Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Report: Jewish woman gives birth in Ramallah hospital (updated)

Ma'an Arabic has a story (picked up by other media, including the PA's Ministry of Health) saying that a Jewish woman (last name Nasreen) was shopping in Ramallah with her husband and went into labor.

She refused to go to an Israeli hospital, and insisted to give birth at the local hospital instead.

The baby was premature, a boy weighing 2.3 kg.

Palestinian Arab plain-clothes police were in the delivery room.

It appears that Mrs. Nasreen is an Arabophile. She was born in Haifa as she lives in the Israeli-Arab village of Sakhnin with her (presumably Arab) husband, which would explain how she could go shopping in Ramallah to begin with.

Not only that but she expressed her desire for the child to get Palestinian Arab citizenship.

As a result, her hospital stay was free and Mahmoud Abbas sent her a bouquet of flowers, as the PA tries to use this episode as an opportunity to show that they love Jews who happily embrace their second-class dhimmi status.

UPDATE: Aussie Dave notices that she had converted to Islam.

Israel dismantling Huwwara checkpoint

From Ma'an:

Nablus Governor Jebrin Al-Bakri was informed by PA liaison officials that the Israeli military will begin immediately the removal of infrastructure for the Huwwara and Beit Furik checkpoints.

Al-Bakri told Ma'an that the news came early Thursday morning, and that the deconstructions would include the removal of dozens of concrete blocks and barriers. He said restrictions at the Za’tara checkpoint south of Nablus would also be eased.

The announcement came after what Al-Bakri said was eight months of negotiations with Israeli officials, saying that without freedom of movement through the northern West Bank, economic development would be impossible.

The Huwwara checkpoint has stopped terror attacks, including the 16 year old would-be suicide bomber seen in this CBS video, which mentions that the same checkpoint had stopped another child from bringing explosives into Israel the week before.

UN agency supports Arab media campaign that idolizes a terrorist (updated)

From PMW:

As part of a TV campaign to "support women's issues" in the Arab world, a TV clip presenting several "model women" was broadcast on more than 50 Arab TV stations including Palestinian Authority TV. One of the women promoted as role models for Arab women today is famous for her terrorist attack that killed dozens, and another is famous for celebrating the Martyrdom deaths of her children.

The clip was broadcast as part of the "White Hands Campaign - The largest media campaign to support women's issues," which is organized "by the Arab Producers Union for TV (APUTV) in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)," according to the campaign's English website.
[accessed Feb. 9, 2011, http://www.whitehandsc.com/en/component/content/72.html?task=view]

Entitled The Model Woman, the clip honors different Arab women of the past, assigning to them various virtues and accomplishments. Dalal Mughrabi, who in 1978 led the most lethal terror attack against Israel, in which 37 civilians were killed, was venerated in the clip as a role model for "Martyrdom" and "victory over enmity". Al Khansa, a 7th century Arab poet, who celebrated her four sons' Martyrdom deaths in battle was praised as an example of "resolve" and "Martyrdom and giving".

The campaign's English website also states that "APUTV works under the umbrella of the Arab League, and through the Arab Ministers Information Council." And that "APUTV's official headquarters are in Cairo- Egypt."

UPDATE: The UN disavowed the commercial (h/t Samson)

Hasbara 2.0, part 2: What is good hasbara?

Part 2 of my series on hasbara is now up on NewsRealBlog.

Check it out!

UPDATE: It looks like the videos that were supposed to be embedded in the story did not make it in. Here they are:

Arabs to uproot 3000 trees - because they are too Jewish

From JPost:

The developer of Rawabi, a new Palestinian city being built in the West Bank, said he will remove some 3,000 trees donated by the Jewish National Fund and replace them with indigenous olive trees, Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported Tuesday.

Bashar al-Masri said that the city's identity is meant to be Palestinian and that Israeli elements are trying "to manipulate the issue," according to the report.

Masri's move came in response to a scathing op-ed published by Ma'an a day earlier by Jewish Israeli-born convert to Islam and member of Fatah, Uri Davis. In the op-ed, he slammed the decision to accept the trees from an organization whose mission "is the 'redemption' of lands in 'Eretz Israel,' including Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and beyond for Jewish settlement."

Davis further criticized the species chosen to be planted by the JNF. Non-indigenous pine trees, he said "add insult to injury." "Rather than plant indigenous" trees, he added, "the tree saplings planted by the JNF in the area designated for the Rawabi projects are typically political-Zionist pinera (conifers)."

