Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

A quick comparison

Number of vehicles that Viva Palestina brought into Gaza with their much heralded convoy: less than 150

Number of vehicles that Israel has shipped into Gaza in the past couple of months: about 200. (The tenth shipment of twenty cars arrived Monday.)

Now, how much news coverage did each event get respectively?

PalArabs mourn anniversary of Balfour Declaration

Today is the 93rd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, and there are a number of articles in the Arabic media about it.

Islamic Jihad released a statement condemning the Declaration and declaring "[we] renew our commitment to our right to recover our entire land without sacrificing an inch of soil. We reject any solution at the expense of principles in our conflict with the Zionists, and we consider any recognition of a "Jewish State" by the Balfour Declaration the most serious trial of our history and the struggles and sacrifices of our people."

Another article in Palestine Today about Balfour illustrates itself with this map of the borders that, they are certain, Israel is really aiming to expand to, from the Nile to the Euphrates:

Which is very similar to a map that Iran once published in their edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

More on the Iranian weightlifter

The poor thing.

The Persian BBC writes that the coach, the weightlifter and the head of the weight lifting delegation are temporarily banned in Iran because the weightlifter stood next to the Israeli during the medal ceremony.

While the BBC mentions a temporarily ban, this Iranian source says that they have been banned from all sport activities for life.

“The fact that an Iranian weightlifting veteran has competed against an Israeli during the worldwide competitions and has stood beside him during the distribution of medal is unjustifiable,” Jalal Yahya-Zadeh, head of Physical Education Committee for Youth Committee "explained".

Anti-fur group sends talking breasts to Israel to lobby haredim

There is a bill that has been winding its way through the Knesset to ban the fur trade in Israel altogether - with the exception of fur used for religious purposes (many chassidim wear hats made of fur.)

Animal-rights groups are lobbying hard for the bill, making Israel the first nation in the world to have such a law and hoping for a cascade effect with other nations.

As a result, the bill has become politicized worldwide, with Canadian furriers banding together with some Israeli religious parties to defeat it. They say that a ban on fur would be the first step towards a worldwide ban on kosher slaughter - especially since the same animal-rights activists oppose both.

So the animal-rights movement is sending a spokesperson to Israel to help convince the religious parties to reconsider their stand.

And who are they sending?

Pamela Anderson.

Does the anti-fur group think that she will help? Do they think that any of the religious Knesset members even heard of her, let alone whether they'd be dazzled by a former TV star whose main assets are her breasts? Do they think that they even heard the word "Baywatch?"

Clueless.

More PA lies and UNRWA deceptions

The Palestinian Authority has added its own voice to the denunciations throughout the Arab world when outgoing UNRWA official Andrew Whitley revealed a bit of sanity.

From Ma'an:

The Palestinian Authority Cabinet on Sunday denounced the statement of UNRWA official Andrew Whitley, who said Palestinian refugees should give up their right to return and resettle in Arab countries.

Whitley, outgoing New York director of the UN refugee agency, said refugees should not live in the "cruel illusion" that they will return. He said UNRWA did not publicly advocate the issue, which was not "politically palatable."

At the weekly Cabinet meeting in Ramallah, ministers expressed surprise at the comments in light of UNRWA's mandate to assist refugees until they returned to their homes in accordance with UN resolution 194.

Does the UNRWA mandate say anything about UN 194?

Not at all.

From the UNRWA website:

UNRWA was originally mandated to:

"carry out direct relief and works programmes in collaboration with local governments"
"consult with the Near Eastern governments concerning measures to be taken preparatory to the time when international assistance for relief and works projects is no longer available", and
plan for the time when relief was no longer needed.

UNRWA’s contemporary mandate is to provide relief, human development and protection services to Palestine refugees and persons displaced by the 1967 hostilities in its fields of operation: Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, West Bank and the Gaza Strip. UNRWA’s mandate has been repeatedly renewed by the UN General Assembly. The current mandate runs till 30 June 2011.

There is nothing in UNRWA's mandate that is at all dependent on the outdated and irrelevant UNGA Resolution 194. The PA cabinet is lying.

While we are at it, UNRWA's Chris Gunness wrote a letter to Hudson-NY in response to an article by Khaled Abu Toameh that we linked to asking why everyone is lying to PalArab "refugees."

