Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Roger Cohen goes hick-huntin'

From Roger Cohen in the NYT:

I decided to check the pulse of a resurgent conservative America at the Kumback Café. The Kumback, established 1926, is a cozy, memorabilia-filled joint that sits opposite the courthouse in downtown Perry [Oklahoma], population 5,230.

Things work like this at the Kumback: The guys, average age about 80, arrive around 8 a.m. and get talking on “the whole gamut of life”; the girls, average age too indelicate to print, gather later at a horse-shoe shaped table toward the back. Ken Sherman, 86 and spry, explained: “We’ve got to come here every day to find out what’s going on. And by the time we leave we forget.”

I asked Paul Morrow, a whippersnapper at 71, how things were going. “There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law,” he said. “We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous.”

You might not expect Shariah, a broad term encompassing Islamic religious precepts, to be a priority topic at the Kumback given that there’s not a Muslim in Perry and perhaps 30,000, or less than one percent of the population, in all Oklahoma. And you’d be wrong.

Jeffrey Goldberg summarizes it as "A very good Roger Cohen column on the irrational fear of Sharia, which the people who fear it most couldn't define if their lives depended on it."

While Cohen makes a reasonable point that the danger of Sharia law to Oklahoma is pretty much nil and that it is being used as a shorthand to exploit people's bigotry against Muslims, it is equally wrong to dismiss the issue of Sharia as flippantly - and as condescendingly - as Cohen does.

I don't think that Sharia needs to be outlawed in the West. It has a place, and that place is as a method of private arbitration between Muslim parties who agree to be bound by the decision of the religious judges - as long as that decision does not go against secular law. So, for example, if a shopkeeper has a dispute with his customer and both agree to go to Islamic arbitration that would use Sharia law in its decision, the American court can accept that decision as it would any other arbitration - as long as no one's hands are going to be chopped off. Agreed-upon third party arbitration, after all, is why it is legal for TV programs like " Judge Judy" to exist. Any decision needs to be reviewed and approved by a secular court, and there is great benefit in taking pressure off of the court system.

Safeguards have to be built in so that no party is coerced into accepting an Islamic decision process, such as a woman in a divorce case, but the possibility for abuse is not enough reason to throw out the system altogether.

Cohen's mistake, however, is in not considering how Sharia is not simply a personal legal code but it is intended as an all-encompassing system of universal laws in the international arena as well. Sharia as practiced in Iran or Saudi Arabia affects foreign policy, it affects how wars are fought, it affects whether Muslim nations accept international conventions - they still do not accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights precisely because they perceive it as being in conflict with Sharia.

There are fatwas issued daily against Western nations and leaders. Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen have been under death threats that are based on Sharia. Is this not a concern to anyone who holds by liberal, western ideals?

In addition, Sharia is also used as a means to suppress freedom of expression, women's rights and an entire slew of other sacred liberal principles in a number of countries. It is entirely possible that Islamic law, as understood by hundreds of millions, mandates not only the destruction of Israel but also the conquest of Spain and other "Muslim" portions of Europe. It is very shortsighted to dismiss the desire of Islamic fundamentalists to expand Sharia law as greatly as possible worldwide.

Sharia does not distinguish between Islam as a personal religion and Islam as a geopolitical movement akin to communism or capitalism. This is not a danger to be dismissed so perfunctorily. Cohen, by deliberately looking for the most illiterate hicks he can find to show his moral superiority, is being disingenuous.

Bigotry against Muslims is wrong. But Cohen's unstated thesis is that if there are bigots who are against Sharia, then there must be nothing wrong with Sharia itself. This is a false and ultimately dangerous idea.

Another blow to Hamas/Fatah reconciliation

Hamas today sentenced three Fatah members to death for their role in killling a Hamas militant during the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza.

As the pro-Fatah Palestine Press notes, Hamas had killed some 700 Fatah members during the battles and none of the Hamas killers have been tried. On the other hand, it is not like the PA could do it if they wanted to.