Interestingly, there have been conifers in Israel since the Jurassic era. I think that might qualify as "indigenous."

The Gharqad tree is the Koran's "tree of the Jews" that will protect them when all the other trees and stones tell believing Muslims where Jews are hiding so the Jews can be slaughtered according to the will of Allah. Some identify it as a boxthorn.

But it appears that Davis believes that this heretical tree is the conifer.

Palestine Papers: Jews legally own land in the territories

Here's another EoZ scoop that the Guardian could have broken - but decided not to.

In another bombshell document that the Guardian and Al Jazeera did not believe is newsworthy, in 2008 the PLO wrote a paper describing the legal rights of Jews to lands that they owned prior to 1948.

The intent was to have a position ready in case Israel brought the issue up in negotiations. It was not presented to Israel.

It is astonishing to read paragraphs like these from the PLO:

Jews who owned land have the right to have their land restored to them or to be compensated, if restitution is not materially possible. Jews are entitled to compensation for other material and non-material losses, including lost profits, lost income, etc. caused by their displacement and dispossession.

Of course, they hold this position because they do not want to appear hypocritical with their demands from Israel. (The PLO also includes an annex to list legal arguments that Jews do not have any rights to the land anymore, in case they need to use those arguments publicly.)

Some of the parts are fascinating. For example, it describes (and implicitly supports) the bigoted British policy of severely restricting the rights of Jews - and only Jews - to buy land before 1948:

In 1940, in response to Arab concerns regarding Jewish land ownership in Palestine, the British introduced restrictions on land transfers to Jews. Pursuant to the Palestine (Amendment) Order-in-Council of 25 May 1939, the High Commissioner was authorized to prohibit and regulate land transfers.23 Acting on these powers, the High Commissioner adopted the Land Transfer Regulations, 1940, which established three zones: Zone A (16,680 km2), where land could generally not be transferred except to Palestinian Arabs; Zone B (8,348 km2), where land transfers from Arabs to Jews required permission that was generally withheld; and land outside Zones A and B (1,292 km2), which could be freely transferred.24 According to the hand-drawn map annexed to the Regulations, what became Gaza and the West Bank was entirely Zone A, meaning that land transfers to Jews were, with few exceptions, prohibited.25 Britain apparently repealed these Regulations upon the termination of its Mandate (12 May 1948).26

Between 1948 and 1967, Jordan and Egypt essentially confiscated Jewish-owned land, against international humanitarian law:

The Custodian [of Enemy Property] held and administered Jewish-owned in the West Bank until 1967 according to the Trading with the Enemy Ordinance (as opposed to administering the land like absentee property according to the powers and rules of IHL).38 Some of these assets were used by the Custodian for public purposes, such as the establishment of refugee camps, the rehabilitation of refugees, and the setting up of army camps and marketplaces. In other cases, the property was leased to private individuals, who used the land for agricultural, commercial or residential purposes, depending on its characteristics.

...
By the Order Providing Regulations for the Administration of Jews’ Property in the Areas Subject to the Control of the Egyptian Forces in Palestine, No. 25 (issued in 1948, published in 1950), Egypt appointed a Director General to administer property owned by Jews who fled in 1948. The Director General used the parcels for public projects, including refugee camps for Palestine Arabs, or leased them for private uses.41

Finally, the document describes some specific lands indisputably owned by Jews - even according to the Palestinian Arabs.

[L]and located on Mount Scopus...was purchased from a British national in 1916. Boris Goldberg, a member of Lovers of Zion, paid for the land and took title in his name.51 He gifted the land to the JNF, which gave a 999-year lease to Hebrew University.52 Additional land was purchased on Mount Scopus from Raghib al-Nashashibi, Mayor of Jerusalem, and was used for the Hebrew University. Hadassah Hospital was also built on land purchased on Mount Scopus.53

...By 1946, the JNF acquired 72,300 dunums in the Gaza district, which encompassed more than present-day Gaza.

