Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 22, 2010

Latest Latma (10/22/10)

"It's the occupation, stupid" - Robert Pape's stupid argument

Robert Pape, writing in Foreign Policy, says:

New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance. Although this pattern began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s, a wealth of new data presents a powerful picture.

More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago's Project on Security and Terrorism, where we examined every one of the over 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to the present day. As the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, which have a combined population of about 60 million, total suicide attacks worldwide have risen dramatically -- from about 300 from 1980 to 2003, to 1,800 from 2004 to 2009. Further, over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide are now anti-American.

He then goes on to his recommendation - stop "occupying" other countries and the problem goes away!

Pape then makes up some very subjective criteria to explain why most occupations do not result in suicide bombings -one that there is a "social distance" between "occupier and occupied," and the other is "prior rebellion."

There is a lot that is absurd about this obviously biased research meant to reach a foregone conclusion. Joshuapundit covered a few.

I looked up the raw data for his research supposedly showing no correlation between Islamic fundamentalism and suicide bombing, the Suicide Attack Database at the University of Chicago. It allows you to search for all attacks by country, year, group claiming responsibility and other factors.

Here is the full list of all groups that engaged in suicide attacks since 1981, according to the research that Pape relied on for his conclusion:

1920 Revolution Brigade
Abu-Dajanah al-Ansari Martyrdom Brigade
Aden-Abyan Army
Al Madina Regiment
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
Al-Fatah
Al-haramayn Brigades
Al-Jaysh al-Islami li Tahrir al Amaken al Muqaddasa
Al-Mourabito un Group
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa
Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia
Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb
Al-Shabaab
AMAL
Amjad Farooqi group
Ansar al-Islam
Arab Egyptian League
Arab Resistance Movement - Al-Rashid Brigades
Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
Armed Islamic Group
Assirat al-Moustaqim
Babbar Khalsa International
Chechen Separatists
Egyptian Islamic Jihad
Fatah al-Islam
Great Eastern Raiders Front
HAMAS
Harakat ul-Mujahidin
Hezbollah
Hizb-I Islami
Hizbul Mujahedin
Islamic Holy War
Islamic Jihad
Islamic Resistance
Islamic Revolutionary Movement
Islamic State of Iraq
Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah
Jaish-e-Muhammad
Jama'at Al-Tawhid Wa'al-Jihad
Jemaah Islamiya
Jund al-Sham
Kurdistan Workers Party
Lashkar-e-Islam
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
Lashkar-e-Taiba
Lebanese Ba'ath Party
Lebanese Communist Party
Lebanese National Resistance Front
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq
Mujahideen Youth Movement
Mujahidin Shura Council
Mujahidin Shura Council
Partisans of the Sunni
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Popular Resistance Committees
Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front
Riyadus Salikhiin
Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions Group
Syrian Social Nationalist Party
Taliban
Tanzim
Tehrik Taliban-e-Pakistan
Unknown Group
Vanguard of Arab Christians

Now, when you look at this list, do you see a pattern?

Now, it is true. many of these groups are not Islamist - some are secular and some are Christian - but practically all are Arab or Muslim, pointing to a much clearer correlation between suicide bombings and Arab/Muslim culture than a strained theory of "occupation."

Also, his biased research is apparent when he defines Pakistani suicide bombings against Pakistan - over 2000 deaths that do not fit any of his "occupation" criteria - as an example of US occupation, since Pakistan is a US ally!

Friday afternoon links

Hezbollah's Boy Scouts in FP

Joshua Hammer in TNR - good until the last paragraph

Israeli ties with Greece improving in wake of Turkish fallout

ZAKA adding Christian, Muslim, Druze units

CiFWatch on Israel - and Luxembourg

Alaska Airlines and Operation Magic Carpet

Abuse of temporary marriages in Iraq (NPR)

UN Watch on the bias of "Goldstone II"

(h/t to many commenters, Jawa Report, Daily Alert)

Israeli flag in Morocco causes consternation

Last week I mentioned that there were a number of protests over the participation of Israeli singer Yael Naim in the "Concert for Tolerance" in Agadir, Morocco.

Well, the vigilant Arabs have sniffed out other Israelis visiting that city,and they are not happy.

The Hespress Moroccan newspaper mentions that the Seventh International Congress on Cactus Pear and Cochineal was also held in Agadir this week, and it included an Israeli scientist who spoke on Tuesday (Noemi Tel-Zur on the scintillating topic of "Pitahayas: introduction, agrotechniques and breeding.")

Last June, the paper notes, an Israeli delegation participated in a conference on whaling, also in Agadir.

All of these events went off without a hitch, and it is to Morocco's credit that the complaints - while noisy - were contained. But it is harder for them to forgive what happened next.

Earlier this week, also in Agadir, one could see the scene in the picture on the right.

The occasion is the 16th World Junior Judo Championships, being held in Agadir - and Israel is participating.

Municipal officials were stunned at the Israeli flag being displayed publicly. They felt blindsided by the display, not even knowing that Israel was participating. Some prominent officials said that they would not attend the opening ceremony if the flag continued to be shown.