He writes:

The facts speak for themselves. The proportion of refugees living in camps has steadily declined from about one hundred per cent at the time of our creation over sixty years ago, to just one third today.

And in real numbers? The number of "refugees" in camps has roughly doubled since 1949, to 1,396,368 registered refugees as of January 2010. That number is not decreasing, and it never will. One big reason is that UNRWA has no mechanism to remove "refugees" from its calculations outside of death, as opposed to UNHCR which has a detailed definition of how refugees lose their status.

Gunness further writes

As with refugees assisted by UNHCR, the refugee status of UNRWA refugees is transferred through the generations pending a just and lasting solution.

While UNHCR extends refugee benefits to family members (Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees page 12), it does not give them the status of refugees in perpetuity.

That's why the number of world refugees has been generally decreasing and those of Palestinian Arabs inexorably increasing. That's why in 2009 there were some 10.4 million refugees worldwide under UNHCR's responsibility and 4.8 million UNRWA "refugees" just from one tiny sliver of land from 62 years ago.

One of UNRWA's biggest problems is the utter inability to tell the truth - not to the people they are pretending to help, not to the world as they beg for more and more money, and not even to themselves, except behind closed doors (as Whitley showed.)

You've heard of the insanity defense - now comes the Jinni defense

From Al Arabiya:

A recent case in which a judge claimed stealing 100 million while under a spell stirred controversy among lawyers and jurists over the possibility of accepting magic as a legal defense argument and the means to verify the involvement of a jinni in a crime.

A heated debate over committing crimes while under magical influence ensued during the proceedings of a corruption trial that involved several employees in the Medina Court including one of the judges.

I Dream of ...

A statement by a man who claimed to have performed a roqia (Islamic exorcism) on the suspected judge ignited the controversy. The ‘exorcist’ told the Saudi newspaper Okaz that the judge was possessed by a jinni and was under his influence while taking bribes to cover up for illegal possession of land and real estate.

For legal advisor Saleh al-Khedr, being possessed by a jinni or an evil spirit does not absolve the culprit of blame....

Meanwhile, several jurists argue that it is possible that an evil spirits makes people unable to control their actions, yet it is hard to prove.

Dr. Ibrahim al-Balawi, a lawyer, stated that the judge should consider this possibility if the culprit admitted to being under a spell while committing the crime.

“However, it is very hard to prove that and the court only acknowledges clear and tangible evidence,” he told AlArabiya.net. “But the judge should not ignore it and further investigations have to be carried out.”

Balawi added that there are specialists who are capable of detecting if a person is possessed and they can be consulted in these cases to verify the defendant’s allegations.

Lawyer Badr al-Basees agreed with Balawi and stressed that magic and its effect on people are mentioned in the Quran.

“There is no doubt that magic exists,” he told AlArabiya.net. “It is only proving it that is a challenge.”

Here's a picture you won't see often: the national flag of Iran next to (and on a lower level than) Israel's flag.

From Payvand Iran News:

During the World Masters Weightlifting Championships in Poland in an unprecedented move, an Iranian athlete took his place on the medal podium beside an Isreali athlete drawing criticism from Iranian authorities.

Iran's Student News Agency (ISNA) reported that Hossein Khodadadi, Iranian representative in the Masters Weightlifting Championships stood beside his Israeli peer in the medals ceremony.

The event which took place in early October was in the 105 Kg category for the ages of 35 to 39.

Sergio Britva, Israeli weightlifter took the first place lifting 300 kg in total and Hossein Khodadadi, the Iranian weightlifter took the silver medal lifting 296 kg.

Khodadadi appeared on the podium to receive his medal beside the Israeli athlete and this move led to serious criticism from Iran.

This is the first time since the 1979 Revolution in Iran that an Iranian athlete has appeared beside an Israeli athlete in an official championship.

Head of Iran's weightlifting committee at the Masters Weightlifting Championships, MirRasouli Raisi, said that everything had been done in coordination with the Iranian embassy in Poland.

Khodadadi claimed that they were not able to remove their flag from the hall and all he could do was to appear in unofficial attire so that their presence would not be deemed official.