In 1930, a Jewish farmer from Rehovot, Tuvia Miller, bought 262 dunums of land in Dayr al-Balah in the Gaza sub-district. Miller eventually sold his land to the JNF in the early 1940s. The JNF then allowed settlers from the religious Ha-Poel ha-Mizrahi movement to build the kibbutz of Kfar Darom on the land in October 1946. They abandoned the kibbutz in June 1948.59

Stein reports a purchase of 4,048 dunums in Huj (Gaza sub-district) in 1935 but does not indicate the identity of the Jewish purchaser.60 Note, however, that the Palestine Partition Commission reported that, by 1938, only 3,300 dunums in Gaza were owned by Jews.61

In 1941, 6,373 dunums were purchased by the JNF around Gaza City, though it is unknown whether the purchase was permissible under the Land Transfer Regulations 1940.

The government of Palestine estimated a population of 3,540 Jews in the Gaza sub-district at the end of 1946. Information has not been found on the circumstances under which these Jews departed from Gaza in 1948.

There were Jewish settlements north of Jerusalem called Atarot and Neve Yaakov, which were evacuated in 1948.65

A settlement called Bet Haarava, and Palestine Potash, Ltd., both located at the northern end of the Dead Sea, were situated on miri land leased by the government of Palestine and were evacuated in 1948.66

During the 1920s and 1930s, individual Jews and two Jewish-owned realty companies, Zikhron David and El Hahar, bought land in the hills around Hebron.67 Notwithstanding (and, actually, because of) the Land Transfer Regulations, 1940, which placed nearly all of the West Bank in Zone A, the JNF began purchasing land around Hebron in 1940. It acquired about 8,400 dunums by 1947, some of which was purchased from individual Jews and from Zikhron David and El Hahar. The settlements established on this land were called Kfar Etzion, Masuot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim and Revadim. The JNF circumvented the prohibition on acquisition of land by Jews by creating front companies. Most of the Jewish-owned land around Hebron was held, as of 1948, by the JNF rather than by individual Jewish owners.68

Some 16,000 dunums of land were purchased by Jews before 1948 in the Etzion Bloc and Beit Hadassah.69

Himnuta bought land near Jericho and present-day Ma’ale Adumim. The funding in urban areas usually came from state coffers, while the purchase of agricultural land was paid for by the JNF.70

During the British mandate, the government of Palestine leased miri land on a long-term basis (50 or 100 years) to Jewish settlement organisations.71

By 1948, the concentrations of lands owned by Jews were in the old Jewish quarters of Jerusalem and Hebron, on the periphery of Jerusalem, and in the Tul-Karem region and the Gaza Strip.72

* Apparently, 80% of Har Homa’s [Jabal Abu Ghneim’s] land is Jewish land purchased in the forties and before.73

The JNF lost land in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank as well, and this matter has been postponed for the eventual [peace] talks for over a decade.

Now, why wouldn't The Guardian or its partner Al Jazeera want to write about a paper that details Jewish legal rights to lands in the territories?

Could it be that these "news" organizations are more interested in manipulating the news rather than reporting it?

This paper doesn't merely hurt the PLO, as most of the papers that made The Guardian's pages were intended to do, but the entire Palestinian Arab national movement - and that's a big taboo in the newsroom of The Guardian. (Not to mention the inconvenient fact that Great Britain made laws specifically banning land sales to people based merely on their religion. Slightly embarrassing, no?)

This is one of the Palestine Papers stories they wanted to remain buried.

(Other Palestine Papers scoops here.)

Epic BDS fail: Intel invests another $2.7 billion in Israel

From Israel21c:

In an unstable business environment, where US companies are scaling back and weathering bad times, Intel has made a surprising business move. The chipmaker announced in January that it will invest $2.7 billion in its Israeli plant in southern Israel, which will produce next-generation 22-nanometer chips.

It is expected that 22-nanometer technology will make our computers faster, smaller and lighter.

Not willing to elaborate on what exactly this will mean for our everyday lives, Intel Israel's spokesman Koby Bahar tells ISRAEL21c that "it will be the most advanced technology" available.

"Intel decided to invest here because it's worthwhile," he says. "Because we have a good record for Israel and Intel."

Currently, Intel produces processors that run more than 80 percent of the world's personal computers. If you own a PC, chances are a part of it was produced in or developed in Israel.

We have yet to see would-be boycotters of Israel giving up their computers.

Britain's foreign minister finds Egyptian reason to bash Israel

The Times of London writes (behind paywall):

The Middle East peace process is in danger of becoming a casualty of the revolutionary tidal wave sweeping the Arab world, and Israel is putting itself at risk by failing to compromise, William Hague told The Times yesterday. Speaking on an emergency peace mission covering five countries in three days, the Foreign Secretary issued a blunt instruction to Israel to tone down the belligerent language used by Binyamin Netanyahu, its Prime Minister, since the uprising and protests, which have spread from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond.

