Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Giant Saudi clock set to herald "Mecca Time."

As I reported two weeks ago, the new giant clock atop the Saudi Abraj al-Bait Tower is meant to symbolize Islamic attempts to make Mecca the source for the world's time, supplanting Greenwich.

From the Arab News:

Quiz: What's wrong with this picture?

The giant clock of Makkah is all set to tick home a new time standard, as some scholars believe that it will be an ideal alternative to the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Many scholars are of the opinion that Makkah Time can provide the world an alternative to the GMT. These people have scientific arguments to back their contention, as Makkah is situated in the center of the world.

At a conference in Doha in 2008, Muslim clerics and scholars presented “scientific” arguments that Makkah time is the true global meridian. They said that Makkah is the center of the world.

“Putting Makkah time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time, this is the goal,” said Mohammed Al-Arkubi, general manager of Royal Makkah Tower Hotel.

The Royal Clock is sitting atop the central tower in the Abraj Al-Bait Project, 50 meters opposite the Grand Mosque in Makkah. The clock will be visible from 17 km away at night and 11 to 12 km away during the day. A German-owned company, Premiere Composite Technologies, has designed the clock.

Sources said that the world’s largest clock — six times larger than London’s Big Ben — will be launched in the first week of Ramadan but no date has yet been fixed. The trial run would be conducted on the clock facing Jeddah that is to be inaugurated first.

The tower featuring the world’s largest clock also includes a Lunar Observation Center and an Islamic Museum. While the Royal Clock will announce daily prayers, the Lunar Observation Center and Islamic Museum will serve to protect the heritage for future generations. The observatory will also be used to sight the moon during the holy months. On special occasions, 16 bands of vertical lights will shoot some 10 km up into the sky.

AP mentions that the giant clock was designed by Swiss and German engineers.

The chances of the world adopting Mecca Time is roughly the same as the chances of it adopting Jerusalem Solar Time and the (pretty complicated) Jewish lunar/solar calendar.

PA versus Hamas at An Najah University

From PCHR:

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the continued arbitrary arrests and illegal detentions of members of Hamas by Palestinian security services in the West Bank, as these arrests and detentions are in violation of law. The latest arrest campaign was carried out by the Preventive Security Service (PSS) in Nablus against six academics working at an-Najah National University, one member of a municipal council of Nablus, two engineers and one university student. In addition, the PSS summonsed and questioned nine women in Nablus, confiscating their IDs.

According to the testimony given to PCHR by Mona Mansour a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from the Change and Reform Bloc, late on the night of Monday, 02 August 2010, the PSS carried out an arrest campaign against six academics working at an-Najah National University, one member of a municipal council, two engineers, one university student and another two persons. Additionally, the PSS confiscated three cars and summonsed and confiscated the IDs of nine women, requiring them to appear to the PSS headquarters in order to force them to resign from Al-Tadamon Charitable Society.

These were Hamas members.

Today, the lecturers were released, and a hundred other political prisoners (again from Hamas) will be released for Ramadan by the PA.

Both Hamas and the PA regularly arrest and intimidate members of the other group.

Did Barak tell Kouchner he wanted to invade Lebanon?

From YNet:

France dissuaded Israel from opening a large-scale military operation against Lebanon in response to the border incident which killed Ltc. Dov Harari, the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Wednesday.

French sources told the paper that Defense Minister Ehud Barak had informed French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner that "Israel intends on opening a large-scale military operation to educate the Lebanese Army and avenge the death of the senior Israeli officer."

This allegedly led to high-rank contacts involving French President Nicolas Sarkozy, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as Egyptian, Jordanian and other Arab state officials.

According to the report, the pressure managed to defuse tensions and prevent another northern campaign.

The Al Asharq article is here.

I don't think that Israel was going to invade - but I think it is entirely possible that Barak threatened to do so, in order to get France and the US to take a second look at exactly who they are supporting when they send weapons to the LAF and to encourage them to curtail such arms transfers in a deal to avoid having the trigger-happy, reckless IDF overreact.

