Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Al Jazeera reporters receiving death threats from "Arab Spring" coverage

Al Jazeera says that its reporters and presenters have been receiving threats from government loyalists in the Arab world, because of their coverage of Arab uprisings and protests.

They have been receiving threatening emails and female on-air staff have been receiving obscene threats.

The network has been beefing up its security procedures and is hiring investigators to track down the sources of threats that are posted on Facebook and elsewhere.

Almost all al Jazeera reporters have canceled their summer vacations to Arab countries outside of Doha for fear for their families' safety.

Al Quds al Arabi also has received email threats and one bomb threat in reaction to its coverage of the riots, forcing them to evacuate.

Hamas condemns Abbas meeting with Greek president

Hamas has published a statement in their Palestine Times newspaper condemning the meeting that Mahmoud Abbas is having Greek president Karolos Papoulias.

The press release, from a Hamas student group, slams Abbas for meeting with Papoulias after he was praised by Shimon Peres and Binyamin Netanyahu for Greece's role in aborting the flotilla.

The group plans to hold a sit-in in Ramallah to protest the meeting.

Morning links

The latest "flotilla" idea drops all pretense of helping Gazans and goes directly towards destroying Israel.

This article includes a great graphic that shows the inter-relationships between the Flotilla groups and Islamist/terror groups like Hamas. Click to enlarge.

Adam Holland exposes Mondoweiss for lying, saying it is under "attack" by Israel in order to raise cash and then admitting it really isn't.

Birkat Avraham notes that the Church of England seems to be fooling Israel's chief rabbis, as it continues to engage in anti-Jewish activities.

Want to see what a real refugee camp look like?

A new Australian law would force Muslim women to lift their veils if requested by the police.

(h/t Nick, Chanan, Mike, plus one I forgot, sorry)

Saboteurs again blow up Egypt's gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan

From AP:

Masked gunmen blew up a terminal of the Egyptian natural gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan in a predawn attack Tuesday, security officials said.

The officials said the attack was carried out by at least four assailants. The terminal is located in the city of El-Arish in the northern part of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of the Israeli border.

The attackers ordered the guards on duty to leave and then blew up the terminal, starting a huge fire that sent flames shooting into the air that lit up the night sky, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

No one claimed responsibility for Tuesday's explosion but disgruntled Bedouin tribesmen in the area have been blamed for attacking the pipeline in the past. Islamists opposed to Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel have also been suspected.

Bikya Masr adds:

It is unclear what the extent of the damage is, but comes less than 48 hours after Egyptian authorities reported they would have all repairs to damage on the pipeline from an earlier explosion completed this week.

The pipeline was damaged on July 4 in an explosion in the Bir Abd region at Nagah in the northern Sinai Peninsula. According to officials, a group of men in a small truck forced the guards to leave the station at gunpoint before planting an explosive device.

That explosion was the third of its kind this year, following attacks on February 5 near the Sinai the Arish compression station and April 27 near the village of el-Sabil, which cut off the flow of natural gas for weeks.

In March, an attempted explosion near el-Sabil failed when the device did not detonate.

It is indeed ironic that Jordan gets hurt, more than Israel does, whenever this happens. Hurting Jews is such a supreme priority that hurting other Arabs is a small price to pay for the privilege.

(h/t CHA)

Ma'an (Arabic) reports that Hamas has arrested people who were counterfeiting American $100 bills in Gaza. They caught over $200,000 of fake currency.

The counterfeiters' tool? An HP 5550 color laser printer.

Hamas has good reason to arrest the counterfeiters. After all, they want to make sure that they corner the market for themselves.

Another article on how Malmo's Jews are being chased out

From The Telegraph: (sorry, didn't realize this was from last year when I posted it.)

When she first arrived in Sweden after her rescue from a Nazi concentration camp, Judith Popinski was treated with great kindness.

She raised a family in the city of Malmo, and for the next six decades lived happily in her adopted homeland - until last year.

