Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 11, 2011

Latest Latma (3/11/11)

My "Apartheid?" posters have officially gone viral (updated)

My "Apartheid?" poster page has now gotten over 5000 pageviews, with links to that page coming from all over the world and many emails from people who appreciated them, or have made suggestions for more.

It received over 250 Facebook "Likes."

Other websites have reproduced the posters on their pages, adding thousands more views.

The YouTube video I threw together with some of the posters has done OK, with over 2200 views itself.

I'm still waiting for more people to send photos of how the posters have been used on college campuses. I hear that some turned them into postcard-sized handouts.

UPDATE: A Google search of "Apartheid week posters" shows many of mine towards the top. Nice!

Israel saving the world, again

From Dore Gold in the Jerusalem Post:

The British-based World Energy Council reported in November 2010 that Israel had oil shale from which it is possible to extract the equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil. Yet these numbers are currently undergoing a major revision internationally.

A new assessment was released late last year by Dr. Yuval Bartov, chief geologist for Israel Energy Initiatives, at the yearly symposium of the prestigious Colorado School of Mines. He presented data that our oil shale reserves are actually the equivalent of 250 billion barrels (that compares with 260 billion barrels in the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia).

Independent oil industry analysts have been carefully looking at the shale, and have not refuted these findings. As a consequence of these new estimates, we may emerge as the third largest deposit of oil shale, after the US and China.

OIL SHALE mining used to be a dirty business that used up tremendous amounts of water and energy.

Yet new technologies, being developed for Israeli shale, seek to separate the oil from the shale rock 300 meters underground; these techniques actually produce water, rather than use it up.

The technology will be tested in a pilot project followed by a demonstration stage. It will be critical to demonstrate that the underground separation of oil from shale is environmentally sound before going to full-scale production. The present goal is to produce commercial quantities of shale oil by the end of the decade.

This particular project has global significance.

For if Israel develops a unique method for separating oil from shale deep underground, that has none of the negative ecological side-effects of earlier oil shale efforts, that technology can be made available to the whole world, changing the entire global oil market. The effect of the spread of this technology would be to shift the center of gravity of world oil away from Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf to more stable states that have no history of backing terrorism or radical Islamic causes. (In the Arab world, Jordan and Morocco have the most significant oil shale deposits.)

WHEN WILL the West begin to treat Israel as a powerful energy giant and not as a weak client state that must be pressured? In the case of the Saudis, when the US realized the true extent of their oil reserves, after America’s reserves in Texas and Oklahoma were depleted by World War II, it sought to upgrade its military and diplomatic ties with the Saudi kingdom even before its production capacity was fully exploited. The US-Saudi connection grew as massive infrastructure investments for moving Saudi oil to Western markets were made, like the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (TAPLINE).

It is a little premature to celebrate, but if all the "ifs" get worked out, but this could be the most important news for the next fifty years.

(h/t The Muqata)

Peres: "Gaddafi wears strange hats and crappy dresses"

From YNet:

President Shimon Peres on Thursday made unusual comments on Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi during a meeting with students in the Bayit VeGan boarding house in Jerusalem.

Peres said that in his opinion Gaddafi should work for the Dior fashion house, whose chief designer John Galliano was recently fired over anti-Semetic slurs.

"Who needs this Gaddafi? I think he should have gone to work at Dior. He changes his outfit everyday, investing thousands of dollars in strange hats, crappy dresses, wasting his money… Who needs him? You tell me, what for?" Peres said.

I sort of like his dress. Reminds me of another:

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar)

Join the Facebook cause for a tenth Intifada!

I am no expert on Facebook, but I set up a new page to make fun of the "new Intifada" pages that are cropping up.

Here is the rationale for the Tenth Intifada page:

Palestinian Arabs have tried to use "resistance" (what the enlightened world calls "terrorism") since the late 19th century to make sure that Palestine is a Jew-free land.

