Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

PA GDP proportional to percentage working for Israelis

From Ma'an:

Of every 100 Palestinian workers, 11 work in Israel and the settlements compared to 10 in 2009, a new survey from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics found.

The increase helped push up the Palestinian GDP per capita, in what was counted as a year of growth across the region.

Palestine's Gross Domestic Product increased by about 9 percent during the first three quarters of 2010 compared with the same period of 2009.

Released on Monday, the survey said growth was concentrated in economic activities with largest share in construction with a growth rate of 36 percent, followed by agriculture and fishing, wholesale and retail trade, transport, storage and communications, services, and public administration.

GDP per capita for Palestinian areas increased by 5 percent during the third quarter of 2010 compared with the same quarter of 2009, spurred mostly by an increase of three percent in the number of workers in construction, industry and the service sector.

Which means that since the settlement freeze ended, with Arabs working to build houses in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the Palestinian Arab GDP for the fourth quarter should go even higher.

So once again the people who say they want "peace" also want to hurt ordinary Palestinian Arabs trying to raise their families in dignity.

It is also interesting to see that the GDP increase is almost directly proportional - 9-10% - to the increase of workers in Israel and the Israeli towns across the green line. Foreign aid might not be so much a factor - jobs and cooperation with Israel is.

By the way, these statistics include Gaza, where no one works for Israelis, so that means that the percentage of West Bank Arabs who work for Israelis is probably closer to 15%. Boycotting Israel would throw the Palestinian Arab economy into a tailspin, and it would raise the West Bank unemployment rate to about the same as Gaza's is now - from around 17% to around 32%.

Posters for counterprotests - 5 and 6

Continuing the series...

I couldn't think of a sarcastic tagline that would be better than just showing the photos straight (with URLs so people can see for themselves.)

"Jews are Judaizing the Samuel's Tomb!"

The Al Aqsa Foundation (the same one that just freaked out over the iKotel iPhone app) is upset that Israel is spending "millions of dollars" to Judaize the site of Samuel's Tomb which, they say, is a mosque.

Just FYI: Samuel is not mentioned once in the Quran (although he is implied in 2:247-8.)

Long-time readers may remember my visit to the site four years ago - right after it was vandalized, and holy objects stolen, by Arabs. So let's hope that part of this money will go towards security.

But I suppose they weren't trying to vandalize it - just to "de-Judaize" it.

Qaradawi attacks the PLO

Prominent sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most popular religious figures in Sunni Islam, has issued a scathing attack the PLO for not being radical enough.

He criticized them for cooperating with the Zionist entity, and demanded that they return to "resistance" (i.e., terrorism, since they already claim to be doing non-violent resistance.)

He stressed that security coordination with Israel implies that Jews have a right to at least some of Palestine, which is completely unacceptable.

Qaradawi, who has some 40 million people viewing his al Jazeera TV show, also said these words that show in yet another way why the peace process could never work:

"Palestine does not belong to the Palestinians to do as they like but for [it belongs to] the entire Arab and Islamic nation."

Which means that even if Abbas and his henchmen manage to compromise and come to terms with Israel, the Arab world has effective veto power - certainly those who follow Qaradawi.

Poster for counterprotests - 4

4th in a series....

Physicians for Human Rights can't figure how tear gas could kill people outdoors

Physicians for Human Rights wrote a paper in 1989 to try to make tear gas sound as dangerous as possible. Here's the main point of the paper concerning CS, which is the type used by the IDF and Israeli police.

After discussing how CS could be potentially lethal if used indoors, the paper says:

The respiratory concentration of CS that would be lethal for 50% of healthy adults has been estimated to be 25,000 to 150,000 mg/m 3 per minute, based on animal studies (15). When detonated outside, a CS grenade generates a cloud 6 to 9 m in diameter, at the center of which a concentration of 2,000 to 5,000 mg/m 3 can be produced, with concentrations rapidly tapering off at the periphery. (16)

So for it to be lethal for a normal adult, there would have to be exposure for a full minute at concentrations that are ten to thirty times higher than is physically possible outdoors. I don't know how long CS takes to disperse, but certainly the highest concentrations of up to 5000 mg/m3 would not last for more than a few seconds.

