Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 13, 2010

Gaza blogger bicycles the length of Gaza to defy Hamas

As girls becomes women in Gaza they slowly get dragged into the world of restrictions. These rules have become an art those who govern Gaza have perfected. They are meant to segregate women from men.

Now in Gaza there are rules that do not allow women to Smoke Arigla or Shisha in public places. Another law does not allow women to ride bicycles, the new laws went further more by making it illegal for shop owners to exhibit women’s lingerie. The given explanation is to maintain public decency.

These rules have made women fall in an endless cycle of what is forbidden and what is allowed. Women in Gaza have chosen to adhere to these laws, thinking it’s for the best not to draw attention; actively minimizing their rights risking the few freedoms they have now which may be restricted in the near future.

That was the case in Gaza until a local journalist, Asma Al Ghoul, came along; she decided to draw the line and say enough. In a hot summer day she took her bicycle along with three internationals who work in human rights organizations and cycled for 60 kilometers along the Rafah Egypt borders in southern Gaza.

The human rights defender’s main goal was to send a clear message that any person has the right to enjoy sport as granted by international law. Asma had something else in mind. She had a political and social objective; she wanted to say that the laws against women are unfair especially the latest rules Hamas government had made which looks at women in an eye of shame.

Her journey was difficult in the beginning, since Asma did not ride a bike since she was a child; during her journey she was verbally assaulted by people calling her vulgar names, and some went even further and spit on her; things that did not stop the young daredevil from continuing her trip. The first journey was soon finished, but Asma says it will not be the last. Asma dreams of recruiting more women to cycle with her to counter and cancel the unjust laws against women of Gaza.

An Arabic article goes into more detail of her adventures. While she said that most people were nice but that gangs of youths on motorcycles twice abused her and her foreign friends by claiming to be Hamas policemen.

Asma was one of the women arrested by Hamas on the beach last year for being with a group of friends - men and women - and for swimming in jeans and a T-shirt. In the Arabic article she says that she was arrested then for being in public without an Islamically-approved escort and for laughing.

Galloway begs Mubarak to let his latest Gaza convoy through

George Galloway has been preparing a new convoy to Gaza, but he has one major problem: the fact that Egypt has banned him for the trouble he caused last time.

Galloway was deported from Egypt last January after his "Viva Palestina" convoy members started a protest that ended up killing an Egyptian policeman.

Later, Egypt banned all of these publicity-seeking convoys from entering Egypt while allowing real aid through.

According to Arabic media, Galloway is begging Hosni Mubarak to allow him to return with the convoy he is organizing in Algeria, saying that he is not associated with Hamas but does respect the Palestinian Arabs' choice of Hamas as their leaders.

So far, Egyptian officials have not acknowledged his asking for permission to cross the country with a stream of reporters.

Galloway said that "we have no problems with Egypt, because the actual enemy is Israel."

Egypt arrests Hamas member for smuggling gold through tunnels

Palestine Press Agency quotes an Egyptian newspaper as saying that Egyptian authorities arrested a man several months ago on suspicion of smuggling gold to Hamas.

The man, Mohammed Bassam Naim, is the son of Bassam Naim, Ismail Haniyeh's bodyguard. He is in an Egyptian university to gain a political science degree.

Police arrested him in April and found large quantities of gold, and recently they have arrested a number of Egyptians suspected of being involved in the smuggling.

Erratic schedule open thread

Going to a conference tomorrow for a couple of days; blogging will likely be light.

This whole month will be erratic, come to think of it.

Oh well. Carry on.

Mural of Israeli NBA player defaced with swastika

From CBS Sacramento:

Sacramento police are investigating the vandalism to a mural of Sacramento Kings' player Omri Casspi as a hate crime, and the mural's artist says it has been vandalized before.

Passersby said they were caught off guard when they noticed a swastika had been scratched between the Jewish athlete's eyes on the mural on 16th Street and R Street. It also appeared as though someone had tried to scratch the symbol away.

"It's weird to think there are people like that still out there," said Ravina Bhan.