In 2009, a chapel serving the city's 700-strong Jewish community was set ablaze. Jewish cemeteries were repeatedly desecrated, worshippers were abused on their way home from prayer, and "Hitler" was mockingly chanted in the streets by masked men.

"I never thought I would see this hatred again in my lifetime, not in Sweden anyway," Mrs Popinski told The Sunday Telegraph.

"This new hatred comes from Muslim immigrants. The Jewish people are afraid now."

Malmo's Jews, however, do not just point the finger at bigoted Muslims and their fellow racists in the country's Neo-Nazi fringe. They also accuse Ilmar Reepalu, the Left-wing mayor who has been in power for 15 years, of failing to protect them.

The future looks so bleak that by one estimate, around 30 Jewish families have already left for Stockholm, England or Israel, and more are preparing to go.

With its young people planning new lives elsewhere, the remaining Jewish households, many of whom are made up of Holocaust survivors and their descendants, fear they will soon be gone altogether. Mrs Popinski, an 86-year-old widow, said she has even encountered hostility when invited to talk about the Holocaust in schools.

"Muslim schoolchildren often ignore me now when I talk about my experiences in the camps," she said. "It is because of what their parents tell them about Jews. The hatreds of the Middle East have come to Malmo. Schools in Muslim areas of the city simply won't invite Holocaust survivors to speak any more."

Hate crimes, mainly directed against Jews, doubled last year with Malmo's police recording 79 incidents and admitting that far more probably went unreported. As of yet, no direct attacks on people have been recorded but many Jews believe it is only a matter of time in the current climate.

The city's synagogue has guards and rocket-proof glass in the windows, while the Jewish kindergarten can only be reached through thick steel security doors.

It is a far cry from the city Mrs Popinski arrived in 65 years ago, half-dead from starvation and typhus.

...Muslims are now estimated to make up about a fifth of Malmo's population of nearly 300,000.

"This new hatred from a group 40,000-strong is focused on a small group of Jews," Mrs Popinski said, speaking in a sitting room filled with paintings and Persian carpets.

"Some Swedish politicians are letting them do it, including the mayor. Of course the Muslims have more votes than the Jews."

The worst incident was last year during Israel's brief war in Gaza, when a small demonstration in favour of Israel was attacked by a screaming mob of Arabs and Swedish leftists, who threw bottles and firecrackers as the police looked on.

"I haven't seen hatred like that for decades," Mrs Popinski said. "It reminded me of what I saw in my youth. Jews feel vulnerable here now."

The mayor insisted to The Sunday Telegraph that he was opposed to anti-Semitism, but added: "I believe these are anti-Israel attacks, connected to the war in Gaza.

“Jews came to Sweden to get away from persecution, and now they find it is no longer a safe haven,” said Rabbi Shneur Kesselman, 31. “That is a horrible feeling.”

One who has had enough is Marcus Eilenberg, a 32-year-old Malmo-born lawyer, who is moving to Israel in April with his young family.

"Malmo has really changed in the past year," he said. "I am optimistic by nature, but I have no faith in a future here for my children. There is definitely a threat.

"It started during the Gaza war when Jewish demonstrators were attacked. It was a horrible feeling, being attacked in your own city. Just as bad was the realisation that we were not being protected by our own leaders."

Mr Eilenberg said he and his wife considered moving to Stockholm where Jews feel safer than in Malmo. "But we decided not to because in five years time I think it will be just as bad there," he said.

"This is happening all over Europe. I have cousins who are leaving their homes in Amsterdam and France for the same reason as me."

Comparing Pollard's crime with Arab intelligence leaks (Zahran)

A very interesting perspective from Mudar Zahran in Hudson-NY:

As a Palestinian, I never thought I would ever end up writing in Jonathan Pollard's defense, especially as, when he was convicted of espionage in 1987, I was 13 years old.

It seems Pollard will remain in jail for his crime against US national security -- while at the same time US national security and intelligence are being compromised by American's Arab allies.

