Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Western darling ElBaradei says he'd go to war if Israel attacks Gaza

Egypt's Masrawy and other Arabic media outlets are quoting Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohammed ElBaradei as saying that Egypt may go to war if Israel attacks Gaza.

He is quoted as saying that if he becomes President, in the event of any future attack on Gaza he would discuss ways to implement the joint Arab defense agreement, for all Arab atates to respond "in the face of Israeli aggression."

ElBaradei is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

He also is revealed in a new Wikileaks document as saying that if he becomes president he would restore Egyptian relations with Tehran that were severed after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Ma'an again quotes bogus "activists" in Hebron

On Friday, Ma'an wrote:

Israeli settlers burned a store in the center of the West Bank city of Hebron on Friday, activists said.

Protesters assembling ahead of a demonstration said settler tossed flammable materials that burned a storefront on Shalala Street.

Palestinian firefighters put out the blaze that caused damage to the stores and prevented it from spreading, onlookers said.

This sounded fishy to me, as Israelis are simply not allowed in most of Hebron. So I asked someone who lives in the area whether this was possible, and he responded:

It's an area behind Beit Hadassah where we have no access at all. I gave David Wilder a call to double check since it's up by him. He said no chance.

How many times must we document that anti-Israel "activists" lie before the media starts to show some skepticism on their wild and unfounded claims?

And when will Ma'an actually do some real reporting and verify facts instead of mindlessly repeating any anti-Israel drivel anyone claims? It is not hard to reach out to Jews living in Hebron.

March rocket calendar

G=Grad
Q=Qassam
M=Mortar
P=Unidentified projectile
S=Fell short in Gaza
F=Fatality (Green-Gaza, Red-Israel)

March 2011

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
		1	2	3 1P	4 2Q	5 1Q
6	7	8	9 1Q	10 1Q	11 1Q	12
13	14	15	16	17	18 10M	19 50M
20 3Q (1G) 1M	21 1Q	22 4Q 4M	23 3G 7M	24 6Q 2G 6M	25	26 3Q
27	28	29 2QS	30	31 1Q

Elder poster sighting: North Miami Beach

At the JCC in North Miami Beach:

(h/t to the globetrotting Junior Elder)

UC Davis newspaper says it will allow EoZ ad - under certain conditions

On Friday, I reported that the California Aggie newspaper by the students of the University of California-Davis had rejected my "Apartheid?" ad because it was too "controversial" - even though it says nothing controversial at all.

The sponsor of the ad received a clarification from the newspaper:

Hi XXXXX,

First of all, I'd like to apologize for any inconvenience The California Aggie has caused you. I've talked to a few of my staff members and I've decided that we will run your ad on two conditions:

1) We put the words "Paid Advertisement" at the top of the ad.
2) The Aggie will run a box next to the ad giving readers their response options (Where to buy an ad of their own, where to send a guest opinion, etc...)

If you think these sound reasonable, let Kevin [the advertising manager] and I know as soon as possible and he'll help you finish the ad-placement process.

Again, I apologize if my decision to not run your ad caused any problems.

My preference is that The Aggie takes no sides in issues like this, but there is no harm in running your ad if we make sure to point out that anybody can write a guest opinion or run an ad.

Thank you for your time,
--
Mark Ling
Editor in Chief
The California Aggie

I personally have no problem with the first condition, although from looking at back issues it seems the only time they included the words "Paid Advertisement" was for full-page ads. They have plenty of smaller ads without that disclaimer.

But the second condition again presupposes that somehow a pro-Israel ad is "controversial" and the newspaper must go out of its way to allow those that hate Israel to have ample opportunity to respond. Would a similar pro-Canada ad have the same conditions attached? Or an ad made by a pro-choice group?

The sponsor of the ad replied:

Thank you for writing to me.

You said that The Aggie would run my ad on two conditions, and you asked me to tell you and
Kevin whether I thought those conditions were reasonable.

Before answering that question, I have several questions of my own:

(1) What other ads have met those conditions in the past?

(2) For what other ads have those conditions been required in the past?

(3) For what other ads will those conditions be required in the future?

(4) Who has approved requiring that my ad meet those conditions?

I hope that you will let Kevin and me know the answers as soon as convenient.

