Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Understanding UN bias against Israel (video)

A very effective word-graphic video:

It appears that this was created for the Jerusalem Institute of Justice.

Two rock star FAILS for BDSers

From Moby's website:

if you go to america does that mean you support american foreign and domestic policy? does a visit to america mean that you support guantanamo?
if you visit italy does that mean you support berlusconi?
if you visit the uk does that mean you're a happy supporter of david cameron?

i'm guessing the answer is: no.

a visit to a country isn't a condemnation or an endorsement of the domestic or foreign policies of that nations current government.

when i tour i visit countries that are universally loved (canada), as well as countries for which people have more complicated feelings (israel).

but when i tour i'm going to countries to play music for people.
my presence in a country is not an endorsement or a condemnation of that countries policies.
my presence in a country is an effort to connect with people through playing music.

almost every country on the planet has some aspect of their foreign or domestic policy that is questionable(i mean, i live in the united states, and many aspects of our foreign and domestic policy are seriously questionable...but yet i continue to live there and do what i can to effect positive change).

i have opinions about the policies of the countries i visit, of course, but i think its incredibly dangerous to form opinions of a place without actually spending time there.

the situation within a country is oftentimes considerably more complicated when experienced from within rather than when seen from thousands of miles away or through the sensationalistic and often simplifying and reductionist lens of the media.

i'm sorry if my decisions to visit certain countries are troubling to some people.

Moby played in Tel Aviv yesterday.

And from Richard Millett's blog:

Take That are currently touring the UK and during a recent concert at Wembley national treasure Robbie Williams approached a group of screaming teenage girls who were sporting cheesy Israeli head-wear and took away one of their Israeli flags, promptly kissed it and then took it on to the stage with him (see clip below).

You could call it sticking two fingers (or even one finger, if you wish) up at the vicious anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which desires to kill off the Jewish state for good.

If you listen carefully, you can hear BDSers heads exploding.

(h/t Israel Muse)

Ancient Shabbat marker found in the Galilee

From JPost:

An ancient rock inscription of the word “Shabbat” was uncovered near Lake Kinneret this week – the first and only discovery of a stone Shabbat boundary in Hebrew.

The etching in the Lower Galilee community of Timrat appears to date from the Roman or Byzantine period.

News of the inscription, discovered by chance Sunday by a visitor strolling the community grounds, quickly reached Mordechai Aviam, head of the Institute for Galilean Archeology at Kinneret College.

“This is the first time we’ve found a Shabbat boundary inscription in Hebrew,” he said. “The letters are so clear that there is no doubt that the word is ‘Shabbat.’”

Aviam said Jews living in the area in the Roman or Byzantine era (1st-7th centuries CE) likely used the stone to denote bounds within which Jews could travel on Shabbat. The Lower Galilee of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages had a Jewish majority – many of the Talmudic sages bore toponyms indicative of Galilee communities.

The engraving uncovered in Timrat is the first and only Shabbat boundary marker yet discovered in Hebrew – a similar inscription was found in the vicinity of the ancient Western Galilee village of Usha, but its text was written in Greek.

One of the very cool things about Israel is that an ordinary person, walking his dog, can stumble upon an archaeological treasure like this - which is what happened.

Biblewalks also tries to figure out which town this was the marker for:

We speculate that the marker in Timrat is related an ancient town, located approximately 1kmto the south-east of the marker. This Jewish Roman town was called “Mahalul”, and flourished from the commercially strategic location during the Roman/Byzantine times (Mishna and Talmud). It is mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud (Megila page 2 , 2 1:1, Hebrew): “Nahalal is Mahalul”, and listed among the walled cities from the period of Joshua. The distance from the Roman village to the Timrat Sabbath stone fits the exact range of the perimeter as defined by the Jewish tradition.

Another candidate for the town related to the marker is Simonia, located around the nearby Tell Shimron. This was another Jewish town during the Roman and Byzantine periods. It is also located about 1.5KM from the marker, on the south-west side.

(h/t Yoel)

Gaddafi sent delegation to Israel!

I had missed this one from JPost:

A delegation from Libya sent by leader Muammar Gaddafi recently visited Israel and met with opposition leader Tzipi Livni and other officials, Channel 2 reported on Sunday.

According to the report, the delegation of four senior Libyan officials received visas from the Israeli embassy in Paris after gaining approval from Israeli security services. Once in Israel, the delegation immediately asked to meet with Livni.

Upon receiving the invitation for a meeting, Livni immediately turned to security officials, who gave their approval for the opposition leader to meet with the Gaddafi delegation.