How does this add up?

...In weighing the damage Pollard has caused, it might be good to compare his passing of classified information to Israel to what has been taking place in recent years, and the way the US has been handling its security operations with "trusted" allies.

The United States has been vigorously cooperating with the intelligence entities of several Arab and Muslim countries, including the Jordanian General Intelligence Department, better known as the GID. The strong cooperation between the US and Jordan has been directed at fighting terrorism; nevertheless, in 2009, a trusted Jordanian Bedouin intelligence officer, Hammam Al-Balawi, who had been recruited by the GID and implanted inside Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, blew himself up, killing seven senior CIA officers along with the King of Jordan's cousin, who was his case officer. Shortly after, Al-Qaeda released a propaganda tape in which Al-Balawi detailed how both the GID and CIA did intelligence work with him, and declaring that he hope he had provided a guideline of operations to other terrorists. . In his tape, Al-Balawi describes the GID as "stupid" and "ignorant" for "fulfilling his dream by taking him to Afghanistan by themselves," even after he had been arrested for supporting Al-Qaeda. Has Pollard's damage come anywhere close to the damage Al-Balawi might have done? What Al-Balawi did could be light years ahead of Pollard's crime in compromising the security of the US and its NATO allies in and out of Afghanistan, all because the CIA had probably vested too much confidence in its Jordanian allies

In January, when Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was toppled by public unrest, protestors stormed countless Egyptian State Security centers, pored through classified documents and presented some of them to the media. The State Security (Amin El-Dawlah, in Arabic), Egypt's main intelligence body, is known for its close cooperation with the US intelligence bodies on a major scale. No one yet has an exact idea of what documents have found their way to the public -- or terrorists or enemy governments -- yet this breach of security must have seriously compromised US intelligence secrecy and operations. Perhaps the US intelligence community should estimate such risks when working with the intelligence agencies of dictatorships, especially as the "Arab Spring" has shown that dictatorships can be toppled, regardless of how stable they might seem.

...The US national security and intelligence operations have been significantly compromised by none other than the US "allies" themselves, which brings us to the main subject: Pollard. Although he acted illegally and betrayed the national trust vested in him, he gave the information to an ally, Israel; and there seems to be no proof whatever that his acts resulted in harm to any of his fellow Americans.

The question remains: why do so many out there seem obsessed with opposing Pollard's release while they willfully ignore more serious threats taking place on the ground?

Confiscated Iranian weapons explode in Cyprus

From AFP:

Huge blasts in a seized Iranian arms cache at a Greek Cypriot naval base in southern Cyprus killed at least 12 people on Monday, triggering power and water outages at the height of the summer.

In what Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides called a "tragedy of Biblical dimensions" for the small Mediterranean island, the explosions devastated the adjacent Vassiliko power station.
The plant accounts for almost 60 percent of supply.

The blasts also caused massive damage to homes in the nearby village of Mari, forcing the evacuation of its population of 150 people, its mukhtar or headman, Nikos Asprou, told AFP.
Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said 62 people were injured, two of them seriously, announcing three days of official mourning with flags on state buildings to be flown at half-mast.

Defence Minister Costas Papacostas and Greek Cypriot National Guard commander Petros Tsaliklides resigned over the blasts at an emergency cabinet meeting, Stefanou said.

The defence ministry had held talks last week about the storage conditions after National Guard chiefs reportedly expressed concerns about them being kept in the open as temperatures touched 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

"Decisions were taken on protecting the material but unfortunately this was not possible as time ran out," Stefanou said, promising a "thorough investigation".

Here's the story behind the weapons, from Wikipedia:

The Monchegorsk (Мончегорск) was a Russian multipurpose cargo ship built in 1983 by Wärtsilä as the 10th ship of the SA-15 class Arctic freighters. The ship, named after the Russian town of Monchegorsk, was owned and operated by the Murmansk Shipping Company.

