Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Deputy PM: Iran's nuke program delayed three years

The United States and its allies have up to three years to curb Iran's nuclear programme, which has been set back by technical difficulties and sanctions, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday.

Saying Iran remained his government's biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes by Israel, saying he hoped U.S.-led action against Tehran would be successful.

"I believe that this effort will grow, and will include areas beyond sanctions, to convince the Iranian regime that, effectively, it must choose between continuing to seek nuclear capability and surviving," Yaalon told Israel Radio.

"I don't know if it will happen in 2011 or in 2012, but we are talking in terms of the next three years."

Yaalon, a former armed forces chief, noted Iran's uranium enrichment plan had suffered setbacks. Some analysts have seen signs of foreign sabotage in incidents such as the corruption of Iranian computer networks by a virus.

"These difficulties postpone the timeline, of course. Thus we cannot talk about a 'point of no return'. Iran does not currently have the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own," Yaalon said.

"I hope it won't succeed at all and that the Western world's effort will ultimately deny Iran a nuclear capability."

This is a bigger delay than anything I had heard before from Stuxnet, at least (there might have been other successful operations that delayed the program further.)

Morning links

Sultan Knish writes "Who's Afraid of Israeli Democracy?", slamming Jeffrey Goldberg for his essay "What if Israel Ceases to Be a Democracy?"

Yochanan Visser in YNet on "Biased Dutch reporting on Arab-Israeli conflict leads to drastic rise in anti-Semitism"

On a related note, we have JPost's 'Norwegians in UNIFIL causing negative view of J'lem' based on a Wikileaks cable.

NGO Monitor goes after NGOs and Goldstone for uncritically believing Palestinian Arab statistics about civilian casualties in the Gaza war, a theme we have written extensively about.

Daphne Anson discusses Israel's new tough line against the London-based "Palestinian Return Center" saying it is a front for Hamas. The PRC denies this, according to Middle East Monitor - which is itself suspect.

US blacks have higher unemployment rates than WB PalArabs

From the Washington Post:

Unemployment for African Americans is projected to reach a 25-year high this year, according to a study released Thursday by an economic think tank, with the national rate soaring to 17.2 percent and the rates in five states exceeding 20 percent.

Better not tell human rights organizations, or else they will start writing a whole lot of reports about how the US is oppressing blacks to cause this high unemployment rate.

After all, they kill countless trees crying over Palestinian Arab unemployment, blaming Israel for it, when the rate for West Bank Palestinian Arabs is actually lower than blacks in the US.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in the second quarter of 2010 the unemployment rate for everyone aged 15 and above was 15.2%, and for both Gaza and the West Bank together it was 22.9%.

If you don't count the Palestinian Arabs aged 15-17 the unemployment rate would be lower (the rate for 15-19 year olds is 22.6% in the West Bank and 72% in Gaza.)

What would happen if Israel would stop employing West Bank Palestinian Arabs?

13.5% of all West Bank Palestinian Arabs are employed in Israel or "settlements," according to the survey, so that means that the WB unemployment rate would go from 15.2% to 26.6% if Israel would unilaterally disengage altogether from the territory.

Before the Palestinian Arabs started the terror war of 2001, the unemployment rate in the West Bank was under 10%.

So it is obviously not Israeli policies that are keeping Palestinian Arabs from working, but Palestinian Arab actions and policies.

(h/t Zach)

A good question from an unlikely source

"Kaffir" put my Trivia Question post from yesterday on Reddit, and the first commenter asked:

Wow dude, what the hell is your angle, Israel is never going to get a more peaceful Palestinian leader than Abbas. Is that why you don't like him?

And in that single sentence, the commenter encapsulated the entire argument between the left and the right.

Should Abbas be judged on his words and actions, or relative to other Palestinian Arab leaders?

One side, that likes to say that you only make peace with your enemies, see Abbas as, at worst, flawed, but as the best chance for peace. Without him, peace is "doomed."

The other side looks at it in absolute terms, not relative terms. If Israel's most promising "peace partner" shows zero interest in compromise and has no problem publicly celebrating the most disgusting terrorists, why should he be considered a peace partner to begin with?

The question boils down to: what kind of peace can Abbas deliver? If he continues to insist on the "right to return" and on no territorial compromise, then he is not a peace partner by any definition - and he is proving that his interest in a state is less important than in what he calls "principles."