Hey, if the world is convinced that the IDF starts wars at the drop of a hat, then why not use that to diplomatic advantage? The Arabs use the same tactic to pressure the West all the time (saying that if they don't get their way, the unpredictable and dangerous "Arab street" will rise up and cause big problems.) The threat of acting irrationally is a very effective tool when applied correctly.

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog)

Lebanon not impressed with Nasrallah's speech

From Ya Libnan:

Last night and during a televised press conference Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah tried to present evidence to prove that Israel was behind the assassination of Lebanon’s former PM Rafik Hariri .

Lebanese Media has reported that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) will indict Hezbollah members for the 2005 assassination of Hariri.

As was expected , only those who support Hezbollah bought the evidence. Many were disappointed because they were expecting convincing solid evidence and specific details on the the van that contained the 2000 kg bomb that killed Hariri. Nasrallah never mentioned the van. According to der Spiegel the van belonged to a Hezbollah official and was loaded with the bombs in the Dhahiyeh, a southern Beirut suburb and a Hezbollah strongold . The footage on Israeli monitoring activities was dismissed as nothing new and “routine.”

YNet has more on Lebanon's lukewarm reaction to this highly-touted speech.

What real co-existence looks like (UPDATED)

The "Other Side" video that I posted earlier included an incredible description of real, honest-to-goodness Jewish-Arab co-existence - a narrative of how, before the first intifada, Jews who lived nearby would go to Ramallah to get various errands and shopping done, with Arab shops sticking items like challah for their Jewish customers. How these "extremist, right-wing, intolerant Jews" would forge real relationships and friendships with their Arab neighbors. In other words, how the stereotype that the mainstream media uses to portray the "settlers" is utterly false.

Similarly, in an earlier video, another resident of Yesha describes how, every Friday, IDF soldiers and Jewish residents and Arabs all go shopping and drink coffee together in an Arab-owned shop (5:40 in the video.) As she says, "a marvelous picture."

Here is a new example:

The Rami Levy supermarket is located a few hundred yards from the Gush Etzyon junction in the West Bank, 10 miles south of Jerusalem on the road to Hebron.

The store opened in June and has been packed with Arabs and Israelis every day except on the Jewish Sabbath or holidays.

Rami Levy is a savvy businessman who over the years expanded his stall in the Jerusalem shuk into a very successful national Israeli chain. He would not have opened his new store in the middle of Judea — the southern half of the West Bank — if he wasn’t certain it was financially, politically, and militarily secure. Says my wife Shellie (the real shopper in our family):

My Rami Levy shopping is still a wonder to me: if I need a few items, I don’t have to shlep into Jerusalem, but can just hop in my car and in five minutes be at the supermarket. Today, as I was whizzing down an aisle in my jeans skirt, Lands End shirt, and crocs, I noticed five or six very well-dressed Arab ladies in their caftans and hijabs, probably in their late 20s to early 30s, checking out the store. They were speaking among themselves as they gazed and pointed at items. At one point a worker in his Rami Levy uniform came over to speak to them in Arabic. Later, I saw that they had finally settled in the shampoo aisle, comparing different brands. Women will be women.

Every customer — Jew, Christian, Muslim — gets “wanded” with a metal detector by a security guard on the way into the store. Once through the door, though, I’ve experienced an occasional “traffic jam” of grocery carts. Some Arab families — often a whole family on a sightseeing trip in their holiday finery — just freeze while they take in the sight. And, of course, one of Levy’s marketing specialists chose the entrance to stack a kind of cookies that the Bethlehem, Hebron, or village residents are attracted to. I predict that as Ramadan approaches, the store will packed to capacity with Palestinian delicacies and customers.

