Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Religious Jewish girl on "America's Next Top Model"

Esther Petrack, an 18 year old girl who was born in Jerusalem and attended a modern Orthodox school in Brookline, MA, is apparently competing in the TV show America's Next Top Model.

She elicited some controversy when she told host Tyra Banks that she was Sabbath-observant, and then seemed to throw it all away when Banks told her this was a seven-day-a-week competition:

Clearly there was editing in that segment. (Just as clearly, there was more interest in her breast size than in her religious practices.)

Now her mom is defending her, saying that she did not say what the TV show tried to make it seem like.

The fateful words “I will do it” in an answer to the question about working on shabbat were the result of editing. Esther never meant or said that she would give up shabbat for the show, neither did she do it. These words were taken from a long conversation about the principles and laws of shabbat and how Esther was planning to observe them. The producers cut out these 4 words to create a more scandalous storyline; judging from the amount of reaction, they were quite successful!

I'm not quite sure how all of this will affect her chances for a shidduch...

Lotsa links

CiF Watch and Melanie Philips on the dis-invitation of a pro-Israel speaker at a panel discussion in Belfast. Not only is Israel delegitimized, but also her defenders.

Yesterday, I quoted the European Jewish Congress warning on the dangers to Jewish communities in Europe, and one example was a "throw the [Israeli] soldiers into the sea" event for children. The Philosemitisme blog has more details on that event as well as one before it. (h/t Ora)

A new study methodically monitored Palestinian Arab posts on websites and found that - surprise! - they aren't nearly as moderate as the West insists they are! (h/t Daily Alert)

The Dead Sea Scrolls are coming - to Google!

Naomi Campbell is the latest celebrity to join the Kabbalah bandwagon.

Here is a video of a diamond that shows a Star of David in its internal pattern from all angles:

At this site you can see a video of a girl singing Old MacDonald - in Yiddish!

An interesting video summing up Turkey's crimes over the past century:

Erdogan posturing for his Arab friends

From Ma'an:

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said he would not attend a climate change conference in Athens on Friday if his Israeli counterpart is present, he told Greece's Skai TV on Monday.

Erdogan is due to attend a Mediterranean conference on climate change in Athens on Friday. "If the prime minister [of Israel] takes part in this event, I will not be there," Erdogan said.

The funny part is that there is zero indication that Netanyahu planned to attend this conference. Israelis have presented at similar conferences, but there are no Israelis stated to speak here. The only other leaders mentioned in the program are the prime ministers of host Greece and Malta, as well Salam Fayyad of the PA.

In other words, Erdogan made a statement to look tough when he knew very well that he would not be forced to follow through. It was simple posturing for the media, and it worked, as his statement was picked up by a number of news services.

"Settlers storm Tomb of Joseph"

Once again, a group of Jews went late at night to pray at the Tomb of Joseph near Shechem (Nablus,) and the Arabic media freaks.

This time it is Palestine Today saying they are "settlers" who "stormed the shrine" and "raided" the area, which is supposed to be accessible to Jews under existing agreements.

The IDF needs to go to with them to protect the worshippers from being lynched.

Islamic Jihad distances itself from "rogue elements"

On Sunday, Israel killed two people who were about to shoot rockets towards Israel.

No terror group claimed them as members. And therein lies a tale.

There are reports that Islamic Jihad is separating themselves from members who act "impulsively" or who also claim membership in other groups, especially Salafist groups.

This appears to be an attempt to rein in their members. It is considered a "fateful decision," as in the past they would take responsibility for anything done by their members.

At least one of the would-be rocket terrorists were members of Islamic Jihad. Apparently, these rogue operations have been embarrassing for Islamic Jihad, especially the numbers of people killed.

Abbas "willing to renounce future claims"? No, he isn't.

From Bloomberg:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he is willing to renounce all future claims on Israel after a Palestinian state is established, though he stopped short of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

“We are ready to put an end to historic demands” once a Palestinian state is established on land outside Israel’s 1967 borders, Abbas said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 1 television late yesterday.

Although he didn't spell those claims out, he almost certainly meant the "right to return" as well as claims on land within the 1949 armistice lines.

