Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Iranian machinations in Bahrain

The Iranian Red Crescent Society announced that it is ready to send relief workers to Bahrain to provide people with medical assistance after Bahraini security forces, assisted by Saudi troops, killed and injured scores of peaceful protesters on the tiny Persian Gulf island.

The secretary general of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said the organization is ready to help the Red Crescent deal with the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Bahrain.

"If we are given permission, we are ready to send our relief forces to help the Bahraini people with medical and health supplies," Zaher Rostami told Press TV.

Wikileaks revealed that Iran had previously sent agents, missiles and other weapons to Hezbollah - disguised as medical aid.

Odds are, this is what they have in mind for Bahrain as well, as they want the mostly Shiite protesters to ultimately make Bahrain an Iranian satellite - or part of Iran.

(h/t Folderol)

EoZ makes it into London Jewish Chronicle

From page 4 of the print edition of the current London Jewish Chronicle, as a sidebar to an article about Israel activism on campus:

Now, why would they have chosen that one?

Thanks to Jeremy for setting this up!

Group encouraging Arab couples to get married at al-Aqsa mosque

From Al Arabiya:

A Palestinian heritage association launched a project to encourage Arab-Israelis to hold their marriage ceremonies in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque as part of its plan to fight perceived Israeli attempts at erasing the identity of its Arab citizens.

“This project aims at ensuring that al-Aqsa is always full of worshippers in order to assert the importance of the mosque and to counter Israeli violations and occupation,” association chairman Hekmat Naamna told AlArabiya.net.

Naamna explained that since marriage is one of the most important events in anyone’s life, holding the ceremony in al-Aqsa would highlight the importance of the mosque and help bring a sense of blessing to one’s life.

“The Aqsa Mosque is a holy place with a special importance in the entire Muslim world and couples will be blessed if they hold their marriage ceremony in it. It is a source of pride for them.”

The association, Naamna added, encourages couples to marry in al-Aqsa through offering a variety of facilities for the bride and groom as well as the invitees.

“For each ceremony, we make available two buses that take the couple and the guests to the mosque, we coordinate with the marriage registrar, and handle photographs and media coverage.”

The association also gives each couple a gift and a trophy and invites public figures to the ceremony.

Ahmed Abul-Houf, from the village of Deir Hanna in Galilee in northern Israel, was one of the first youths to respond to the association’s project and marry in al-Aqsa mosque.

“I wanted my love for al-Aqsa and my solidarity with its cause to turn from words into action,” he told AlArabiya. “I married there to take part in protecting the mosque.”

It's funny; I never saw any Jewish groups that needed to pay for the cost of the many bar mitzvahs at the Kotel. Somehow, people want to do it on their own without being bribed.

This is just more proof that the supposed holiness of the Al Aqsa mosque is derived more from politics than religion. One can be certain that there were few if any, marriage ceremonies there from 1948 to 1967.

Two unlikely stories

From YNet:

Alber Halul, who was stabbed Saturday night by a group of masked men he claims are haredim, recounted the attack Sunday. "They threatened to shoot us if we resisted and stabbed me 10 times – in my head, my leg, and my neck," he told Ynet.

Halul, a 22-year old Christian Arab from the Galilee town of Gush Halav, was assaulted while with a group of friends at Ein Zeitim forest, near Safed.

"At around 12:30 five masked drove up in a Nissan jeep and began driving in circles near us. Then they left and came back with another vehicle, and came closer," he recalled from his hospital bed.

"They threw stun grenades and fired in the air. Then eight masked men got out of the car and began to attack us. The guys I was with ran away but I stayed to protect a girl who was with us. They stabbed me 10 times in my head, my leg, and my neck until they hit me hard and I fell to the ground."

Halul says he knows the men were ultra-Orthodox Jews although they wore masks. "While they were attacking us one of the said that if we dared to resist they'll shoot us and we knew from their accent and their clothes that they were ultra-Orthodox," he said.

It wasn't the first time the 22-year old was attacked due to his race. "I won't return to the forest again. The Jews' hatred and racism against us has reached a point of real violence that threatens our lives," he said.

So let's see what a man who was stabbed ten times looks like:

Yeah.

Also, Palestine Today says that Arab guards on the Temple Mount stopped a Jewish man with a gun from entering the compound via the Mughrabi gate.

Of course, there are Israeli guards there, and no one can bring a gun into the area to begin with because the entire Western Wall perimeter has metal detectors.