I'll keep you posted.

Half a cheer for Goldstone

Richard Goldstone backtracks somewhat concerning his already infamous report in a Washington Post op-ed:

We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

...Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.

Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants. The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).

Goldstone's admission, welcome as it is, is disingenuous.

Certainly the worst part of the report was in the many parts that he is now retracting, that the IDF purposefully targeted civilians. He now says that the "fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion" when the report was written. But in reality, if he had looked at both the history of how the IDF acts in war in general, the specifics that were known about how the IDF acted in Gaza, and how wars in urban combat zones are generally waged (i.e., in Iraq), of he was fair he would have easily concluded that the IDF was not purposefully targeting civilians and that they went out of their way, indeed even above and beyond, to avoid targeting real civilians (while Hamas was dressing up its fighters in civilian clothing.)

It appears that now, two years later, he is impressed that Israel is conducting investigations into acts of individual soldiers. Yet this is how the IDF always acted.

His belated retraction also doesn't note that much of what his report said was known to be false at the time the Goldstone Report was released, as I and others have documented quite exhaustively. His report had a clear and consistent bias where Israeli claims were treated skeptically but Hamas claims were believed without reservation. To come back 18 months later and lamely admit that Israeli claims were indeed found to be accurate just shows how biased he was in accepting problematic testimony then.

For example, he writes now:

Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants. The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).

But this blog as well as others had, already at that time, documented that hundreds of so-called "civilians" were in fact Hamas combatants, based purely on Hamas' own admissions in Arabic.

So while it is nice to see that Goldstone realizes his report was mistaken in its key accusation against Israel, his admission is way too little - and comes way too late.

His Washington Post op-ed is not going to get nearly the same publicity that the report did, and the damage cannot be undone.

University of California-Davis student paper rejects pro-Israel ad as "controversial"

I've mentioned that a loyal reader was, at his own expense, placing ads featuring my "Apartheid?" posters in various California newspapers.

Here is the ad:

This ad does not insult anyone. It has no offensive content. Every single photo and caption shows how Israel is a tolerant, liberal state.

Yet when this ad was submitted to The California Aggie, the newspaper written by students at the University of California-Davis, it was rejected.

Here's the rejection letter:

Hi XXXXXX,

So due to the fact that we'd be taking money to publish an ad
portraying a controversial opinion, we will not be able to publish the
attached advertisement. Ultimately, such decisions are made by Mark
Ling, our Editor in Chief, who can be reached by email at
editor@theaggie.org.

Thanks,
Kevin Kankel
Advertising Manager
The California Aggie
25 Lower Freeborn
One Shields Ave
Davis, CA 95616

Apparently, at UC Davis, saying that Israel is anything other than an apartheid regime is considered "controversial."

UPDATE: The California Aggie is an independent newspaper written by UCD students; it is not an official UCD paper. I corrected the post.

Weekend links, and videos too

NRO has a nice take on Nick Kristof that links back to a post of mine.

Just Journalism notes that thousands of Islamists are ready to go to Egypt to help set up that new, democratic, liberal government we've been hearing so much about.

Zionism Is Humanitarianism:

In a related story, a girl from Russia with a very rare disease - where her bones are as fragile as crystal - needs to travel to Israel for a potentially life-saving operation, and her parents are raising money.

Asaf Romirowsky and Alexander Joffe, in the WSJ, say that UNRWA must be defunded.

A judge in New York has allowed a lawsuit against the PLO to proceed. More details on the case here.

Aish has a video that looks at the "Third Intifada" Facebook page.

Germany together with an Iranian bank are bypassing sanctions on Iran.

Mordechai Kedar says that the only solution for the Arab world is the exact opposite of a large Islamic 'ummah.

A very interesting two-part video showing how Israeli Jews react when confronted with explicit anti-Arab bigotry. Most of them (although not all) actively protest.

And one more video: CAMERA takes a very critical look at a BBC program that violates all of BBC's own guidelines for fairness. ( I originally mistakenly gave credit to another organization, my apologies to CAMERA.)

(h/t Zach, David G, Shraga, Menachem L, Brian from Snapped Shot)

Hamas member Hasan Abu Jaser was killed in a tunnel collapse Thursday.