He is almost certainly lying. His promises are like his mentor Arafat's promises - things that are meant for Western consumption that have no basis in reality. His actions have not been consistent with these words.

But even if we take his words at face value, they are still meaningless. If a model Palestinian Arab state is established and some sort of peace treaty signed, we still have the problem that the majority of the Arab world will not accept it in their hearts. The decades of incitement, of demands for all of Israel - that won't evaporate.

For a small example, look how Islamic Jihad reacted to Abbas' statement:

[His words] affect the national principles, strength and strategic vision for our people, and do not represent the Palestinian people.

Another leading Islamic Jihad figure was even more explicit, saying that the conflict will not be over until the last Zionist departs from the soil of Palestine.

Hamas has stated similar opinions as well in the past. More importantly, they are consistent with English-language op-eds that Palestinian Arab intellectuals and academics at major Western universities write all the time.

Abbas represents only a tiny percentage of Palestinian Arabs worldwide, and probably not even a majority in the borders of 1947 Palestine either. His assurances are worthless.

The descendants of refugees whom he has not lifted a finger to help or even represent will vigorously disagree with any tampering of their sacred Right to Return - the only bone that their Arab hosts have ever thrown them.

As soon as a state is established, Arab countries will begin the process of expelling their guests to a state that does not want them and cannot absorb them, and these stateless Arabs will insist that they don't want to go to Ramallah anyway - but to Jaffa.

The number of terror groups will multiply out of frustration, and as we have seen, the West will cave to pressure by Palestinian Arab terror groups and start demanding more concessions from Israel - no matter what assurances they gave Israel in the past. It might take a decade or two, but it will happen, and no agreement drafted today can stop that from happening*. They'll hang those demands on some excuse - perhaps saying that lands outside the 1947 partition lines are also illegally occupied, or that some future fake massacre by Israel justifies how Palestinian Arabs must be returned to their historic nation, or that Israel does not allow free enough travel between Gaza and the West Bank.

Whatever the excuse, the maximal demands that we see today will not evaporate in the wake of a new Arab state on the West Bank. Like the "peace process" itself, it is a diplomatic fantasy that is far removed from reality.

And no one on the Palestinian Arab side is working to change that reality. No one - not Abbas, not Fayyad, nobody - is fighting against the daily incitement, no one is making statements to reassure people in refugee camps that they are fighting for their rights, no one is laying the groundwork for Day One of independence. On the contrary, they are (by their actions or inactions) doing everything they can to ensure a Palestinian Arab state is merely the first of two (or three) such states that will eventually encompass all of Palestine.

* If the agreement includes Arab countries agreeing to naturalize their Palestinian Arab guests, then there might be a slight chance. Of course, no one is even discussing that today.

Classic misoziony in the art world

(Misoziony is my term for rabid, pathological hatred of Israel and Zionism. It is my opinion that it is just as irrational and dangerous as anti-semitism.)

From AFP:

Two paintings by Norway's Haakon Gullvaag that show an Israeli flag have been withdrawn from an exhibition at the French Cultural Centre in the Syrian capital, the artist said on Monday.
His "Terra Sancta" exhibition contains works about the Israeli offensive against the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009.

Two of the works in which the Israeli flag features were removed from the show on Saturday, an angry Gullvaag told AFP by phone from Oslo, adding the French embassy in Damascus "explained to us that it was their decision.

"This was done without contacting the artist, the curator or the Norwegian embassy. I have never experienced something similar in my entire life."

The artist said the French embassy said it had concerns about a hotel near the cultural centre which normally has many Iranian guests.

"They were afraid that the Iranians would misunderstand the motifs as being Israel-friendly. Then the cultural centre claimed that some students have complained about showing the Israeli flag at all," Gullvaag said.

And what were the pictures that had the Israeli flag that were pulled out of fear that people would think they were too pro-Israel?

One is simply called "The Flag". It shows an Israeli flag, splattered with blood, standing in a pile of human skulls.

The other one, a detail in a 3-part series called "Invasion Triptych," shows an IDF tank with a dead Gaza child on top where an Israeli flag is partially visible.

And the French embassy didn't withdraw the paintings because they are incitement to hate, or because they represent baldfaced lies, or because they are slanderous, or because they are simply disgusting. They withdrew them because of the fear of offending people who might think they were somehow supportive of Israel!

