Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Nasrallah upset at UN report

AFP reports:

Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement Wednesday accused the United Nations of interfering in Lebanese affairs, days after the world body warned tension in the country could affect the entire region.

The UN on Monday released a report on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all militias on Lebanese soil and the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon.

In the report, released after a controversial visit to Lebanon by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week, UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned that Lebanon had been hit by a new climate of "uncertainty" that could cause instability across the Middle East.

"The report released by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Resolution 1559 ... marks interference in internal Lebanese affairs as well as political interference in the affairs of the international tribunal," Hezbollah said in a statement.

For some reason, I couldn't find the new report in the UN website, although I found a copy here.

While it is welcome to see the UN actually try to enforce a Security Council resolution, the bad news is that the Secretary General has written similar reports every six months since 1559 was adopted. Here's the one from April, and all the others.

Meaning that, it the end, the UN cannot do anything about it.

What happened between Peres and Morocco's king?

From JPost on Monday:

President Shimon Peres on Sunday announced that he would not attend the World Economic Forum being held in Morocco at the end of the month because King Muhammad VI had refused to meet with him during his planned visit.

According to reports from Beit Hanassi, King Muhammad let it be known that Peres is an Israeli figure held in high esteem in Morocco but that at time was not ripe for a meeting between the two leaders due to tension caused over the stalemate in peace talks with the Palestinians.

The Arabic media is reporting that Arab states, including Syria, Libya and especially Saudi Arabia, put intense pressure on Morocco's King Muhammad to shun Peres, especially after there were other press reports in the Israeli media that the king had invited Peres to meet.

The current Arab League trend is to avoid having Israeli leaders step foot on Arab soil, including Egypt and Jordan, in order to further isolate Israel politically, according to the article.

UAE court ruling allows wife and child beating

From HRW:

A decision by the United Arab Emirates Federal Supreme Court upholding a husband's right to "chastise" his wife and children with physical abuse violates the right of the country's women and children to liberty, security, and equality in the family - and potentially their right to life, Human Rights Watch said today. The ruling, citing the UAE penal code, sanctions beating and other forms of punishment or coercion providing the violence leaves no physical marks.

Human Rights Watch called on the government urgently to repeal all discriminatory laws, including any that sanction domestic violence.

"This ruling by the UAE's highest court is evidence that the authorities consider violence against women and children to be completely acceptable," said Nadya Khalife, Middle East women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Domestic violence should never be tolerated under any circumstances. These provisions are blatantly demeaning to women and pose serious risks to their well-being."

The October 5, 2010 court ruling, a copy of which Human Rights Watch obtained, states that, "Although the husband has the right to discipline his wife in accordance with article 53 of the penal code, he must abide by conditions setting limits to this right, and if the husband abuses this right to discipline, he shall not be exempt from punishment."

Article 53 of the UAE's penal code acknowledges the right of a "chastisement by a husband to his wife and the chastisement of minor children" so long as the assault does not exceed the limits prescribed by Shari'a. Similarly, article 56 of the UAE's personal status code obligates women to "obey" their husbands.

The court ruling said that abuse that results in visible injuries that require treatment is illegal, but anything less than that is (by implication) OK.

French human rights official asks Arab League to curtail anti-semitic programming

Al Manar, Hezbollah's Lebanese media outlet, reports:

On Wednesday, Paris requested that the Arab League take action on "the problem of television channels that broadcast anti-Semitic propaganda in the Middle East and also to Europe via satellite."

Francois Zimeray, Ambassador for Human Rights at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said he had noted in particular the case of channels of Hamas, "Al Aqsa," and that of Hezbollah, "Al Manar," during during a visit to the headquarters of the pan-Arab institution.

The anti-Semitic propaganda of these channels is "spreading hate via satellite, returns a bad image of Islam and does not contribute to creating a climate conducive to peace," he told reporters.

I have not yet seen this reported in any non-Arab media outlet.

"Princess Diana was killed because she converted to Islam"

Arabic media is abuzz about the latest twist in the story of the late Princess Diana.

Safia al-Fayed is the sister of Mohammed al-Fayed, whose son Dodi was killed with Diana. Safia, speaking to Egypt's al-Shorouk newspaper, claims that Diana had publicly converted to Islam - and that is why she was killed.

She also says that Dodi was planning to live with Diana in Alexandria and to move his business there after they got married.

Khaled Abu Toameh asks why everyone is lying to PalArab 'refugees'

Khaled Abu Toameh continues his stellar series of articles in Hudson-NY, telling the truth that goes against all conventional wisdom of the Middle East:

The Palestinian Authority, like the rest of the Arab governments, has been lying to the refugees for decades, telling them that one day their dream of returning to their villages and towns, many of which no longer exist, would be fulfilled.