Syria's lies and what the West can learn from them

From the New York Times:

Just a week after President Bashar al-Assad of Syria assured a top State Department official that his government was not sending sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah, the Obama administration lodged a confidential protest accusing Syria of doing precisely what it had denied doing.

“In our meetings last week it was stated that Syria is not transferring any ‘new’ missiles to Lebanese Hizballah,” noted a cable sent by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in February, using an alternative spelling for the militant group. “We are aware, however, of current Syrian efforts to supply Hizballah with ballistic missiles. I must stress that this activity is of deep concern to my government, and we strongly caution you against such a serious escalation.”

A senior Syrian Foreign Ministry official, a cable from the American Embassy in Damascus reported, flatly denied the allegation. But nine months later, administration officials assert, the flow of arms had continued to Hezbollah. According to a Pentagon official, Hezbollah’s arsenal now includes up to 50,000 rockets and missiles, including some 40 to 50 Fateh-110 missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and most of Israel, and 10 Scud-D missiles. The newly fortified Hezbollah has raised fears that any future conflict with Israel could erupt into a full-scale regional war.

A major worry was that Syria or Iran had provided Hezbollah with Fateh-110 missiles, with the range to strike Tel Aviv. (A United States government official said last week that the 40 to 50 missiles were viewed as especially threatening because they are highly accurate.) Israeli officials told American officials in November 2009 that if war broke out, they assumed that Hezbollah would try to launch 400 to 600 rockets at day and sustain the attacks for at least two months, the cables note.

In February, the White House announced that a new American ambassador would be sent to Syria after a five-year hiatus. The next day, William J. Burns, a State Department under secretary, met with the Syrian leader.

During the session, Mr. Burns repeated American concerns about weapons smuggling to Hezbollah, one dispatch noted. Mr. Assad replied that while he could not be Israel’s policeman, no “new” weapons were being sent to Hezbollah.

Soon after the meeting, though, a cable noted that the Americans received intelligence reports that the Syrians were about to provide Hezbollah with Scud-D missiles, which are based on North Korean technology. (Some recent intelligence reports conclude that the group has about 10 such missiles stored in a Syrian warehouse that Hezbollah uses, according to American officials. The Defense Intelligence Agency believes that two have probably been moved to Lebanon, according to the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.) The United States officials also worried about Hezbollah’s vow to avenge the death of Imad Mughniyah, a senior fighter killed in a 2008 car bombing the militant group said was the work of the Israelis.

In a classified cable in February, Mrs. Clinton directed the embassy to deliver a warning to Faisal al-Miqdad, the deputy foreign minister. “I know you are a strategic thinker, which is why I want to underscore for you that, from our perspective, your operational support for Hizballah is a strategic miscalculation that is damaging your long-term national interests.”

The Syrian official’s response was dismissive, according to an American cable. He denied that any weapons had been sent, argued that Hezbollah would not take military action if not provoked and expressed surprise at the stern American protest. The complaint, he said, “shows the U.S. has not come to a mature position (that would enable it) to differentiate between its own interests and Israel’s.”

This episode points to what is good about the State Department - and what is bad about it.

It is nice to see that the State Department is not quite as clueless as its public statements and actions seem to indicate. They know when Arabs leaders are lying; they know that Israel is not the major obstacle to peace; they know that Iran strikes more fear into Arab leaders' hearts than anything that the Jewish state could possibly do.

What is unclear from the Wikileaks so far is how that recognition of how Arab leaders think translates into concrete action. The State Department does not seem to understand the honor/shame dynamic at play in Arab culture, and especially how that culture can work to the West's advantage.

In the honor/shame culture of the Arab world, when someone does something wrong it is not a source of shame until it becomes public. And that shame is to be avoided at all costs.

The world of diplomacy, on the other hand, is dedicated to keeping the unsavory facts out of public view, with the aim of eventually being able to convince the other party to cooperate due to mutual interests, or in some cases a sort of quid pro quo.