Press accounts, political pundits, and pontificating politicians portray the situation in the West Bank as bleak and insoluble. Perhaps that’s why I was in awe on my first visit, when I saw Palestinian families and Israeli “settlers” mingling in the aisles, thumping the watermelons and squeezing the plums. My checkout cashier was a Jewish woman from Kiryat Arba of Moroccan descent, on the cash register next to her was a blue-eyed Muslim woman from Halul, and working the register behind me was a member of the Bnei Menashe tribe from India who had formalized her conversion to Judaism.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised, however, since out here in the Etzyon bloc region we “settlers” had good relations with many Palestinian craftsmen and workers who live in the area. The intifada in 2000 quashed almost all relations and ties, but in recent months they’ve been reestablished. I’m back in touch with Khalil, who taught me how to prune my grapevines, and Mahmoud, who was the subcontractor on a construction project in my home 14 years ago.

Knives and boxcutters are tools of the trade in supermarkets, just as knives were once the weapon of terrorists during the early stages of the intifada. One sign of newfound trust can be seen behind the butcher counter where almost all the men are Arabs, working in the Etzyon store as well as Levy’s Jerusalem stores with the largest and sharpest knives.

Incredibly, none of the major Western newspapers have visited and reported on the Rami Levy phenomenon in Gush Etzyon.... Can it be that the coexistence in aisle 2 and cooperation behind the meat counter run against the media narrative that Israeli “settlers” and Palestinians can never live together?

Maybe we’ll finally meet up with the press when Rami Levy opens his pizza shop and the catering hall on the second floor.

This is the ultimate irony: The leftists who shout about "co-existence" are the ones who want separation and who encourage by their actions the minority of Arabs who want to sabotage peaceful relations with Jews.

The people who have the best relationships with Arabs are the supposedly right-wing, militant, extremist, intolerant, religious, nationalist, racist, bigoted, land-grabbing, and illegal settlers.

UPDATE: This article was from May: (h/t Emet M'Tziyon)

Palestinian Authority Economy Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh warned Palestinians on Thursday against shopping at Rami Levy supermarkets in the West Bank.

Thousands of Palestinians converge every day on the Rami Levy supermarkets at Sha’ar Binyamin and Mishor Adumim, the only two branches in the West Bank. The two stores also employ dozens of Palestinians.

This was the first threat of its kind issued by the PA against Palestinians who visited the Israeli supermarkets, which are named after their founder.

Abu Libdeh said in an interview with the local Al-Watan TV station that the PA knew the names of individuals and families who shop in the Rami Levy stores.

He condemned the phenomenon of Palestinians buying goods at the Israeli supermarkets in the West Bank as a “big disgrace.”

So which side is intransigent and against co-existence again?

Now, go and send these two articles to self-proclaimed activists for Palestinian Arab rights and see whose side they are on.

New Mavi Marmara video, and the fifth column in Israel's Knesset (UPDATED)

A new video of the Mavi Marmara has surfaced, centering around Arab Knesset member Hanin Zouabi. She was on the ship, and this video proves that she lied in her interviews after the incident.

As Arutz-7 reports:

The clip, released on Army Radio’s website Wednesday morning – although currently not viewable, apparently because of the heavy demand – shows Zouabi standing next to a group of Turks who are armed with clubs and metal bars.

It is likely that they were among the mob that attacked the sparsely-armed IDF soldiers who rappelled down onto the ship after it refused to adhere to IDF orders to change course. Though the mob proceeded to beat and injure several soldiers, including one very seriously, the small IDF force was able to recover and kill nine attackers.

MK Zouabi said repeatedly after the incident, and again today, that though she was on the ship, she had no knowledge of any preparations for a violent attack on IDF soldiers. Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin said he plans to submit the tapes to the Attorney General and to the Knesset Ethics Committee.