The only part of the story that might be true is that the Israeli guards declared the would-be intruder to be drunk - because it happened on Purim.

(h/t Vicious Babushka via Zvi)

Report: Syria importing Hezbollah to quash protests

Israel HaYom (Hebrew) is quoting Syrian opposition groups, saying that Syria is bringing in Hezbollah to help stop the protests spreading throughout the country.

According to the reports, thousands of Hezbollah members have been brought into the epicenter of protests in Daraa, which is now under curfew.

Syria's Al Watan blamed the protests on "Palestinian extremists and members of radical Islamic organizations from the refugee camps in southern Syria."

The Daraa protesters have shattered a statue of former Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad.

There are also reports that the Kurdish minority is starting to protest as well in the northern town of Kamishli.

UPDATE: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is supporting the uprising.

Who wouldn't pay to see the MB fight Hezbollah - for many years? (h/t Silke)

Latest Richard Falk slander: "IDF sexually abuses PalArab kids"

Richard Falk has outdone himself again in his never ending quest to demonize Israel.

His latest report to the UN Human Rights Council includes this passage:

The continued reports of inhumane and degrading treatment, including sexual assault, of children in detention is further deplorable....In the Ariel settlement in the occupied West Bank, children reported that they had been given electric shocks by Israeli interrogators in the settlement. The children, one as young as 14 years of age, were each accused of throwing stones at a settler bypass road in the occupied West Bank. Following the electric shocks, the boys provided their interrogators with confessions, although they maintained their innocence. In May 2010, a 14-year-old boy reported that his interrogator in the Israeli settlement block of Gush Etzion, in the occupied West Bank, attached car battery jump leads to the boy’s genitals and threatened to electrify the cable. After further abuse, the boy confessed to throwing stones, although he maintains his innocence.

The footnotes for these accusations come from DCI-International Palestine where they simply ask children who were detained by Israeli authorities whether they were abused, and the kids happily answer with what the Israel-haters want to hear.

The accusations are so ridiculously lurid and absurd that only people who are already convinced of Israel's pre-determined guilt could possibly believe them.

Hence, Richard Falk quotes them approvingly.

DCI-PS counted some 40 more children killed in Cast Lead than PCHR did. Invariably, any of the children who were known to have been killed while fighting (and even those that PCHR admitted were combatants) their deaths were described by DCI-PS this way: “Despite DCI-Palestine’s best endeavours to collect affidavits from eyewitnesses to [the child’s] death, no reliable evidence could be gathered.”

More evidence of DCI-PS's disregard for the truth comes from their descriptions of the fictional "massacre" in Jenin in 2002, from April 12th and 16th, the second being copied in a separate report to the UN on the 19th after it was already becoming obvious that there was no massacre:

Reports emanating from residents of the Jenin refugee camp indicate hundreds of dead, a significant percentage undoubtedly children, as well as mass destruction of homes, businesses, and vital infrastructure.

With a limited number of journalists finally allowed entry into Jenin refugee camp, the picture of the massacre that occurred there has become increasingly clear. Testimony from survivors of this massacre present a harrowing picture of a bloody military offensive designed to destroy a civilian population and raze Jenin refugee camp to the ground. Survivors estimate that 1/3 of the camp has been completely destroyed. Moreover, eyewitnesses from the camp describe how Israeli soldiers dug mass graves for those killed in an attempt to hide evidence of the massacre. Thousands of residents have been made homeless and are now seeking refuge in neigbouring villages while desperately trying to seek missing family members.

It is estimated that several hundred residents of the camp were killed during the Israeli attack, including a large proportion of children. Video documentation and photographs from the camp are images of horror that no words can ever describe. They overwhelming illustrate the mass destruction wreaked on the camp and its residents. Journalists in the camp are describing that the air is filled with a noxious stench of rotting bodies that remain lying in the street or buried under rubble. There are also reports of summary executions carried out by Israeli soldiers in the centre of the camp.

As far as I can see, DCI-PS never retracted their lurid claims of a massacre in Jenin that killed possibly hundreds of children. And this report also shows how DCI will happily swallow any lies being given to them by "eyewitnesses" who make up stories.

Just like the kids who claimed to be given electric shocks by Israel.

In other words, the group has no compunction about lying, and they certainly would have no hesitation to ask kids released by Israel leading questions to indicate abuse when there was none. It is no surprise that they support BDS and that they do not say a word about Hamas' abuse of children and use of child soldiers.

