Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 15, 2010

Price gouging in Gaza

In recent months, the Gaza meme has changed from "Gazans have no basic goods or food" to "Gazans have access to plenty of goods - but can't afford it."

This was, of course, a reaction to the news that a mall was opening in Gaza selling luxury items - to sellout crowds. This was a case where the blogosphere managed to help explode one of the greatest myths about Gaza.

So the meme had to morph to handle the new reality. Additional corollaries included "it is much larger than a humanitarian crisis" or it is a "crisis of dignity." And all those well-stocked shops? Well, the owners are fools, because UNRWA officials assure us that no one can afford these luxury items.

Well, at least during Eid al Adha, they are partially right.

Palestine Today looks at the shops of Gaza, and sees that the stores have jacked up the prices as much as 500% in the past week for clothing and similar items.

The shop owners defend themselves. In one case, a merchant says that no one wanted to buy an article of clothing for NIS 5 ($1.25) because they assumed it was cheaply made, so he raised the price to NIS 25 and now can't keep up with demand.

Another merchant tells the story of a woman who refused to buy pants for NIS 15 (about $4) but came back the next day and bought them for NIS $45.

The truth is often different from what the "experts" say. Yet no matter how often they are proven wrong, when it comes to bashing Israel, everyone still considers them "experts."

Links, links and more links

Daphne Anson has a fascinating article about the British plans to transfer Arabs out of Palestine - that were largely opposed by Jews! (h/t Silke)

As Suzanne reported, the Iranian weightlifter who dared to stand respectfully during the playing of the Hatikva, and the head of the Iranian team, are now banned from all sports. (h/t jhrhv)

An Israeli student was attacked by a mob of Muslims students in Italy.

Israeligirl has some great reporting on how Iran is cracking down on critics in anticipation of being forced to raise prices on basic staples.

The IDF rescues an elderly woman at the Lebanese border. For some reason, the Lebanese army didn't shoot this time. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Dan Gillerman on the folly of public negotiations over the freeze. (h/t Israellycool)

Samson looks at the next likely "temporary" settlement freeze, and is not happy with what he sees.

JoeSettler of The Muqata is even less happy, saying that the very idea of linking the American veto of anti-Israel resolutions in the UN with Jews building in Judea and Samaria is putting America's soul on the line.

Tea from the Galilee winning over the British - but don't say "Made in Israel." Bad for business.

Hamas/Damascus rebukes Zahar for using the word "Jews"

A couple of weeks ago, Mahmoud Zahar - the supposedly moderate and pragmatic Hamas leader in Gaza - let his mask slip as he spouted anti-semitic rhetoric, saying that Jews have been expelled from all the countries they've been in because of their "crimes" and they will be expelled from Palestine as well.

Hamas, of course, has been carefully nurturing an image of moderation and pragmatism - an image that is happily believed by the likes of Jimmy Carter and Stephen Walt and MJ Rosenberg. Hamas works assiduously to place moderate-sounding op-eds in major newspapers, all to feed the wishful thinking of leftist wishful thinking and latent anti-Zionism.

Explicit anti-semitism is not on Hamas' current agenda.

So, Palestine Press Agency reports, Zahar received an urgent memo from Hamas' Damascus leadership rebuking him for his impolitic statements.

The memo stated "that the efforts of the Hamas leadership in Damascus with the West and Europe have been opening up new political avenues, and we must preserve them." The memo said that he has to stay away from words like "Jews" and instead use words like "the occupation" - which is exactly what Hamas normally does, even when referring to Israel within the 1949 armistice lines.

The Damascus leaders emphasized that Gaza leaders should not talk about extermination and annihilation of Jews, or uprooting of Jews from the land of Palestine. Instead, those terms should be replaced by saying that they are seeking to liberate the occupied Palestinian territories, and the removal of the Zionist occupation of our land, and to emphasize to Americans that "our hostility is not for the Jews or Judaism, but those who have occupied our land."

Of course, Zahar's statements were exactly in line with what is written in Hamas' charter which is rather explicit concerning Jews.