Filmed in the stairwell of one of the ship's below-board floors, the clip first shows Zouabi with an orange life-jacket, standing and talking with mob members. One Israel Navy soldier testified that it was at this point that three of his comrades were being dragged below in an attempt to kidnap them; according to his testimony, it is unlikely that Zouabi did not see this.

Here's the video: (updated, with captions by IsraelMuse)

While is may be possible that she wasn't present when the soldiers were dragged down the stairs, we see clearly that she was aware of the pre-cut clubs and the "activists" waiting to ambush IDF soldiers at the entrance to the stairwell.

The second half of the video is no less important. As pointed out in the Balfour Street blog, Zouabi is actually arguing with the IDF soldiers who want to evacuate the wounded to Israeli hospitals! Both she and another terror-supporting "activist" say that the injured do not want to be treated in Israeli hospitals. Apparently, they were hoping for more deaths. (She continues to deny knowing that the MM passengers had weapons.)

This is a member of Knesset actively seeking to destroy Israel, and willing to support those who want to attack her country's soldiers. It is beyond belief that even the most open-minded, democratic country could tolerate this kind of behavior from their own representatives in government.

(h/t Joel B., Jed, and the two blog-links above.)

The Other Side, part 4

I thought that this installment was very powerful, but I imagine that different people have different tastes.

This video project now has a website.

Internal unrest in Gaza

For a while it looked like Hamas had a pretty strong grip on security in Gaza, but recent reports indicate that things might be fraying at the edges.

PCHR (Arabic only as of this writing) reports on three separate bomb attacks since Friday. On Tuesday, a lawyer's car was damaged by a bomb after he received a threat on his phone; a bomb targeted a pickup truck outside someone's home on early Monday morning, and on Friday a bomb damaged the house of a 63 year old woman who happens to be the sister of a senior Fatah official in the West Bank.

Palestine Press Agency reports that a peaceful PFLP protest against the power shortages in Gaza were violently broken up by Hamas police with batons. Many were arrested and beaten.

Last week an Al Jazeera reporter was attacked and insulted by Hamas police, in front of his children.

There was also a major clan clash earlier this week in Gaza City, where one was killed and seven injured.

A couple of years ago, this would have been a typical week in Gaza, but things had certainly seemed to be calming down internally. More troubling is that some of these attacks were not mentioned in the daily Palestinian Arab press I monitor, so it is possible that the Arabic media is missing some of them.

A solution to the "Made in Israel" problem

Things are really bad in England.

In just the past few weeks, we saw:

A judge instruct a jury to acquit vandals who damaged a factory because they said it was manufacturing weapons to be used by Israel;

An appeal to the British Advertising Standards Authority to overturn a ban on Israeli tourist posters showing the Western Wall was defeated;

and, today,

Four anti-Israel activists were today cleared of all charges after they locked themselves onto concrete-filled oil drums inside the Israeli-owned Ahava shop on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden forcing it to close down for one day in September 2009 and another day in December 2009.

Taherali Gulamhussein, Bruce Levy, Tom Ellis and Ms Crouch were found not guilty of failing to comply with a police officer’s orders to leave the shop.

The activists insisted that they were legally justified in their actions as they claim the shop’s activities are illegal because the products on sale in the shop originate from Mitzpe Shalem, an Israeli settlement on the West Bank and are deliberately mislabeled as “made in Israel”.

At this moment, the word "Israel" is essentially purged from the Ahava (US) website. They are clearly worried and the effects of the BDS movement is affecting them. This is a problem.

However, I think there is an easy solution.

Stop using the phrase "Made in Israel."

Instead, replace it with "Made in the Land of Israel."

The phrase "Land of Israel" is not political at all. It comprises most of the State of Israel, all of Judea and Samaria and even parts of Jordan and Lebanon. (OK, so Eilat would have to continue advertising itself as being part of "Israel." ) It refers to historic boundaries, not current political boundaries.

No one can dispute that the Dead Sea or all of Jerusalem are within the boundaries of the Land of Israel.