So DCS-PS is a really great fit for Richard Falk, for whom facts that contradict his beliefs are ignored and for whom absurd rumors that confirm his beliefs are God-given truth.

Real Liberals Love Israel #5: Solar Energy

Entire poster series here.

Iranian site recruiting "martyrdom volunteers" for Bahrain

A website called rahil.ir, based in Iran, is recruiting people to be "martyrdom volunteers" to fight in Bahrain. Presumably this means suicide bombers.

The site helpfully describes the Bahraini government as being "a puppet of the Great Satan America and Israel."

So far, according to the site, 1938 people have pledged to sacrifice their lives for the cause.

It points out how Iran has been supportive of the other Arab revolutions, no matter if the demonstrators were Shi'a or Sunni. For obvious reasons, they don't mention supporting the people who are being shot in Syria.

(h/t O)

I unfortunately had to make this poster a bit taller and skinnier than the others; I prefer to keep things in proportion but I couldn't do that with this wonderful photo.

(photo credit IDF Spokesperson Flickr page)
(h/t David G for the idea)

Arab discrimination against Palestinians: How to fix it

Today is the Arab Mothers' Day.

To commemorate the occasion, hundreds of Egyptian mothers who are married to Palestinian Arab men are demonstrating in Tahrir Square to give Egyptian citizenship to their children.

An Egyptian law passed in 2004 allowed Egyptian mothers to pass their citizenship to their children with foreign spouses - except Palestinians.

The reason given is the usual excuse. As Al Ahram wrote when discussing the law in 2006:

Also, children of Palestinian fathers are not eligible for Egyptian citizenship. While this seems unfair, asserted Diaaeddin, it is in accordance with Arab League Decree 1547 for 1959. The decree calls for the preservation of the Palestinian identity as an integral part of the Palestinian cause, and prevents it from assimilating into the identity of the host country.

The Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court in 2006 ruled that the law should apply to Palestinian Arab fathers as well, but that ruling has been completely ignored by Egyptian authorities.

There is a Facebook page for the mothers in this predicament, called The Ugly Duckling's Sons. The group claims that the law could allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to become Egyptian citizens, although that number seems to be exaggerated.

This is only one example of the state-supported discrimination against Palestinian Arabs, and Palestinian Arabs alone, in every Arab state.

The mothers' protest shows that the excuse given by every Arab leader - including Palestinian Arab leaders, and even parroted by UNRWA - that Palestinian Arabs do not want to become citizens of their host countries, is a complete lie. When given the opportunity, many if not most of them would jump to gain the equal rights that citizenship affords them.

There is a simple thing that could be done that could help galvanize the world to help these victims of Arab discrimination. It would not cost much and could be done by a private organization.

Commission an independent poll of Palestinian Arabs living in Arab countries, and ask them these simple questions:

Do you feel legally discriminated against in your host country because you are a Palestinian?
Do you feel that the citizens of your host country discriminate against Palestinians?
If you had the option, and if it would not impact your status as a Palestinian, would you want to become a citizen of the country you live in?
If you had the option to become a citizen of your host country but it meant that you would lose your status as a Palestinian, would you still want to become a citizen of your host country?
If given a choice, would you like to move to another Arab country and become a citizen there? If so, which one?
If given a choice, would you prefer to become a citizen of your host country or to move your family to the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas?

Never has anyone dared poll Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia or elsewhere to ask them if they would take advantage of citizenship if it was offered. It is impossible to know how bad the problem is without simply asking them.

Once the poll results are known, assuming that most Palestinian Arabs are like the protesting mothers in Tahrir Square and the poll is done without bias and without governmental pressure, the issue of systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Arab countries can be tackled properly.

Human rights groups like HRW who bend over backwards to pretend that the problem doesn't exist would be forced to acknowledge that there is a problem and that the Arab governments must be pushed to stop their discrimination.

We need to expose the truth. And it would not be that hard; to commission a poll like this can't possibly cost that much money.

For decades, the world has been fed lies about how the Palestinian Arabs feel about their own lives. Isn't it time to simply ask them what they think?

And then shouldn't every Western nation and human rights group mobilize to give Palestinian Arabs the simple human right to become citizens of any Arab country, under the same rules as any other Arab?