In the four-day visit, the senior Libyan officials reportedly met with other Israeli officials in addition to the opposition leader.

Earlier this year, a leader of a Jewish group told The Jerusalem Post that Libya secretly offered to give Israelis of Libyan descent an undisclosed sum of money if they agreed to form a "Libyan political party."

Michael Totten comments:

I can’t help but wonder: does Qaddafi take the myth of overwhelming Jewish power so seriously that he thinks Israel can pull the plug on NATO’s campaign against him?

Ah, the positive part of anti-semitism!

(h/t Silke)

All the aid money that goes into Palestinian Arab infrastructure frees up funds for Hamas to buy rockets, guns and explosives to target Israel.

(h/t D)

Glenn Beck in Knesset (video)

Again, whatever you think about his politics, you cannot argue with the fact that he loves Israel and Jews.

Except that many anti-Israel Jews, people who will never say a word against explicit Arab anti-semitism, are openly saying that Beck is an anti-semite.

MJ Rosenberg in HuffPo writes that Beck is especially critical towards liberal Jews, so therefore he must be anti-semitic.

Sorry. I can accept people calling him a buffoon, or a right-wing nutcase.

But the accusation that Beck is anti-semitic is manifestly absurd.

Rosenberg, absurdly, titles the article "Glenn Beck Defiles the Holy Land." He is very happy with virulently anti-semitic Arabs having rights to freely say whatever they want; he is happy with Jewish shrines being taken over by Muslims in the textbook definition of defilement - but when an openly pro-Israel media figure, someone who loves unapologetic Jews, speaks in front of the Jewish State's government to acclaim, Rosenberg calls this a defilement?

Rosenberg's definition of anti-semitism is really anti-liberalism. And it is really sad that so many Jews think that Judaism is identical with leftist politics, so much so that they are not even embarrassed to publish drivel like Rosenberg did.

(h/t Yoel)

Pure anti-semitism in the Palestine Chronicle

The Palestine Chronicle calls itself "an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region."

It is edited by Ramzy Baroud, a prolific anti-Israel writer that this blog has mentioned before. But it boasts an honorary editorial board that includes Hanan Ashrawi and Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, as well as the following endorsements:

"The Palestine Chronicle has been an invaluable source of information and analysis about Palestine and related issues, drawing from a wide range of sources, including many that are otherwise inaccessible to the concerned public. An independent voice, it has been trustworthy and reliable." -- Noam Chomsky, a professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"In the midst of an institutional media bias against telling the searing truth about Palestine, the Palestine Chronicle is a beacon. History, witness, analysis and ways forward are here, written with authority and humanity. Long may it publish." -- John Pilger, a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker.

"The Palestine Chronicle presents independent commentary on crucial issues. The editors and their work constitute a sign of hope for a better future." -- Kathy Kelly, Co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence

"The Palestine Chronicle is an essential publication for keeping up with the big picture in the Middle East." -- James Petras, Professor Emeritus, Binghamton University; author of many books.

"The Palestine Chronicle is proof positive that there is hope, that alternative media can one day overpower the corporate mainstream." -- Joshua Frank, co-editor of DissidentVoice.org.

With all of that supposed influence, one of its latest essays is most revealing.

Written by Stuart Littlewood, it is called "Zionists in Our Midst: Battle of Britain II."

Churchill, in his Battle of Britain speech 71 years ago, said: 'If we can stand up to him [Hitler], all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science...'

Today those "broad, sunlit uplands" of Churchill's are again shrouded in storm-clouds. Zionist infiltrators have succeeded where Hitler failed. The difference now is that the enemy’s invasion forces are not massing across the Channel. They are already here in our midst and we are indeed on the brink of a new Dark Age, as the ruthless conspiracy masterminded by foreign interests expands its influence by stealth and by subversion and by intimidation.

America is sliding into the abyss fast as US Congressmen repeatedly parade their abject subservience to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC. Who will forget the pathetic spectacle of 29 standing ovations they accorded the swaggering, lying, crazed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu while he delivered his poison?

The question now is whether we in the UK can stand up to the encroaching menace and save "all that we have known and cared for", when we have so completely lost our moral bearings.

We duck our solemn responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions and give Zionist war criminals a safe haven immune from arrest.

We allow fanatics, such as Conservative Friends of Israel, to organize and promote the interests of the criminal Israeli regime at the very heart of Westminster government.

We allow MPs to place themselves under the influence of foreign interest groups and to abuse the principles that are supposed to underpin standards in public life.

We allow Jews to be hugely over-represented in our Parliament and to dominate key areas of our administration, including those related to security. If Muslims were over-represented to the same extent they’d have 200 seats and action would be taken.

