Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 04, 2011

Boat people (Hitchens)

From Christopher Hitchens in Slate:

The tale of the Gaza "flotilla" seems set to become a regular summer feature, bobbing along happily on the inside pages with an occasional update....

However, given the luxury of time, might it not be possible to ask the "activists" on board just a few questions? (Activist is a good neutral word, isn't it, with largely positive connotations?) Most of the speculation so far has been to do with methods and intentions, allowing for many avowals about peaceful tactics and so forth, but this is soft-centered coverage. I would like to know a little more about the political ambitions and implications of the enterprise.

Only a few weeks ago, the Hamas regime in Gaza became the only governing authority in the world—by my count—to express outrage and sympathy at the death of Osama Bin Laden. As the wavelets lap in the Greek harbors, and the sunshine beats down, doesn't any journalist want to know whether the "activists" have discussed this element in their partners' world outlook? Does Alice Walker seriously have no comment?

Hamas is listed by various governments and international organizations as a terrorist group. I don't mind conceding that that particular word has been used in arbitrary ways in the past. But what concerns me much more is the official programmatic adoption, by Hamas, of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This disgusting fabrication is a key foundational document of 20th-century racism and totalitarianism, indelibly linked to the Hitler regime in theory and practice. It seems extraordinary to me that any "activist" claiming allegiance to human rights could cooperate at any level with the propagation of such evil material. But I have never seen any of them invited to comment on this matter, either.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a "warrant for genocide" forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test. I wonder if any reporter on the scene will now take me up on this.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t D)

Hello Rafah, hello Gaza (video)

Don't know who made this, but it is pretty good.

And since this gives me a reason to post it again, here was my version of that song from a couple of years ago:

(h/t Omri)

Did Abbas retract his Holocaust denial?

In an interview with Dutch media, PA president Mahmoud Abbas was asked about his views of the Holocaust:

Is it true that you deny the extent of the Holocaust in which six million Jews were killed?

"No, I do not deny the Holocaust. I know that the Holocaust took place during WWII. I have studied and written a book about. I believe that many Jews were murdered and that other peoples of other nationalities were murdered . So I agree, I admit there were pogroms, that genocide was committed during the war against the Jews by the Nazi regime. "

How many Jews were killed according to you?

"I've heard from the Israelis that there were six million. I can accept that."

So are you yourself convinced of that number?

"I accept what they say. If they say six million, six million I say. It is up to them to decide, because they know better than e."

In Abbas' doctoral thesis, he wrote, "the Zionist fantasy, the fantastic lie that six million Jews were killed." In the book he wrote based on the thesis, he wrote, "It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure [of Holocaust deaths] so that their gains will be greater. This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions — fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand...Following the war, word was spread that six million Jews were amongst the victims and that a war of extermination was aimed primarily at the Jews . . . The truth is that no one can either confirm or deny this figure. In other words, it is possible that the number of Jewish victims reached six million, but at the same time it is possible that the figure is much smaller, below one million."

He also claimed that the Jews who were killed were victims of a Zionist-Nazi plot.

So how can we reconcile Abbas from 1983 and Abbas today? Simple - he is a liar.

When Israeli media asked him about his thesis and book, Abbas told Maariv, "When I wrote `The Other Side,' we were at war with Israel. Today I would not have made such remarks."

Which means that he is willing to lie about his beliefs if the lies are politically expedient.

So which is more likely - that he lied about his beliefs in a doctoral thesis and subsequent book that took hundreds of hours to write, or that he is lying now because he does not want to appear to be a Holocaust denier to the Europeans and Americans?

(h/t jzaik)

First person video of Syrian sniper shooting cameraman

From Ha'aretz:

Syrian opposition released footage Sunday that it says was filmed in the restive city of Homs, in which a civilian cameraman is fired upon by troops dispatched by President Bashar Assad.

In the video, the photographer documents the security forces firing indiscriminately at citizens and homes in the Karm a-Shami neighborhood. As the photographer narrates what is happening around him, the camera focuses on a uniformed man hiding near a house below.

After a few seconds the soldier is seen pointing his gun at the photographer and firing, apparently hitting him as the camera drops. Media outlets outside of Syria have yet to verify the events documented.

No idea if the cameraman survived.

Three million hits

On Sunday, EoZ registered its 3,000,000th hit since the blog started.

So that's why I've been hearing so many fireworks outside!

Other shoe to drop from Special Tribunal for Lebanon?