So the judo officials took the flag down a half hour before the ceremony, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Jimmy visits Jerusalem and exposes more hypocrisy

London's Al Quds quotes Jimmy Carter as calling for Israel to withdraw from "East Jerusalem", saying it must become the capital of a Palestinian Arab state.

AFP quotes him as saying, "We will continue to work on a peaceful solution where the Israelis will withdraw from east Jerusalem and let this be the capital of a Palestinian state."

Since 1948, the entire world has demanded that Israel not establish its capital in even the western part of Jerusalem. Israelis have been told that the eternal Jewish capital and the center of Jewish hopes and dreams for some 3000 years cannot be the capital of the Jewish state, rather it must be in the new city of Tel Aviv. The Green Line, which everyone now remembers as an "internationally recognized border," was not considered a legal boundary by anyone, and as a result Israel's declaring Jerusalem as its capital was considered somehow illegitimate.

Even today, practically no country recognizes even the western part of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Instead, the world is demanding that Jerusalem become the capital of a Palestinian Arab state.

Arab interest in Jerusalem was practically nil before the anti-semitic Mufti in the 1920s started politicizing the issue, and then it faded from Muslim and Arab consciousness for the 19 years of Jordanian rule when the Palestinian Arab national cause was all but mute.

Arab interest in Jerusalem is directly proportional to Jewish political rule over the city. It is not inherent; it is derivative. It was never set up as a positive goal but rather a negative one - they didn't want to establish Jerusalem as an Arab capital, but to deprive Jews of establishing it as theirs.

Nowhere was this clearer than in 1949, when almost the entire Arab world appealed to the UN to make Jerusalem an international city - and expel all Jews who moved there since 1947:

Yes, Arabs wanted to give away the entire city, including Muslim holy places, holy places to the UN in 1949 - for the sole purpose of depriving Jews of controlling even the western part of the city!

Is this how a nation acts towards their capital?

Fast forward back to today. Idiots like Carter insist that a Palestinian Arab state cannot possibly exist without Jerusalem as their capital.

The simple question is - why?

If Tel Aviv must be Israel's capital according to the entire world, why can Ramallah not be the Palestinian Arab capital?

The fact is that the only reason that people say that Jerusalem must be the Palestinian Arab capital is because the Palestinian Arabs insist upon it, despite the absence of any historical ties to the city as a political or cultural center for the Arab world. Their insistence - wholly predicated on taking away Jewish sovereignty - is regarded as somehow more valuable and authentic than the rich Jewish historical, religious and cultural ties to the city.

The question of Jerusalem exposes the hypocrisy of the world.

UNRWA website still silent on West Bank strike

The UNRWA workers' strike on the West Bank that started on Sunday is still in force:

Refugee camps in the West Bank district of Tulkarem face a health crisis as trash builds up in the streets due to an ongoing strike by workers employed by the UN's Palestine refugee agency.

"The situation in the camp is threatened by the strike, which is legitimate, and the fact that UNRWA has not agreed to the workers' demands," said Faisal Salameh, the head of the popular committee in Tulkarem refugee camp.

Clinics and other healthcare providers will be forced to close without the staff, he added.

Yet the UNRWA website, filled with press releases and news items, remains silent about the strike.

It's almost as if it cares more about PR than reporting the truth of what goes on in areas it administers.

Fatah says western Jerusalem is also "occupied"

Ma'an has an op-ed from Muhammad Shtayyeh, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, complaining about the OECD Tourism conference being held in Jerusalem this week.

First, holding this conference in illegally-annexed and Israeli-occupied Jerusalem would appear to lend legitimacy to Israel's universally unrecognized claims to the city. Second, the conference, including the attention and revenue Israel will garner from it, will serve to reward Israel, despite its continuing occupation and colonization of Palestine, including East Jerusalem.

...Our original request to move the meeting to another host country, or even to Tel Aviv, was rejected. Instead, the OECD decided to hold the meeting only in "West" Jerusalem, the area of Jerusalem more commonly viewed as part of Israel. Crucially, however, Israel does not differentiate between East and West Jerusalem, but covets all of Jerusalem as its "eternal and undivided capital." Palestinians could only wonder what areas of occupied Jerusalem Israel would showcase during the meeting, given that most holy sites are located in occupied East Jerusalem, in particular in and around the Old City.

The OECD said that the meeting would not be in any area that could be construed as disputed or occupied - but the "moderates" from Fatah say otherwise.

Hamas and UNRWA agree: schoolchildren should be human shields (updated)

From JPost:

The United Nations Relief and Work Agency asked for permission to build several schools in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in southern Gaza City, according to details obtained by The Jerusalem Post.

The request was submitted to the Defense Ministry in line with current Israeli policy to approve international projects in Gaza after they have received the approval of donor nations and the Palestinian Authority.

Since Israel eased the blockade on the Gaza Strip in July, the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has approved 70 international projects – including the renovation of a sewage treatment plant, the construction of 151 housing units and eight new schools.

But when the Defense Ministry received the UNRWA request for the new schools and checked their planned location, defense officials said they were alarmed to discover that the UN had planned to build the schools adjacent to a Hamas military installation.