We attacked Jews in 1886 in Petah Tikva. It was glorious!
We attacked Jews in Tiberias in 1901 and 1904. It was fantastic!
We attacked Jews in Jerusalem in 1920. It was phenomenal!
We attacked Jews in Hebron, Jerusalem and Safed in 1929. It was gorgeous!
We attacked Jews continuously from 1936 to 1939. Even though we ended up killing more Arabs than Jews, it was one of the finest chapters in Palestinian history. We attacked Jews in 1947 hours after we rejected a UN resolution that would have given us that state we want so badly. While attacking the Jews then was really great, we call the end of that little episode "the Naqba." We celebrate that every year.
We attacked Jews continuously throughout the 1950s, through our Fedayeen. It was glorious!
We attacked the entire world in the 1970s, but since the target wasn't specifically Jews, we won't call that an intifada. It was really majestic, though.
We attacked Jews in the late 1980s. It was marvelous!
We attacked Jews right after rejecting another plan that would have given us a state. It was epic!

But now, we have Facebook, so we must call for the biggest, best intifada of all: Intifada Number 10!

Because if there is anything we are good at, it is not learning the lessons from the past!

So go ahead and "Like" the page!

Saddam's disgusting gift to Donald Rumsfeld

From Donald Rumsfeld's website:

In December 1983, I traveled to Baghdad as President Reagan’s Middle East Envoy and met with Saddam Hussein. At the conclusion of our meeting he presented me with a gift. Such gifts can be unusual, but even so I was shocked by this one. Saddam had given me a three-minute videotape documenting alleged Syrian “atrocities.” The blurred, choppy footage shows young Syrians biting the heads off of snakes and stabbing puppies, to the apparent applause of then-Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad. Saddam’s message was clear: The Syrian regime was barbaric. Though his evidence was hardly convincing, his conclusion was a tough one to dispute.

WARNING: This video depicts graphic violence. Some viewers may find it disturbing.

I actually linked to a better version of this video here, but it didn't have the same killing of the puppies seen in the Rumsfeld video (in my link I also show a Syrian taking a big bite of a puppy.)

(Corrected the name of the dictator...h/t Solomon)

PFLP joins Hamas in denouncing Holocaust education

From Palestine News Network:

The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) joined Islamist party Hamas in condemning a plan to teach the Holocaust in West Bank and Gaza Strip schools run by the UN Refugee and Works Association (UNRWA).

A PFLP statement sent to PNN said that to teach the Holocaust would be a “big mistake” and an “attempt to beautify the ugly face of racism.” He said the “Zionist entity” would use their victimization by the Nazis to justify their crimes against Arabs and Palestinians.

“The Zionist entity extorts the world by exploiting the victims of the Nazis, which has no relation to its odious, racist project,” said the statement. “It is AJDAR by UNRWA to impose the teaching of this continuous MHRQA against our people since the 1948 Nakba and the suffering of Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora.”

The PFLP also stressed the importance of forming a national council of professors, researchers, and specialists to oversee the Palestinian curriculum, focusing especially on national history and geography and human rights, national resistance against the occupation, and the Palestinian national identity, “instead of a culture of normalization, surrender, and distortion of facts.”

Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, announced on March 1 its intent to defeat the UNRWA proposal with a similar statement, saying the plan was “an attempt to impose on us the culture of normalization with the occupation.”

The statement from the Hamas Ministry of Culture, however, described the Holocaust as “tales and lies.” At least one representative from Fatah has described the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews died, as “a big lie,” but no official statement from Fatah has come out about the UNRWA plan.

UNRWA ignored my request for a statement, as it appears to have done for Islam Online.

It is entirely possible that UNRWA never planned on a curriculum that included the Holocaust; it floated the idea in 2009 and faced strong opposition then as well.

Report: Molotov cocktails hurled near Rachel's Tomb

Firas Press reports that "Palestinian youths" threw Molotov cocktails at soldiers near Rachel's Tomb this afternoon.

This must be part of that non-violent resistance that we hear so much about.

The world accepts Palestinian Arab violence as natural

José Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor, visited Israel recently and wrote about his trip in the Huffington Post.