Realization of Palestinian Arab self-determination does not in itself necessarily compromise Israel's security. But Abbas' "principles" are about far more than a state - they are fundamentally opposed to Israel's existence as a Jewish state and to the very idea of Jewish self-determination. The human rights of Israelis to live in security and for the Jewish nation to practice its own right to self-determination are more important than Abbas' "principles," a point that the world does not understand.

Abbas conflates the right of Palestinian Arab self-determination - which does not necessarily mean statehood, incidentally - with his "principles" of 1949 armistice lines and "right to return" and, most probably, the right to have an army and invite Iran over for some tea and missiles.

His actions indicate that self-determination is not his goal, but the "principles" are - "principles" that were designed by Arafat to destroy Israel.

In other words, Abbas seems to look at "peace" as a Trojan horse to fulfill the wishes of his predecessors Arafat and the Mufti, not as a means to create a Palestinian Arab state.

Abbas' "peace" is in exact contradiction to real peace. It would result in more bloodshed on both sides than the status quo.

So the question is not whether to consider Abbas a peace partner because there is no more moderate alternative. The question is whether Abbas really is a peace partner to begin with and what his goals are - questions that he answers very explicitly and very often.

Just none of the advocates for "peace" are listening to his answers.

Hamas continues to arrest and beat political opponents

Today, Hamas raided and closed the headquarters of a group called the Democratic Union of Palestine in Rafah, confiscating some of the group's files and arresting and beating its leaders.

Hamas also detained and beat 14 Fatah members.

These sort of events are happening pretty much every day, yet one would have to look long and hard to find any Western so-called "human rights for Gaza" organization mentioning them, let alone condemning them. Nothing from Free Gaza, or Viva Palestina, or IHH, or any of the other groups who so publicly claim to care about the human rights of Gazans.

Which just goes to prove that there is no such thing as a "pro-Palestinian" activist. They are anti-Israel agitators, period. And that is how they should be referred to.

EoZ Hasbara 2.0 video now available

The video of my Hasbara 2.0 lecture at Yeshiva University on December 7 (audio plus slides) is now available.

The lecture enumerates 11 Rules of Hasbara and 14 ways that anyone can be a reporter - i.e., find news that the media misses - in the Internet age. I also discuss how to amplify and publicize the news that the mainstream media misses, with simple methods that anyone can and should do.

I believe that the video can be very helpful to people and groups who are interested in helping Israel's cause, as I discuss the barriers that we face and many specific ideas that could be effective in making our case.

It is hosted on a site called MovieLocker, and the cost is $12 to view it (3 day rental.) The lecture is about 90 minutes long (I didn't include the Hasby Awards) and it is followed by about 30 minutes of videos I've made that hopefully illustrate the principles I spoke about.

The video requires Microsoft Silverlight to view.

The license is for private viewing, for public showings please contact me.

It is best viewed full-screen.

Here is a sample of one of my topics, and of part of the video.

I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to contact me with questions.

Hey, Abbas: Would "Palestine" allow conversions to Christianity?

From Al Masry al-Youm:

In June 2009, an Egyptian court declined a request by [Christian convert Maher] al-Gohary to register his current religion in his identity documents. The verdict said that "conversion from Islam is unacceptable since it contradicts the prevailing order and because society has a Muslim majority," adding that "conversion is at odds with Article 2 of the Constitution which says that Islam is the primary source of legislation."

Islam prohibits conversion to Christianity, even for Muslim coverts originally belonging to the Christian faith.

Al-Gohary’s request to be recognized as a Christian is the second to be turned down. In January 2008, the administrative court dismissed another request by Mohamed Haggay, who later named himself Bishoy.

So the legal reasons given by the Egyptian court to not accept al-Gohary's conversion is because the Egyptian constitution says "Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia)."

Now, it just turns out that the constitution of Palestine has virtually identical wording ("The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be the main source of legislation.")

So, as the world continues to rush to provide recognition for the state of "Palestine," Mahmoud Abbas should answer a simple question:

Would a Muslim be allowed to convert to Christianity in Palestine?

(To make it even more interesting, change "Christianity" to "Hinduism," which Islam abhors.)

Why Israelis are skeptical (The Australian op-ed)

A pretty good summation of how Israelis think, by Jeremy Sharon in The Australian:

The current Israeli insistence on the deployment of Israeli troops on both the western and eastern borders of any future Palestinian state is regarded as of critical importance to Israel's long-term security. This is seen as one of the inviolable lessons of the Gaza withdrawal and the 2008 Gaza conflict. The other lesson Israel learnt from Operation Cast Lead is that the country can in no way rely on the international community to support its right to self-defence. Having been bombarded with more than 3000 rockets and mortars in 2008 alone, the Israeli government felt it was well within its rights to try to put an end to the intolerable situation in which hundreds of thousands of its citizens found themselves before Cast Lead was initiated.