The studies done of people who have been seriously injured from CS all show that they were indoors at the time, and had prolonged exposure - far more than a few seconds - and they could not leave the room.

I cannot find any case of someone succumbing quickly (within a day) to any level of exposure to CS.

In 1989, some human rights groups charged that Israeli use of tear gas - the more dangerous CN gas at the time - was responsible for increases in miscarriages and even 400 deaths. A US government GAO study found the claims to be baseless.

So this is nothing new.

UPDATE: Some blogs are saying "The U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine warns that at a concentration of 2mg per cubic meter, CS gas “is immediately dangerous to life…”

The document does say that - and it is a typo.

The document cached here says that for CS,

LCt50 = 61,000 mg-min/m3

which means that the median lethal dose of CS is 61,000 mg per cubic meter for a full minute - well within the range described by PHR and way, way higher than is possible outdoors. There is simply no way that it is dangerous to life at 1/30,500 of the median lethal dose, if the words "median lethal dose" have any meaning.

Not to mention that if the dose of 2 mg/m3 is immediately dangerous to life, then Bil'in protesters would all have been dead for years. A minor point.

Poster for counterprotests - 3

Third in a series...

Poster for counterprotests - 2

Second in a series....

Poster for counterprotests - 1

A friend wrote to tell me that there was an anti-Israel protest (called "Gaza Massacre Remembrance") in New York's Herald Square on Sunday.

So, for any counter-protesters, I'm going to make some quick posters that they can plaster all over the place. Of course, anyone can use them for any similar purpose.

Here's the first:

Muslims freak out over Kotel iPhone app

Recently, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation released iKotel, an iPhone app that lets you see a live camera view of the Western Wall and also allows you to send notes to be placed between the stones. It also helps point the user towards the Temple Mount for prayers.

Muslims aren't happy.

The Al Aqsa Foundation put out a press release, quoted by Ma'an, saying that the Jews - through this app - are attempting to get the younger generation to forge a closer connection to what they falsely call the "Al Buraq Wall."

Palestine News Network quoted them:

The "Al-Aqsa Foundation" said that the Wailing Wall is an integral part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and it is exclusively Islamic, linked ideologically and religiously fully with the incident of [al-Buraq] with the Prophet Mohammed - peace be upon him - and non-Muslims have no right to it, even to the dust of the Wailing Wall, it is the right of Muslims and will remain so, even though it came under the control of Israeli occupation.

Next week the Al Aqsa Foundation will probably come out with a press release slamming the 1695 Amsterdam Haggadah, which depicts the Second Temple in Jerusalem:

Also, the official WAFA news agency of the Palestinian Authority quotes the Al Aqsa press release with obvious approval of the contents. The PA had previously published a paper claiming that there is no Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

Is there any daylight between the rantings of the "extremists" of the Al Aqsa foundation and the "moderate" Palestinian Authority?

Morning links

Jonathan Halevi at JCPA has a monograph on Hamas' continuing genocidal intent - even while people continue to call for Israel to talk to Hamas.

Michael Horesh has a nice posting about European investment in the PA.

Fatah says that Hamas arrested over 3000 of its loyalists in 2010 in Gaza.

Charles Jacobs writes an important piece on "Jewish malware:Why is World Jewry So Bad at Defending Itself?"

Jews may be susceptible to a particular type of rhetorical virus, so devastating that once implanted it prevents them from acting in their own self-defense and turns otherwise eloquent people into stuttering blockheads. The worm is simple, and ancient. It’s called “accusation.”

Accuse the Jews. Accuse them unfairly and with such disproportionate frequency that anyone who wishes to can see there’s an agenda at work that has little to do with the actual charges raised. Accuse the Jews and they instinctively, like moths fly to candles, start believing they can cleverly explain themselves, and convince their accusers of their innocence and their goodness.

I mentioned the Jewish and Zionist frontman for the heavy metal band Disturbed. There is an Israeli heavy-metal band that is gaining Arab fans too.