For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails.

Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree

When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, Jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims. In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad. This would require the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses on all local, Arab and Islamic levels. We must spread the spirit of Jihad among the [Islamic] Umma, clash with the enemies and join the ranks of the Jihad fighters.

The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people’s livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor. In their horrible actions they mistreat people like the most horrendous war criminals.

We cannot fail to remind every Muslim that when the Jews occupied Holy Jerusalem in 1967 and stood at the doorstep of the Blessed Aqsa Mosque, they shouted with joy: “Muhammad is dead, he left daughters behind.” Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. “Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep.”

Iran's PressTV: "Israel refuses fuel for Gaza." Truth: Opposite.

From Iran's PressTV:

Israel has refused to supply fuel to the Gaza Strip's main electricity plant as power outages have intensified in the besieged coastal sliver.

There have been up to twelve hours of power outages in Gaza.

Gaza's main power plant has two turbine generators and only one of them works due to fuel shortages, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Israel refuses to allow diesel into Gaza, which has been under an all-out Israeli blockade since 2007.

Gazans use small electricity generators to meet their electricity needs.

The IDF Spokesperson blog says, on the contrary, that the amount of fuel entering Gaza last week was 1.7 million liters. The week before it was 1.3 million.

From Palestine Press Agency (Arabic):

The [Gaza] Electricity Distribution Company and the Palestinian Energy Authority that they were able to run a second generator in Gaza's only power station on Sunday afternoon.

A spokesman explained that this will continue until midnight on Wednesday as long as there is enough fuel.

He explained that the operation of the second unit will increase the productive capacity of the power plant from 30 megawatts to 60 megawatts, which will improve significantly the distribution of electricity applied to the program in the areas of the provinces of Gaza during the period.

As we've mentioned in the past, the major obstacle to providing fuel to Gaza has been their ability to pay the bills (and sometimes Hamas restrictions), not any restrictions on Israel's part.

I have noticed that many anti-Israel sites will rely on PressTV for their lies. Iran certainly makes it easy for them: the articles are already written in decent English and seemingly authoritative. The only pesky problem is that they make up their stories, but the truth is not a pre-requisite when your entire purpose is to demonize the Jewish state.

Carter praises PalArab democracy, slams Israeli democracy

The disgusting old coot keeps on going...

In an interview with a Swiss and Belgian newspaper, Carter brings out all the stops - the Jewish lobby, Hamas as a peaceful democratic partner, Israel as an evil theocratic superpower. The usual.

Translated by Philosemitism:

The Palestinians' situation is as follows: in Israel, they are subject to 35 laws which discriminate specifically non-Jewish citizens, who were denied the right to own land, to marriage, to travel, to have access to medical care and the media. In East Jerusalem - occupied by Israel - the Palestinians are not treated as citizens. The Silwan community, where there are 55,000 Arabs, has no playground and there is no school building. Jerusalem Mayor apologized while explaining that he was planning a tourist and archaeological site there. The Arabs who have lived there for sixty-five years will be forced to leave. In the West Bank, more than 300,000 Israeli settlers have confiscated land and properties off the Palestinians to build their own houses. Finally and even worse, Gaza is like a cage in which 1.5 million Palestinians live, 75% of which are refugees.

Why are the United States so close to Israel?
The same can be said of the Europeans. Firstly, there is a very powerful Israeli political lobby in the United States. Then there is a natural belief that Israel is a great democracy like ours somewhere in the Middle East. Americans see Israel as a small country besieged by hundreds of millions of hostile Arabs - but the truth of the matter is that thanks to the United States Israel has the most advanced military capability in the planet. I must underline that the Carter Center has helped to oversee some 80 problematic elections in the world. The best three elections that we oversaw were in Palestine: when Arafat was elected, the election of Mahmoud Abbas and the 2006 elections. When Hamas won the elections, Israel and the United States said that they were terrorists in order to prevent them from ruling the Palestinian territories while a few months earlier they were considered as legitimate candidates. When I meet with Hamas leaders, they clearly state that they will accept any peace treaty negotiated between Abbas and Israel that is approved by referendum by the Palestinian people.