We spend large amounts of treasure and send our troops to murder foreign civilians and die in foreign lands simply to support US-Israeli greed, destroying our own good name in the process.

We allow civil society's hard-earned savings to bail out Zionist bankers in distress and fund endless wars and the corporate and personal profits of those who promote wars.

...Churchill, a Zionist sympathizer of the old-fashioned kind, confronted many dire threats but could not have foreseen, in his day, how the tentacles of Zionism would envelop the civilized world. But there’s no excuse for today’s leaders when the truth is so brazenly ugly. That they embrace it and even change our laws to accommodate it, underlines their utter unsuitability for high office.

We stood up to Hitler. Is no-one incorruptible enough to stand against the Zionist menace?

While the entire screed owes a huge debt the the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Littlewood lets his "anti-Zionist" mask slip off by not only referring to "Zionist bankers" but to Jews in Parliament, with the implication that Jews cannot possibly be loyal British subjects.

In other words, this is a classic (if poorly written) anti-semitic libel, that is being given prominence by a media source that is well-respected in the English language "pro-Palestinian" universe (and of course this same article has been copied to other well-known leftist and "pro-Palestinian" websites as well.)

Will the self-styles fighters against bigotry who support the Palestine Chronicle rise up and demand that this article get removed? Will Littlewood's essays be banished from publication by similar sites because he has exposed himself to be a hateful, bigoted man whose opinions are forever tarnished because of his sickening bias against Jews?

Or is this just more proof that anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are two sides of the same coin?

Ma'an English vs. Ma'an Arabic (updated)

From Ma'an (English):

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a young Palestinian man early Wednesday near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli security officials said.

University student Ibrahim Sarhan was shot while emerging from a mosque during a search operation in Al-Farah refugee camp near Nablus, Palestinian security sources told AFP.

Soldiers were looking for an activist of the Islamic Jihad movement but Sarhan did not belong to any Palestinian political group, they said.

From Ma'an Arabic:

The Islamic resistance movement Hamas in the West Bank confirmed that the martyr Ibrahim Sarhan, 22, is one of its children and its activists in the Farah camp.

The Arabic article was timestamped 11:24 AM. The English one was posted at 11:40. It was still the top English story at 14:00.

UPDATE: At 17:18 Ma'an English updated the story - but it still does not point out that Sarhan was a Hamas member, only approaching the issue elliptically:

Sarhan was close to graduating from the faculty of engineering at An-Najah University, where he supported the Islamic bloc in student senate elections, the Hamas party announced Wednesday.

In a statement, Hamas said Sarhan was shot while en route to morning prayers.

Yet the Hamas statement explicitly said that he was one of its activists, as can be seen on the Hamas Al Qassam website.

Flytilla crybabies fighting each other

From one of the Flytidiots, unsure of the date:

An Open Letter to Paul Larudee from the Welcome to Palestine Campaign

From: lubnna (at) gmail.com
To: larudee (at) pacbell.net

Paul,
I regretfully send you this second letter and will publish it publicly as you have left us no choice.

You have appeared in the media over the last week, often stating that you organized the Welcome to Palestine campaign. All statements you have made in regards to this campaign were false.

As organizers, we were surprised by your statements as you were never part of this campaign. Sadly, your declarations about our campaign being about the right of return have confused the media and brought on damage to our basic plan.

We appreciate your will to work for Palestine but trying to take over any activity has profoundly affected the trust we have in you and we would be very surprised if any respectful organization in Palestine will be willing to work with you.

We urge you to stop giving statements to the media in the name of the Welcome to Palestine campaign.

Lubna Masarwa
On behalf the "Welcome to Palestine" campaign

From Paul Larudee's Free Palestine Movement site:

Accusations have been circulating about FPM's Paul Larudee representing himself and FPM as part of the Welcome to Palestine project. Here are the facts:

1. FPM has had a project called the Return from Exile Project for more than a year. Larudee has given multiple presentations on this project at Al-Awda, the PRC and other conferences. In addition, he has described the project in numerous interviews on television, radio, the written press and other places. A description of the project appears at www.freepalestinemovement.org/ffe.html.

2. The Return from Exile Project has some similarities with the Welcome to Palestine project in that it includes a fly-in to Lid ("Ben-Gurion") airport. However, that is where the similarity ends. It uses different procedures, occurs on a different date, yet to be determined, and it has different objectives.
...
4. The accusations by some Palestinian and Palestine solidarity sources, accusing Larudee of false representation and undermining the Welcome to Palestine project could have been avoided by confronting him with the "evidence", discussing the matter, and seeking explanation. A small amount of research, such as going to the FPM website would reveal the truth immediately. It is totally irresponsible to make such accusations without first going through the due process of justice which we all advocate but that some of us are reluctant to practice before pronouncing judgment.

