Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 03, 2010

Administrivia open thread

Thanks to all who wished me a Mazel Tov!

In the Watcher'sCouncil this week, I was nominated twice, for Iran used Red Crescent to send agents and weapons to Hezbollah and UN “threatened” CBC reporter; Hezbollah uses hospital for comm HQ. Unfortunately, both entries tied for fifth place, but it is still nice to be doubly nominated by the Council in a single week! (The winners are pretty good, too :) )

I don't know how many people will attend next week's EoZ Z-Vent Off Broadway Extravaganza Hasbara 2.0 Live One-Person Show Featuring the First Annual Hasby Awards, but in the Facebook invitation there are 34 people who say they will attend and 71 "maybes." And others will show up who didn't receive the FB invite. So it will not be a bad crowd for such an event; from the similar events I've attended held on college campuses and the videos I've seen this is quite respectable. Especially considering that no one knows if I even know how to speak to begin with. Of course, I want more people to attend....Yeshiva University, Tuesday night, 8 PM. Free food to attract the fence-sitters!

I noted earlier that Elecronic Intifada gets donations to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to run their website, even though it gets fewer readers than mine. Commenter anarchofascist notes that Mondoweiss just was offered a $20,000 matching grant. I guess it pays to bash Israel - literally. None of that Zionist money that Helen Thomas is whining about has managed to filter down to me.

Statcounter says I've averaged about 4500 pageviews a day this past week. That is about 1000 higher than usual.

Here's an open thread for me to catch my breath.

Have a great weekend. Not sure how I'm going to manage to shoe-horn blogging into it...

A Mazel Tov at EoZ HQ

The beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon is engaged to be married.

So things will be even more hectic around here than usual.

And to think, it seems so recent that she a typical but quite articulate teenage blogger, with insightful and thoughtful posts (and a tiny amount of teenage angst.)

You may also want to check out her unforgettable guest post here a couple of years later.

And, a bit after that, my readers actually saw her wearing a beach-towel burqa.

Life hurtles on....

EI vs. EoZ

The anti-Israel, anti-semitic Electronic Intifada website, which has been seen this week to have received funds from the Dutch government, says it had a budget of $149,208 in 2008 and $183,760 in 2009.

It's Alexa ranking is currently at 237,143.

Elder of Ziyon's Alexa ranking is higher at 219,966, a bit better than this well-funded site run by at least four people. The EoZ budget for this past year has been approximately $19.

Maybe I should start asking European governments to fund me.

Sarah Palin's Chanukah message

From Sarah Palin's Facebook page:

As Jewish families all over the country and the world come together to celebrate the festival of lights – the miracle of one day’s worth of oil lasting for eight – we are reminded that this holiday is also about the miracle of taking a stand against impossible odds, surviving existential threats, and staying true to one’s values and beliefs through it all.

More than two thousand years after the Maccabees rebelled against their oppressors and reconsecrated their Holy Temple, the Jewish people continue to face threats to their existence, and they continue to persevere and overcome great odds. Today we should all recommit ourselves to ensuring that the miracle of a Jewish state endures forever. The dreidel is one of the most familiar symbols of Hanukkah, with Hebrew letters on it representing the phrase Nes Gadol Haya Sham – “a great miracle happened there.” Indeed a great miracle is still happening there. Todd and I wish the Jewish community a very Happy Hanukkah.

Whether or not you think she is qualified to run the country, there is no doubt that Palin is a deep friend of Israel. These words do not ring hollow as some politicians' messages do.

More evidence at least some of the Carmel fires are arson

From JPost:

Coastal District Police Commander Roni Attia said Friday that two arson suspects were apprehended in the North, near Kiryat Bialik.

The suspects were allegedly attempting to rekindle a fire in the forest with the use of Molotov cocktails. Police are not connecting the arsonists at this stage to the massive fires in the Carmel and Atlit but rather to the fire which broke out earlier at the Tzur Shalom area of Kiryat Bialik.

Attia added that arson is suspected in a number of separate fires, including Kiryat Bialik and Kiryat Tivon.

Earlier on Friday, police found a bike, a bag, and a wig inside near a fire center in Tzur Shalom, leading them to believe that the fire was caused by an arsonist or arsonists.