Try to wrap your head around that one.

We have a Norwegian artist, a French cultural center and the Syrian/Iranian art lovers, all vying to see who can outdo the others in their public, visceral hatred and demonization of the Jewish state.

The exhibition was already shown in Beirut and it travels next to Israel's peace partners in Amman, Jordan.

UPDATE: One other angle: notice that the wire services don't bother to describe the paintings themselves, because their narrative is of the poor artist being censored by a French embassy, not the fact that the artist is filled with bile - that would just distract from the story.

Cuban pilots rescued 150,000 Jews 1951-3

From JPost via OlehGirl:

In the first years of the state, Cuban planes and pilots brought nearly 150,000 Jews to Israel from Iraq, Iran, Yemen and India, the official Cuban newspaper Juventude Rebelde (Rebel Youth) reported on Saturday. Unreported for 60 years, the airlift was one of the largest in history.

In the years after Israel declared independence, Jews in Arab countries began emigrating to Israel as their lives became more difficult. However, due to the lack of cooperation by the Arab governments, traveling by land was very difficult. Since there were no diplomatic relations between Israel and the Arab countries, it was necessary for the aircraft to be from a neutral country, according to the Juvente Rebelde report.

The Cuban connection stemmed from someone in the Israeli trade mission in New York's close friendship with Cuban businessman Narciso Otero-Roselló, a licensed pilot, according to the report. The businessman became president of new air company, Aerea de Cuba, which took ownership of the aircraft to be used in the years-long airlift and established offices in Havana and Nicosia in Cyprus.

The Cuban pilots who flew the planes on the historic mission recalled several close calls to Juvente Rebelde. They told of dust storms suffocating their engines in Iraq, making stops on desolate airstrips in Oman when making the long flights from India to Israel, emergency landings, and crashes while transporting Jews to Israel.

In early 1953, when their special mission was completed, the pilots returned to Cuba, Juvente Rebelde reported. This newly discovered chapter in Jewish and Israeli history shows how far-off countries assisted the Jewish people in the building of the state of Israel.

I found the original article in the Cuban magazine, although it is possibly the slowest Internet connection I've been on since 1994. And the end of the article goes on to talk about Israel's "genocide" of Palestinian Arabs. But it looks very interesting!

FP on the 10th anniversary of the intifada

Glenn E. Robinson writes in Foreign Policy about the tenth anniversary of the second intifada. While the article is not terrible, it makes some mistakes, and in at least one case it appears that Robinson is purposefully misrepresenting a quote. (see update below*)

This year's 10th anniversary of the start of the second Palestinian uprising passed with barely a mention in the Israeli, Palestinian and American media. This is not surprising, considering the uprising is widely seen as a disaster for most Palestinians and Israelis, putting the Middle East peace process into a deep and perhaps permanent freeze.

As I noted at the time, the Arabic media did not ignore the anniversary at all. Palestine Today published Islamic Jihad's gleeful tally of "martyrs" as well as the number of Israelis they had killed; Hamas followed with its own stats. Al Jazeera published a ridiculously biased history of the intifada. To these Arabs, the terror spree was a point of pride; they do not see it as a disaster at all. The fact that this contradicts all common sense is not relevant - the anniversary was celebrated.

The dominant Israeli narrative, shared by many in the United States, can be summarized as follows: Israel offered a generous deal at Camp David, which Yasir Arafat rejected -- and then went home to make war against the Jewish state. In this narrative, the second intifada was a planned event, led and directed by Arafat himself, demonstrating that the Palestinians will never accept Israel.

The problem with this narrative is that it is factually wrong on all counts. Former peace negotiators Robert Malley and Hussein Agha have done more than anyone else to destroy the myths that were propagated about Camp David. Their work is now supported by a slew of memoirs and other accounts. As they noted recently, their "revisionism" of 2001 has now become orthodoxy that "barely elicits a raised eyebrow."

First of all, while there may be some doubt as to exactly when Arafat took over the running of the second intifada, there is no doubt that he controlled it fairly early on and that he was planning for an uprising. David Samuels goes into detail on these points, with interviews with major Palestinian Arab colleagues of Arafat. Hamas recently announced that Arafat had instructed them to strike at internal Israeli targets at the very start of the fighting.