He added that if they had not attended the ceremony, they would have had to return all the medals they had received on the previous days and disqualified Iran from participating in further competitions.

Iranian athletes have often run into difficulty refusing to confront Israeli opponents in other world championships.

In the competitions in Poland, all of the Iranian participants received medals.

Head of Iran's National Athletic Organization had earlier written a letter to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to receive instructions on how to handle situations where Iranian athletes have to confront Israeli athletes.

Iranian athletic community has become more and more concerned about political restrictions costing them medals in competitions.

CrethiPlethi adds:

The [Iranian] reformist daily Mardom Salari dedicated its editorial to the incident, wondering why it took a whole month to uncover and deal with the affair. The editorial said that all those responsible for the issue—from the Foreign Ministry and the Physical Education Organization to the team coach—must provide answers. The daily strongly criticized the head of Iran’s Weightlifting Association for taking no action about the issue until it was exposed on the media (Mardom Salari, October 23).

Here's the video, where you can see the Iranian refuse to shake hands with the Israeli. For good reason - it would have ended his career, and maybe his life.

It is still fun to know that he had to stand respectfully during the entire playing of Hatikva.

(h/t Gabriel, who points out an Iranian athlete who is quite a bit friendlier to Israelis.)

Fair news/bad news/worse news from Saudi Arabia

The fair news, from September:

JEDDAH: The phenomenon of employing women cashiers in supermarkets is catching on with Centrepoint shopping store now joining the growing list of employers.

Panda and then Marhaba supermarkets were the first to employ women cashiers, but Centrepoint has gone one step ahead by placing women cashiers at check outs for T-shirts, pants and accessories for women.

The Centrepoint store on Prince Sultan Street, visited by Arab News, has women cashiers in a separate section. The women were busy checking out and packing the goods from the women customers.

The mahrams (male guardians) of women shoppers were seen standing outside area waiting for their spouses. A store official said that men who come with their families can come inside the area but the majority of the men preferred to wait outside.

Keeping a strict watch was a security personnel, whose task was to prevent men without families entering this area. It also fell on them to call out on the microphone the names of family members if the mahrams were not waiting outside the area.

A woman cashier, who revealed that some of the women working here are also studying and taking care of their families, lauded the stores for giving them this independence. “Women are now taking care of things. It is not like the old days when daddy would do everything,” she added.

Severe restrictions and rules, but at least a step in a positive direction for women in Saudi Arabia.

For a while.

The bad news:

Saudi Arabia's top clerics have challenged the government's policy to expand jobs for women with a fatwa ruling that they should not work as cashiers in supermarkets, a report said on Monday.

The official fatwa issuing body said that "it is not permissible for a woman to work in a place where they mix with men," the news website Sabq.org said.

"It is necessary to keep away from places where men congregate. Women should look for decent work that does not make it possible for them to attract men or be attracted by men," it said.
The ruling came from the Committee on Scholarly Work and Ifta, the official issuer of fatwas, or religious rulings, under the Council of Senior Scholars, the top authority for Islamic issues in the kingdom.

The fatwa was in response to a question -- published with the ruling -- asking specifically if women should work as cashiers in supermarkets, Sabq reported.

The ruling was unambiguous, and signed by Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, the head of the Senior Scholars Council, and six other members of the fatwa committee.

Again this is a government-sanctioned religious rulings board. It sounds like their problem goes beyond the existing restrictions on the women cashiers. (What I don't understand is why women - with their guardians, of course - are allowed to go to stores altogether, where they see male cashiers.) It is unclear whether this will make those cashiers illegal, or if the government can ignore this fatwa.

The worse news:

A Saudi journalist is to be lashed in public after he was convicted of instigating protests against a government electricity company because of continuous power cuts in a central town, Ajel online newspaper said on Monday.

The court in Qubba in the central province of Qaseem sentenced Fahd Al Jukhaidib, a journalist in the Saudi Arabic language daily Aljazierah, to two months in prison and 50 lashes with the whip, including 25 lashes in public in front of the electricity department, the paper said.

Al Jukaidib was accused of leading residents of Qubba to the department two years ago to demand action to resolve continuous power cuts in the town.

A few days later, the company yielded to their demands and sent seven additional power generators to the town.