Police Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the Post that there are 3 fire centers - Tzur Shalom, the Atlit - Tirat Hacarmel area, and the Carmel hillsides. In one, Tzur Shalom, north of Haifa, "we located suspicious items pointing to arson. As for the other two major fires, it is too early and the incidents are to large in scale to know their causes at this stage." The death toll in the fires rose to 42 on Friday, according to Army Radio.

Now, who would want to do something like that?

Could it be the types of people who celebrate it?

(h/t Israel Matzav)

UPDATE: Commenter Jed says

Update from Israeli TV:
Fire investigator says fire source was from burning garbage.
Suspicion that more fires set up by gang, 2 suspects from Daliat el Carmel arrested by police.

Erekat creates "The Zionist Grinch Who Stole Palestinian Arab Christmas"

From Ma'an:

"The Israel Ministry of Tourism has hijacked Christmas for political purposes," Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erakat said Thursday, denouncing the occupying nation for hosting a pre-Christmas reception in East Jerusalem.

The reception, set for 6 December, will see diplomats, heads of churches and other community members gather in the city to mark the start of the holiday season.

"This is yet another display of the lengths that Israel is willing to go to distract the world from its policies of dispossession against the Palestinian people," the official said in a statement, on the one hand hosting events to celebrate the Christian holiday, while on the other continuing to "sever the ancient link between Jerusalem and Bethlehem through the construction of the Wall and the expansion of settlements surrounding Bethlehem, including Har Homa and Gilo."

The isolation of Jerusalem from its West Bank neighbors, separating holy sites, families and religious networks was condemned by Erekat, who said "we seek an open Jerusalem as the capital of two states, where free access to all holy sites is guaranteed."

In contrast, he added, "Israel continues its plan to make Jerusalem an exclusive Jewish city."

Yes, those wily Israelis are making Jerusalem exclusively Jewish by holding Christmas events there.

And look how much Erekat is decrying the supposed severing "the ancient link between Jerusalem and Bethlehem" when his entire political career is based on severing the ancient Jewish link between Hebron, Shechem, Bet El, Shiloh, and even the Western Wall from the rest of the Jewish state.

Turks, others send help to Israel. Some PalArabs upset.

From YNet:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with other world leaders for sending planes and firefighting equipment to Israel in order to assist the battle against the blaze consuming its northern region.

Netanyahu spoke at a special Cabinet meeting called in the wake of flailing efforts to extinguish the flames. Netanyahu also thanked other world leaders, including Bulgaria's prime minister and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who sent "a very large Russian plane, perhaps the largest of its kind in the world"

"The plane is on its way here, and will arrive in the afternoon," Netanyahu said, also thanking Egypt, Azerbaijan, Spain, Croatia, France, and Jordan for their offers. "I think this constitutes an unprecedented response to our appeal for international aid," he added.

Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey) adds:

Putting aside recent tensions to lend a hand, 10 Turkish rescue personnel and two airplanes carrying firefighting equipment arrived at the Ramat David airbase in Haifa at 10.30 a.m. Friday, Anatolia news agency reported. The planes are aiding firefighting efforts in coordination with Israeli authorities.

Israeli officials said some 100 firefighters from Bulgaria have arrived as well as forces from Jordan and Greece. Fire extinguishing planes were on their way from Britain and Cyprus as well as aid from the United States, Russia, Egypt, Spain, Azerbaijan and Romania.

Commenter Yerushalimey muses:

I wonder, if Israel was not known for sending aid to crises all over the world, if less foreign assistance would be forthcoming. Honestly, I am surprised and grateful we are receiving ANY assistance.

It is indeed one of the small slivers of good news from this disaster.

And while Palestine Press Agency says that Palestinian Authority civil defense personnel are also being sent to help, and there are reports that Jordan as sent aid as well, other Palestinian Arabs are not so thrilled at the idea of Arabs helping Israel.

Palestine Today, which is aligned with Islamic Jihad, has an op-ed slamming any Arab governments who offer to help Israel deal with this crisis.

Our advice to the kind-hearted Arab countries is to think carefully before venturing to help [the Zionist] entity, which flows into lava for day and night on our unarmed people, whether in the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip. Here we have to tell you how happy our Palestinian people are at the killing 40 Zionist wardens burned to death.