We hope that those responsible for issuing these accusations will take the trouble to discuss them with the accused, discover the truth, issue an apology and then all trust each other again.

First Ken O'Keefe, and now Paul Larudee? My, my. Solidarity doesn't mean what it used to!

The funny thing is, even with all the infighting, you still won't hear any of these "non-violent" activists or their apologists at 972mag or Mondoweiss say a word against the IHH's actions on the Mavi Marmara. Criticizing fellow Westerners is fine, but don't dare criticize the Muslims! Muslims and Arabs can do no wrong!

(h/t fafa)

Orthodox Zionist films becoming mainstream in Israel. And a word about empathy.

An interesting article in the New York Jewish Week:

[The Ma’aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts in Jerusalem] says it is the only film school of its kind, committed to producing work by filmmakers “inspired by their Jewish heritage,” including the prophetic heritage that was not only about scolding Israel but loving, comforting and defending Israel, as well.

Ma’aleh students are free, in their projects, to explore any Israeli topic whatsoever, fiction or documentary. The only requirement, aside from no work on Shabbat (a rarity in the film business), is that there be no overt sexuality, gratuitous violence or crude language.
Within the confines of modesty, or perhaps because of it, more than a few of these films nevertheless depict Orthodox Jews in highly erotic or religiously ambiguous situations. These films are hardly propaganda: In “A-Meiseh,” a relationship between a Holocaust survivor and his Filipino caregiver is tested when police search the neighborhood for illegal foreign workers.

In “Elyokim,” a young, brilliant but wheelchair-bound haredi man in Meah Shearim develops a crush on his rebbe’s daughter, who has private sexual reckonings of her own. Another film, “The First Night,” enters into the bedroom of a newlywed Modern Orthodox couple who, never having touched, confront their first nights of intimacy. Their unease is accentuated during “sheva brachos” week by the couple’s greater ease with old friends than with each other.

And yet, for all these tensions, the viewer never doubts that the Ma’aleh films fully respect – even love -- all the Jewish characters and Jewish laws that come into play, much as no one doubts that Thornton Wilder, writing “Our Town,” or Frank Capra, directing “It’s A Wonderful Life,” were anything but in love with American small-town dreams and values, while not shying away from the truth that someone in Grover’s Corners or Bedford Falls might consider suicide, or how it can all turn into Pottersville if just one good man has a run of bad luck, or wasn’t born.

Ma’aleh has changed Israeli film and TV. Hannah Brown, a film critic for the Jerusalem Post, reported in 2010 that “in decades past, religious characters could often be seen as the butt of jokes in silly comedies…. But these new films take their religious characters seriously. They have also sold tickets both here and abroad, and have won prizes at festivals around the world.” In recent years, “religiously observant directors and movies on religious themes have claimed an increasing share of the limelight and have become part of mainstream local cinema.”

Among Ma’aleh’s graduates are the creators of “Srugim,” a hit Israeli television series about Modern Orthodox single men and women in Jerusalem.

Harold Berman, Ma’aleh’s director of resource development, says he knew someone “who wanted to make a film, set in the West Bank, with a kind of Zionist script,” only to get a rejection from a Tel Aviv producer who said, “‘Zionism is no longer relevant.’”

Yet, it might be obvious that several Ma’aleh films about the West Bank are more relevant than ever. “Barriers,” a film about the complexity but justification of checkpoints (shown this week in the Jerusalem Film Festival) is a drama, but what’s fascinating is that several Ma’aleh settlement films are comedies. “Evacuation Order,” directed by Shoshi Greenfield, for one, is the story of a secular, leftist soldier, for whom the West Bank is alien territory, sent to evacuate an illegal hilltop settlement. He ends up falling in love with a beautiful female settler with long flowing hair and an ankle-length dress. (As Zionism was an erotic revolution as well as a political one, Ma’aleh casting crews have no trouble finding and casting beautiful and erotic Orthodox faces). The settler woman can’t imagine abandoning a thyme-speckled hillside that she sees as entwined with her soul. Beyond the film’s gentle humor, there’s the underlying truth that as a prelude to peace, or evacuation, Israelis must find a way to love the Jewish “other.”