Even better, the phrase is evocative of the entire reason why Jews want to live on that land to begin with - because of their strong historical and emotional connection to the Land.

Imagine how well Ahava would do if they proudly advertised that all of their products were made in the Land of Israel!

Similarly, Israel's Tourism Board should advertise "Come to the Land of Israel." The statement is completely accurate and it is more effective than "Come to Israel" would be. The Advertising Standards Authority should have no problem with the accuracy of that statement.

If the corrupt British court system has a problem with that phrase as well, then they might have no choice but to dust off the old Jewish Agency tourism posters.

Hatikva at a Jethro Tull concert in Israel

From JPost:

Ask Ian Anderson a seemingly innocent “what’s new?” or “have you acquired any favorite sites or restaurants on your many trips to Israel?” and you’re likely to get a 10- minute multi-faceted treatise on global warming, the finite resources of the Earth and the noisy, disgusting habits of infants.

Just shy of his 63rd birthday, the gregarious front man of veteran British rockers Jethro Tull showed no signs of slowing down or mellowing as he prepared to leave home in England on Wednesday for two weekend Tull shows in Caesarea and Binyamina, and one more on Monday night in Jerusalem. In a phone conversation with The Jerusalem Post, he especially minced no words about efforts to convince him to join the loosely-knit artistic boycott of Israel – efforts which prompted him to write a note on the band’s official Web site defending his decision to perform here.

“I didn’t feel the need to make any statement until I started receiving some very hateful communication from people representing different sides of this ongoing issue – from supposed human rights supporters to individuals, bodies and groups… there was some pretty nasty stuff,” said Anderson.

“Basically what I wrote was, ‘don’t f***ing tell me what to do.’ And I have to say that since I posted the letter on my site, over the last two or three weeks, nobody has uttered a peep.”

What Anderson actually wrote was his commitment, ala Leonard Cohen’s initiative in 2009, to donate his proceeds from the three shows to “bodies representing the development of peaceful co-existence between Muslims, Jews and Christians, and the fostering of better Palestinian/Israeli relations.” The letter added that he didn’t “feel pressured by human rights groups, national interests or any individuals to perform or not to perform in Israel or anywhere else.

“I make up my own mind in light of available facts, with my own experience and a sense of personal ethics.”

Wow, an artist who actually thinks for himself! The fact that this is refreshing is scary.

Anyway, here he is performing last night with the band, with special guest keyboardist Shlomo Gronich. Gronich plays riffs from Israel's national anthem Hatikvah at about the 4:00 mark and then at about 5:10, bookending one of his own popular jazz pieces:

Send it to all your friends who support boycotting the only state with a decent human rights record in the Middle East. With luck, it will make their heads explode.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

The Gazans who are in an open-air prison - in Jordan

Did you know that there were well over 100,000 Gazans in Jordan with limited rights - and no easy way to get out?

An Arab researcher named Oroub El Abed has been documenting the plight of two little-known groups of Palestinian Arabs - the Gazans who live in Jordan and the PalArabs who live in Egypt.

Here is an excerpt from an article she wrote in Forced Migration Review about the Gazans in Jordan:

Gazans in Jordan are doubly displaced refugees. Forced to move to Gaza as a result of the 1948 war, they fled once more when Israel occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967. Guesstimates of the number of Gazans in Jordan range between 118,000 and 150,000. A small number have entered the Jordanian citizenship scheme via naturalisation or have had the financial resources to acquire citizenship.

On arrival in Jordan, the ex-residents of Gaza were granted temporary Jordanian passports valid for two years but were not granted citizenship rights. The so-called ‘passport’ serves two purposes: it indicates to the Jordanian authorities that the Gazans and their dependents are temporary residents in Jordan and provides them with an international travel document (‘laissez-passer’) potentially enabling access to countries other than Jordan.