From Ya Libnan:

The day the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) team delivered the indictment to Lebanon , several reports from Beirut indicated that the delegation will head to Syria to deliver the Syrian portion of the indictment in the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former PM Rafik Hariri .
An STL delegation met June 30 with Lebanon’s state prosecutor Said Mirza and handed him a copy of the Lebanon portion of the indictment and the arrest warrants. Two of the suspects Mustafa Badreddine and Salim Ayyash are reportedly senior members of the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah while the other two Hassan Aneissy, also known as Hassan Issa, and Assad Sabra played a supporting role in the execution of the assassination.

According to a report by Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot handing the indictment to Damascus was postponed due to the Syrian unrest.

According to the paper at least two prominent members of President Bashar Assad’s family will be on the list, his younger brother Maher (Assad ) who has been commanding the crackdown against the protesters and his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat ( married to Assad’s sister Bushra) , former head of Military Intelligence and current deputy chief-of-staff of the armed forces.”

Der Spiegel magazine which was the first to leak details ( May2009) about Hezbollah’s involvement in Hariri murder has reportedly leaked that “new indictments in the STL will include Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian suspects.”

Things might get very interesting if the STL hands down indictments for Assad's family. And the existence of Palestinian Arab complicity is intriguing as well.

Meanwhile, if anyone had the slightest idea that Hezbollah worked for Lebanese interests instead of its Iranian masters, this reaction from Iran should show otherwise:

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani ( right) rejected the indictments against Hezbollah members in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.

“We know that the United States was opposed to the establishment of a government led by Najib Mikati, but they failed due to the vigilance of Lebanon’s leaders. Now they created the tribunal, which they use as a tool to express their dissatisfaction with the new government,” Larijani said during an official visit to Azerbaijan.

“The Americans feel they have been slapped in the face and they are seeking to make up a story” by indicting Hezbollah members, Larijani added.

According to observers Larijani’s reaction was expected because if Hezbollah did in fact execute the murder , it could not have done so without the knowledge of the top Iranian leadership. When Hariri was assassinated Larijani was the security adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ultimate authority. Larijani also is a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the group that created Hezbollah in 1982.

PA facing financial crisis. But insists it is ready for statehood!

From Bloomberg:

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said his government has only enough money to pay half of salaries this month and appealed to “donors and our Arab brothers” to fulfill their pledges for funding.

“Today is a day of crisis,” Fayyad said at a press conference today in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He said the Palestinian Authority had a deficit of $585 million and had reached the limit of its bank borrowing.

Fayyad said the financial crisis “shouldn’t mean anything for the readiness for a Palestinian state.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said he plans to ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state in September.

The World Bank said in an April report that the Palestinian Authority had increased bank borrowing to fund development projects for which designated aid hadn’t been received and that arrears were accumulating at an unsustainable rate. At the end of 2010 total domestic debt was about $840 million, “which may be close to the PA’s borrowing limits,” the report said.

Donor countries have paid only $330 million of the $971 million pledged this year, Fayyad said. Roughly one-quarter of the authority’s $3.7 billion budget comes from foreign aid.

Oman, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates are the only Arab countries that have so far paid funds that they pledged for this year, Fayyad said, adding that the U.S. and European Union have been making regular contributions.

It's been nearly a year since Fayyad declared that the PA would be "financially independent" by the end of 2013. I'm sure this is all going according to plan.

The World Bank report from earlier this year warned about this crisis, but the report buried this information on page 12 in its overly rosy view of the future of the PA and how ready it was for statehood.

Notice also how it is always the Arabs who don't pay their commitments to the PA. But don't be to hard on them - they are very good at shipping burial shrouds to Gaza.

(h/t NormanF)

Newest Free Gaza publicity stunt

As the flotilla gets shakier by the day, the Free Gaza/ISM and sister movements are planning a new stunt: having activists fly to Israel and protest at Ben Gurion Airport.

Here's a video of Paul Larudee, from Free Gaza, describing the plan:

I particularly like what he says around the 4 minute mark.

While he wants the trip to be taken by the usual D-list celebrities and token self-hating Jews, he particularly wants Palestinian Arabs who can trace their families to within the Green Line, and who now live in the West, to participate in this "return" - but he warns that only people who really don't want to return should join, because Israel is likely to ban them from future trips.

Apparently, the action is planned for this coming Friday.

While a couple of prominent activists say they will go, I'm certain that the number will be much smaller than the hundreds they are pretending will go. And almost certainly the number of Palestinian Arabs who now have citizenship in Western countries that go will be minuscule.

Last year, Free Gaza announced an initiative of flying to Gaza with a private plane. That intended stunt went exactly nowhere. Chances are, so will this one, and a few dozen people will have wasted hundred of dollars apiece on - nothing.