... Mr Hague responded to increasingly militaristic pronouncements by Mr Netanyahu, who has been urging his nation to prepare for ‘any outcome’ and vowing to ‘reinforce the might of the state of Israel’. The Foreign Secretary said: ‘This should not be a time for belligerent language. It’s a time to inject greater urgency into the Middle East peace process.’

As Melanie Phillips writes:

Belligerent? Israel is currently petrified that, if Islamists come to power in Egypt and tear up its 30-year old peace treaty as the Muslim Brothers have said they will do, it will face the nightmare of a renewed threat of war from the south as well as from Iran/Hezbollah in the north and Iran/Hamas in Gaza. It will be thus encircled by truly ‘belligerent ‘ enemies. It will have to turn its entire military and strategic thinking upside down in order to defend itself against such a grim prospect – and yes, of course it will have to reinforce its defences. Even more young Israelis will have to be called up to army service and face the risk of death to prevent their country from being wiped off the map. For William Hague to represent the warnings by Israel’s Prime Minister that his country must now prepare itself for this terrifying eventuality as ‘belligerency’ is simply obscene.

Let us hear no more nauseating hypocrisy from Cameron or Hague about how they are Israel’s staunch allies. With ‘friends’ like these, who needs enemies?

The Times illustrated the story this way (via Honest Reporting blog):

What an interesting photo choice!

The culture of submission (Ayaan Hirsi Ali)

A good piece in Financial Times (registration required) that explains well how Egyptian Muslims think - and why that makes real democracy a more difficult outcome.

Innumerable commentators have drawn analogies with the revolutions that swept eastern Europe in 1989.

This is to miss the profound difference between the western and the Muslim crowd. The people taking to the streets in north Africa and the Middle East have many motivations. But nothing unifies them more than the mass prayer of their religion – particularly the Friday prayer. It is the mosque as much as the street that is key to understanding this uprising.

...

Those who look forward to a 1989-style outcome – a peaceful transition to a secular, multi-party democracy – should remember how little experience the proponents of secular democracy have. The Muslim Brotherhood has been around since 1928, and draws on a 1,400-year-old tradition of submission....

The Mubaraks and Gaddafis of the Middle East are not an anomaly; they are the product of structural lack of freedom inherent in the crowd culture of the Islamic world. In this culture submission is instilled early on. If you are not allowed to talk back to your father, or teacher, or clergyman, submission to state tyranny becomes almost second nature. In such a setting, the methods to empower oneself – indeed to survive – are conspiracy, manipulation, intrigue and bribery. Those aspiring to positions of power fear that sharing it will weaken them and lead to humiliation. So once a position is achieved it is made permanent, from the lowliest bureaucrat to the president.

A culture that elevates individual submission oscillates between periods of apathy and occasional bouts of revolt. Arab leaders either rule for life, grooming their sons for succession, or end up having to flee.

So what can today’s Muslim crowds do to avoid the fate of all those mice who thought they glimpsed freedom but were in fact mere playthings of the cat?

The protesters must begin by acknowledging the factors that create an environment where tyrants thrive. For too long, outside forces have been the scapegoats of the Arab street. It is easy to blame the Zionists and America. It is harder to admit one’s own shortcomings.

But today’s crowds also need to articulate what they want. A participant in Egypt’s mass protests was asked on the BBC to comment on the leaderless quality of the demonstrations (February 4). His answer – “We don’t need a leader” – baffled the interviewer and no doubt most western viewers.

His aversion to leadership is understandable in the light of past Arab regime changes. Here, men who arrive as liberators have a way of morphing into dictators until the time when another man mobilises the masses to liberate the nation from their ex-liberator. The new man then rebuilds the old infrastructure of spies and torture chambers.

But is it realistic to have a leaderless revolution? In my view it is not. In the absence of leadership – which means not just one man but a legitimate command structure, as well as some kind of explicit manifesto – these protests will never achieve the truly revolutionary changes we saw in Europe in 1989.

Instead we shall see chaos and instability followed by a new era of authoritarianism; a brief democracy followed by a coup or a sharia government led by the Brotherhood.