This secret diplomatic world of only privately expressing outrage plays into the Arab honor/shame dynamic perfectly. Arab leaders have no fear that their duplicity will be exposed by Western diplomats and they have no incentive to modify their actions. If it remains hidden from view, it is not a source of embarrassment. On the contrary, misleading the other party is a proud tradition - the Arab side speaks the language of the souk where both sides are expected to lie in order to strike a deal, and the honor goes to the one who most skillfully manipulates the other using a combination of lies and false compliments.

From that perspective, Arabs have a big diplomatic advantage.

The Western diplomatic fear that relations would be damaged by publicizing Arab misdeeds is overriding the huge potential benefits of threatening to expose those very misdeeds - to publicly shame the Arab leadership. In this way the Arabs can be forced to play the diplomatic game on a level playing field, not one where they can lie with impunity without any public consequence.

After all, even as this Syrian intrigue was happening, the US was preparing to return an ambassador to Syria - showing a public diplomacy completely at odds with what was really happening. Any way you slice it, this was a huge diplomatic victory for Syria and proof that its policy of lying to the US has no real consequences outside of hidden diplomatic outrage, which is meaningless to those within the shame culture.

Diplomats have a huge weapon in their hands - the truth - and they need to start using that weapon a lot more than they do today.

Morning links

The Canadian media finally noticed the story of the University of Toronto student who wrote her incredibly stupid master's thesis on the topic of how Jews are oppressive white people who use the Holocaust to justify their racism. (h/t ehwhy)

Israeligirl interviews Professor Itamar Rabinovich, former Israseli ambassador to the US, about the so-called "peace process."

Commenter Vandoren points us to a BBC video of a debate last March between Hamas and Fatah. It is worth viewing if only to see how sick Arabs are of both Hamas and Fatah, as well as how casually both sides - and the audience - justify terror attacks as a legitimate and legal right.

A recent HuffPo piece from Qanta Ahmed about how ordinary Jews are genuinely afraid of extinction - and how Muslims who genuinely desire peace need to understand that. (h/t Małgorzata Koraszewska, who translated it into Polish.)

Now Israel-haters in Spain are disrupting sporting events featuring teenage Israeli girls.

A Jew goes undercover as a neo-Nazi and gets a 97-year old former SS officer into admitting his participation in the Holocaust.

Latest member of Zionist Attack Zoo, illustrated (updated)

Yesterday I mentioned the story that some Egyptians were blaming Israel for the shark attack that killed an German tourist in the Red Sea. This is an addition to the Zionist Attack Zoo, which has over the years featured dogs, pigs, wolves, lions, rats and sheep.

Blogger and author Chas Newkey-Burden found a great way to illustrate the story:

Incidentally, Chas Newkey-Burden has written a biography of Justin Bieber - who just announced that he will perform in Israel in April.

UPDATE: It looks like the story is inspiring others as well:

(h/t Dave)

UPDATE 2: Backseat Blogger reminds me of the International Zionist Attack Squirrels of 2007.
Not to mention the Zionist Spy Pigeons.

New T-shirts, other items at Elder store: "Deal with it"

Hasbara Rule #8, that I will be speaking about tonight at Yeshiva University, is "Be proud and be loud."

People respect people who have pride. We should ensure that we always treat the word "Zionist" as a compliment. Be unapologetic to show your unwavering support for Israel.

As I was reviewing that slide I realized that I should illustrate it better, so I just created a new set of items at the Elder Store:

Malcolm Hoenlein talks about UNESCO, Wikileaks, more

Another terrific speech at the Bet El dinner on Sunday night:

The dinner is videotaped every year - but I can never find the videos online.

So I decided to make my own video of the event.

One of the points I will be making at the Hasbara 2.0 event I am giving tomorrow is that cameras are cheap, and YouTube is free. And if a terrific speech is made to a roomful of people, if it doesn't end up online, it might as well never have happened.