The ‘passport’ – which is expensive – has value as an international travel document only if receiving states permit the entry of temporary passport holders. Few countries admit them, because they have no official proof of citizenship. Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and some Gulf States are among those who refuse to honour the document. Any delay in renewing the temporary passport or in applying for one puts an individual at risk of becoming undocumented.

Since 1986 it has been harder for Gazans to compete for places in Jordanian universities as they must secure places within the 5% quota reserved for Arab foreigners. Entry to professions is blocked as Gazans are not allowed to register with professional societies/unions or to establish their own offices, firms or clinics. Only those with security clearance can gain private sector employment. Those who work in the informal sector are vulnerable to being exploited. Many Gazans are keen to leave Jordan to seek employment elsewhere but are constrained from doing so. Some have attempted to leave clandestinely.

Rami was brought up in Jordan, studied law and worked for over two years for a law firm in the West Bank city of Hebron. Lacking a West Bank Israeli-issued ID, he was forced to return to Jordan every three months to renew his visitor’s visa. Due to the high cost of living he returned to Jordan in 1999 only to find himself stripped of his Jordanian temporary passport. Now without any form of identity, he notes that “being Gazan in Jordan is like being guilty.”

In Jordan, as in most other Middle-Eastern countries, women cannot pass on their citizenship to their children. Neither is citizenship granted to a child born on the territory of a state from a foreign father. Married women are forced to depend on their fathers or husbands to process documents related to their children. Because of this patriarchal conception of citizenship, children of Jordanian women married to Gazans are at risk of being left without a legal existence.

Heba, a Jordanian national, married Ahmad, a Gazan with an Egyptian travel document. A year after their marriage, Ahmad was arrested for being in Jordan without a residence permit. Deported from Jordan, he was refused re-entry to Egypt and ended up in Sudan. Heba had a child but has been unable to register the birth due to the absence of her husband. She cannot afford to go to Sudan to be with him.

So there is a significant population of up to 150,000 Palestinian Arabs, living in the one Arab country that has granted other Palestinian Arabs full citizenship, who are left in legal limbo and danger of being deported. They are discriminated against and cannot leave. Even worse, most major Arab countries do not recognize their "travel documents" and effectively discriminate against them, forcing them to stay in Jordan or get deported forever.

How many times have you read about this "open-air prison?" How many human rights groups have championed the cause of Jordanian Gazans? What op-eds have ever been written, shaming the Hashemite Kingdom on how poorly they treat their Arab brethren? How many flotillas and convoys are being organized to help out the women and children? How many people are working to divest from Jordanian products because of this shameful discrimination?

Zero, zero, zero, zero and zero.

The obligatory Ashton Kutcher post

OK, so talking about celebrity airheads is not obligatory, but Jameel at The Muqata tracks Kutcher's visit to Efrat and Hebron where he is no doubt single-handedly ticking off thousands of BDSers.

Under the initiative of project "Mashiv HaRuach" which deals with strengthening the values of Zionism, Kutcher visited the community of Efrat, listened with great interest to a historical review of the community and the Gush Etzion area, dined at a Glatt Kosher restaurant, and even dipped in a local natural spring "Mikva" no less than 151 times! (151 is the numerical equivalent "gematriya" of "Mikva")

The project's director, Rafi Even D'aan briefed Kutcher and the history of settlement in Gush Etzion and spoke to him at length about the region's Jewish history. Rafi told Kutcher about the establishment of the new Jewish settlements after the Six Day War and explained the spiritual and historical significance of Gush Etzion.

Jameel also has photos and Ashton's tweets.

Jews planting the 'Tree of Jews'. ALL OVER THE PLACE!

"Jews planting trees. An abomination! How are we ever going to find them?" or a similar thought must have gone through this forum contributor's head when he posted this:

"I would like to show you the trees of the Jews (al-Gharqad) and now they have increased their cultivation in the occupied areas (...)"