“The problem was over but I was later summoned by police, who charged me of instigating protests. I was then referred to court, which has just sentenced me to two months in prison and 50 lashes, including 25 lashes in front of the electricity department,” the paper quoted Al Jukhaidib as saying.

Technorati ranks blogs according to something called "authority." They define it this way:

Technorati Authority measures a site's standing and influence in the blogosphere.

Authority is calculated based on a site’s linking behavior, categorization and other associated data over a short, finite period of time. A site’s authority may rapidly rise and fall depending on what the blogosphere is discussing at the moment, and how often a site produces content being referenced by other sites.

Topical Authority measures a blog’s influence within its subject category. Blogs will appear ranked by topical authority within Technorati’s blog directory. Factors include linking behavior from blogs and posts in the same category, how well a blog's overall content matches the category in question, and other associated data. It’s possible for a blog to have authority in several different categories. The authority in each category may be different.

Last August I was stunned to see that Technorati ranked EoZ as #56 in Technorati Top Political Blogs and #15 in Technorati Top World Political Blogs.

So when I saw the most recent rankings...I was blown away.

Top Politics/World Blogs

#1 Jihad Watch
#2 Danger Room
#3 American Thinker
#4 Commentary
#5 TPMMuckraker
#6 The Daily Beast
#7 Gates of Vienna (tie)
#7 Elder of Ziyon (tie)
#9 The Huffington Post
#10 Babylon & Beyond

Just for comparison, Atlas Shrugs is at #12, Michelle Malkin is #24, and Power Line is #25.

In the more general Politics rankings, EoZ also went up; it is now at #50.

There are over 10,000 blogs that get ranked in those two categories.

For all blogs, period - over 1.2 million of them - they rank EoZ #426.

Rankings do change often, but still....cool!

My letter to the UN

A commenter noted that Al Awda, an extremist organization that is dedicated to destroying Israel by falsely claiming that descendants of Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948 have a "right of return," has started a letter writing campaign to the UN to fire Andrew Whitley for making the sane comment that most Palestinian Arabs will never "return."

They nicely gave a list of email addresses to send their letter to.

So, I used their list and sent a letter to the same UN officials, saying my opinion. You might want to modify my letter and do the same.

To: inquiries@un.org
CC: f.grandi@unrwa.org; c.gunness@unrwa.org; s.mshasha@unrwa.org; j.ging@unrwa.org; r.cook@unrwa.org; r.hearn@unrwa.org; b.shenstone@unrwa.org; a.whitley@unrwa.org; l.takkenberg@unrwa.org; maher.nasser@unvienna.org

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon
The Secretary General of the United Nations

Your Excellency,

I was gratified to read the words of Andrew Whitley, where he spoke - for once - a basic truth: that the vast majority of the descendants of Arabs who fled Palestine will never return.

It is not a kindness to keep millions of people in misery, living under the false hope of "returning" to a country that most have never seen. Yet that is what UNRWA is doing by perpetuating their status as "refugees" - the only people in the world to be defined as such when it is only their ancestors who truly had that legal status.

It was disheartening that UNRWA immediately distanced itself from Whitley's comments, thus ensuring the lengthening of the misery and stateless status of millions of people.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child says that every child has the right to a nationality, and that "States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights." Yet the UNRWA's unique definition of the descendants of refugees as having refugee status themselves has given the green light for Arab nations to purposefully keep Palestinian Arabs in perpetual limbo. They argue that this is done to ensure the Palestinian Arabs' "unity" - disingenuously claiming that they are doing it for their own good.

Yet when are human rights so cavalierly dismissed on such scale? Why can't individual Arabs of Palestinian descent be given the choice to become citizens of their host countries, a right given by to any other Arab?

The only way to truly solve the problem of the Palestinian Arabs is to resettle the vast majority of them in their host Arab countries. This simple truth has been known for generations, and even UNRWA did some work in the 1950s to solve the problem in that way. Yet Arab intransigence, and the UN's weakness, did not force Arab nations to accept their so-called "guests" as millions of other refugees from the 1940s integrated into their respective host countries.

UNRWA's position, rather than helping the Arabs of Palestinian descent, is designed to keep the problem festering for generations to come. The Palestinian Authority has shown no interest in naturalizing millions of additional Arabs in any potential state. And most Arab states fight tooth and nail to keep the "refugee" issue alive.