But the torrent of condemnations, denunciations, diplomatic attacks and media outrage that was directed at Israel for having the temerity to defend its own citizens was unprecedented, even for Israel. This campaign culminated with the publication of the Goldstone report that, were it to be enforced, would essentially prevent the Israeli armed forces from protecting its citizens in the future, should they be attacked by artillery fire from civilian towns and cities, as they were prior to Operation Cast Lead.

In this context, Israel's concern over a withdrawal from the West Bank is quite clear. It is apparent to Israelis that should the urban areas of the West Bank be turned into rocket launching-pads, as happened in Gaza, the international community would not afford Israel the right to self-defence. The Israeli public is therefore much more inclined to forgo the risk of being shelled in their houses in Tel Aviv despite the international opprobrium that accompanies such a choice.

...The lesson Israel has taken from this appalling negligence is obvious; it can rely on no one to protect its citizens and stand up for its right to self-defence other than itself. It is this accumulated sentiment that those who wish to see a Palestinian state established must contend with, because Israelis cannot be expected to trust external forces with their security.

Read the whole thing.

HuffPo op-ed: How a liberal can defend Israel

From David Harris in the Huffington Post:

"I read the things you write about Israel. I hate them. How can you defend that country? What happened to the good liberal boy I knew 30 years ago?"

I replied: "That good liberal boy hasn't changed his view. Israel is a liberal cause, and I am proud to speak up for it."

Yes, I'm proud to speak up for Israel. A recent trip once again reminded me why.

Sometimes, it's the seemingly small things, the things that many may not even notice, or just take for granted, or perhaps deliberately ignore, lest it spoil their airtight thinking.

It's the driving lesson in Jerusalem, with the student behind the wheel a devout Muslim woman, and the teacher an Israeli with a skullcap. To judge from media reports about endless inter-communal conflict, such a scene should be impossible. Yet, it was so mundane that no one, it seemed, other than me gave it a passing glance. It goes without saying that the same woman would not have had the luxury of driving lessons, much less with an Orthodox Jewish teacher, had she been living in Saudi Arabia.

It's the two gay men walking hand-in-hand along the Tel Aviv beachfront. No one looked at them, and no one questioned their right to display their affection. Try repeating the same scene in some neighboring countries.

It's the Friday crowd at a mosque in Jaffa. Muslims are free to enter as they please, to pray, to affirm their faith. The scene is repeated throughout Israel. Meanwhile, Christians in Iraq are targeted for death; Copts in Egypt face daily marginalization; Saudi Arabia bans any public display of Christianity; and Jews have been largely driven out of the Arab Middle East.

It's the central bus station in Tel Aviv. There's a free health clinic set up for the thousands of Africans who have entered Israel, some legally, others illegally. They are from Sudan, Eritrea, and elsewhere. They are Christians, Muslims, and animists. Clearly, they know something that Israel's detractors, who rant and rave about alleged "racism," don't. They know that, if they're lucky, they can make a new start in Israel. That's why they bypass Arab countries along the way, fearing imprisonment or persecution. And while tiny Israel wonders how many such refugees it can absorb, Israeli medical professionals volunteer their time in the clinic.

It's Save a Child's Heart, another Israeli institution that doesn't make it into the international media all that much, although it deserves a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Here, children in need of advanced cardiac care come, often below the radar. They arrive from Iraq, the West Bank, Gaza, and other Arab places. They receive world-class treatment. It's free, offered by doctors and nurses who wish to assert their commitment to coexistence. Yet, these very same individuals know that, in many cases, their work will go unacknowledged. The families are fearful of admitting they sought help in Israel, even as, thanks to Israelis, their children have been given a new lease on life.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Daled Amos)

Egyptians unhappy with Jewish pilgrims

From Al Ahram, Sunday:

Cairo International Airport announced on Sunday it was implementing emergency measures as hundreds of Israelis arrive to mark the annual moulid of Abu Hasira.

A 19th-century Moroccan Jewish rabbi, Abu Hasira's mausoleum is located in the village of Damatiuh, outside the delta city of Damanhour, where he died while travelling to Jerusalem in the 1880s.

Three flights from Tel Aviv arrived in Cairo today carrying 550 Israeli passengers. They were transferred to Abu Hasira's tomb by a secure convey. More Jewish pilgrims are expected to attend the eight day festival.