So the crowd must become a real movement. They have to build civil institutions. They must hurry and compose a list of demands before they are dispersed. It is not enough just to ask for the despot to go. There need to be amendments to existing constitutions or new ones need to be written. And here America and Europe can offer help.

But when it comes to changing the culture of submission no one can help the Arabs but themselves. It is not their inexorable fate to be ruled either by dictators or by religious fanatics. They will achieve true freedom, however, only when they emancipate themselves from the peculiar power structure imposed on the Muslim crowd – by itself.

(h/t Silke)

Egypt bans Palestinian Arabs from entering country

The number of visitors to Egypt has dropped precipitously:

Minister of Civil Aviation Ibrahim Mannaa said on Wednesday that flights to Egypt have declined by 70 percent, which led to a sharp drop in profits.

Sources at Cairo International Airport said 14 of the international airlines canceled their flights to Cairo on Wednesday due to a lack of passengers.

“Passengers boarding EgyptAir flights have dropped to 54 percent,” added Mannaa. “Losses during the past two weeks can only be calculated after all losses are identified.”

But there is one group of people that Egypt doesn't want at all:

Immigration officers have been instructed to bar Palestinians from entering Egypt, an official at Cairo airport said on Wednesday after 12 travellers were sent back.

"There are instructions to stop Palestinians entering Egypt. Twelve Palestinians were sent back to the places they came from on Wednesday," the official told AFP, on condition of anonymity.

A second airport-based official told AFP that airlines had been told not to bring Palestinian passengers to Egypt.

Of course, the Arab world will unanimously condemn this blatant discrimination against Palestinian Arabs, whom they care about so deeply.

Any time now.

(h/t Herb G)

Morning snippets

Just in case you don't already have enough to read....these will keep you busy all day.

Martin Sherman in YNet:

...[W]hy the Palestinians find themselves in the miserable state in which they are today: a chronic and cavalier disregard for the truth; an enduring propensity to blame others for their fate; and an obdurate refusal to take responsibility for their own actions - and inaction.

European Foundation for Democracy (German):

The Iranian rulers see in the new mass protests in Arabic states the reawakening of Islam and speak of the "new axis of Islam in the Middle East." They think that the Islamic revolution of 1979 was the beginning of the protests against the western and "Zionist" supremacy.

Shiraz Maher interview at Harry's Place:

[T]he Brotherhood might be marginal but it is neither bumbling nor benign. It is an astute movement watching [the West] betray the legitimate sentiments of young, ordinary Egyptians. That is what the Ikhwan is waiting for so it can pounce. A marginal movement could very suddenly find itself in the mainstream. I have good evidence from Alexandria that this is already starting to happen, and it is worth bearing in mind that the Brotherhood is much better organised there than in Cairo.

PMW translates the Muslim Brotherhood in their own words:

- "...Jihad for Allah is not limited to the specific region of the Islamic countries, since the Muslim homeland is one and is not divided, and the banner of Jihad has already been raised in some of its parts, and it shall continue to be raised, with the help of Allah, until every inch of the land of Islam will be liberated, the State of Islam will be established,..."

"... despite this, the [Muslim] Brotherhood is not rushed by youth's enthusiasm into immature and unplanned action which will not alter the bad reality and may even harm the Islamic activity, and will benefit the people of falsehood..."
- "... one should know that it is not necessary that the Muslims will repel every attack or damage caused by the enemies of Allah immediately, but [only] when ability and the circumstances are fit to it."

Khaled Abu Toameh in Hudson-NY:

Jordan's King Abdullah II has good reason to be worried about the future of the monarchy in the Hashemite Kingdom. If he fails to implement real political and economic reforms, Jordan could easily fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood group or turn into a Palestinian state.

Yoel Guzansky in Meria Journal:

The Gulf states' policy towards Iran's nuclear ambitions has combined elements of appeasement with a fundamental reliance on the United States as a defending and deterring force. Most Gulf states lack strategic depth, have small populations, and small, untrained armies. Moreover, their significant oil and natural gas reserves have made them the potential target for aggression and dependent on outside forces for defense. Despite the great wealth and inherent weakness of the Gulf states, they have remained largely on the sidelines in the international effort to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Jackson Diehl on how the White House ignored warnings on Egypt:

The White House was warned, publicly and repeatedly, that Egypt was approaching a turning point and that the status quo was untenable - not by an intelligence agency but by a bipartisan group of Washington-based experts who pleaded, in vain, for a change of policy.