The Al Qassam website said he was in a "resistance tunnel."

I don't think this is the same as a wind tunnel.

They said that he was a jihadi and died as a martyr. They need to announce that publicly or else he misses out on the virgins in the afterlife, so it is important to declare dead Hamasniks to be "shahids" as soon as possible after death.

BBC admits they dropped the ball on the Fogel massacre

From TheJC:

The BBC has admitted that the horrific murders of the Fogel family last month should have been covered on their 24 hour news channel.

The massacre, in which a three-month-old baby was decapitated and her siblings' throats were slashed, did not appear anywhere across the BBC's television channels, and was mentioned only briefly on the broadcaster's news website.

The BBC gave no mention of Hamas' statement praising the attack, or of celebrations about the killings in the West Bank, yet did cover the Israeli government's announcement about settlement construction the following day.

I believe this is in error. I heard one unverified report of celebrations in the West Bank and one verified report of a single person handing out pastries in Gaza. Also, Hamas never praised the attack, although Islamic Jihad did.

The broadcaster's poor coverage was highlighted by Louise Bagshawe, Conservative MP for Corby, who registered her disgust at what she called the BBC's "inexcusable" failure, in the JC as well as on Twitter and in a comment piece for the Daily Telegraph.

Ms Bagshawe, a member of the Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport, called on the BBC to admit their "lack of evenhandedness". She also demanded a list of the other stories which were featured on BBC News 24 on March 11, in preference. Her complaint was passed to the BBC's director of news, Helen Boaden, but it was five days before Ms Boaden replied. During that time Ms Bagshawe received thousands of messages of support.

In her response Ms Boaden said: "I agree with you that the significant nature of this murder of an entire family meant it should have been included on our television news output."

A drop in the ocean, but at least it is a drop.

(h/t O)

What's beneath the Temple Mount? (Smithsonian)

A fascinating article in The Smithsonian that exposes how the Waqf has been destroying priceless Jewish artifacts underneath the Temple Mount:

...The Waqf, with the approval of the Israeli government, announced plans to create an emergency exit for the El-Marwani Mosque. But Israeli officials later accused the Waqf of exceeding its self-stated mandate. Instead of a small emergency exit, the Waqf excavated two arches, creating a massive vaulted entranceway. In doing so, bulldozers dug a pit more than 131 feet long and nearly 40 feet deep. Trucks carted away hundreds of tons of soil and debris.

Israeli archaeologists and scholars raised an outcry. Some said the Waqf was deliberately trying to obliterate evidence of Jewish history. Others laid the act to negligence on a monstrous scale.

“That earth was saturated with the history of Jerusalem,” says Eyal Meiron, a historian at the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Eretz Israel. “A toothbrush would be too large for brushing that soil, and they did it with bulldozers.”

Yusuf Natsheh, the Waqf’s chief archaeologist, was not present during the operation. But he told the Jerusalem Post that archaeological colleagues had examined the excavated material and had found nothing of significance. The Israelis, he told me, were “exaggerating” the value of the found artifacts. And he bristled at the suggestion the Waqf sought to destroy Jewish history. “Every stone is a Muslim development,” he says. “If anything was destroyed, it was Muslim heritage.”

Zachi Zweig was a third-year archaeology student at Bar- Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, when he heard news reports about dump trucks transporting Temple Mount soil to the Kidron Valley. With the help of a fellow student he rounded up 15 volunteers to visit the dump site, where they began surveying and collecting samples. A week later, Zweig presented his findings—including pottery fragments and ceramic tiles—to archaeologists attending a conference at the university. Zweig’s presentation angered officials at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). “This is nothing but a show disguised as research,” Jon Seligman, the IAA’s Jerusalem Region Archaeologist, told the Jerusalem Post. “It was a criminal deed to take these items without approval or permission.” Soon afterward, Israeli police questioned Zweig and released him. By that point though, Zweig says, his cause had attracted the attention of the media and of his favorite lecturer at Bar-Ilan—the archaeologist Gaby Barkay.