Meanwhile, the refugees are continuing to live in harsh conditions in their UNRWA-administered camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

No Arab or Palestinian leader has ever dared to confront the refugees with the truth, namely that they are not going to move into Israel. On the contrary, Palestinian and Arab leaders continue to tell these people that they will go back to their former villages and towns.

Arab and Palestinian governments are lying to the refugees because they want to avoid any responsibility toward their plight. The Arab governments hosting the refugees have done almost nothing to improve the living conditions of the refugees.

On the contrary, Palestinian refugees living in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan have long been subjected the victims of racism and other repressive and unjust measures and laws that deprive them even of basic rights. Governments such as Jordan receive a payment for each refugee, turning the refugees into nothing more than property, like stocks on Wall Street.

Since its establishment in 1994, the Palestinian Authority has also done very little to help the refugees. In the West Bank, most of the international aid is being invested in major cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Jenin, as well as scores of villages.

UNRWA is also not offering a solution to the refugees. Instead, the UN agency is perpetuating the problem by creating new generations of refugees. UNRWA is in fact encouraging the refugees to stay where they are. For UNRWA, refugees are a gigantic UN jobs program, providing over 30,000 of them, costing over $1 billion USD a-year, or, according to separate sources, a third of all other UN regugee services combined.

The case of the Palestinian refugees is one of the most important issues in the Israeli-Arab conflict. It needs to be solved for once and for all -- and immediately. The refugees have the legitimate and moral right to continue dreaming about their original villages and towns. But the Arab and Palestinian governments do not have the right to continue lying to these people.

The issue of the refugees can easily be solved if the entire international community, with the help of the Arab world, gets together to find a solution. Israel alone will never be able to solve the problem.

The refugees should be offered financial compensation or resettlement in Arab and other countries. Those who wish to move to a Palestinian state that is established alongside Israel in the future should not be denied that right. Arab countries should be urged to absorb Palestinian refugees.

Western countries should also participate by taking some of the refugees and offering them a new life. Why not establish an international fund that would offer financial compensation to those who lost their homes and lands? And let us not forget that there are also hundreds of thousands of Jewish "refugees" who lost their properties in Arab countries.

The world needs to tell the Palestinian refugees that while they are entitled to many rights, they must forget about returning to Jaffa, Haifa and other places inside Israel.

The issue of the Palestinian refugees can be solved only when a courageous Arab or Palestinian leader confronts them with the truth. As long as the refugees are being fed with false hopes, there can be no solution.

More on the fake graves in Mamilla

Palestine Today writes that the Muslim Waqf and the Al Aqsa Foundation went to court to stop the demolition of Arab graves in the Mamilla cemetery.

Their lawyer eloquently said, "We are the owners and the ones with the rights this historic Muslim cemetery. No one else has any rights there! There is no basis for the occupation authorities to demolish the graves of Muslims, [it is a] heinous crime and a flagrant violation of basic human rights, and violation of the feelings and beliefs of the Muslim people."

The only problem is that the Jerusalem Municipality isn't destroying any Muslim graves, but instead they are dismantling new headstones that the Al Aqsa Foundation have erected only recently in order to expand the boundaries of the cemetery. No one is buried under them.

Of course, the Arabic press is silent on this minor fact. They are inciting their readers by telling them that hundreds of their ancestors' graves are being destroyed.

This outright lie, that Israel is targeting Muslim graves, started in August. It was even believed by the president of the UN's General Assembly, who happily repeated the lie.

And so it goes.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Gulf states drop in press freedom rankings

From Arabian Business:

Many Arab states in the Gulf region have dropped in this year’s world press freedom rankings, Reporters Without Borders said.

Kuwait, which came top out of all Arab nations in the 2009 list, fell 27 places to number 87 out of 178, drawing level with the UAE, according to information on the group’s website.

Kuwait is regarded as having the freest press in the Gulf region, however its treatment of the writer Mohamed Abdel Qader al-Jassem, who has been jailed twice following accusations against official figures, is one of the reasons for its decline.

Qatar also dropped 27 places on the list to 121, while Bahrain slipped from 119 place to 144 due to the "growing number of imprisonments and trials, notably against bloggers and netizens," Reports Without Borders said in a statement. Oman fell 17 places to 124 and the UAE slipped just one place.

However, Saudi Arabia bucked the regional trend, rising six spots to 157 place. Despite the increase the country languishes last among GCC countries.

The full report is here.