Maybe a thousand people were at the event. But in the couple of hours it took me to edit and upload the video, it is now available to millions. Pretty simple math, and great bang for the buck if you want to help defend Israel.

Krazy Ken O'Keefe unmasked - by fellow moonbats

Palestine Think Tank has a long, almost unreadable moonbat piece that takes apart the farce that became the Road to Hope convoy that reached Gaza last month, under the leadership of Ken O'Keefe.

Here's part of it, dealing with O'Keefe himself:

In the footnotes are excerpts of three brief statements from persons who had known Ken, not when he was in the USA Marines, (which often has discipline where the entire troop “pays for” the mistakes or disobedience of one soldier, but he is no longer in the military). The first is Greta Berlin, who worked with him on one of the first (successful) flotillas to Gaza. The second is from Sasha Crow, who came into contact with him while volunteering in the Human Shields project to prevent the Coalition bombing of places in Iraq. The third is from Felicity Arbuthnot, human rights worker and unembedded journalist specialised in the Middle East who was in Iraq at the time. These are statements from activists who know him well by firsthand experience on the ground (and not on tours speaking about himself). In the footnotes are the extended statements. All are worth reading to understand the “reputation” with persons involved in concrete organisation of actions, but here is reprinted only an excerpt.[ix]

*****
Greta Berlin: Ken was on our first trip (FGM) in August, 2008 … During the entire voyage, he was obstreperous, obnoxious and, finally, dangerous to all of us. He threatened some of the activists with bodily damage. If you've seen him, you know he is capable. Finally, he tried to commit mutiny on the Free Gaza during the night we were traveling to Gaza with no outside communication and our ship's captain sick.

Two or three of us put our feet down and said 'no'. He did not have paperwork to be a captain, and he is not a captain of anything except a small fishing boat once in Hawaii. He did not seem to comprehend that, if Israel had stopped us, and we had no real captain with papers proving that, he would put us all at risk. Instead he screamed obscenities, threatened several men on board and told me he'd get even with me.

Once we arrived in Gaza, we were relieved that he was not coming back with us. We have had nothing to do with him since.
*****

Unlike the three human rights activists above, the vast majority of people, including this writer, came to learn about Ken O’Keefe for the first time after the Israeli Massacre on the Mavi Marmara, part of the Freedom Flotilla at the end of May 2010. Many of us had seen his Internet reports of the brutal beating he receieved by the Israeli police in detention, along with photos of a badly bloodied face and refusal to wash himself. Those of us who know Israeli officers and soldiers beat Palestinians and do not reserve particular care for activists either were once again thoroughly disgusted, and did not for a moment doubt the account. However, it does appear peculiar that this is the only activist who had the same thing happen, head-bashing, TWICE. As a matter of fact, it is almost gleaned fact for fact by a similar account of his, with frontal wound, reported in 2004, but never mentioned successively.

O'Keefe said: "I was beaten and put in shackles and then had my head bashed into the wall which caused a concussion and brusing. I responded by saying to him, 'makes you feel big does it, little man?' He retaliated by pulling out his penis." http://www.beirut.indymedia.org/ar/2004/06/1426.shtml

Yet, there were odd inconsistencies about his treatment at the hands of the Israelis that this paper cannot properly address. Why did he not have a bruised or cut face in the Al Jazeera video a few days later and where did he get that powerful shout if two days before his wife wrote a press statement claiming that he could only speak in a whisper due to the pressure on his throat? In the same letter we see that he was denied a laywer but a few paragraphs down we are hearing about his lawyer’s advice?