In early 2009 it became the centre of an international incident involving Iran, Russia, the US, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Cyprus. The ship was apprehended in the Red Sea by U.S. warships in Task Force 151 having left Iran. [4] Following an on board search suspicious military material was reported and the ship was escorted to Limassol Port on 29 January 2009.

The ship, registered with the Cyprus Merchant Marine was then subject to an international diplomacy struggle as to the fate of its cargo. The US and Israel maintained that the cargo was in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747 which sanctions Iranian arms exports.[5] Israel claimed that the intended destination of the cargo was Palestinian organizations in the Gaza strip,[6] a claim that Iran denied. [7]

Cypriot authorities proceeded to a limited search of on board containers, the result of which was referred to the security council for clarification. Once the breach was confirmed the cargo was confiscated and unloaded onto the island where it was stored in warehouses of the Cypriot National Guard. [8][9] The details of the contents from the 98 confiscated containers were not released to the public.

Hadassah Hospital and the IDF: How REAL humanitarians act, part 2

From the IDF:

Last month, a group of Palestinian children from the West Bank along with their parents traveled to the Jerusalem Zoo for a day. Their trip was organized by the Civil Administration and Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Many of the children had previously underwent open heart surgery at Hadassah, a procedure which was paid for by the hospital itself and the A Heart for Peace organization. The trip was designed to provide relaxation, learning, enjoyment and a positive experience for the children who cope with health difficulties.

Ms. Dalia Bassa, the Health and Welfare Coordinator for the Civil Administration, played an instrumental role coordinating the children’s treatment at Hadassah and during their leisure trip to Jerusalem.

The Civil Administration, a unit under the IDF and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, is responsible for administering and coordinating civilian needs in the West Bank, and is comprised of various staff offices working alongside the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian population, IDF and Israeli authorities, as well as with international organizations and NGOs to fulfill these needs.

I would love to see a philanthropist offer a 200% match for any donations to Hadassah Hospital - earmarked for programs like this - that are paid by any of the "humanitarians" on Israel's no-fly list.

(h/t Silke)

Syrian pro-Assad protesters breaking into US, French embassies (updated)

From Fox News:

President Bashar Assad's loyalists broke into the U.S. Embassy compound Monday in the Syrian capital Damascus, Reuters reports.

A witness in Syria's capital says security guards at the French Embassy have fired into the air to drive back protesters taking part in two-pronged demonstrations outside the French and American embassies in Damascus.

The protests Monday come days after the U.S. and French ambassadors visited the opposition stronghold of Hama in central Syria. The witness says crowds were not allowed to get near the U.S. Embassy.

The witness, Hiam al-Hassan, says about 300 people had gathered outside the French Embassy. Hundreds others were at the American diplomatic compound.

The protests coincide with government-organized talks in Damascus on possible political reforms after four months of unrest against the regime of President Assad.

AP adds:

The witnesses said the protesters smashed windows and raised a Syrian flag on the [US} compound on Monday. They also wrote anti-U.S. graffiti referring to the U.S. ambassador as a "dog," the witnesses said.

A spontaneous outpouring of democratic feeling, no doubt.

UPDATE: I just saw this laughable interview with Haldun el Kassam, a Ba'ath Party deputy and Assad loyalist in Turkey, where he discusses the Syrian regime's viewpoint on the protests:

According to Kassam, armed terrorists came to Syria under the guidance of the US and devastated towns and villages. A total of 370 Syrian soldiers died and 1,700 people were injured. To express support for Bashar al-Assad, 11.8 million people -- 2.7 million in Damascus, 1.8 million in Aleppo, 1.2 in Latakia and 1 million in Haseke -- rallied in Syria. The Ba'ath Party in Syria has 3.5 million members. The alliance of opposition parties in parliament has 600,000 members. It follows that President Assad has electoral support behind him. If the opposition seeks to get rid of the ruling party, it must do this through democratic methods. In Syria, only religious or sectarian parties are forbidden. Assad does not discriminate between Alawis and Sunnis, or practitioners of any other religion or faith. His wife is Sunni and his children are attending a Christian school.