He then refers to the following Hadith:

“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews. The Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: ‘Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him;’ but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.”
(Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fitan wa Ashrat as-Sa'ah, Book 41, 6985)

And then he says:

"But few of us know the form of this tree."

Now you also know how the "Tree of the Jews" looks like. Go sit behind it. No need to worry.

Arab oil billionaires criticized in Arabic op-ed

Last month, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet started an initiative where the world's richest people would donate half their fortunes to charity.

They so far signed up some forty super-rich people to join this "Giving Pledge."

Pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds al-Arabi looked at this list and noticed one thing missing: Arabs.

Not only that, but the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, who ridiculed the entire idea, is an Arab - his father was a Maronite Christian.

Here is part of the scathing op-ed:

There is no accurate survey of the number of Arab billionaires and how rich they are, but there are several known names that emerge from time to time in the pages of foreign magazines that care about such things, some of them princes or kings or businessmen, not to mention the tens of thousands of millionaires. But we do know that that most of these are featured in the glossy magazines because their private jets are outfitted with gold faucets or toilets, or their luxury yachts moored in southern France or southern Spain, competing with each other on their length and number of rooms.

Even if they donated some of a few tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, these contributions are always done for PR, in front of an array of cameras that record this great event, and broadcast to dozens of television stations and newspapers that belong to the donor, which were established mostly for this purpose...

There are more wealthy Arabs than rich Americans, yet Westerners set aside a portion of their wealth to charity. Most of the Arab wealth is built up through illegal activities, or they got kickbacks for arms deals of weapons that have never been used...

The vast majority of Arab billionaires made their fortunes because of the massive corruption of the regimes that belong to, and lack of accountability, transparency, and the encroachment of looting public funds, or money laundering, or all of these methods combined.

We hear about the tens of millions were invested in the pornography channels but not about about the establishment or the construction of scientific or humanitarian cultural institutions.

More than half of the Arab world live under the poverty line, on less than two dollars a day, and we saw the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz visited the slums surrounding the city of Riyadh, the capital of the richest oil state in the world, showing misery in the ugliest forms and manifestations, and in a manner can is unbelievable.

If we went to sister Arab countries such as Yemen, which occupies a prominent place on the list of the twenty poorest countries in the world, we find that hunger and disease is the common denominator for the vast majority of citizens, and all they get from their brothers are crumbs.

Meanwhile, foreign billionaires pledge half of their wealth to charity, wealth ways that they earned legitimately as the result of their creativity, and they paid taxes to the coffers of their country, under a strict, transparent accounting system - yet they did not hesitate to commit to helping the needy and the vulnerable not in their country only, but in all around the world, without distinction or discrimination.

Do not begrudge our millionaires, and do not be surprised if we say just the opposite: we feel for them when they live in mansions or yachts or private jets, isolated from humans, in lives of plastic with no taste or smell, surrounded by a group of hypocrites and hangers-on.

We write this essay on the occasion of holy month of Ramadan, the month of mercy and blessing and sacrifice, when we need to help the poor and disadvantaged. We are not preachers, but we are ringing a bell to awaken the public conscience of the sleepers, and remind them of the minimum level of their duties.

Stoning 101 (Slate)

Slate has a helpful article on what exactly is involved when women adulterers are stoned in Iran. Sort of like a "Stoning for Dhimmis."

First, you get buried. Iran's Islamic Penal Code states that men convicted of adultery are to be buried in the ground up to their waists; women, up to their chests. If the conviction is based on the prisoner's confession, the law says, the presiding judge casts the first stone. If the conviction is based on witness testimony, the witnesses throw the first stones, then the judge, then everyone else—generally other court officials and security forces. Stones must be of medium size, according to the penal code: Not so big that one or two could kill the person, but not so small that you would call it a pebble. In other words, about the size of a tangerine. The whole process takes less than an hour.

Something to think about the next time Ahmadinejad declares that Iranians have superior human rights to Westerners.

(h/t Israeligirl)