Don't you think that Israel is a democracy?
They have democratic elections for their own people. But, as I said, they have specific laws that prohibit equal treatment for non-Jews. This includes 1.5 million Arabs (20% of the population) and about 320,000 others who are neither Jewish nor Arab. I'm not saying that Israel is not a democracy, but it is not a democracy like ours.

Not a single bad word for Hamas, and not a single good word for Israel. That's our Dhimmi!

There are also reports that Jimmy told his pals at Al Jazeera - the same network that publicly celebrated 9/11 - that "the continued blockade on the Gaza Strip as one of the worst violations against humanity."

Meanwhile, Fatah and Hamas continue to arrest leaders of the other parties in their respective territories, they suppress any media critical of them, they allow hundreds of thousands of people under their rule to rot in "refugee" camps...and Carter is more than willing to approve of their thugocracies as being brilliantly democratic.

What a tool.

Decoy duck open thread

Not a real duck, but an amazing simulation.

Unlike the Z-Vent, which will be quite real.

Tennessee jihadist/murderer wanted to kill rabbis

From AP, via ArmyTimes:

A Tennessee man charged with killing a soldier at a recruiting station in Arkansas wrote letters to a newspaper saying that he had planned a large-scale attack before his arrest.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad wrote in the letters from prison that he was planning multiple attacks that included sites in Nashville and Florence, Ky.

He wrote seven letters earlier this year to The Commercial Appeal of Memphis that detailed his methods and motives.

Muhammad, born in Memphis as Carlos Bledsoe, faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted of capital murder in the June 2009 fatal shooting of Pvt. William Andrew Long of Conway, Ark.

After returning in 2007 from Yemen, where he had been imprisoned and later deported, Muhammad said he began plotting an attack with targets that included rabbis and recruiting centers.

In the letters he called it “Plan A,” which was to assassinate “3 Zionist rabbis in Memphis, Little Rock and Nashville. Then target recruitment centers from the South to the nation’s capital. And other Zionist organizations in the northeast. That was the plan, which mostly failed.”

During the trip, he had prepared a carton of Molotov cocktails, lit one and threw it at what he believed to be the home of an orthodox rabbi in Nashville. But it bounced off the glass.

His next target was an Army recruiting center in Florence, Ky. He had researched recruiting centers and chose one in Florence because “it was near an interstate and bordered Ohio. Easy to get away.” But the office was closed.

He became frustrated at the failings and said he saved money for guns and ammunition.

On the morning of the shootings at the Little Rock recruiting center, Muhammad said his “Plan B,” was a “random and unplanned attack.”

“I went around the corner so they [couldn’t] see me,” he said of two soldiers standing outside. “I did not want them to see me coming. I had the SKS [rifle] with me and put it out the window. I rolled by and started shooting.”

Long and 18-year-old Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula were hit by bullets. Long later died from his injuries.

Muhammad drove away after the shootings but made a wrong turn and left his tailgate down, a mistake he believes made him easier to identify.

Going to jail was not part of the plan, but, “I got myself caught,” he wrote to the newspaper.

Muhammad said his motives for the attack were a response to what he called a “war against Islam and Muslims” by the U.S.

“The U.S. has to pay for the rape, murder, bloodshed, blasphemy it has done and still doing to the Muslims and Islam,” he wrote. “So consider this a small retaliation the best is to come Allah willing. This is not the first attack and won’t be the last.”

He is now in an Arkansas jail, and is scheduled to face a jury in February on charges of capital murder and attempted capital murder, among other charges. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Winners of pro-Israel video competition

I got wind of a course that was taught in how ordinary people can make videos that can help Israel.

The students each made a video to be judged for effectiveness.

Here are the winners:

And honorable mentions:

Al Quds reports that the northern branch of the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has started warning women to cover their eyes if they are judged to be "exciting." (The other autotranslated word used is "seditious.")

The exact criteria were not publicized.