Well, there you go.

Worst. Genocide. Ever.

According to the Hamas government, in the first half of the year there was an average of 140 babies born in Gaza every day.

During that same time period, there was an average of only 12 deaths a day.

It appears that the "slow genocide" that Israel is supposedly perpetrating on Gaza is so slow, it is going backwards.

IsraAID: How REAL humanitarians act

Helping the new nation of South Sudan.

From JPost:

IsraAid, an umbrella group of Israeli and Jewish humanitarian aid organizations, is preparing to send a consignment of humanitarian aid to the newly formed nation of South Sudan, the group said in a statement on Sunday.

The aid package worth $100,000 will include food, clean water, medical supplies and other non-food items.

In addition, IsraAid teams have also begun to plan for a long-term project, aimed at providing assistance to vulnerable women and children living on the streets and in refugee camps around the capital city of Juba. The group, whose full name is the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid, hopes to raise $1.5 million for the initiative.

“As a small and relatively new-born country, Israel has gained experience in various factors of water, agriculture, post-traumatic stress disorder, education, migration and others that would be valuable to the people of South Sudan who are now building their country,” said Shachar Zahavi, founding director of IsraAID. It is our mission and Jewish commitment to reach out to our new friends in any way we can.”

IsraAid is working in conjunction with Operation Blessing, a Christian humanitarian aid organization based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, which is providing support on the ground for IsraAid’s efforts.

Yesterday, George Galloway said that "Israel takes money, it doesn't give it." Oh well, another lie from the Ziophobes, another drop in the ocean.

Zvi comments:

The anti-Israel drones squander an insane amount of effort and money to symbolically hurt Israelis, when there are REAL humanitarian causes out there that would benefit very much from that kind of effort and money. The hysterical anti-Israel drones have succumbed to the temptation to let their hatred overcome their humanity, warp their perspective and destroy their souls.

If every last one of them were to vanish from the world tomorrow, the world would not notice the difference, except that the volume of shouting would decrease a bit.

In contrast, if IsraAID were to vanish from the world tomorrow, lives would end in many poor countries.

And that says just about all that needs to be said.

Flotilla fools: "It was never about aid." Yup, it was about hate for Israel.

From Nadia Hijab in the HuffPo:

It was never about aid.

Freedom Flotilla II is, like its assaulted predecessor of a year ago, a political act. The passengers came together in shared determination to challenge Israel's five-year siege of Gaza and to exercise their right to travel through international waters to Palestinian shores and, by so doing, support the Palestinian right to freedom.

Many have misrepresented this political act as being about aid.

Even though this has been what the anti-Israel activists have been saying in private for years, even in this current floptilla they made a point of telling the media that they were bringing 3000 tons of aid - cement, ambulances, medicine. As recently as yesterday, Reuters parroted the line that their primary purpose was aid. Their tweets regularly refer to themselves as a "humanitarian mission" and not as primarily political.

As usual, they are trying to have it both ways, depending on the audience and convenience.

If you ask Hijab, honestly, whether Hamas has the right to import Iranian rockets to target Israeli schoolchildren, she would answer "Absolutely." Because this is her definition of freedom and human rights - human rights for everyone in the Middle East except for Jews seeking self determination and the right to live in peace and security.

In fact, Israel's sealing of Gaza from the outside world began before Hamas was elected. It began as far back as 1988 -- almost before Hamas existed -- when Israel imposed a "permit system" in Gaza.

I love handpicked history lessons.

Gaza, under Egyptian control, really was a prison. Gazans couldn't easily travel to Egypt, they couldn't get jobs, they couldn't get citizenship, they were herded into camps, Egypt ignored their needs for infrastructure, their life expectancy was absurdly low. The only time that Gazans had freedom of movement was when Israel controlled the area - and until the first Intifada when Palestinian Arabs started to kill Jews by the score. Of course, as we have seen, Nadia Hijab cares not one whit for Jewish human rights.