More troubling, the Malley/Agha article that Robinson links to and quotes was not talking about this narrative at all, but rather about the competing narratives about the Syrian peace initiative at the time. It is a bit dishonest to misquote them so brazenly.*

...The intifada was a strategic disaster for the Palestinians. As a stateless people, Palestinians lack many basic political and human rights and statehood presents the only viable path toward securing these rights. The uprising put off statehood by at least a decade (and perhaps permanently), and at high levels of human suffering and economic devastation.

If you assume that the goal of the Palestinian Arab leadership is to create an independent state and end the scourge of statelessness that their people suffer under, no doubt it was a disaster. That assumption does not account for many other actions of that leadership, however.

And, seriously, what political and human rights do Palestinian Arabs in Area A - some 95% of those living in the West Bank - lack? Certainly the ones in Lebanon and Syria and elsewhere are lacking in rights, but a Palestinian Arab state would not solve their problems, because there is precious little indication that a new "Palestine" would welcome millions of new immigrants or even provide them with citizenship. (Why are we not seeing them give Lebanese Palestinians any passports?) But the PA has representation in the UN that arguably has more real political power than Israel's, PA citizens are living the same lives they would if there was a state.

Secondly, the intifada created a cult of martyrdom among Palestinians. Suicide bombings were unknown in the Middle East until Hezbollah in Lebanon learned of their effectiveness from Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers in the 1980s. After 400 Palestinian Islamists were exiled to southern Lebanon for a year in 1992, they brought the technique home with them. A smattering of suicide bombings in the 1990s gave way to an average of one every two weeks during the first four years of the uprising. The tactic of suicide bombing was accompanied by a cultural motif to support, justify and venerate the "martyrs."

There were 21 suicide attacks between 1993 and 2000 before September. A little more than a "smattering," I would say, though of course they increased dramatically afterwards.

Third, the intifada killed the Zionist and post-Zionist Left in Israel. Israel's center-left staked its political future on a peace deal with the Palestinians, which itself was based on the presence of a Palestinian partner for peace. The dominant Israeli narrative of the intifada holds that there is no reliable Palestinian peace partner; this has led to the virtual extinction of the Zionist Left in Israel. Since the start of the intifada, Israelis have elected only prime ministers who cut their political teeth in the right wing Likud party: Ariel Sharon (three times), Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is true, to a point. However, others have noted that the mainstream Likud-led government now holds an official position that is very close to what the Israeli Left's was in 1993. Likud officially supports a two-state solution - something that no American president said publicly before 2001! In a larger sense, the Left has won, and they then marginalized themselves by moving further and further from the center.

Fourth, the intifada empowered the forces of Greater Israel. The biggest political winner over the past decade has been the Israeli settler community. About 500,000 Israelis now live on the Palestinian side of the 1967 Green Line, and they and their political allies are now arguably the single most powerful political force inside Israel.

This is absurd. The residents of the territories were powerless to stop the abandonment of Gaza. West Bank communities have been dismantled. This is an Arab talking point, but it does not represent the consensus within Israel. (Far more recently, President Obama's amateurish handling of the "peace process" has made many Israelis more intransigent towards giving up any land, but that is for different reasons and that doesn't reflect inherent political power of the Jews of Judea and Samaria.)

And lastly, the information revolution has arrived in the Middle East. During the first intifada, uncensored events were only occasionally caught on video by private citizens and the videos were only disseminated if a friendly television station was willing to broadcast them. The second intifada was seen in real time, through videos and cell photos that were posted on the Internet within minutes of being taken.

Yet the vast majority of these pictures are still going through layers of left-leaning media, meaning that the events that end up being seen are still the ones that the media wants you to see. The recent staged Silwan stone-throwing event illustrates that nicely.

If there is any takeaway from the tenth anniversary of the intifada, it is that Israel cannot trust mere words coming from the Palestinian Arabs. Remember that the letter that Arafat sent Rabin to kick off the Oslo process claimed that the PLO has renounced violence, and yet more Jews were killed during the first five years of the Oslo "peace" process than during the last five years of the abrogation of Oslo that the intifada represents.