“We were shocked to see that some of the schools sent for approval were right next to Hamas,” one official told the Post on Thursday.

The Defense Ministry contacted UNRWA and asked if it was aware that Hamas maintained a military installation nearby. The answer the Defense Ministry received was “yes,” according to Israeli officials, with UNRWA acknowledging that Hamas had allocated the land for the schools.

Chris Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA, confirmed the details of the report but claimed that the Hamas installation in question was severely damaged by Israel during Operation Cast Lead and questioned whether it still served as a military facility.

IDF sources said that the building functioned as a Hamas base during Operation Cast Lead and continued to serve as a base today.

Gunness said that due to the Defense Ministry’s decision, UNRWA would not be able to build the schools, and therefore thousands of Palestinian children will be educated by Hamas instead of the UN.

“There is an acute shortage of UNRWA schools in that area, and as a result of the shortage more children beyond the 39,000 who are already not receiving a UN education will continue to receive local education instead,” Gunness said. “It is a great pity that we can’t have children in Gaza receive a UN education based on universal values.”

Defense sources said that Israel was committed to the UNRWA education system but that Israel would not allow Hamas to cynically use schools and children in its terrorist war against Israel.

UNRWA'a Gunness doesn't even pretend to be concerned that the UNRWA schools would be in the line of fire if - and when - Hamas uses the adjacent terror bases and Israel responds. Moreover, he doesn't seem concerned that the kids could become victims of one of the regular "work accidents" that occur at Hamas facilities.

And Gunness would be the last person to publicly accuse and embarrass Hamas, telling them that the land they are offering is unacceptable and that the safety of the children is of paramount importance. No, all of UNRWA's demands are from Israel, and Hamas is positioned a wonderful patron of the organization for offering land where the kids could get blown up. (A wonderful patron that happens to attack UNRWA facilities as well.)

If the military installation is damaged and unused, as Gunness implies, then why not convert that into the school?

Gunness and UNRWA are obfuscating, as they do so often.

Some 21 confirmed terrorists were killed in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood during Operation Cast Lead.

UPDATE:
Guess what happened this week in an area that UNRWA built a housing project and schools right next to a Hamas facility in Rafah?

Three UNRWA schools were damaged and 26 were injured, including 17 children, from an explosion at the Hamas training base. And the base seems to have been there when UNRWA built the housing project and three schools that were damaged.

(h/t T34Zakat)

Viva Palestina makes it to Gaza with very little aid

The Viva Palestina convoy made it into Gaza on Thursday, and the activists were thrilled, saying that they managed to "crack" the "blockade."

They delivered 500 tons of aid that took over four weeks to travel from England and other countries.

In those same four weeks, Israel delivered over 75,000 tons of aid - over 150 times as much aid as was sent by this high-profile convoy.

The Israeli aid included cars, cement, and infrastructure equipment.

Hamas arms cache found - in Ramallah

Palestine Press Agency reports that PA security forces uncovered a cache of weapons in Ramallah that belonged to Hamas.

The weapons included automatic weapons and RPGs.

It appears that the weapons were meant for targeting the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. It is especially significant that they were being stored in Ramallah itself, which is about the most pro-Fatah spot in the territories.

The discovery angered the PA leadership, which has been trying in fits and starts to negotiate a unification agreement with Hamas. A meeting between the parties that was meant to be in Damascus this week was canceled, but the PA denied that it had anything to do with Hamas. Instead, they claimed that they had a dispute with Syria and they wanted to move the venue.

AP? Biased? Nah.....

Here is the initial headline from AP this morning about the Rachel Corrie trial:

This inflammatory text was clearly the headline that AP sent it out initially over the wire, because many news sites that grab the AP feeds reproduced it (the New York Times seems to be the exception in the list below):

As well as major news sites:

Some editor at AP must have realized that the headline was not exactly unbiased. It was changed about six hours later to this:

The change has been propagating slowly through the local news sites that grab the AP feed.

I found the thread of AP headline posts on the topic:

#1 at 5:26 AM said "US activist's parents confront bulldozer driver"
#2 said "Slain US activist's parents face Israeli killer": at 7:59 AM
#3 and #4 said the same thing as the story got updated during the morning
#5, at 11:21 AM, changed it to "Israeli driver", as did #6 at 12:16 PM.

(h/t SoccerDad, Zach, Vic)

Iranian cleric explains how Jews corrupt America's human rights

Syria's SANA news agency informs us that the vice president of the Iranian Shura Council, Muhammad Hassan Abu Turabi, says that human rights in America today have become a victim of the "illegitimate interests of a few international Zionists."

He was speaking at a conference in Iran called "Human Rights and the United States." He said that democracy is now an instrument for violating human rights, and that Iran has detected the Zionist influence in this scheme.

That term "International Zionists" reminds me of something....

Hunting Iranian arms brokers - 8 part series

The Philadelphia Inquirer published an 8-chapter series on a sting operation that nabbed a major Iranian arms dealer - and possibly a whole lot more.

It is long, but very much worth reading.

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.