Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Horrific slaughter of Jewish family in Itamar

A mother, father and three of their children were stabbed to death late Friday night by at least one suspected terrorist who infiltrated the Itamar settlement southeast of Nablus.

The killings occurred shortly after 10 p.m., when one or two attackers jumped the fence that surrounds Itamar and broke into the home of Ruth and Udi Fogel, aged 35 and 36, respectively. The attackers went room to room, stabbing the parents, a three-month-old girl, Hadas, and two boys, Elad, three, and Yoav, 11.

Two other children – aged two and eight – were in a side room but were not attacked.
The family’s oldest child, 12- year-old Tamar, was out of the house at the time.

The IDF immediately launched searches in nearby Arab villages as Palestinians reported that a faction of Fatah’s al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade had claimed responsibility.

Israel Peace Week at Berkeley

Nice to see some pro-active Israel advocacy in the belly of the beast:

I doubt I'll have much access to a computer this weekend, but I have a few posts queued up for Saturday night and Sunday so you'll at least have something to read.

Posting will probably be pretty light on Monday as well.

Have a Shabbat Shalom and a great weekend!

Egypt and Syria make nice

From People's Daily Online:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad voiced readiness to work with Egypt to maintain cooperation relations between the two countries, Syria's official SANA news agency reported Thursday.

In a message sent to head of the Supreme Council of Egypt's armed forces, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, Assad expressed his hopes that Egypt would restore its normal role in the common Arab work, expressing Syria's readiness to consult and closely cooperate with Egypt in all fields.

The message, SANA said, came in reply to that sent by Tantawi to Assad, in which Tantawi has confirmed the solid relations between the two countries and the imperative to open a new page based on the well-known, aspired-for firm principles.

With all this goodwill, it is probably only a matter of time before Iran offers to build uranium-enrichment facilities in Egypt...

Where's the outrage at Arab apartheid? (Khaled Abu Toameh)

From Hudson NY:

Mohammed Nabil Taha, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, died this week at the entrance to a Lebanese hospital after doctors refused to help him because his family could not afford to pay for medical treatment.

The tragic case of Taha highlights the plight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live in impoverished refugee camps in Lebanon and who are the victims of an Apartheid system that denies them access to work, education and medical care.

Ironically, the boy's death at the entrance to the hospital coincided with Israel Apartheid Week, a festival of hatred and incitement organized by anti-Israel activists on university campuses in the US, Canada and other countries.

It is highly unlikely that the folks behind the festival have heard about the case of Taha. Judging from past experiences, it is also highly unlikely that they would publicize the case after they heard about it.

Why should anyone care about a Palestinian boy who is denied medical treatment by an Arab hospital? This is a story that does not have an anti-Israel angle to it.

Can anyone imagine what would have happened if an Israeli hospital had abandoned a boy to die in its parking lot because his father did not have $1,500 to pay for his treatment?

The UN Security Council would hold an emergency session and Israel would be strongly condemned and held responsible for the death of the boy.

All this is happening at a time when tens of thousands of Palestinian patients continue to benefit from treatments in Israeli hospitals.

Last year alone, some 180,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip entered Israel to receive medical treatment. Many were treated despite the fact that they did not have enough money to cover the bill. In Israel, even a suicide bomber who is -- only! -- wounded while trying to kill Jews is entitled to the finest medical treatment. And there have been many instances where Palestinians who were injured in attacks on Israel later ended up in some of Israel's best hospitals.

Lebanon, by the way, is not the only Arab country that officially applies Apartheid laws against Palestinians, denying them the right to receive proper medical treatment and own property.

Just last week it was announced that a medical center in Jordan has decided to stop treating Palestinian cancer patients because the Palestinian Authority has failed to pay its debts to the center.

Other Arab countries have also been giving the Palestinians a very hard time when it comes to receiving medical treatment.

It is disgraceful that while Israel admits Palestinian patients to its hospitals, Arab hospitals are denying them medical treatment for various reasons, including money. But then one is reminded that Arab dictators do not care about their own people, so why should they pay attention to an 11-year-old boy who is dying at the entrance to a hospital because his father was not carrying $1,500?

But as the death took place in an Arab country – and as the victim is an Arab – why should anyone care about him? Where is the outcry against Arab Apartheid?

Critics of Syria disappear - in Lebanon

From Babylon and Beyond:

Human-rights groups are becoming increasingly concerned about the fate and whereabouts of three Syrian brothers who disappeared in the Lebanese capital about two weeks ago after they distributed fliers calling for demonstrations for democratic change in Syria.

On Thursday, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called on Lebanon in a statement to immediately launch an independent probe into the matter.

The circumstances of the brothers' disappearance are murky. According to Human Rights Watch research, agents from Lebanon's Military Intelligence took at least six members of the Jasem family into custody on Feb. 23 and 24 after they handed out pamphlets calling for more democracy in Syria, a country ruled by the Assad family for decades.

One of them, construction worker Jasem Mer`i Jasem, then disappeared in the early hours of Feb. 25 along with his two brothers, who had gone to pick him up from a police station in Beirut's Baabda district, according to the rights group.

Family members worry that the brothers might have been sent back to Syria, where, rights groups say, authorities regularly arrest political and human-rights activists, block websites and detain bloggers.

I haven't checked lately, but I'm sure that college campuses worldwide have lots of programs calling on Syria to embrace freedom and liberal ideals, and to stop interfering with its neighbors.

(h/t David G)

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.