And for those who think that I shouldn't only highlight Latma's brand of right-wing humor, here is a funny piece from Israeli comedy program Eretz Nehederet that skewers the Right:

(h/t Yerushalimey and Gidon)

Spy vulture story reaches Israeli media

Last week I wrote about a large bird being caught in Saudi Arabia, with markings indicating "Tel Aviv University," and the Saudi suspicions that it is part of an Israeli espionage plot. (It was, of course, part of a research program.)

The Hebrew media finally caught up to the story, nearly a week later.

The bird is evidently a vulture.

An English version of the story is here.

(h/t Joel)

Al Azhar University wants 15-year sentence for Quran errors

From President Obama's 2009 speech in Cairo:

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment.

From Al Masry al-Youm:

Al-Azhar's Islamic Research Academy on Thursday proposed a new law mandating 15-year jail terms for printing and publishing houses found guilty of making copy mistakes in published versions of the Quran.

Under the proposed law, the transgression would be classified as a felony rather than a misdemeanor, while offending printing or publishing houses would be forced to close.

According to Academy Secretary-General Sheikh Ali Abdel Baqi, a committee composed of academy members, Al-Azhar scholars and legal experts would draft the proposed legislation before referring it to the Shura Council (the consultative house of Egypt's parliament) for discussion.

Enlightened!

How Arab media describes Jewish pilgrimage to Abuhatzeira grave

The Egyptian media is linking to a YouTube video showing mostly Mizrahi Jews - men and women - at the gravesite of Yaakov Abuhatzeira.

They are praying, chanting and one person blows a shofar:

However, at least one Arabic article, even after linking to the video, describes a much different - and quite unlikely - scene:

Among the rituals of the ceremony, to be held at the tomb, are practices to drink alcohol [or spilled over the cemetery and licked after that - not sure what that means - EoZ] , and the slaughter of sacrifices are often sheep or pigs, and dance hysterically to some Jewish tunes and say prayers and entreaties to cry bitterly in front of the grave, and hit heads in the Wailing Wall for the blessing.

Yeah, let's slaughter and sacrifice pigs at a famous rabbi's tomb!

There is also a group of Egyptian bloggers who are very much against the annual visit.

Israel again ranks high in world university survey (Zvi)

From Zvi:

Here's how Israeli research universities fared in the 2010 "Academic Rankings of World Universities" subject rankings.

Israel was one of only 8 countries to have universities that received top-20 "subject" rankings (US, which dominated, followed by the UK, France, Japan, Israel, Switzerland, Canada and Germany, in that order).

Subject Rankings:

Computer Science:
#12 in the world: Weizmann Institute (#1 outside of North America and of course #1 in Eurasia)
#15: Technion (#2 outside of North America and of course #2 in Eurasia)
#21: Hebrew U. of Jerusalem (#4 outside of North America, #3 in Asia)
#31: Tel Aviv University (#9 outside of North America, #7 in Asia)

Israel is the only country other than the United States that has more than 3 universities in the top 50.

No other middle eastern country has even one university that made it into the top 100.

Mathematics:
#26: Tel Aviv University (#6 outside of the US, #1 in Asia)
51-76: Technion
51-76: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Only 10 countries made it into the top 50: the dominant US, followed in order of appearance by the UK, France, Russia, Israel, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Canada and Italy. Other than Switzerland, all of these countries have much larger populations than Israel.

No other middle eastern country has even one university that made it into the top 100.

Economy/Business:
#44: Hebrew University of Jerusalem (#5 outside of North America, #1 in Asia)
78-100. Tel Aviv University

Only 6 countries made it into the top 50; listed in order of first appearance, these are the US, which dominated, the UK, Canada, Israel, France and China (Hong Kong). All of the other top countries have much greater populations than Israel.

No other middle eastern country has even one university that made it into the top 100.

Physics:
51-75. Hebrew University of Jerusalem
51-75. Weizmann Institute of Science
76-100. Tel Aviv University

Only 12 countries made it into the top 75. All but Switzerland have much greater populations than Israel.

No other middle eastern country has even one university that made it into the top 100.

Chemistry:
51-75. Technion
51-75. Weizmann

Only 14 countries made it into the top 75. All but Switzerland and Sweden have much greater populations than Israel.

No other middle eastern country has even one university that made it into in the top 100.