The methodology of the rankings seems to be somewhat consistent, although they didn't release the detailed answers to the questions that went into the scores so there may have been inherent bias in how they answered the questions as well as how highly they ranked some questions versus others. In the end, it is impossible to be truly unbiased in a survey such as this one.

Lebanon ended up at 78, Israel at 86 but "Israel territories" at 132, Jordan 120, Egypt 127, Iraq 130, Algeria 133, Morocco 135, Turkey 138, PA 150, Syria 173.

For contrast, the US ended up at 20 but US "extra territorial" at 99.

Many of the top countries were in Scandinavia. Not that I know one way or the other, but I wonder how many viewpoints they allow that go against the politically correct.

Cool Hebrew University video

A single 5-minute tracking shot of dozens of students lip-syncing Glee's redo of Queen's "Somebody to Love," done last week, with the videographer walking throughout the campus.

The FDD study of Palestinian Arab social media

I briefly mentioned a report by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies that analyzed Palestinian Arab social media (blogs, message boards, Twitter) to find current trends. Commenter "Elder of Lobby" pointed me to the actual study.

The authors acknowledge that online forums are not necessarily representative of what people really think. As with English-language Web 2.0 sites (and in real life,) the people who scream the loudest with the more extreme positions tend to get the most attention.

The survey did note that traditional polling is not any better - pointing out that the polls that the US relied on saying that Fatah would easily beat Hamas in the 2006 elections were way off, and suggesting that an analysis of social media could have headed off that mistake.

The report identifies three broad trends:

First, Palestinian social media is dominated by users who harbor radicalized perspectives. The landscape is not completely devoid of users with moderate to liberal views, but it is influenced heavily by political and theological radicals.

This is no different from any other social media, so it doesn't tell us anything new.

Second, there appears to be little cross-over between radical and liberal sites, indicating a significant lack of debate between radicalized users and those with non-violent ideologies.

This is also largely true in Western social media, although there are exceptions. Even where multiple viewpoints are seen, rarely will one find anyone convincing the other side of anything.

The third trend, however, I found most interesting:

Third, Palestinians who espouse moderate or liberal viewpoints online are often inclined to blog in English rather than Arabic. Indeed, there is no shortage of English-language blogs produced by Palestinians and other Arabs to address local and regional issues in general, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in particular.

That finding is important. It indicates that Palestinian Arab political moderates are not welcome to post their opinions in Arabic where (one presumes) the majority of the social web users congregate. Moderation is not rewarded in Arabic, but the English-language audience is much more inclined to identify with such thinking, meaning that an important potential source for dampening extremism in the PalArab media is missing.

Language is important. People who share a language naturally are less guarded in what they will write to their peers than they would be to outsiders. Absent peer pressure to the contrary, thsi extremism will tend to intensify. This would explain why extremists dominate in Arabic - there is no peer pressure within Arabic language posters to stand up and tell them that their ideas are wrong.

Newsweek, which just wrote an article mirroring the "Elders" saying that Hamas should come to the negotiating table and has moderated its positions, should read this report:

[T]he Palestinian social media environment gives no indication that Hamas is willing to seek peace with Israel. There were no scored posts on this topic on any of the pro-Hamas forums. Nor were there any posts attributed to pro-Hamas users on this topic on other web forums. From discussions about the flotilla violence in late May to the rumors of reinvigorated peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel during June and July, rejectionism was the dominant position among Hamas users. Accordingly, decision-makers weighing the benefits of engaging Hamas in talks should be wary of claims that the group has become more moderate and pragmatic, or that it privately wishes to negotiate peace with Israel and the United States.

The authors note the incongruity that I have mentioned a number of times of the disconnect between Fatah's official political positions and what its adherents say to each other.

Broadly speaking, most Fatah supporters embraced the notion that Israel was an enemy, rather than a peace partner.

In general, the study mirrors what I have seen from reading the Palestinian Arabic news media and comments for the past few years via Google Translate. for example:

Palestinian social media commentary on Israeli-Palestinian political reconciliation was overwhelmingly negative. Potentially positive diplomatic steps were often derided in the Palestinian online environment. Thus, despite Washington’s efforts to win the hearts and minds of Palestinians—both through new Obama administration policies and online engagement with Palestinians through a State Department initiative to explain those policies—the online forums suggest that there is currently scant support for a new peace initiative.

I can see the study being accused of bias, as it does not explain well the scientific basis for its views. The description of the methodology is interesting but it doesn't translate to any real numbers or trends, and since the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is perceived as a right-wing group, its findings may be dismissed out of hand by those who need to read it most.