The article is a mixed bag of good, bad and naïveté, and there is a lot to comment on. But one throwaway sentence within the following two paragraphs grabbed my attention:

Visiting Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, including walking along a "refugee" area, with the infamous concrete security wall towering above me, and shaking hands with a number of youth, I was struck by the relative calm in the area. As someone all too familiar with situations of subjugation and despair, I could sense that this is a very fragile peace. Violence will flare-up if the much promised and much delayed Palestinian State does not become a reality within the next two years. Nevertheless, at this particular point in time, Israel and Palestine (West Bank) form an oasis of tranquility in a region in turmoil.

Visiting the West Bank I envied the relative prosperity of the Palestinians and the progress being made in their State-building exercise. Palestinians in the West Bank are far ahead of most Sub-Sahara African States, and indeed well ahead of my own country, in economic well-being and the development of the State institutions.

He visits, he sees that things are doing remarkably well, that terrorism has gone way down and the West Bank economy is way up.

But he says, with certainty, that "Violence will flare-up if the much promised and much delayed Palestinian State does not become a reality within the next two years."

Why? Why would people whose lives are visibly improving want to go back again to a disastrous terror spree, one that cost them thousands of lives and tens of thousands of jobs?

Let's see if this similar sentence makes sense:

Violence will flare-up if Gilad Shalit is not released within the next year.

Sounds weird, doesn't it?

But it sounds perfectly normal to state, as a fact, that Palestinian Arabs will choose violence if they don't get their maximal goals - even after they have already rejected compromises that would have led to their state they supposedly want.

The only explanation is that the world expects Palestinian Arabs to be naturally violent.

To the current politically correct mindset, the relative peace we have now is considered an aberration, something counter to the Arab personality. Isn't it wonderful that Palestinian Arabs have managed to avoid sending suicide bombers into Israel for a few years? Let's all applaud their superhuman effort to temporarily overcome their normal, warmongering personalities for a few years! Give them a cookie! We know it is an act, and that if we stop treating them as "special" children they will of course go back to their wild, murderous ways. But if we keep throwing money and promises to pressure Israel at them, they'll stay in line for a couple more years, just enough time to give them their reward.

And if they erupt in their natural violence again, well, that must be Israel's fault.

(h/t Colonel R for the idea)

Abbas: "My threats to quit are my strength"

We've mentioned how many times Abbas has threatened to quit, and how the West cowers when he makes these threats.

He has now said fairly explicitly that he uses those threats as the main weapon for his continued intransigence.

In a press conference at the end of his three-day visit to England (one wonders why no leftist tried to have him arrested as a terrorist,) Abbas said,

I often ask myself, "Who are you to say no to the Americans when you are living on their assistance, as well as from European aid,"... but there is a reason that I am in a position of strength. I am not stuck to the chair [of the presidency,] and I can leave at any moment that I want; I will not nominate myself in the upcoming elections, and I will not sell out, I will not give up and I will not do something I am not convinced is right.

It is way past time to call his bluff.

The Guardian: "We bring you only the news you want to hear"

A great pickup by Just Journalism:

In an incredibly candid blog entry on media self-censorship by veteran Guardian journalist and staunch Israel critic Michael White, he confesses:
‘middle class ill-ease in going after stories about immigration, legal or otherwise, about welfare fraud or the less attractive tribal habits of the working class, which is more easily ignored altogether.’
By contrast, in, ‘Media self-censorship: not just a problem for Turkey,’ Israel is put forward as one of the archetypal ‘targets’ of The Guardian:
‘Toffs, including royal ones, Christians, especially popes, governments of Israel, and US Republicans are more straightforward targets.’
White, who has been at the publication for 30 years, also alleges that positive stories about Tony Blair are rarities despite other ‘tyrants’ being granted positive coverage:
‘Nor has it been easy to smuggle anything creditable about Tony Blair into the paper for several years now, though tyrants with more convincing leftwing credentials sometimes get the benefit of the doubt.’
In his final comments he implies that The Guardian – in common with other publications – has an overwhelming tendency to simply tell its readers what they want to hear, rather than produce journalism which might challenge their ingrained prejudices and preconceptions:
‘And remember, dear reader, that we are also striving much of the time to tell you what you’d rather know rather than challenge your prejudices and make you cross.
‘As the old saying goes, we are all guilty.’