The minister of religious affairs in Gaza, Dr. Taleb Abu Sha'ar, is warning that Israel plans to rebuild the "alleged" synagogue Tiferet Yisrael, also known as the Nissan Bek Shul, in the Jewish quarter of the Old City.

He claims that the project is underway and is budgeted for 40 million shekels.

Tiferet Yisrael's dome was about as prominent in Jerusalem's skyline as the Hurva was before Jordan destroyed those and every other synagogue in the Old City in 1948. In fact, as Abu Sha'ar warns, the dome of the rebuilt Tiferet Yisrael will be taller than the new Hurva synagogue dome, at 26 meters. This would, of course, help "Judaize" the eternal Jewish capital, which is the worst thing that can occur to the Arab mind.

He also complained about the tens of thousand of visitors that the rebuilt Hurva has been receiving.

I can find nothing about this plan anywhere. A moribund two-year old Facebook group was pushing that cause.

But even evil people can give blessings to the Jewish people, so let's hope that Dr. Abu Sha'ar's words help spur the project along! Where can I donate?

Interior of old Tiferet Yisrael

As it was being destroyed by Jordan

The ruins today

UNRWA workers in the West Bank have been on strike since October 14th - and that fact has been completely absent from UNRWA's website the entire time.

Not even a word about a UNRWA worker who went on a hunger strike and is now being hospitalized.

Even though UNRWA is paid for with donor money from throughout the world (mostly the US and EU), it apparently does not feel that it has the obligation to tell the whole truth to its donors. The strike is well-known in the territories, of course, but the world media has been largely silent on the matter.

So garbage is piling up, schools are closed, medical clinics are closed, and food distribution has stopped in all the so-called "refugee" camps.

The residents generally support the strikers, who are demanding pay from a previous strike.

Most of these camps are in PA-administered areas. Even though UNRWA provides services in the camps, they do not administer them. Which means that the PA can easily send in people to pick up the garbage and take up some of the slack from the strike. Moreover, the PA could have created a plan years ago to close the camps altogether and mainstream the residents into the areas it has control over.

Most governments' major responsibility is to take care of their citizens.

Instead, the PA is silent, letting the trash piles grow and letting the poor people get more and more miserable. Because if the PA would take actual responsibility for its citizens who live in the camps, UNRWA would happily divert resources elsewhere - and the PA is more concerned with money than with the well-being of its people.

So we have a UNRWA that is trying to hush up the whole situation.

And a supposedly institution-building government that refuses to lift a finger to help people under its control.

And a world that is utterly clueless about the dysfunctional situation of a quasi-state that threatens to unilaterally declare its independence but that refuses to act in even the most minimal way as a state should - to protect and support its people.

The reason is the same as always - if the dynamics of how Palestinian Arab leaders are willfully negligent towards their own people were known, the world might realize that Israel is not the problem. And that piece of information is the one that all the parties agree must be kept absolutely hidden.

"Arafat was poisoned - but not by food"

From YNet:

Yasser Arafat's personal bodyguard said the Palestinian leader did not die as a result of poison injected in his food.

"We all ate what he ate," 47-year-old Imad Abu Zaki told the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat in an interview published Sunday, a few days after the sixth anniversary of Arafat's death.

The bodyguard, who accompanied Arafat from 1988 until his death at a military hospital in France on November 11, 2004, said, "It is widely assumed that he was poisoned, but not with the use of food, because we ate together with the Rais. We would eat from the same food 45 minutes before he did.

"Once, a foreign guest brought the Rais a box of chocolates. He (guest) took out a piece of chocolate and served it to the Rais. I immediately took the box and handed the pieces of chocolate to all the bodyguards who were present. I did the same with all boxes of chocolate, sweets or any other foods we received as gifts – we all shared the food and gave it out to the bodyguards," he recalled.

However, Abu Zaki did not rule out the possibility that Arafat was poisoned. "It is safe to assume that he was poisoned, but not with food," the bodyguard said in the interview.

Which can only mean one thing: it really was a high-tech Joo-Ray device that killed Arafat!