(h/t Israel Matzav, Daled Amos and others)

Bibi answers the first YouTube question

But I thought that Netanyahu was just like Mubarak! Isn't that what Thomas Friedman said?

PINGO!: A Flotidiot Bingo/drinking game

Jake sent me this wonder variation of Bingo he created that can be played by everyone!

It can be played like traditional Bingo. In this case, when you read an anti-Israel argument (for the purposes of this game, let's limit them to those published on the Web since June 15), highlight it here and hyperlink it to the URL. The first to get five in a row wins, as does the first to fill out the entire board.

Or it can be a drinking game - take a shot whenever a Flotidiot makes one of these arguments.

Either way, it looks like a fun summer!

P	I	N	G	O
You're using the anti-Semitism card to silence my legitimate criticism of the devious, Christ-killing Jewish financiers who run all the governments with their Israel lobbies!	The UN doesn't spend enough time criticising Israel... This is because the USA, which is run by Zionists, controls it!	Checkpoints are a violation of human rights! How would you feel if, say, you had to go through a metal detector before boarding a flight? Humiliated!	Hamas want peace. Their charter is just an outdated relic they don't really believe in. All those rockets are just really sophisticated fireworks celebrating the fact that they have such lovely Jewish neighbours.	Ilan Pappe is a serious, credible historian, whereas Benny Morris is just a racist. (Karsh? Who's Karsh?)
Sometimes I can't help but feel that the American Empire is the real threat to the world and Israel is just a distraction. Ahmedinejad talks a lot of sense.	Israel was created on the backs of imperialist settlers and violence. No other state was created through violence!	Jewish settlements are the real threat to peace. Imagine how Palestinians feel having to live next to Jews! If they get their own state, Jews should be forced to leave.	Israel are just like the Nazis. In fact they're worse! Except for the death toll, the lebensraum policy, the systematic genocide and the desire to control the world, Israel is essentially the Fourth Reich.	Boycotting Israel is a great idea! Let me just bin my computer, my camera phone, my Kindle, a great deal of my medicine, my solar panels and my cherry tomatoes, to name a few.
Israel purposefully targets civilians and schools. Totally nothing to do with Hamas using schools as launching pads.	The IDF want to decimate Gaza. It's amazing that an army as powerful and as eeevil as Israel hasn't done it yet...	Calling Israel an apartheid state is an insult to South African apartheid. (If you believe otherwise then the Israeli government must be paying you to say so.)	Secular? How can a secular democracy have a religious symbol on its flag?	Turkey is a secular democracy.
Zionists use outdated Biblical fantasies to justify Israel's existence, but Israel shouldn't exist because according to the Torah we have to wait for the Messiah!!! Nurny nur nur!	Arabs can't buy land in Israel. Forget the fact that most land is government-owned and leased out, and that Jews are also forbidden from buying land... let's just focus on the Arabs.	The Law of Return is racist. No other countries (apart from most European countries and a lot of other ones – most countries, in fact) use the racist jus sanguinis policy.	Jews are a race when we're calling them racial supremacists. They're a nation when we're highlighting how they're different to us. But they're not distinctive at all when they start claiming the right to a country of their own.	Real Jews oppose Israel. Real Jews, like Chomsky, don't think Holocaust denial is wrong at all. In fact, real Jews stand up for Holocaust deniers. Real Jews... real Jews... real Jews... real Jews...
The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Not one Palestinian supported Hitler... Nope, still can't think of any. You're just exploiting the Holocaust.	How dare you suggest the Palestinians could go to other Arab countries! They deserve one of their own.	Couldn't the persecuted Jews just have gone to New York/Europe instead of Palestine?	Hamas has legitimacy because they were democratically elected. All Israeli governments, however, have no legitimacy at all. How dare you even compare the Palestinian democracy with Israel's military dictatorship?!	I happen to think that Arabs are incapable of knowing freedom, therefore Israel is just an insult to them and should be destroyed. -or- The Arab Spring will inevitably spread to Israel, destroying it.

Holiday weekend open thread

I am on a mini-vacation so posting will be light for the next couple of days. Comment with the latest from the never ending Flotilla Comedy Cavalcade!

Flotilla follies continue!

Things keep getting funnier in Flotilla Funland.

Greece arrested the captain of the "Audacity of Hope" for endangering the lives of the passengers by going out without permission.

Remember how the flotidiots accused Israel of sabotaging the Irish boat in the harbor in Turkey? This accusation even made it into the Huffington Post as a headline story. Well, it turns out that there was no sabotage, as Turkey's Hurriyet reported.