It would have been more effective if it showed more rigor in drawing the lines from the research to the analysis. And it would be a shame if it is not studied closely by the current US administration.

Afternoon open thread

I missed it at the time, but my 9000th post was published a couple of days ago.

So now it is time to take advantage of some well-deserved bloggers' block.

If you have any cool links, feel free to post them in the comments.

Big break in Mabhouh assassination! OK, maybe not...

From Gulf News:

The Dubai Police chief on Tuesday confirmed the arrest in Canada of a suspect believed to be involved in the assassination of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh, a Hamas commander, in the UAE last January.

Speaking to reporters here, Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan Tamim said the Canadian authorities have arrested a suspect who is connected to the murder of Al Mabhouh.

The Hamas commander was killed in a Dubai hotel on January 19 by Mossad agents.

Lt-Gen Dahi told reporters that he has been informed of the arrest "verbally" by a representative from the Canadian embassy.

He went even further:

Canada actually informed Emirati officials of the arrest in June, but requested that they not announce it, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told Al Arabiya television.

"I am astonished. Why this attempt to cover up on this issue? We must act transparent, reliably and quickly in such cases," said Khalfan.

Speaking to the Al-Ittihad daily, Khalfan did not say why Canada had called for secrecy, nor explain why he had not said anything until now, given his objections.

He said he went public after the news was reported in the Canadian media.

Only one, slight problem:

Dubai’s outspoken police chief insists a Canadian security official informed him of the secret arrest of a Mossad assassin, even though Canadian officials deny having ever told him that.

His pronouncement has caused befuddlement in Canada’s national-security establishment, leaving some officials to speculate that Dubai is seeking to embarrass Canada amid an ongoing row over airport rights.

“Baseless,” was the word one well-placed Ottawa official used to describe the general’s claim.

Given the lack of specificity of Lt.-Gen. Tamim’s comments, the reaction in Ottawa is mostly one of confusion. “We have nothing to say at this point,” said Sergeant Greg Cox, a spokesman for the RCMP.

Two senior sources at the Canadian Embassy in the UAE told The Globe they did not inform the Dubai police chief about any arrest. “We are trying to verify this information with our colleagues in Ottawa,” one said, asking to remain anonymous. “Tamim said we gave this info to the Dubai police, and we didn’t.”

So why is Dubai starting to say lies about Canada? This could be one reason:

For years, Dubai has been lobbying for Canadian airports to open themselves up to more flights from the Gulf. Meanwhile, Canada has had unfettered access to the so-called “Camp Mirage” logistics base – a Dubai landing strip that’s existed for years to supply the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan with men and military hardware.

The UAE abruptly cut off Canada’s access this month, forcing Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s flight to redirect to Europe midair, after he ended a three-day tour of Afghanistan.

"Work accident" in Rafah

The Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today reports that Israeli warplanes bombed Rafah this morning, causing some 13 to be injured in the huge explosion, including women and children.

The Fatah-oriented Palestine Press Agency, however, says that there was an "internal explosion" at a military site belonging to Hamas - a "work accident."

Which seems more likely?

A picture contradicts a thousand words

From Reuters:

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal (2nd R) meets members of The Elders delegation Lakhdar Brahimi, Ela Bhatt, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former Irish President Mary Robinson (L-3rd R) in Damascus October 19, 2010. The Elders are on a tour of the Middle East to build support for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

While Reuters and the wannabe tribal elders claim that they want a peace agreement between Israel and the Arabs, the poster shows quite the opposite.

Right above Jimmy Carter's head is a map of Hamas' vision of "peace" - a world without Israel altogether.

It is telling that the self-proclaimed global leaders allow themselves, without compunction, to be props in a Hamas advertisement for the destruction of Israel.

One wonders whether they would take a walk with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a gaggle of wire-service reporters to survey Iran's exhibition of Holocaust-denial cartoons, or if they would have agreed to a photo-op in front of a picture of the World Trade Center crashing down.

The fact is that the public and prominent display of maps showing a Judenrein "Palestine" (whose only relationship with historic Palestine is that it portrays areas that Jews have some level of political control over) is no less offensive than proud pictures of 9/11.

The world has become numb to such an outrage, of course. You will have to look long and hard to find any so-called "peace" activist saying a word against these graphic paeans to ethnic cleansing that are pervasive in the Arab world.

But make no mistake - that is what a map of "historic Palestine" is. It's ubiquity makes it no less offensive, and for people who truly want peace, this should be obvious.

(The words on the poster are the Koranic verse that Muslims use to claim that Mohammed journeyed to Jerusalem, h/t Ali.)