How come the IHH report of the raid does not mention his name and its accounts of the disarming of weapons does not match his own in any way? How come no one has come forward to state that they were the brother who had assisted in his heroic deed? Why does the number of Israelis he managed to disarm levitate (in Salem-News, this week we find out it was not two but three)? Why was he not called by any investigative commission by any side at all to testify, if his involvement was so important and he directly had handled Israeli commandos? Why did he respond to the BBC Hardtalk journalist that the deaths on the Mavi Marmara were definitely “worth it” and why does the discourse of it always centre around his deeds and the martyrs themselves are never mentioned by name but are part of his storytelling to prove that he “saw” so many things in great detail with his own eyes? We invite people to look at all of those things and see if it was the beginning of a “survivor” branding which would be a desirable thing to earn the quick adulation and donations of others who share the same outrage at the atrocity of the massacre. And, as you will see, donations towards his own projects and personal needs become a big part of his activism, indeed, currently, a “free trade” company with Gaza (as if they can actually compete in the market!) accompanied by a resistance flotilla all run by him is the new way for activists take part economically. He is asking for large 3 BR or more flats in London for its operation, for attorneys, accountants, marketing experts… all of them free or pro-bono of course (though he states it is about free trade, not charity or even fair trade, and the call is for “investments” he seeks everything free of charge as if he himself is a Gazan). He does this based on his reputation as a survivor. It should be mentioned that Turkish friends of mine also on the Mavi Marmara ship and who were raising funds for it for many months, have written to me about it and refer to themselves as “passengers”, not heroes or survivors.

And then we would also ask people to question why on one of his many autobiographies we see him describe himself this way: “Ex US Marine who renounced US citizenship on March 1 2001. Now holding Irish, Hawaiian and Palestinian citizenship.” Despite the fact that Hawaii is in the USA and the current USA President was born there, it is simply untrue. He did not renounce his citizenship, at least, his request was never fulfilled and he in fact utilises the primary US document, its passport. As a matter of fact, being a US citizen (whether he likes it or not), allows him travel privileges which he absolutely takes advantage of, including “rights” to travel in occupied Iraq. And thus, he finds it useful to continue to possess it.

[Ken O’Keefe] was forced under duress, to request a U.S. passport at the American Consulate in Rome on February 12, 2003. This request became necessary after the Turkish Government unlawfully deported of Mr. O’Keefe and thus prevented his peaceful transport through Turkey, on his way to Iraq to act as a Human Shield. Had Mr. O’Keefe not made his reluctant request he could have been denied the inherent right to travel to Iraq. [x]

Despite this being the most oft-repeated claim to his fame, only after his title as a “Mavi Marmara Survivor”, it is a lie. He is currently a US citizen and though we have seen videos of him burning US passports on several occasions (that is, he had more than one to burn, so he renews them), and as recently as September 2010 he was doing a self-promotional tour in the USA, in which he was travelling on his US passport, where activists had said part of these meetings involved money being collected for his “expenses”. It does appear, as a bare minimum, that declaring himself as having renounced his citizenship is outright misleading. At any rate, this “calling card” that differentiates him from all those who for some reason don’t disassociate themselves with the USA seems to attract people for some kind of appeal it undoubtably possesses, though this writer still has to figure out what that appeal might be. Also, being an ex-Marine (dishonourably discharged for steroids use), while not earning exciting acclaim in most of the world, is considered at least by other ex-Marines as a “plus” in activism, and this was the point made also in a video interview of Ken’s mother (yes, his mother) made by former embedded journalist in imperialist wars in the Middle East, another ex-Marine, Tim King of Salem-News, to which Ken contributes.

If Ken O'Keefe is so crazy that even the Free Gaza moonbats are slamming him, you know that he is nuts.

(h/t Harry)

Helen Thomas: Worse than Bigoted (Taranto)

From James Taranto in the Online Journal Best of the Web Today:

If your lifelong ambition is to win the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award from Detroit's Wayne State University, you might as well end it all now. Thomas's alma mater terminated the award Friday "after she made controversial remarks in Dearborn on Thursday," reports the Detroit Free Press.

Things move more slowly at the Society of Professional Journalists, whose website still advertises the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement and describes Thomas as "a living icon of journalism for her dogged pursuit of the truth in a career that has spanned almost 60 years." Thomas said on Thursday: "Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists." Apparently the truth outran her.

