discovered and dismantled this week.

The leader of the cell was a Palestinian Arab named Yahya al-Hindi. He completed his jihadist training, including weapons and explosives training, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He tried to enter Morocco five times. The first four times he was denied entry, but then he married a Moroccan woman to make it in successfully in May, 2009.

He managed to build a terror cell of eleven members from different areas of the country.

Authorities in Rabat believe that he thought that Morocco was a great place to recruit members of his cell because of its many anti-Israel rallies held there (euphemistically referred to as "Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.")

His Palestinian origins are not expected to hurt the relationship between Morocco and the PA.

"The Maryam ship does not exist"

Asharq al-Awsat reports that the Lebanese Minister of Transportation says there is no ship named the "Maryam" registered in a port in Lebanon, although there is a ship called the Julia that is being renamed to the "Naji al-Ali."

The Maryam is supposed to be the ship that would take women towards Gaza, while the Naji al-Ali is the ship that was supposed to take "journalists." Both of them are really organized by Hezbollah with Iranian help, and the "journalists" were mostly members of Hezbollah as well.

The "Julia" is docked at the Lebanese port of Tripoli. Yesterday, it sat in port with a couple of people performing repairs - no sign of activists and no sign of loading any aid. Lebanese army troops prevented people from getting closer.

According to a newspaper source, the Naji al Ali can only accommodate some 16 people, including 7 crew, not close to the 50 journalists that they claimed would be on board. The boat is registered in Bolivia.

Either way, it is certain that the boats' departures are not imminent, and that the organizers did not do all of the necessary groundwork for the voyages.

(UPDATE - I made a mistake in the original translation; I thought the Julia was the Maryam.)

Saudi Vice, episode 30: A great way to start a marriage

A young man in the town of Al Jouf, Saudi Arabia, apparently had some compromising pictures of a young lady. It is unclear how he came to gain these photos - at times, men cajole women to take pictures of themselves and send them over email; other times men take the pictures themselves during an illicit relationship.

As is often the case, the man attempted to blackmail this woman, threatening to expose these pictures unless she does what he wanted.

The courageous young woman called up our heroes at the Muttawa, also known as the Hai'a, otherwise known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, to take appropriate action against this blackmailer.

The Hai'a jumped into action, meeting the young man and interrogating him.

But instead of arresting him, they arranged a different kind of punishment: the young man and lady are now going to get married.

The article in the Saudi Gazette unfortunately doesn't mention how ecstatic the woman must be to have a chance to spend the rest of her life with a man who tried to blackmail her, nor whether he already has a wife or three. However, we can be sure that the Commission is very happy over its new role as a matchmaker, and will attempt to convince other young women of the advantages of marrying those who had heretofore just been using them.

Good job!