Israel often complains that it is singled out for criticism when there are other worse human rights violators. Why not set a flotilla against China or Russia? Because Israel is the only country claiming to be a Western-style democracy whose gross human rights violations are supported economically and politically by major world powers.

Here is a neat sleight-of-hand. Up until now, Hijab has claimed that her concern was for Palestinian Arabs and their rights. The obvious hypocrisy is that she doesn't care about Syrian Arabs, Egyptian Arabs or any other Arabs who are truly fighting for real rights. So in order to shield herself from that charge, she changes the equation with a tortured explanation that somehow Israel's western status is what offends her - it isn't the victims at all that concerns her, but the perpetrators!

Of course, this proves what Israel has been saying all along - it is not a pro-Palestinian movement, but an anti-Israel movement! Nadia's pretense at caring about Gazans' "freedom" has now morphed into something else, that is much closer to the truth.

Of course, Israel's actions in Gaza are no less moral that the Western actions in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq, and I don't see her sending any flotillas there, so even here she remains a hypocrite.

And then comes the coup de grace:

Beyond drawing the world's attention to the obscenity that is the siege of Gaza, the Flotilla has shown the peoples of the Arab world, engaged in their own quest for dignity and rights, that there are two kinds of Americans and two kinds of Jews. Not just those in power in the U.S. and Israel who are widely seen to subvert human rights throughout the region, but also those determined to uphold human rights. By so doing, the Flotilla has contributed to an eventual era of mutual respect between Arabs, Americans, and Jews.

You see, Israel contributes to worldwide anti-semitism, and the flotilla helps combat that image! Arabs appreciate the moonbats who come to Gaza to meet with Haniyeh and receive medals and honorary citizenship from him, and that helps fight anti-Americanism and anti-semitism!

Has any NGO ever had a workshop to combat anti-Western and anti-semitic attitudes among Arabs? No, they believe that by their shining examples they are leading by example. Of course, that didn't save the lives of Vittorio Arrigoni or Juliano Mer Khamis.

I wonder what she has to say about the Western "peace activists" who have been sexually harassed and raped by their most appreciative Arabs. Only the Westerners, mind you, not the honorable Arab women.

The entire article is claptrap, an exercise in misdirection and obfuscation meant to justify the real motivation that the flotilla activists have - a seething hatred for the Jewish State, and only for the Jewish State.

Today's photos from Open Air Prison Gaza

A Palestinian youth jumps with a horse during an equestrian show in Gaza City on July 8, 2011.

Palestinian girls ride horses during an equestrian show in Gaza City on July 8, 2011.

I hope the two remaining flotilla boats are bringing food. For the horses.

Official PA newspaper again says that the Temples never existed

Once again, the official WAFA "news" agency has stated that there was no Temple in Jerusalem:

The Israeli authorities are working on establishing a Talmudic garden in Tantur Faron, an area south of Al-Aqsa mosque, which is considered an Archaeological area that extends back thousands of years, it said.

It said that in Ein Em Edorg, an area in Silwan, diggings reached a depth of more than 20 meters under the ground, and there are diggings in Al-Ain Mosque, the oldest mosque in Silwan, in the area of Ain Silwan, in addition to the digging of tunnels.

It said the diggings in Wadi al-Rababa, aim to establish more of the Talmudic gardens, change its historical and Archaeological character, and to build additional fake Jewish graves, in an attempt to give it a Talmudic historical character associated with the myth of the alleged temple.

Last year the PA Ministry of Information (a truly Orwellian title) published a paper saying that the Kotel was never a Jewish site. When American outrage caused them to delete the article, it surfaced a couple of weeks later in...WAFA.

It is worth recalling that the Waqf themselves published a pamphlet in 1925 that described "Al Haram al-Sharif" as the place where Solomon built the first Temple, saying this was "beyond dispute."

(h/t Yaacov Lozowick)