We asked SPJ if it plans to continue offering the award in light of Thomas's latest comments. The society's president, Hagit Limor, quickly got back to us by email. She wrote: "I am placing this item on the agenda for consideration at the next executive board meeting," which will be held Jan. 8.

Having finally managed to reach an SPJ executive--Limor's predecessor, Kevin Smith, stonewalled us six months ago--we asked Limor why the society decided to continue the award after Thomas's last eruption, in which she demanded that Israeli Jews go "home"--that is, that they leave their homes and emigrate to the countries whence their ancestors came. Limor replied: "We discussed the issue at our exec board meeting in July 2010. The majority believed this to be a one-time slip that didn't change Ms. Thomas's lifetime of service, which is what we were honoring."

It must be said that Thomas's comment about "Zionists" was taken out of context and made to look, in most news accounts, like a bigoted rant. It was that, but it was also something even more pernicious.

Read the whole thing.Taranto must be one of those "haters" that we've been talking about.

Fatah/Hamas conflict heating up again?

Yesterday, Hamas police broke into the house of Dr. Abdullah Abu Samhadana, a Fatah minister in Gaza, and left an arrest warrant (he wasn't home.) This was only the most recent of a series of arrests by Hamas in Gaza, which are usually mirrored by arrests of Hamas members in the West Bank by the PA.

This time, however, the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades released a statement threatening Hamas for these arrests, saying "Silence is no longer possible for the actions of Hamas against the sons of Fatah in Gaza, the latest being the storming of the house of fighter Abdullah Abu Samhadana. We in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades announce clearly that our silence is running thin."

The only problem is that the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades in Gaza has been decimated by Hamas, so it is probably an empty threat.

Ray Hanania a bit unclear on the concept of "free speech"

From UPI:

Journalist Helen Thomas ripped Wayne State University in Michigan for ending a diversity award in her name, saying the school mocked the First Amendment.

The university ended the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award last week after she made controversial remarks in Dearborn, Mich., about what she saw as Zionist control of American institutions. When announcing the end of the annual award, Wayne State said it pulled the prize and "strongly condemns the anti-Semitic remarks made by Helen Thomas."

Thomas told the Detroit Free Press in an article published Monday the leaders of Wayne State University "have made a mockery of the First Amendment and disgraced their understanding of its inherent freedom of speech and the press."

Thomas, 90, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, added, "The university also has betrayed academic freedom -- a sad day for its students."

Some Arab-American leaders joined in criticizing Wayne State's decision to pull the award named after Thomas, who grew up in Detroit and graduated from Wayne.

Who are the Arab American leaders who criticized the decision? The only one I can find so far by name is our old pal Ray Hanania, who called this blog an "often racistly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate site" and accused me of hypocrisy.

Let's talk about hypocrisy, Ray.

Hanania wrote the press release for the National Arab American Journalists Association criticizing Wayne State University:

The National Arab American Journalists Association Saturday denounced the decision to Wayne State University to terminate its annual Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award, calling the move a cowardly act surrendering to racist hate.

Wayne State University, which has a large American Arab student population located in the heart of the nation's largest American Arab community, took the action in the face of pressure from Pro-Israel hate organizations angry because Helen Thomas expressed an opinion criticizing the influence of Zionist American organizations on American Foreign Policy.

Thomas, the keynote speaker at a Diversity Conference hosted Dec. 3 by ArabDetroit.com and attended by more than 300 participants, criticized those who attacked her for challenging Israel's actions in Palestine. She repeated her belief that the Zionist political movement in the United States "controls" the White House, the Congress and American foreign policy.

You forgot about Hollywood and Wall Street, Ray! Why would you not mention that part, I wonder? Because it proves that Thomas was undoubtedly using anti-semitic stereotypes! Better to ignore that and pretend, in your lying press release, that she was simply stating anti-Zionist views.