The assistance to the entity is not a crime but treason to the blood of all the martyrs, and therefore assure them, that many lessons will be learned from this "divine fire", and the lesson that the most prominent in the demise of this entity is no more a matter of time.

Helen Thomas gets memo, changes "Jew" to "Zionist"

Helen Thomas, speaking in front of a group in Dearborn, kept up and expanded her anti-semitic diatribes - but this time she was careful to substitute the keyword "Zionist" to shield herself from truthful accusations that she is anti-semitic.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Striking a defiant tone, journalist Helen Thomas, 90, said today she absolutely stands by her controversial comments about Israel made earlier this year that led to her resignation. But she stoked additional controversy with new remarks, claiming that "Zionists" control U.S. foreign policy and other American institutions. The local Jewish community strongly condemned her remarks.

Thomas, who grew up in Detroit the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, was in Dearborn today for an Arab Detroit workshop on anti-Arab bias. The Free Press asked her about her comments, which critics have said were anti-Israel.

"I paid the price for that," said Thomas, a longtime White House correspondent. "But it was worth it, to speak the truth."

"The Zionists have to understand that's their country, too. Palestinians were there long before any European Zionists."

Thomas claimed that "You can not say anything (critical) about Israel in this country."
In a speech that drew a standing ovation, Thomas talked about "the whole question of money involved in politics."

"We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where there mouth is…We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way."

Asked by the Free Press how she would respond to those who say she's anti-Semitic, Thomas said:
"I'd say I'm a Semite, What are you talking about? Who are you?"

Ah, the last refuge for Jew-haters - false semantics.

(h/t Yid With Lid)

"Moderate" Jordanians love terrorists more than anyone else does

A new Pew Global Attitudes poll asks Muslim citizens in various countries what their opinion of different terror groups were.

The results show that Jordanian Muslims love them more than anyone else.

The questions were about Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda:

The highest favorable ratings for Hezbollah and Hamas came from Jordanians - 55% and 60%, respectively - and Jordan also scored the second highest ratings for al-Qaeda. This is in contrast with how the government feels and acts.

On the flip side, Turkish Muslims are not happy with Muslim terrorists at all - while their government supports, at least tacitly, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Jordan's numbers spell real trouble. At worst, it means that Jordan could be a bullet away from becoming another Muslim Brotherhood-style theocracy, one which would not honor any existing peace treaties with the despised Jews.

(h/t Zach)

Muslim.Net forum cheering burnt Israelis

The mujahid-loving members of Muslim.Net message forums are happily celebrating some forty Israelis being burned to death.

They are publishing explicit photographs of burned bodies (warning: very graphic) and sprinkling in liberal doses of "Allahu Akbar." They are also implying that this was a case of arson: one page says "The Mujahideen said the brother to sneak into the land."

Their happiness is palpable. It is beyond disgusting.

(h/t O)

The other Syrian nuclear facilities

From ISIS:

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung has reported the names of three cities in Syria which are near sites suspected of being functionally related to a destroyed covert reactor construction project. These suspect sites are located near Masyaf, the village of Marj as-Sultan near Damascus, and Iskandariyah (see figure 1).

ISIS has learned that the site seen in Figure 2 is the suspect site located near Masyaf. This site is located approximately six kilometers northeast of Masyaf city center ¹ in Syria (see figures 3 and 4), and appears to be comprised of storage buildings. Aside from what could be a line of berms or trenches (see figure 5), the site does not appear to have many security measures visible in commercial satellite imagery. The entire site, however, is situated in a ravine between two hills and buildings at the site are located along the base of the hills—a common method for providing general protection and isolation. This could indicate that the site is a military depot/storage facility. Hundreds of items can also be seen stored in rows out in the open (see figures 6 and 7). It is unclear what these items are.

Syria was secretly building a reactor in the Dair Alzour region along the Euphrates River with assistance from North Korean trading companies. After acquiring incriminating ground photographs taken inside the reactor building, Israeli jets bombed the facility in a pre-dawn raid in September of 2007. In April of 2008, member states provided information on the reactor project to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as the locations of three other sites in Syria suspected of being functionally related to the reactor. ISIS has learned that there is an additional site that the IAEA is interested in visiting, bringing the total to four sites. The IAEA has repeatedly asked Syria for access to these sites, but Syria has so far refused.