With no surveillance cameras aimed at the mural, police don't know when the vandalism took place. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime, even though the swastika was drawn incorrectly.

Huge dropoff in Gulf aid for PA this year

From Reuters:

The United Arab Emirates has donated $42 million (27 million pounds) to the Palestinian Authority, boosting support for President Mahmoud Abbas' cash-strapped government as it embarks on direct peace talks with Israel, Arab officials said on Friday.

An Arab source in Washington said the donation, which was confirmed by a Palestinian government spokesman, was made after repeated calls by senior U.S. officials for more Arab support to help build Palestinian government capacity.
...

The Palestinian Authority's main Arab donors, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have contributed considerably less this year than they have annually since 2007.

So far, the Saudis have donated $30.6 million until August, compared to $241.1 million in the same period in 2009. The new donation by the UAE, the world's third-largest oil exporter, is its first this year -- it gave $173.9 million in 2009.

That means that Saudi Arabia slashed its support for the PA by 87% this year, and the UAE by 75%.

Earlier this year, UNRWA mentioned that Arab nations have paid less that 20% of their pledges to that organization, a miniscule 1.5% of the UNRWA budget.

So apparently it is not just the PA that Arab nations don't care about, but Palestinian Arabs altogether.

Shouldn't people in the US and Europe be wondering why Arabs care less about their fellow Arabs than the West does?

Palestinian Arabs in Europe against peace talks

Over twenty Palestinian Arab organizations in Europe have signed a letter criticizing Mahmoud Abbas' negotiating with Israel, saying that he will sell out on Jerusalem and the "right of return" without representing them.

They claim that Abbas is covering up the Zionist killing of Palestinian Arabs, the Judaizing of Jerusalem, and the creation of ghettos for Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, as well as collaborating with the Israelis.

The letter concluded that the "Palestinian people" will certainly not tolerate any such moves.

Groups that signed the letter included The General Secretariat of the Conference of Palestinians in Europe, Palestinian Return Centre, London, Palestinian Doctors in Europe, the Association of Palestinian Engineers in Europe, the Association of Palestinian Women in Europe, The Denmark Palestinian Forum, Britain Palestinian Forum, the Palestinian Center for Justice, the Palestinian Assembly of Italy, the Austrian Association of Palestine, the Palestinian Forum of the Netherlands, , the Palestinian Forum of France, the Association of Germany of the Right of Return, the Palestinian Assembly of the Netherlands, Sweden Palestinian Engineers Association, Union of Palestinian Artists in Sweden, Union of Palestinian Teachers in Sweden, and the Palestinian Assembly - Ireland.

Palestinian Arabs who live in Europe have traditionally been far more ideologically hawkish than the ones who live in the West Bank.

The war between Hamas and Fatah gets religious

In recent weeks, PA's Minister of Religious Endowments Mahmoud Habash has become Fatah's point man on fighting Hamas from a religious Islamic perspective.

Last week he railed against Hamas' compliments of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, saying that Knomeini had said things that were against Islam.

Yesterday Habash called on Hamas to repent for its coup in Gaza on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr and again slammed Iran for meddling in Palestinian affairs via Hamas.

Hamas recently criticized Habash for politicizing the mosques in the West Bank and for allegedly closing pro-Hamas mosques on the first day of the Eid festival.

Jewish plot to corrupt the Koran revealed!

From YNet:

Algeria ordered thousands of Koran books whose covers bear a Jewish symbol to be removed from shelves.

Algerians who had already purchased the books decorated with a Star of David were urged to return them to stores in exchange for another Koran or their money back.

According to the Algerian government, the symbol on the cover "is not in keeping with the general ethics of the state".

The United Arab Emirates-based Al-Bayan quoted an official from the Algerian Ministry of Religious Affairs as saying that a private businessman had imported the books from Egypt, and that censoring authorities were accusing him of "disrupting public order".

Members of parliament also expressed outrage, placing blame on the religious affairs minister and threatening to outlaw individual importation of the holy book.

Some commenters at Islam Today are convinced that this was a Zionist - or Jewish - plot.