Here's an unintentionally hilarious video that shows the ridiculous self-righteousness of the flotidiots as they try to convince the world that their Cause is so Righteous that any Laws that stop them are Immoral.

Hamas is exercising all the political muscle that any terror group can muster:

The Hamas movement on Friday denounced Greece after its coastguard intercepted a US vessel which tried to sail to Gaza to break Israel's blockade of the coastal strip.

In a statement issued by its political leadership in Damascus, the group described the action as "inhumane" and said Greece had played into Israeli hands.

"This is inhumane action, is contrary to international regulations and norms," said the statement by Hamas, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

"Barring this aid from reaching the Gaza Strip is done as a result of pressure imposed by the Zionist occupiers," referring to Israel.

Hamas also called on the EU parliament and human rights organizations "to put pressure on the Greek government" to allow a planned flotilla of aid boats to set sail from Greece to Gaza.

Well, both the Israel haters from the West and those from the Islamic world agree that there is nothing more important than having a half dozen ships deliver letters that have already been emailed to Gazans. Who can disagree?

(h/t Israel Muse, Palmer, ehwhy)

Flotilla follies!

Lots of fun happening in Greece today!

HuffPo is reasonably up to date:

Greece on Friday banned ships heading to the Gaza Strip from leaving Greek ports, and a vessel carrying several dozen American protesters which left port without permission was ordered to return.

A flotilla of nine Greek and foreign-flagged vessels and several hundred activists have said they want to break Israel's sea blockade and deliver aid to the Palestinian territory.

Greece's Civil Protection Ministry said coast guard authorities had been ordered to take "all appropriate measures" to implement the ban. It also said the "broader maritime area of the eastern Mediterranean will be continuously monitored by electronic means for tracking, where applicable, the movements of the ships allegedly participating" in the flotilla.

Protest organizers said one of the boats, dubbed the Audacity of Hope and carrying several dozen Americans, had left the port of Perama near Athens Friday afternoon, but had been intercepted by coast guards on inflatable speedboats about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) out at sea.

"We're not moving because they put one of the (boats) in front of us, so we are stationary," vessel spokesperson Jane Hirschmann told reporters in Athens.

The Merchant Marine Ministry refused to give any details of the incident, saying only that the protest boat had not left the "general port area."

Head protest organizer Vangelis Pissias angrily condemned the ban and argued Greece had no legal grounds to block a privately leased ship from leaving one of its ports.

"We condemn the policy of the Greek government and its last actions ... The efforts to sail will continue," Pissias said.

A Greek government official said the boat had set sail without the permission required of all boats to leave port, and that the Coast Guard had asked it to return. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the situation was still evolving.

The tweets from the flotidiots are priceless, as they pretend to be heroic by singing "We Shall Overcome" towards the Greek authorities (who, they never fail to point out, are armed!)

Their righteous indignation at being stopped from breaking maritime law is amusing, to say the least. For people who love to talk about "international law" they sure seem to be enamored of breaking laws themselves.

But, of course, they are pure and good and moral, so they are allowed to.

I tweeted to them a suggestion - perhaps they should sail from Syria next time, so as not to worry about pesky Westerners stopping their party. It would be considered an act of war, but that's a minor point - they want to destroy Israel anyway.

Sky News first Western outlet to film Syrian violence in protests (video)

Sometimes, one can find real reporting among the news sites:

Also they quote opposition claims:

These are more details the organisation have given us about the repression they face in their effort to bring about change in Syria.

They claim to have the names of 1450 dead civilians, among them 91 children, 41 women, and 193 soldiers who they claim were killed for refusing to obey orders to open fire on protestors.

They claim between 5000 and 16000 have been detained and ‘tens were returned dead with torture marks on their bodies to their families, many are missing and we have no idea if they are alive or dead.’

Oppostion groups claim the regime returns the mutilated bodies of dead and tortured teenagers to instil fear in their opponents. A number of chilling videos of the bodies of dead children and youths have been posted on YouTube in recent months corroborating these claims.
And they have shocking claims about the injured.

‘Most of them don't get proper medical care , because they're afraid of being arrested or mishandled by security forces in hospitals, some of the injured who went to public hospitals were killed there.’

Video: Illegal construction of a mosque by ancient Jewish cemetery

This past week I mentioned that Jewish graves at the Mount of Olives were vandalized by Arabs.

JTA also reported in that link, "At the same time, local Arabs began illegally expanding a mosque to within 15 feet of the grave of Menachem Begin."

Here is video of that mosque being built as the Arab workers ignoring the court order to stop:

The mainstream Israeli English language media is not reporting on this outrage; only Arutz-7.

(h/t Yerushalimey)