ISIS learned during the April 2008 briefings by US government officials that some U.S. intelligence information indicated that one of the suspect sites might be related to uranium processing. These sites could also have served as storage facilities for equipment or materials, such as graphite, en route to the Al Kibar reactor construction site. A senior official close to the IAEA said in an interview on November 16, 2009 that the IAEA had received information that showed that equipment was seen coming and going between the reactor and these three sites. Furthermore, one of these sites could have been used as a means to store uranium intended for the reactor. It is unclear if these sites also include ones where Syria is suspected of storing portions of the bombed reactor building resulting from the Israeli airstrike.

The village of Marj as-Sultan is located on the eastern outskirts of Damascus. ² ISIS learned that the suspect site near the village of Marj as-Sultan has security elements visible in satellite imagery. ISIS assesses that Iskandariyah refers to a small town north of Hamah, Syria. ³

The IAEA has for over two years requested from Syria access to these sites suspected of being related the Al Kibar site. Syria has refused to cooperate with the IAEA, and it continues to dodge the IAEA’s questions. It Syria continues not to cooperate beyond the upcoming Board of Governors meeting, the Director General should call for a special inspection in Syria.

All the photos are at the ISIS site.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung story, in German, is here.

Deadly Carmel fire: Arson? (updated)

UPDATE: The Muqata is liveblogging the fire.

The fire that raced through the Carmel forest this morning, killing at least 40 people, is an unbelievable tragedy.

But was it arson?

From the Montreal Gazette quoting the Daily Telegraph:

Initial reports suggested that the fire had started in four different areas, but police said it was too soon to presume that arson was the cause of the blaze.

One thing is almost certain: Arab terrorist supporters are keenly interested in something that could so easily kill dozens of Jews. And during this drought that Israel is going through, it is way too easy to imagine what might happen next.

UPDATE 2: Guess who the Palestinian Arab blame for the fire? Their eternal bogeymen, the "settlers!"

They don't quite explain the logic, but I'm sure it goes something like "the settlers set the fire hoping to kill scores of people just so they could blame it on us."

The fact that a PalArab official even sees a reason to blame Israelis for something that could have started naturally is already an indication that he is trying to misdirect. Wonder why.
(h/t Zach)

UPDATE 3: From Jed in the comments:

According to photos by a pilot the fire started at one place, Osafia. Fire trucks were very late. Possibly they were burning garbage.

Honest Reporting looks at wire service photo bias -Flotilla edition

An excellent report, and the first of a series.

A couple of new Wikileaks

From Ha'aretz:

The Irish government has acted to limit transfers of American weapons to Israel and Iraq through Shannon Airport in the wake of public outrage after the Second Lebanon War, an American diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks reveals.

After the Second Lebanon War, the Israel Defense Forces needed to restore its depleted ammunition stocks, but the ambassador's cable indicates that the Irish government has been making it increasingly difficult for American weapons shipments to Israel to pass through its airport.

The cable, sent from the Dublin embassy in September 2006, says that "although supportive of continued U.S. military transits at Shannon Airport, the Irish Government has informally begun to place constraints on U.S. operations at the facility, mainly in response to public sensitivities over U.S. actions in the Middle East."

According to the ambassador, "Segments of the Irish public ... see the airport as a symbol of Irish complicity in perceived U.S. wrongdoing in the Gulf/Middle East." He said the Irish government "has recently introduced more cumbersome notification requirements for equipment-related transits in the wake of the Lebanon conflict."

And from WSJ:

Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables provide new details on the U.S. assessment of how Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps has promoted Tehran's influence in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The demise of archenemy Saddam Hussein, with whom Tehran fought an eight-year war in the 1980s, presented the Iranians with an unprecedented opportunity, and they appear to have exploited it from Day One.

The leadership of the Qods Force—the Guards' paramilitary and espionage arm—"took advantage of the vacuum" in the aftermath of the fall of Mr. Hussein's regime to begin sending operatives into Iraq when "little attention was focused on Iran," according to an April 2009 dispatch from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The cable was part of a trove of classified U.S. diplomatic communications made public this week by WikiLeaks.

(h/t Joel)