The moulid and the presence of Israelis have provoked indignation and legal action. Residents of the area are opposed to Israelis celebrating in their midst with some going as far as stating that the tomb should be transferred to Israel.

From Al Masry al-Youm:

Dozens of largely Israeli Jewish pilgrims on Sunday arrived in Egypt to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Abu Hasira, a 19th-century Jewish Rabbi whose mausoleum is located in the village of Damtu in the Nile Delta.

Nearly 60 Jewish pilgrims have arrived and authorities anticipate an additional 280 tourists will arrive on Monday.

Security authorities have tightened measures around the mausoleum. Places of business were closed for the day and some 3000 security officials formed a cordon around the area, home to roughly 30,000 Egyptians.

Meanwhile, the National Association for Change leaders announced the group will hold a seminar at the Gabha Party headquarters in Damanhour to protest the festival. A number of other opposition movements also plan to stage a protest vigil on Thursday in front of Damanhour's municipal court.

The government’s approval of the festival has fomented popular reproach, particularly after the Supreme Administrative Court recently upheld a 2001 lower court decision to ban the annual event.

From The Media Line:

Hebrew signs reading "death to the Jews" greeted Israeli pilgrims who came to the Egyptian Nile Delta village of Damtu to commemorate the annual anniversary of death of a 19th-century rabbi.

Some 550 Israelis arrived Monday at the mausoleum of Rabbi Yaakov Abu-Hasira, a revered Moroccan rabbi, who died in Egypt in 1880 en route to the land of Israel. But 3,000 Egyptian security personnel cordoned the village, closing down local businesses for the day.

Last year, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak allowed Israeli pilgrims to enter Egypt, responding to a personal request by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Pilgrims had been refused entry the previous year, when the anniversary fell immediately after Israel's Cast Lead offensive on the Gaza Strip, and Egyptian security officials agued they couldn’t ensure the safety of Israelis in the country.

But Egyptian opposition parties said the event shouldn’t pass quietly this year either. The local chapter of the Nasserist Party launched a campaign titled "You shall not pass on my land," calling on the government to disallow the presence of "Zionists" in Egypt.

"I welcome Jews from all parts of the world in my home and I will be their servant," Gamal Munib, secretary-general of the Nasserists and coordinator of the campaign, told The Media Line. "But I refuse to welcome Zionists, who killed Egyptian prisoners of war and are killing my brothers in Palestine."

Munib said his party convened an anti-Zionist meeting Monday night, and was organizing a protest vigil on Thursday across from Damanhour's municipal court with the participation of "all national forces.”

The burial site wasn’t identified as Jewish until 1996, when it began being developed, Munib added. The Nasserist Party petitioned the court to declare the area isn’t a historic site, a move that would ban the annual Jewish festivities he said included the drinking of alcohol.

I couldn't find any use of the site in the early part of the century, but I did find a mention in Google News Archive search results in a paywalled Jerusalem Post article from 1989 that has a fragment that says "drove 100 km. to recite psalms at the grave site of Ya'acov Abu Hatzeira," so it was known as a place of pilgrimage from at least as early as then.

It is to Egypt's credit that the government allows these pilgrims to come, and protects them, almost every year.

Some history here.

Israel joins the big leagues!

From Iran's FARS News Agency:

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said on Tuesday that a fate worse than what Hitler experienced is waiting for the US and Britain's warmongering leaders.

"The American, British and Zionist regimes are the three sides of the evil triangle of warmongering and terrorism in the world," Vahidi said, addressing senior military and law enforcement commanders in Iran's Northern province of Alborz today.

He denounced the recent threatening remarks made by the US Defense Secretary and his British counterpart, and said, "The frequent visits paid to the region by the US military officials as well as their warmongering remarks are clear indications of their evil plots for looting the wealth and the riches of the regional nations."

Vahidi further viewed "nations' belief in God, self-belief, insightfulness and resistance" as the main deterrents which can defuse the plots hatched by the aforementioned evil triangle, and said, "If the US and Britain do not seek to revise their policies and if they don't start fundamental changes in their approaches and strategies, a fate worse than those of Hitler's and Saddam's will be waiting for them."

Congratulations to Israel for making it to the big leagues, on par with the US and UK as part of the "evil triangle!"

I think it would be fair, therefore, to raise Israel's profile at the UN to become a permanent member of the Security Council and have veto power over any resolutions. Why shouldn't the triangle be equilateral?

I think that the Evil Triangle of Warmongering deserves a logo:

Um, needs some work.