Of course, those old prejudices were instilled by the same pseudo-journalists at The Guardian to begin with, so even in this surprising mea culpa, White does not take the full responsibility that his newspaper has for anti-Israel sentiment in England.

Danish minister sacked for doing what EVERY Arab country does (updated)

From AFP:

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said Tuesday he fired his integration minister over a scandal involving 36 young, stateless Palestinians who were wrongly denied citizenship.

"Birthe Roenn Hornbech is leaving her post as integration minister and church minister and thus withdraws from the government," he said in a statement, prompting a small government reshuffle.
The integration ministry, he said, failed to brief parliament in a timely manner on "36 stateless persons being wrongly denied Danish citizenship."

Danish media had recently accused the minister of knowing since 2008 that Danish immigration authorities were not respecting a UN convention which stipulates that stateless people born and raised in a country have the right to obtain citizenship there before they turn 21, as long as they are not convicted of any serious crimes.

But 36 Palestinians who were eligible to obtain Danish citizenship had their requests turned down.

Every single Arab country (with the partial exception of Jordan*) explicitly denies citizenship to all Palestinian Arabs born in their countries, in opposition to that same UN convention, which is the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

It states in Article 7:

1. The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.

2. States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless.

Every Arab state has signed, ratified or acceded to this Convention. Yet they all ignore it, purposefully keeping Palestinian Arab children stateless.

Where is the world outcry over this denial of the human rights of every Palestinian Arab child in an Arab country?

UPDATE: Apparently, the Convention that she was sacked over was the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, not the Rights of the Child. (h/t Guan)

Article 1:

1. A Contracting State shall grant its nationality to a person born in its territory who would otherwise be stateless. Such nationality shall be granted:

(a) at birth, by operation of law, or

(b) upon an application being lodged with the appropriate authority, by or on behalf of the person concerned, in the manner prescribed by the national law. Subject to the provisions of paragraph 2 of this article, no such application may be rejected.

It is stronger than the Convention on the Rights of the Child in that it explicitly says that the child has a right to the host country's nationality, something not said explicitly in the Rights of the Child and possibly the loophole that Arab countries use, saying that Palestinian Arab children have the rights to "Palestinian" citizenship.

The Reduction of Statelessness convention is not ratified by any Arab country, but it is ratified by Denmark.

Jordan has been tightening up its rules on citizenship for Palestinian Arabs whose families originated in the West Bank, but it has never accepted the concept of naturalizing those from Gaza.

Galloway: Cast Lead comparable to World War II

Once again, beyond satire:

George Galloway has said Hamas are not tyrants and defended elections in Iran during a lecture about the fall of dictatorships.

Speaking to LSE students on Monday, the former Respect MP called Israel an “apartheid” state and compared scenes in Gaza after Operation Cast Lead to those in the Second World War.

He described Operation Cast Lead at the end of 2009 as a “savage assault on a captive people so ferocious that not since the Second World War are we seen anything like it.

He praised the Palestinian elections in 2006 which saw Hamas elected as the “only free and fair election” in the Arab world.

“Hamas won the only democratic election ever held in the Arab world so how they can be tyrants I really don’t know,” he said. “I am not in favour of Hamas but I am in favour of democracy.

“There are many things wrong with Iran. One thing they do have is elections. They elected a president that you or I might not have voted for but I am in no doubt that Ahmadinejad won the presidential election. He won it because he appeals to the poorest workers, peasants, the most religious sectors of the Iranian population.”

He denied giving money to Hamas despite video footage showing him handing bags of cash to leaders.

He was questioned about video footage during a Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza in 2009 where he is seen saying: “We carried a lot of cash here. We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all the contents. We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine. Here is the money. This is not charity. This is politics. The government of Palestine is the best people where this money is needed.”

But on Monday he said: “I did not give bags of cash to Hamas. I gave money, ambulances, wheelchairs, medicine, food, children’s clothes, teddy bears to the 1.6 million Palestinian people under siege in Gaza.”