Zweig urged Barkay to do something about the artifacts. In 2004, Barkay got permission to search the soil dumped in the Kidron Valley. He and Zweig hired trucks to cart it from there to Emek Tzurim National Park at the foot of Mount Scopus, collected donations to support the project and recruited people to undertake the sifting. The Temple Mount Sifting Project, as it is sometimes called, marks the first time archaeologists have systematically studied material removed from beneath the sacred compound.

Barkay, ten full-time staffers and a corps of part-time volunteers have uncovered a wealth of artifacts, ranging from three scarabs (either Egyptian or inspired by Egyptian design), from the second millennium B.C., to the uniform badge of a member of the Australian Medical Corps, who was billeted with the army of British Gen. Edmund Allenby after defeating the Ottoman Empire in Jerusalem during World War I. A bronze coin dating to the Great Revolt against the Romans (A.D. 66-70) bears the Hebrew phrase, “Freedom of Zion.” A silver coin minted during the era when the Crusaders ruled Jerusalem is stamped with the image of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Barkay says some discoveries provide tangible evidence of biblical accounts. Fragments of terra-cotta figurines, from between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C., may support the passage in which King Josiah, who ruled during the seventh century, initiated reforms that included a campaign against idolatry. Other finds challenge long-held beliefs. For example, it is widely accepted that early Christians used the Mount as a garbage dump on the ruins of the Jewish temples. But the abundance of coins, ornamental crucifixes and fragments of columns found from Jerusalem’s Byzantine era (A.D. 380–638) suggest that some public buildings were constructed there. Barkay and his colleagues have published their main findings in two academic journals in Hebrew, and they plan to eventually publish a book-length account in English.

More about a coin found there:

The project has uncovered more than 4,000 Judean, Greek, Roman and Byzantine coins (plus countless other artifacts such as potsherds, flint tools, weapons, glass, jewelry, talismans, seals and inscribed stones). While most of the coinage has not yet been catalogued, one coin in particular was hailed as the group’s most sensational discovery. A rare half shekel from the beginning of the Judean uprising against Rome (66 CE) was discovered in December 2008 by 14-year-old volunteer Omri Ya’ari. The news reverberated around the world. The Wakf’s malicious attempts to destroy any Jewish link to Jerusalem had obviously backfired.

The obverse side of the coin depicts a branch with three blossoming pomegranates. Encircling the design, in ancient Paleo-Hebrew script, was the stirring legend Yerushalayim Hakedosha (“Jerusalem the Holy”). A chalice is pictured on the reverse with the letter Aleph (representing “Year One” of the revolt). Inside the rim, the words Chatzi Shekel Yisrael – “Half Shekel of Israel” – describe the coin’s denomination. Considered to be among the world’s most beautiful ancient coins, each half shekel contains approximately seven grams of pure silver, in compliance with biblical law.

Immediately after the discovery, Barkay explained that “This is the first time a coin minted at the Temple Mount itself has been found, and therein lies its immense importance because similar coins have been found in the past in the Jerusalem area... as well as at Masada... but they are extremely rare in Jerusalem.” Equally fascinating was that only a few months earlier, archeologist Zweig reported that a Greek-Syrian coin directly related to the Hanukka story had been found through the sifting process. It was a bronze piece bearing the portrait of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. It was his tyrannical rule over the Jewish people that prompted the fight for religious freedom in 167 , led by Mattathias the priest and his sons Judah, Simon and Jonathan – the Maccabees. “The Antiochus coin found by our volunteers,” said Zweig, “is not actually a rare coin (we now have seven of them). But the significance... is that they are the first found in the Temple Mount itself.”

(h/t Martin Kramer tweet via David G)

"Miral" director hints that all critics are part of a conspiracy

From The Daily Caller:

Artist-director Julian Schnabel today blasted critics of his controversial new film, “Miral,” hinting at a conspiracy underlying some of the movie’s poor reviews.

“I actually think that there’s a plan to undermine this thing because people wish that it would go away,” Mr. Schnabel said after being asked whether some of the harsh reviews of “Miral” were politically motivated. A politically charged film about three generations of Palestinian women, the story is adapted from a semiautobiographical novel by Rula Jebreal, who wrote the film’s screenplay.

“And people don’t want to get fired from their jobs,” said Mr. Schnabel, one-time enfant terrible of the New York art world and director of critically acclaimed films such as “Before Night Falls” (2000) and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (2007), which earned four Oscar nominations (including best director).