I need to remind the Quran Division back at the International Zionist Web HQ not to be so damn obvious.

(By the way, Islamic art has historically used the six-pointed star. Here is a tile pattern from Persia in the 13th-14th centuries.

And here is a detail from a decoration of a mosque in Lahore, Pakistan.)

Shana tova u'metuka!

As usual this time of year, my most popular post is not recent, but this one from 2008, because when people are Googling for "Shana Tova U'Metuka" or "שנה טובה ומתוקה" my post from that year still comes out near the top. (And I did design that apple and honey-dripper from scratch, unlike this year...) For those who reach this page to find out what it means, the translation is simply "A good and sweet year." Some 12% of the blog hits today are for that post, and that number is increasing.

I wish all of my readers a happy and sweet New Year. May we all be written in the Book of Life, and enjoy a year of health, a year of prosperity, a year of joy, and a year of peace.

I will not be blogging until Sunday or so.

Sarah Palin holds like Rabbi Eliezer

There is a disagreement in the Talmud whether the world was created in the Hebrew month of Tishrei or Nisan.* Rabbi Yehoshua says Tishrei and Rabbi Eliezer says Nisan. (Tr. Rosh Hashanah 10b-11a)

Sarah Palin, in her Rosh Hashanah message, holds like R' Eliezer:

As Jewish families gather to celebrate the New Year and a new beginning marking the Day of Creation, I want to join them in praying for a good and sweet year ahead. This day marks the beginning of a period of reflection and repentance. It is a time to remember our responsibilities to our families, our communities, our country, and our world.

Glad she cleared that up!

It's a nice message, by the way. Here's the rest:

This is also a time to remember who we are as Americans and our responsibilities to help our friends and allies as they seek peace and security. The people of Israel have overcome so many challenges, taken so many risks, and made so many sacrifices in the pursuit of peace and a better life for their children. This New Year begins with a new hope for peace, but the threats to Israel – and to us – have not gone away.

These are challenging times as Iran continues to work on building a nuclear weapon, Hamas attacks innocents on the eve of peace talks, enemies refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and even in Europe and the United States we hear voices from those trying to delegitimize Israel.

To our Jewish friends and neighbors on this Rosh Hashanah, may you be inscribed in the Book of Life. And for our friends in Israel, know that the American people will continue to stand with you in this New Year as you strive for peace and security.

Shanah tovah u'metukah.
- Sarah Palin

(*To be precise, the world would have been created in either Elul or Adar; Man would have been created on the first of Tishrei or Nisan.)

High tech Rosh Hashana greetings

Just saw this cute graphic at an Israeli apps site (detail):

Israel cultivating ties with Berbers?

A few Moroccan newspapers, including Maraya Press, are reporting that Israel is cultivating contacts with the native Berbers of North Africa.

Quoting a study at the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, the articles claim that Israeli influence is causing the Berbers to call for normalization with Israel and some of them want to coordinate with Israel "against the Arabs."

According to the quoted study, Israel believes that the biggest obstacles to making diplomatic progress in North Africa are the Islamic movements there and the Berbers can act as a political counterweight to them, especially in Morocco and Algeria.

If I understand them correctly, the articles claim that Israel will ask the US to economically reward Morocco for its economic relations with Israel and use that as leverage to push other African states to want to cooperate more with the Jewish state.

There is a long history of Berber Jews in North Africa, although most left in the 1950s and 60s.

Leading Arab-American demolishes pro-Hamas Left

An article by Hussein Ibish in Now Lebanon:

With the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, numerous voices in the United States have been urging the inclusion of Hamas in international diplomacy, a focus on Palestinian unity, or some formal American outreach to the Palestinian Islamist group.

There are many different ways of arriving at such a position. One is to allege, as MJ Rosenberg of Media Matters has, that without Hamas there is no chance of any Palestinian leadership being able to deliver on a peace agreement. This ignores the extent to which Hamas’ appeal relies on cynicism and despair about peace, and the likely surge of legitimation for any leadership that can secure independence for the Palestinians.