"The topic of Zionism is irrelevant to this debate. The real issue is free speech. Is America a nation of Free Speech or has our free speech been compromised by oftentimes vicious and hateful special interest organizations," said NAAJA coordinator Ray Hanania.

"This is America and America is the nation that is supposed to be the country of Free Speech. Instead of cowering in the face of pressure and special interest lobbying groups, journalists especially and other mainstream organizations should allow an open and full public discussion of the issues, controversial or not."

Let's get this straight. No one stopped Helen Thomas from speaking her mind - in fact, it was refreshing that it confirmed what most of us knew from her summer outburst about her desire for Jews, and only Jews, to "get the hell out" of the Middle East. She is perfectly free to spout her hate, hate that Ray Hanania is defending so vehemently.

But, according to this self-appointed Arab American leader, Wayne State University does not have the right to pull an award named after her - a diversity award, no less. Their right to distance themselves from an old, unrepentant anti-semite is not a right that Hanania believes that they have. Their right to spend their own money as they see fit, and to choose who they decide is worthy of emulation - indeed, their own right to free speech is being denied by Ray Hanania!

Hanania knows a thing or two about hypocrisy; he is a living example of it.

People think of him as the model moderate Arab-American because he is against Hamas, and this points to the fundamental problem - an American of Arab descent who is considered oh-so-moderate is still someone who publicly defends explicit anti-semitism and who nonchalantly throws out libelous claims against others.

Ray is a liar and a hypocrite and I have documented it. Which is more than he has done when he labels other people and organizations to be "haters."

UPDATE: Once I'm calling Ray a liar, here's a doozy on one of his many websites:

The Palestinians are ready to accept Israel's hold on most of the settlements in exchange for final borders, but Israel's Netanyahu is dragging his feet and demanding more. Netanyahu's version of Give and Take: The Palestinians give everything and Israel takes everything.

OK, Ray, please find a single public statement made by any Palestinian Arab leader saying that they were willing to accept anything of the sort. You won't find it, for reasons you know very well - anyone who says that would be assassinated. Just because you believe it doesn't mean that the PLO, or Hamas, or anyone in a position to matter does.

On the contrary, as I have documented, Mahmoud Abbas has bragged - publicly - that the Palestinian Arab negotiating position has not changed one iota since 1988.

It is a lie, and you are a liar.

Should I waste my time to find more of your lies, Ray? Or have we already established a pattern?

Honest Reporting continues its series on photo bias

Honest Reporting just published part 2 of their important series on looking at how wire services bias their "news" photos with staging, captions and choice of photos - essentially, showing how photos can lie.

This part, called "Abusing Sport for Propaganda," looks at how wire services report on sports topics in the territories.

Attack of the Zionist Sharks

From HuffPo's Firas Al-Atraqchi:

A German tourist was mauled to death by a shark off Egypt's Red Sea coast Sunday, but if popular rumors on the street are to be believed, it was the Israelis who did it.

The attack came days after authorities claimed they had hunted and killed a shark believed to have injured three foreign tourists in previous incidents.

A popular account has it that Israel is "dumping" hungry sharks in the Red Sea in a bid to weaken Egypt's thriving tourism industry.

One tourism company operator who owns a small fleet of mini-buses that cater to Cairo's tourist spots told me that Israel wants Egypt to lose one of its most vital economic resources so that it can toe the line on the Palestinians.

A waiter at a popular cafe went further and theorized that the deadly fires in Northern Israel were God's way of punishing the Israelis for orchestrating the shark attacks.

"Look at how God has brought Israel to its knees as it asks the world - even Egypt - for help in putting out the fires," he said.

Blaming Israel for nearly every malady is not restricted to loony street conspiracies. Political analysts blame Israel for emboldening Nile Basin countries in Africa to dispute Egypt's share of the river, fueling diplomatic tensions between Cairo and regional capitals.