The Working Group on Egypt was formed a year ago to sound the alarm about Mubarak's crumbling regime. The first sentence of its opening statement: "Egypt is at a critical turning point." The group is still issuing detailed proposals about how to handle the crisis. On Monday, it warned that the administration "may acquiesce to an inadequate and possibly fraudulent transition process in Egypt." Sadly, the administration is still not listening.

Also in WaPo see George Will.

Nick Cohen in "Jesus, I'm Turning into a Jew!"

British Jews are living through a very dangerous period. They are the only ethnic minority whose slaughter official society will excuse. If a mass murderer bombed a mosque or black Pentecostal church, no respectable person would say that the “root cause” of the crime was an understandable repulsion at the deeds of al-Qaeda or a legitimate opposition to mass immigration. Rightly, they would blame the criminal for the crime.

If a synagogue is attacked, I guarantee that within minutes the airwaves will be filled with insinuating voices insisting that the “root cause” of the crime was a rational anger at the behaviour of Israel or the Jewish diaspora.

Evelyn Gordon in Contentions:

Only a pathological obsession with Israel could lead administration officials to blame America’s economic woes of late 2009 on a minor war fought by a marginal trading partner a full year earlier. And curing such pathology lies more in the realm of medical science than political science.

Nevertheless, it’s vital to understand just how deeply it runs. For it is shaping, or rather misshaping, the West’s foreign policy every day.

Arabs again digging on the Temple Mount - and destroying priceless treasures.

Richard Cohen in WaPo:

Certain pro-democracy advocates in the Western media envision a transition period of months that will produce democratic bliss in the region. Not likely. The Middle East must first pass through somewhat the same process as did Central and Eastern Europe. Before World War I, it had no democracies. The region was ruled by monarchies.

After the war, nearly every state (the Soviet Union was the most prominent exception) was a democracy and one, the most culturally and politically advanced of them all, had an exemplary constitution and a resplendent bouquet of political parties. Nevertheless, this country reeled from Weimar Republic to Nazi dictatorship in virtually no time at all.

The rest of Central and Eastern Europe was different only in degree, not in kind. By the end of the 1930s, these countries were mostly right-wing dictatorships of one sort or another. It took another World War, a Cold War and lots of help for democracy to take root. Even so, some of these countries show twitches of recidivism.

To think that the Middle East will vault this process is endearing but dotty.

Jeff Jacoby:

If Egypt is to have any hope of a transition to a genuine constitutional democracy, the Muslim Brotherhood must not be treated as a legitimate democratic partner. For more than 80 years, it has been a fervent exponent of Islamic, not secular, rule; of clerical, not popular, sovereignty. Its credo could hardly be more explicit, or more antidemocratic: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

Myths and Facts:

Europe, of course, has the right to demand and ensure that before it accepts Turkey as a member of its Union, that country is capable of economic independence and stability and that it lives up to standards of democracy and rule of law, civil, political and social rights.

Israel has just as much right to demand from the EU and other Quartet members not to be forced into accepting a Palestinian Arab state on its borders which they themselves would not accept as a functional country.

At present, the international community, including the EU and the rest of the Quartet, is adopting a disturbingly low standard by which to judge PA readiness for statehood and should it continue upon its present course, it is highly unlikely that the creation of such a state will lead to the stability and prosperity so badly needed by the Palestinian Arab people, let alone bring about an end to the regional conflict.

The Guardian shows Wikileaks cables that indicate that Saudi Arabia does not have as much oil as it has claimed - it actually lied to get Western investments - and very soon it will not be able to pump as much oil as it needs to.

And, finally, Proud Zionist presents a new fictional BBC documentary in "Normal Israelis."

Any of these is worth their own blog post. I wish I had more time!

(h/t Zach N., Silke, DWM, SoccerDad, Yaacov L, DJK, Richard B, Emet)

An ad from London's Underground

Remember last year when the British Advertising Standard Agency banned Israeli tourism ads from showing photos of the Western Wall because that implied that it was in Israel?

Well, I just received this photo of an ad in London's Underground:

So the ASA has no problem with Turkey's occupation of North Cyprus?

(I'm fairly sure that the asterisk next to North Cyprus isn't referring to its occupied status, but rather to the fact that flights from Britain to North Cyprus stop off in Istanbul first.)