Andrew Whitley made a small contribution to sanity by speaking the truth. His words should not be distanced; they should be embraced - if the UN really wants to solve this so-called "refugee" problem. Otherwise, by pretending that these millions of humans will one day go to homes that no longer exist, the UN is simply part of the problem - one that is growing daily.

Sincerely,

[name]

Hezbollah's plan to take over Lebanon

From Naharnet:

Hizbullah has reportedly unleashed a simulation of the zero hour aimed at holding both a security and military grip on Lebanon and corner Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
A report published Monday by al-Akhbar newspaper said that prior to Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's Oct. 28 speech a "main Opposition group was carrying out an electronic, field simulation for the assumed zero hour."

This was an indirect reference to Hizbullah.

The simulation, according to the daily, preceded an electronic Israeli simulation for a future war with Hizbullah that could reach Tel Aviv.

It said the Hizbullah mockup was based on a scenario of the issuance of the International Tribunal indictment accusing Hizbullah of ex-PM Rafik Hariri's assassination.

Just a few hours before issuance of the indictment, Hizbullah plans to deploy security and political forces en masse, without bloodshed and without targeting citizens or residential areas, the report said.

The quick implementation on the ground, which was carried out in less than two hours, was "designed to hold a security and military grip on large areas of Lebanon," Al-Akhbar wrote.

It said among the targets, were also centers and sites as well as political, military and security figures. The plan also aims at looking for (simultaneously and during a two-hour period) the officials Syria had issued arrest warrants against or those who tried to stir sectarian strife.

The report said Hizbullah's plan includes pinning down those officials' whereabouts and arresting them "in order to curtail their movement and get hold of major cities in Lebanon."

The report said Hizbullah's plan includes pinning down those officials' whereabouts and arresting them "in order to curtail their movement and hold a grip on major cities in Lebanon from the capital and the suburbs to the Kesrouan highlands and north Lebanon and well as holding a grip on seaports and border crossings to prevent the escape of personalities."

Al-Akhbar said news may not have reached Prime Minister Saad Hariri that his mansion in downtown Beirut, better known as Center House, and the Grand Serail have been toppled and that they are in the hands of Hizbullah security forces and that Hariri had been isolated.

Al Akhbar is a reasonably well-regarded newspaper.

Nasrallah's speech on Thursday was another threat against Lebanon, where he said that anyone who cooperates with the international tribunal on Hariri's assassination is an enemy of the Resistance.

The world has allowed Hezbollah's power to grow so much that it can now envision a bloodless coup due to its sheer strength. And, incidentally, the Wikileaks incident shows that Hezbollah is also deeply involved in training and supporting Iraqi terrorists.

It is not Hezbollah that would be taking over Lebanon - it is Iran. Hezbollah is just a brigade of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

For some reason, the world does not seem unduly alarmed at the prospect of an Iranian satellite state on the Mediterranean, where Iranian missiles would be within range of all of Europe and even much of Africa.

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog)

An inspiring lady

There is a new documentary coming out describing the life of the oldest Holocaust survivor in the world Alice Herz-Sommer. See the official trailer of "Alice Dancing Under the Gallows" and how inspiring this lady is:

UPDATE [EoZ]: The Facebook page for the upcoming movie is here.

Funny AJWS ad

From the AJWS website.

UNRWA workers still on strike. UNRWA still silent.

Day 12.

And still no mention about the strike on UNRWA's webpage, making one wonder whether they are interested more in burnishing their image than with the truth.

Because why water down their message of Israelis somehow being responsible for Palestinian Arabs' misery in the camps by admitting that their own people are letting the garbage pile up?

49 Jewish graves desecrated in France

L'Express reports that 49 graves were toppled at a 200-year old Jewish cemetery in the Bar-le-Duc cemetery in Lorraine, France.

The entire cemetery has 129 gravestones.

A passerby noticed that the usually locked gate was opened, and he notified police.

Members of the Jewish community said that this was the first time that the cemetery has been desecrated.

Photos from Est Republicain.fr show that the attackers probably used sledgehammers to break some of the old, thick tombstones.