(h/t Zach)

UPDATE: Zach emailed my post to Robinson, and he replied, "Having read that blog posting, I cannot take it very seriously. As to Malley’s quote, it is not a misquote in the least."

Well, there you have it.

*UPDATE 2: Re-reading the Malley/Agha article, I see that their quote was indeed directed at the entire narrative of Camp David, not only about the Syrian track that was being mentioned immediately previous to that quote. So I was wrong in saying that Robinson misrepresented their article, and I apologize.

A 1949 vignette

From the Bridgeport, Connecticut Sunday Herald, April 17, 1949:

Qaradawi refuses to participate in interfaith conference with Jews

The 8th Annual Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue is to start tomorrow, but prominent Islamic Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi is boycotting the conference, according to Palestine Today.

The reason? Because there will be Jews there!

He participated in the first, second and third conferences because they were centered on Muslim/Christian dialogue. But he refuses to participate when Jews attend, quoting the Koran 29:46 ["The Spider"], "Do not argue with People of the Book...." [the verse goes on to make an exception of certain types of arguments, and then an exception to the exception, against those Jews who "oppress," if I am parsing the verse correctly.]

Qaradawi said, "So why should we dialogue with the Jews, who... shed blood, and violated the sanctities, and burned farms, and destroyed homes... .. to sit with them on a single platform?"

The article does not say "Zionist Jews" but merely "Jews." He has met with the Neturei Karta in the past, though.

The rest of the Koranic verse makes clear that Islamic "dialogue" with other "divine" religions is limited to telling them about Islam. Which makes it more like a monologue.

Even so, credulous non-Muslims keep thinking that there is value in these fake one-way "dialogues."

A new Hamas newspaper called Rafah News has pictures of Gazans smuggling thousands of eggs - out of Gaza to Egypt.

An article in a different Hamas newspaper gives details. A package of eggs in Gaza are 7 shekels/10 Egyptian pounds each, while they sell in Egypt by wholesalers for 15-17 pounds.

The smuggler claims that they manage to package the eggs so that less than 1% get smashed during the journey through the tunnels.

He also sells chickens to Egypt, while other tunnel operators are selling juice, candies and soap.

Hamas minister: "Zionists use drugs, pornography to destroy our youth"

Hams interior minister Fathi Hammad spoke to the Student Council at Islamic University in Gaza yesterday.

He told them that "the Zionist occupation practices a hidden, invisible war against our young people, using drugs and pornography to destroy them."

He also told them to keep on learning science and engineering to close the gap with the West and go on the path of jihad, in order for there to be a "rebirth of the nation."

It is unclear exactly what nation he is referring to. Hamas wants to see a pan-Islamic nation, with "Palestine" a mere tactical step to get there.

Did Israel sell out spy wannabe?

From the Washington Post SpyTalk column:

The government isn’t saying for which country Elliot Doxer allegedly volunteered to spy, but clues in court papers filed in Boston last week barely disguise that it was Israel.
Other hints in the government’s indictment suggest something even more intriguing: that Doxer got caught up in one of the oldest games in the espionage trade -- the dangle.
Israel is not named in the Oct. 6 indictment of Doxer, 42, an employee of Akamai Technologies Inc., a Web content delivery company in Cambridge, Mass. whose clients include the departments of defense and homeland security, Airbus and “some Arab companies from Dubai,” according to an e-mail Doxer wrote that was presented as evidence in the case.
But it does say that Boxer identified himself as "a Jewish American who lives in Boston" when he wrote to the local consulate of "Country X," and that he told an FBI undercover agent that his chief desire “was to help our homeland and our war against our enemies.”
Doxer’s alleged dalliance with espionage began in June 2006, when he e-mailed the consulate saying “I know you are always looking for information and I am offering the little I may have.”
A year later, according to the indictment, an undercover FBI agent posing as an intelligence operative contacted Doxer and asked him if he was still interested in spying.