(h/t Folderol)

Egyptian protest jokes

Ma'an has a selection of jokes that are going around Egypt:

At Tahrir Square, one sign says "[Mubarak:] Leave, I miss my wife," while a second man proclaimed, "Leave already, my arm is hurting."
----
When it started raining in Tahrir Square, here were the reactions from various groups:

Muslim Brotherhood: No talk with system until rain stops
[Opposition leader] ElBaradai: Regime is fully responsible for rain in At-Tahrir Square
[Opposition party] April 6 Movement: Mubarak promised us safety, but he sent the rain to sink us
Al-Jazeera: Our correspondent has informed us that thugs are responsible for rain falls
Protesters: We caught rain drops and identified them as belonging to the Interior Ministry
[Government]Nile News Channel: What the traitor channels are broadcasting is not true, there is no rain in At-Tahrir Square.
----
Police are in the service of people; they boiled the water before spraying the protesters.
----
A group of surgeons went to Egypt to make an operation of a one of kind conjoined twins called Hosni Mubarak - and the throne.
----
Army commander to Hosni Mubarak: "Everything has come to an end, you should write a farewell speech for the people."

Mubarak: "Oh! Where are they going?"
----
After the "Friday of Rage," the "Sunday of Martyrs”, and the "Week of Resistance," Mubarak might step down when it all rolled around to "Resurrection day."
----
Mubarak died and met the late presidents Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser in the afterlife. They asked him: Poisoned or assassinated? He replied: Neither, Facebook!

Saeb Erekat admits that Jews could never become "Palestinians"

Saeb Erekat was on Hardtalk this week. Unfortunately many countries cannot view the full interview at the BBC site.

But this clip is available, and it betrays the bigotry of even the moderate "Palestinian" leadership.

As Erekat dismisses the idea of a one state solution, he says:

I don't think Christian and Muslim Palestinians would convert to Judaism and become Israelis. I don't think that Jews would convert to Islam and Christianity and become Palestinians.

Since there are over a million non-Jews in Israel, his first statement betrays his hate for Israel and his propensity to slander Israel on British TV by implying that it is a Jewish-only state.

But the second statement shows that Erekat believes that Jews cannot ever be citizens of a Palestinian Arab state! Only Christians and Muslims could!

He could have framed it in national terms ("I don't think that Palestinians want to be citizens of Israel; I don't think that Israelis would want to become citizens of a Palestinian state") but instead his terminology shows that the entire Palestinian Arab national project is really about keeping Jews out of "Palestine," and in the short term limiting the areas that Jews could live, not building a state.

"Honor killing" news

From IOL News:

A Jordanian court on Sunday gave a reduced sentence to a 64-year-old man for killing his wife and two daughters last year over the woman's alleged “bad behaviour”, an official said.

“The court had initially sentenced him to life in prison, but it found mitigating factors and gave him instead a 15-year jail term,” the official said.

“The convict came home one night in March last year and saw a strange man secretly leaving the house. He got enraged and shot and killed his daughters and wife after she denied seeing any man.”

The official said the husband has told police he killed his wife because of her “bad behaviour”.

Murder is punishable by death in Jordan but in so-called “honour killings” courts can commute or reduce sentences, particularly if the victim's family or relatives agree to leniency.

Between 15 and 20 women are murdered in honour killings every year in Jordan, despite government efforts to curb such crimes.

Last month, a Jordanian court gave reduced sentences to a man convicted of stabbing to death his cousin for shunning his brother, and another for murdering his raped sister.

Another court in the Red Sea port of Aqaba jailed a man in January for two years for running over and killing his wife after “she threw a stone at him because he was upset that she bought a new car”.

And, on Tuesday:

A Jordanian man was charged on Monday with the premeditated killing of his sister to "cleanse the family's honor" because she became pregnant after being widowed, a judiciary source said.

"The attorney general charged a 26-year-old man with premeditated crime for having killed his 30-year-old sister, who was eight months pregnant 18 months after being widowed," the source said.

"The crime took place on Monday and the brother handed himself in to the authorities after stabbing his sister 35 times with a knife," the source added.

Murder is punishable by death in Jordan, but the courts often grant clemency in cases of so-called honor killings.

Parliament has twice refused to amend its penal code to increase the penalty in the kingdom for such murders, which claim the lives of 15 to 20 women a year on average.