Another assumes that Hamas is somehow more “authentic” than the Palestine Liberation Organization because it is a violent revolutionary group. Some have transferred sympathy for left-wing revolutionaries of the past to this ultra right-wing fundamentalist organization precisely because it is violent and revolutionary. The preposterous assertion of Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, that both Hamas and Hezbollah are part of the “global left” is only true if the left is reduced to those militantly opposed to the status quo, in which case almost all religious fanatics and almost everyone on the extreme right would be perfectly valid candidates for inclusion.

A third begins by emphasizing democracy, and confusing democracy with elections only (though elections are a sine qua non of democracy), without due attention to the need for transparent, accountable institutions. George Washington University professor Nathan Brown has recently argued that because there have been no Palestinian elections in years so that terms in office have expired, there are two equally illegitimate and authoritarian Palestinian Authorities, one in Ramallah and the other in Gaza.

Arguments assuming that elections alone are what matter and that ignore why there can be no elections (Hamas is blocking them because it rightly fears the results), and that also ignore differences in legitimacy and repression between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas rule in Gaza, invariably end up becoming a brief for Hamas’ aspirations within Palestinian society. They also make Hamas at least co-equal with the PLO as a legitimate international representative of the Palestinian people.

Harvard professor Stephen Walt recently suggested that if peace negotiations fail, “Hamas will be in a strong position” to lead “a Palestinian campaign for political rights within [a] single state, based on well-established norms of justice and democracy.” Walt doesn’t seem to understand what Hamas is, what it believes in, what it opposes, or the implications of its regional affiliations. The idea that Hamas might become a civil-rights movement for international standards of justice and democracy is simply laughable.

It was particularly ridiculous given that Walt and others were expressing similarly naïve or disingenuous opinions either right before, or in Walt’s case right after, Hamas showed its true colors once again by attempting to sabotage the current peace negotiations – which the organization fears might succeed in ending the conflict before it can unseat the PLO. This Hamas did by murdering four Israeli settlers in a drive-by shooting; it claimed “full responsibility” for the killings, called them “heroic,” vowed to repeat the crime (and tried to the very next day), and declared all Israeli settlers to be “legitimate military targets.”

If this didn’t cut through the fog of the “constructive ambiguity” employed by Hamas leaders through a relentless pattern of contradictory statements designed to appeal simultaneously to hard-core Islamists and Western sympathizers, I can’t imagine what will. Actions are the surest test of any ideology, not a mountain of contradictory rhetoric.

Ibish is hardly pro-Israel, but it is increasingly difficult to find people on the left who are willing to denounce Hamas for who they are and what they represent.

Erekat apologizes for seeming to apologize to Jews

Predictably, Saeb Erekat is in hot water with Palestinian Arabs over making his deceptive video for the Geneva Initiative where he pretends to be more peaceful than he is while addressing the Israeli people.

As we've seen before, Erekat (along with other PA officials) is a master at saying the exact opposite things in English and Arabic.

In the video, he starts off by saying, "“Shalom to you in Israel, I know we have disappointed you, I know we have been unable to deliver peace for the last 19 years."

Palestinian Arabs thought that this sounded way too close to being an apology, and they criticized him heavily.

So how does Erekat justify his words? He says that, even though this message was broadcast to the Israeli people and he used the word "we," he was only talking on behalf of both Israeli and Palestinian Arab negotiators, not on behalf of anyone else:

Unfortunately, my words are being interpreted as being said on behalf of the Palestinians to the Israeli people, which completely contradicts what I meant and what I believe. This interpretation is flawed and inconsistent with the operative part of my speech. I was talking to a negotiator and meant that we as negotiators, the Palestinians and Israelis alike, have disappointed [our people] as we have not been able to reach an agreement to end the conflict, despite the long years of negotiations.

I never thought for one moment to apologize to the Israelis on behalf of the Palestinian people, a people who suffer daily from the various policies of occupation and displacement and humiliation and [who themselves are] deserving of an apology.

I'm sure that the Geneva Initiative will issue a clarifying press release.