HRW ignores widespread slavery in Mauritania

Italy's La Repubblica has a report on the phenomenon of widespread slavery in Mauritania.

Members of an anti-slavery NGO group were jailed for protesting the enslavement of two girls, aged 9 and 13.

"White Moors," who are ethnic Arabs, are enslaving nearly 600,000 "Black Moors" in Mauritania. Last month a UN special envoy noted that slavery is still a major problem in the Islamic country. Blacks who are former slaves and others are living in real apartheid conditions, forced to live in black-only camps with poor services and suffering continued abuse from the Arab-Berber minority rulers.

Don't bother to try to find a single report on this phenomenon at the Human Rights Watch website. They don't even have a country listing for Mauritania, and their last full report on abuses in the country was written in 1994. The UN and the BBC can somehow find out about these practices, but Human Rights Watch is far more preoccupied with a certain country with a Jewish majority. (Amnesty, on the other hand, does a nice job on covering these crimes.)

UPDATE: NGO Monitor wrote about this issue a year ago.

Morning links

Those moderate Palestinian Arabs have yet again reiterated that they want everything and will not accept anything less, even as a temporary measure.

The Islamo-nazism blog has a lot information about how brutally Arabs are treating Africans trying to get to Israel, The Africans are subjected to torture, rape, and extortion.

Evelyn Gordon at Commentary: Islamists slaughter Christians and Jews are blamed.

Wired has more information on how Stuxnet seems to have targeted Iranian nuke plants. (h/t Israel Matzav)

Iran claims to have caught, and executed, a Mossad spy.

Also at YNet, an important report on how the Islamic Movement in Israel is attempting to claim Waqf ownership of some 17% of Israeli land. It also talks about how they are placing fake gravestones around the country as a land grab.

Turks scream "Death to Israel" at Mavi Marmara ceremony

From NPR:

Thousands of people crowded into a port area on Istanbul's European side Sunday to welcome the aid ship Mavi Marmara, scene of a deadly clash off the Gaza coast in May. Volunteers from the Islamic charity IHH (Humanitarian Relief Foundation) directed the crowd past huge posters of the eight Turks and one Turkish-American who died in the violence.

Chants of "Israel be damned!" rang out from the crowd as the ship was eased into dock. The anti-Israel sentiment threatened to undo tentative diplomatic efforts to restore Turkish-Israeli ties, which plummeted following the May 31 fatalities.

Israel's Channel 10 had a video report from Turkey where the reporter said that the protesters called out "Death to Israel" at the prompting of the speakers. The organizaers gave out buttons saying "Damn Israel" in Turkish, and some even had anti-Israel signs in Hebrew.

(h/t Joel)

PA backs down from banning PalArabs working in settlements

Last May I reported about how the PA was trying to ban some 25,000 people from working in jobs provided by Jewish employers in Judea and Samaria, saying that they would find alternative work or that they would simply become unemployed rather than work for their Jewish neighbors.

My comment at the time was that it would be interesting to see if Palestinian Arabs, working to provide for their families in an honorable fashion, would sacrifice their own personal dignity for the forcibly imposed "dignity" of the PA. My guess was that people still would prioritize their own dignity.

Ha'aretz's Avi Issacharoff reports that the plan to ban jobs working for pioneer Jews has hit a roadblock.

The Palestinian Authority has reconsidered a proposal that would have barred Palestinian laborers from working in West Bank Jewish settlements.

Although several PA officials, notably Economy Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh and Prime Minister Salad Fayyad, came out in favor of such a move at the beginning of the year, it appears the PA has decided not to push for legislation on the issue because it is unable to offer the workers alternative employment.

The settlements and laborers who work in them have a mutually beneficial relationship, and settlement construction relies on Palestinian labor. Many Palestinian workers who do not have permission to work in Israel proper find employment in the settlements.

According to Israeli figures from September 2009 that were provided to the PA's donor countries, 22,000 Palestinians were working with Israeli permission in the settlements, including the settlements' industrial zones.

Non-governmental organizations have said, however, that about 10,000 other Palestinians are working in the settlements without formal permission, mainly in seasonal agricultural work.

It also appears that since September 2009, the number of Palestinians employed in the settlements has increased to nearly 35,000. These workers support a Palestinian population of more than 200,000, and PA legislation barring employment in the settlements would be an economic blow to Palestinians in the West Bank following a rise in Palestinian living standards there.

So since the PA publicly spoke out against Palestinian Arabs working in Jewish towns, the number of employees have actually increased by some 40%!