Anti-Semitism 2.0 (Mudar Zahran)

From Hudson-NY:

The concept of the "evil Jew" has made a well-disguised comeback: Criticizing Israel and Zionis, is now deemed a legitimate option to cursing Jews and Judaism. Not only is it open, socially acceptable and legal, but it can actually bring prosperity and popularity.

Why would a Palestinian be writing this? The answer is simple: The Palestinians have been used as fuel for the new form of anti-Semitism; this has hurt the Palestinians and exposed them to unprecedented and purposely media-ignored abuse by Arab governments, including some of those who claim love for the Palestinians, yet in fact only bear hatred to Jews. This has resulted in Palestinian cries for justice, equality, freedom and even basic human rights being ignored while the world getting consumed with delegitimizing Israel from either ignorance or malice.

Worse, just as the old form of anti-Semitism has proven itself a threat as poisonous to its supporters, as it was to the Jews, the new form of anti-Semitism 2.0 could prove itself the same -- all the more likely as we see the world tolerating Iran's nuclear ambitions not necessarily out of love for the Mullah's regime, but instead because of mental fixation against Israel.

Such bias against Israel cannot be "accidental" or merely "unfortunate." No other nation has received the amount of scrutinizing, criticism, coverage, demonization and delegitimization. In fact the question to be asked is not whether there is bias against Israel; but rather why there is bias against Israel?

...Media bias against Israel dies not harm only Israelis; it comes at very dear price to us, the Palestinians. In July of 2010, for example, a seasoned journalist Robert Fisk interviewed a group of right-wing ultra-conservative East Bank-Jordanians who were calling on King Abdullah of Jordan to strip the Palestinian majority of their citizenship and property. The group, mostly made up of retired Jordanian servicemen and journalists were also calling for ending the peace treaty with Israel and "establishing it as an enemy state." Despite my attempts to contact Mr. Fisk –-along with another Jordanian-Palestinian journalist---to warn him of the people he was going to meet, he nonetheless, published an article entitled, "Why Is Jordan Occupied by Palestinians?" -- Which was mainly a manifesto for those with whom he had met. They then publicized the article as a global media victory for themselves, and drove the Palestinians of Jordan into even deeper fear for their own safety in a country where they are already oppressed by security agencies; virtually barred from any government or local authority positions, excluded from state universities, despite paying "a university tax", as well as other taxes and tariffs --which their fellow Jordanians of Bedouins heritage are exempted from-- and regularly and openly insulted by the government-run Jordanian media calling for them to be expelled.

The day before Mr. Fisk met with the extremist group, one of their members, a retired intelligence officer now turned writer, published an article calling on the Jordanian intelligence service to "chop off Mudar Zahran's head in the UK without any observance of diplomatic restraints;" would Mr. Fisk have met with an Israeli journalist calling for the Mossad to behead a Palestinian on British soil?

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A good idea from G:

Entire poster series here.

New poster series idea: Real Liberals Love Israel

An idea I've been kicking around:

My main problem is coming up with appropriate photos. How best to illustrate freedom of the press, or of assembly, or a top-notch justice system? (Diversity is a bit easier.) I want this one to be a positive campaign.

By the way, the New York Jewish Voice published 13 of my posters in their current edition (they apologized to me for not putting my URL anywhere on the page...)

Just a Molotov cocktail

Palestine Today quotes Israeli news as saying that a Molotov cocktail was thrown at an Israeli bus near Qalqilya on Sunday evening. Thankfully, no one was injured.

But this is not an isolated incident. A single well-aimed firebomb could kill many people, and Palestinian Arabs attack Israelis with firebombs a lot.

Yet the English-language media - even the Israeli English media - almost always ignores these attacks.

A quick glance at Hebrew media shows that there were two Molotov cocktails thrown at a soldier post near Rachel's Tomb a couple of weeks ago, and an Egged bus was shot at.

Last Friday, in Silwan, a Molotov cocktail was thrown towards an Israeli officer, and he briefly was set on fire. He is only lightly injured, but supposedly a video of the attack is making the rounds of Palestinian Arab media. (You can see a number of photos here, taken by Reuters but not picked up by any major newspaper that I could find.)

From reading the media, you would think that Palestinian Arabs merely throw small stones in their protests. You never hear about shootings, or firebombs. Yet they happen quite often.

They attempt to immolate and shoot Jews to death. Regularly.

But they don't usually succeed.

The Israeli media is used to this, so to them it is not news. The Western media doesn't care, so they don't allow it to be news.

And scenes like this are all but invisible to the world.