The answer was yes, according to the feds, whereupon, over an 18-month period, Doxer unwittingly supplied documents to the FBI undercover agent and visited a pre-arranged dead drop -- a hiding place for documents and cash -- 62 times.
All he asked for, according to his e-mails, was "a few thousand dollars" and information about his son and the child's mother, "a terrible human being" who lived in "a foreign country."
"Not enough bad things can happen to her if you know what I mean," he added.
But how did Doxer’s alleged offer to spy for “Country X” get into the hands of the FBI?
According to Reuters, "Prosecutors said the foreign government cooperated with the investigation and the complaint against Doxer did not accuse that government of seeking or obtaining the sensitive information."
Indeed, veteran counterintelligence agents strongly suspect that Israeli intelligence officials smelled something fishy and ratted out Doxer to the FBI.
“There are two possibilities, of course” said a longtime CIA counterintelligence veteran, who discusses such sensitive matters only on terms of anonymity.
One, he said with sarcasm, is that “the GOI [government of Israel] forwarded the volunteer e-mail to the Bureau because they want to play by the rules.”
He laughed. As everyone in the spy trade knows, Israel and the United States spy on each other as much as they cooperate against targets like Iran, despite their rock-hard alliance.
As for Doxer, the counterintelligence veteran said, it’s more likely the Israelis “suspected the volunteer letter was sent by a double agent set up by the FBI. “
“One thing that any intel service reading a volunteer letter or e-mail would ask themselves is whether the volunteer is crazy and must be avoided…or whether the lack of common sense by the sender is an indicator that the ploy is a [counterintelligence] initiative.”
In short, they thought he might be a dangle, defined in the espionage lexicon as “a spy who poses as a walk-in to penetrate the other side.”
Or just “a dope,” as the counterintelligence veteran put it, a James Bond wannabe dimwitted enough to e-mail an espionage offer to a diplomatic outpost that is surely monitored by U.S. intelligence.
In any event, if this scenario is correct -- and three counterintelligence veterans aver that it is -- the Israelis got a two-fer from dropping a dime on Doxer: the solution to a headache and a thank you, no matter how surly, from the FBI.

I'm still not quite sure why they don't assume that emails to the Israel consulate are routinely monitored by the FBI, as I suggested when the story came out - especially if it is an open secret that the US and Israel spy on each other regularly. The court papers do not indicate that the message from Doxer was encrypted, and I would be surprised if those emails aren't monitored.

If the counterintelligence veterans that were contacted are correct, however, it means that Israel chose to sell out a Jew (albeit a stupid one) to the Feds in fear that he was a dangle.

(h/t Joel)

European Jewish Congress warns of communities on the brink

From the EJC: (October 14):

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) is claiming that certain Jewish communities in Europe are in grave danger after a recent wave of anti-Semitism, some of it officially sanctioned.

Recently, a respected and government-funded Catholic school, the College of the Sacred Heart, in Antwerp, hosted a ‘Palestine Day’, which was replete with anti-Semitic references and activities for youngsters. One stall at the event was titled “Throw the soldiers into the sea” where children were invited to throw replicas of Jewish and Israeli soldiers into two large tanks.

Last weekend, an event organized for Jewish children in Malmo was reportedly attacked by a gang of thugs who shouted “Heil Hitler” and “Jewish pigs”. The gang even entered the area hosting the children’s event and damaged property. This event occurred only a few weeks after Malmo mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, was reelected in the Swedish city.

Earlier in this year after a surge of anti-Semitism hit the Malmo Jewish community, Reepalu considered this an understandable consequence of the Israel-Palestine conflict and claimed “we accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism,” equating Jewish national self-determination with hate and racism.

In recent months, German former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin, Karel De Gucht, European Commissioner for Trade and Emilio Menendez del Valle, Spanish MEP, have all made anti-Semitic comments.

“These events arriving soon after the anti-Semitic comments from Sarrazin, De Gucht and Menendez del Valle demonstrate that anti-Semitism is at best actively promoted and at worst ignored by some officials in Europe,” Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the EJC said. “Due to this intolerable situation, small Jewish communities, like Malmo, are teetering on the brink of extinction.”

“Small Jewish communities are facing a situation where they are being physically, verbally and psychologically threatened by fundamentalist elements and their extreme left-wing cohorts on one side and the far-right neo-Nazis on the other,” Kantor continued. “If they can’t receive protection or respite from mainstream officials then we are entering a very dark period for the Jews in Europe.”