And in mid-August, when a series of power blackouts lefts millions of Egyptians sweltering in the summer sun, who did they blame? Some speculated that gas exports to Israel have left Egyptian power plants "undernourished".

On December 5, the Ministry of health reported that two women had died from the H1N1 and Avian flu viruses, respectively. No word yet on whether the birds flew in from Israel.

(h/t Matt)

Telegraph(UK) says Mossad behind Iranian scientist hit

From the Telegraph (UK):

Inside a secret bomb-proof building in a Tel Aviv suburb, which Google Earth does not include on its website, some of the occupants last week exchanged high-fives at their work stations. According to insiders, several sent each other the same message: The Chief’s Last Hit.

That “chief” was Meir Dagan, the outgoing head of Mossad. On his first day in office eight years ago, Mr Dagan had stood on a table in the organisation’s canteen and promised to support any operation against any of Israel’s enemies, with every means he had — legal or illegal.

He could allow his field agents to use prescribed nerve toxins, dumdum bullets and methods of killing that even the Russian or Chinese secret services would not use.

“We are like the hangman, or the doctor on Death Row who administers the lethal injection,” he said, as – by his own account – his agents listened, enthralled.

“Our actions are all endorsed by the state of Israel. When we kill we are not breaking the law. We are fulfilling a sentence sanctioned by the prime minister of the day.”

Earlier this month, “the chief” and a small team of specialists — analysts, weapons experts and psychologists – met in a conference room adjoining his office. With them was a brigadier-general, the head of the kidon. Named after the Hebrew word for bayonet, the kidon is a unit with 38 elite assassins at its disposal, including five women.

Operating out of a military base in the Negev Desert, all are in their twenties, and trained both as expert killers and as expert linguists: a number are fluent in Persian.

Last Monday, a thousand miles further east in the Iranian capital, Tehran, it appears that the kidon put both of those skills into practice, killing a top nuclear scientist and critically injuring a second as they drove through the rush-hour traffic.

Both were key figures in the Iranian nuclear programme, which Tehran insists is for civilian use only, but which Mossad has long perceived as the ultimate expression of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map”.

In one car was 45-year-old Majid Shahriyari, Iran’s leading expert in designing nuclear switches, a key part in the construction of nuclear weapons. Ali Alker Saler, an Iranian nuclear official, has described Shahriyari’s work as “only handling the big projects”.

The week before he was assassinated, the nuclear scientist had returned from North Korea. Intelligence sources in Seoul have suggested that Mr Shahriyari had gone to Pyongyang to discuss a co-production deal over nuclear centrifuges.

Claims have also emerged that on his flight home via Syria, a Mossad deep cover agent had spotted Mr Shahriyari at Damascus International Airport as he waited for a connecting flight to Tehran.

In another quarter of Tehran, another top nuclear scientist, Fareydoun Abbasi-Davani, was also on his way to work at his laboratory at Shahid Beheshti University.

A world expert on isotope separation, he was routinely driven around by a member of the Revolutionary Guards and, like Mr Shahriyari, had a phone link on his car to Tehran’s security headquarters. That, however, was the only protection the car had.

To assist in the attack, Persian-speaking Mossad deep cover agents have been steadily infiltrating Iran for years. How exactly they helped the hitmen flit in and out of the country remains a secret.

But clues to their methods have been provided by Hossein Sajedina, Tehran’s police chief. He confirmed last week how Shahriyari was killed and Abbasi-Davani seriously injured. “Two motorcyclists had approached their cars and attached bombs on the vehicle which exploded at once,” he said.

There have been unconfirmed reports that the bombs had suction pads fitted to them which had enabled them to be attached to the windscreen of each car.

Within hours Mr Sajedina had accused Mossad of the crimes. In Tel Aviv a government spokesman said Israel had not been involved.

When the news reached Mossad headquarters, the high-fives started, I am told. Yet the day the attack was carried out had also been chosen by “the chief” to formally announce his resignation.