Are you ready for some (American) football?

From CNN, hat tip Israelli:

The webpage of the Israel Football League is here.

Turks only know lies about Mavi Marmara

From Calire Berlinski in Standpoint Magazine, quoted by Michael Totten:

In May, a ship full of civilians — but not full of humanitarian aid — sailed from Turkey to join the Free Gaza flotilla. Having warned the Mavi Marmara that it would not be allowed to breach the blockade, Israeli commandos raided the ship. In the clash, nine Turks were killed. I've lived in Istanbul for five years and I've spoken to hundreds of Turks about these events. A Turkish documentary filmmaker and I have filmed some of these conversations. Something will immediately strike the viewer: the Turkish people have no idea what happened. This is because the most basic facts about and surrounding these events have not been reported in Turkey.

In billing the flotilla as a humanitarian mission, the IHH — the expedition's Islamist sponsor — exploited the Turks' Achilles heel: their generosity. Turks think of themselves as charitable and compassionate, as indeed they are. They genuinely believe, because this is what has been reported here, that the Palestinians are starving. They know almost nothing about the reasons for the blockade. They believe that the ship was on a humanitarian mission and nothing but a humanitarian mission. They are bewildered that anyone would have interfered with such a noble-minded endeavour. They do not know that there were no humanitarian supplies on the Mavi Marmara. They do not know the most rudimentary facts about Hamas. As one man said: "These are elected people. It's not like they took over by force, via a coup."

Almost no one in Turkey understands any language but Turkish. If this obviously thoughtful man was unaware that indeed, Hamas took over precisely by force, via a coup, it is because he had no way to know. The men and women to whom we spoke were astonished when we told them that Israeli officials had invited the ship to disembark at Ashdod and deliver the aid overland. But they were not disbelieving — and importantly, when we told them this, it changed their view. Many spontaneously said that they knew they could not trust what they heard in the news, that the situation confused them and that something about the story just didn't sound right.

Michael Totten adds:

A new Turkish film may make the big lie all but permanent in the minds of millions of Turkish people. Kurtlar Vadisi Filistin, or Valley of the Wolves: Palestine, is the sequel to the notorious Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, which was released in 2006. The first installment portrays American soldiers massacring civilians at an Iraqi wedding party and harvesting the internal organs of prisoners to sell to Israelis.

The trailer for the second installment begins with an obviously false portrayal of the Mavi Marmara incident, and a later scene shows Israeli soldiers shooting more than a dozen handcuffed prisoners in the back.

The film’s main character is a Turkish special agent who sets out to avenge those killed on the boat by assassinating the Israeli commander in charge at the time, who is cartoonishly outfitted with an eye patch. “Our hero acts for the rights of the oppressed,” says Zübeyr Sasmaz, the director. “We’re talking about things people don’t want to hear,” says Necati Şaşmaz, one of the actors. “Up until now we have seen only Western heroes such as Rambo and James Bond. For the first time in the history of cinema there is an undefeatable protagonist from the Middle East.”

It’s too bad the story is based on a lie.

If someone knows Turkish, it might be very worthwhile to subtitle or voiceover one of the videos showing the noble, charitable IHH members beating Israeli soldiers.

(h/t Zvi and IsraelMuse)

Hamas tunnel collapse - in northern Gaza - kills two kids

Palestine Press Agency reports that two boys, aged 11 and 12, were killed when a tunnel collapsed underneath them. A 20-year old man was wounded. (The boys weren't digging or smuggling, they just happened to be above the cavity when it gave way.)

But this tunnel was not a smuggling tunnel in Rafah. It was dug underneath a "refugee" camp in Jabalya, in northern Gaza.

Which means that it is either a bunker that Hamas is building under civilian houses and buildings, or that it is a tunnel meant to go to Israel to attack Jews.

Either way, you can be sure that no human rights agencies will notice or condemn Hamas.

Meanwhile, a 20-year old woman was killed by two gunshots in central Gaza, but officials are not calling it an honor crime.