“There’s a woman that was fired from her place, Nina Rothe. She wrote a beautiful review of this movie,” explained Ms. Jebreal, the stunning Palestinian journalist with whom the divorced Mr. Schnabel now lives in New York.

Nina Rothe reviewed the movie, very favorably, at the Huffington Post. Her review was less about the merits of the movie than about its politics. I could not find anything about her being fired; she is certainly still at HuffPo, not even at her Twitter page which is filled with raves about Miral. So I have no idea what Jebreal is talking about.

On the other hand, Rotten Tomatoes - which collects movie reviews from both critics and moviegoers - says only 18% of the movie critics like the film. Their reviews are sometimes about the politics but often about the fact that is it simply not good filmmaking. Even very left-wing outlets like NPR panned the film.

To imply that film reviewers - perhaps the most liberal group of people in the media - are adhering to an anti-Palestinian Arab agenda borders on paranoia. (The idea that a movie reviewer can lose his or her job over a review in any major media outlet is simply insane.)

If you want to see politically motivated reviews, though, go to Yahoo Movies and look at all the A+s Miral received from viewers - across the board for acting, direction, story and visuals - in what sure looks like a small but coordinated campaign to raise its rankings. Many of the reviews simply like the movie because it makes Israel look bad, not because they have anything good to say about the actual movie.

This is the only possible conspiracy I can find.

(h/t Ian)

UPDATE: Check out this description of the film, and of Schnabel's words after a showing.

MSM FAIL: NYT finally reports on Gaza rockets that fall short

I have been reporting for years about the fact that Qassam rockets often cause more damage to Gazans than to Israel. My rocket calendars note, when I can, rockets that fall short in Gaza and sometimes they even result in fatalities.

But only now does the New York Times notice this phenomenon - and it is because PCHR released a report about it.

A Palestinian human rights group in Gaza took the unusual step this week of condemning the building and storage of anti-Israel rockets in densely populated areas, a practice that has led to injuries and deaths of civilians.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that it had investigated recent rocket explosions and found that locally produced projectiles had fallen on homes in Gaza or exploded in factories where they were made or stored. Shrapnel severely wounded several people, including a 22-year-old woman and her 7-month-old baby.

It called on the Hamas government, which controls Gaza, to investigate “and take measures to protect Palestinians and their property.” It added that “members of the Palestinian resistance continue to store explosives or to treat such explosives in locations close to populated areas.”

“This poses a major threat to the lives of the Palestinian civilians,” it said.

Israel has long accused Hamas and other groups of endangering Palestinian civilians by carrying out militant activities in densely populated areas.

But only now does the New York Times bother to report about it - when Palestinian Arabs admit it is true.

Well, I have a tip for the New York Times.

There is a Gaza consortium of NGOs called GANSO (Gaza NGO Safety Office) that is tasked with keeping internationals in Gaza safe. So they actually keep track of Gaza rocket fire. And according to them, some 30% of all Qassams and mortars fall short in Gaza!

In one two week period late last year, 42% of rockets and 57% of mortars exploded prematurely or fell short in Gaza.

While that was an especially bad week for Gazans, this phenomenon happens all the time. Too bad that the media that has reporters on the ground in Gaza couldn't figure out what I have been able to document for so long.

The NYT is one of the very few media outlets that even noticed the PCHR report to begin with. The blame goes to the media altogether. If one out of every three rockets explodes in Gaza, and if Gazans are injured and killed by those rockets, shouldn't that fact be mentioned occasionally from the thousands of reports that come out of the area?

Yet even the PCHR and the NYT didn't mention the Gazan that was killed by a Qassam on January 21.

Oh, one other thing: The Palestinian Center for Human Rights may have condemned the rocket launches from populated areas, but they didn't have a word to say about the morality of shooting the rockets at Israeli civilians.

I guess they don't consider Israeli civilians to be human.

(h/t Mike and T34)

Kalandia checkpoint post on NewsRealBlog

A somewhat expanded version of the post I did yesterday about the New York Times' op-ed claiming that heartless Isrselis build checkpoints just to humiliate Arabs is now up at NewsRealBlog.