Greenfield, the director, took a settlement story “to a whole new place,” says Neta Ariel, director of the school, “because she knows what it is to be a settler, and self-humor can be very strong and very refreshing.”
...
In Ma’aleh films, the land is as sensual as anything else. Einat Kapach, who handles Ma’aleh’s international relations, says that when she did her graduate work at Ma’aleh, “my goal, my purpose, was to go to the desert and film an extreme long shot, because in Israeli films there wasn’t enough connection to the land and the places and the space.”

Modern Israel may be the greatest story ever told, but one consistently hears from Ma’aleh’s artists, “if we don’t tell our story, who will?”

The beginning of the article is noteworthy for what it doesn't say:

Many Jewish artists pride themselves on having empathy for the “the other,” even — especially – for Palestinians.

For example, “Miral,” a film released earlier this year, shows a Palestinian girl living under an Israeli occupation depicted as absolutely brutal. The director, Julian Schnabel, a Jew, was quoted as saying that he had “a personal Jewish responsibility” to make such a film, which was distributed by Harvey Weinstein, who’s Jewish, too.

Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of CLAL, has said of “Miral,” in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, that what’s missing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a “lack of empathy on both sides.” Miral “is fundamentally a meditation on empathy.”

That only begs the question: In recent years, how many films have been made — anywhere — with empathy for, say, West Bank settlers? Of all the Jews in the film business, how many ever felt “a personal Jewish responsibility” to make films empathetic to Orthodox or old-school Zionist lives?

The writer asks about Jewish filmmalkers being emphatic with sections of the Jewish community as they are with Arabs. But he doesn't even bother asking the analogous question:

Could anyone imagine an Arab film that is empathetic to Israelis?

The fact that it is absolutely inconceivable is just one of those pieces of information that everyone knows with certainty. Yet so many still believe that a true "peace" is possible between Israel and its neighbors, people who have such a passionate hate for Jews living in their midst that the slightest expression of empathy towards them could easily be a death sentence.

When there are Palestinian Arab films that looks as sympathetically at Zionist Jews as Israeli films humanize Palestinian Arabs, then there would be a possibility for a real peace. Until that happens, everyone knows that any peace is a sham.

Most of Ma'aleh's films have English subtitles, their website is here.

Is Dracula a Jewish stereotype?

Blood Will Tell, a new book by Sara Libby Robinson, gives some interesting evidence that Dracula was meant to evoke anti-semitic stereotypes. From Jewish Ideas Daily:

While never explicitly identified as a Jew, the figure of Dracula—and vampires more generally—encompassed an array of anti-Semitic stereotypes: rootless, of East European origin, dark-complected, and lustful for the money and blood of others. Assessing a wide range of themes in which blood and vampirism were evoked in late-19th-century European "scientific" thought (Social Darwinism and criminology in particular), Robinson argues that Stoker's depiction of Dracula exploited widespread anxieties about the dangers posed by the flood (and the blood) of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Great Britain.

Dracula's features are "stereotypically Jewish . . . [his] nose is hooked, he has bushy eyebrows, pointed ears, and sharp, ugly fingers." As for his behavior, Robinson situates Dracula in the realm of fin-de-siècle national chauvinism, which viewed non-Anglo-Saxons—and Jews in particular—as dangerous interlopers loyal only to their alien tribe. "Like many immigrants, Dracula has made great efforts to acculturate himself to his new country and to blend in with the rest of the population, through studying its language and customs . . . [his] greatest concern is whether his mastery of English and his pronunciation would brand him as a foreigner." Likewise, Stoker mines anxieties over Jewish dual loyalty. "The one identified person whose aid Dracula enlists in escaping Britain is a German Jew named Hildesheim, 'a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep,' who must be bribed in order to aid Stoker's heroes."

Robinson asserts that the purpose of her study is to widen the focus away from Dracula. She calls attention, often brilliantly, to the frequent appearance of vampiric metaphors and blood-related anxieties beginning some two decades before Stoker's work appeared, up through the First World War. She marshals evidence from dozens of German, French, and British authors (many now obscure) for allusions to perceived political and social threats evoking the fear of blood-letting and vampirism. Additionally, she casts a fine eye on some 30 illustrations culled from the satirical journals of the period, such as the German Kladderadatsch, the English Punch, and the American Puck and Harper's Weekly.

So what does that make The Count?

It's a long way to Gaza City (song parody/video)

I'm not sure which is funnier - the lyrics or the singing.

From HuffPo Monitor.

Saif al Islam Gaddafi claims rebels want to convert Libyans to Christianity

Back in 2007, The New York Times described Saif al Islam Gaddafi as "part scholar, part monk, part model, part policy wonk" and "the un-Gaddafi."

The BBC Arabic channel reports on a speech that this scholar and policy wonk gave on Libyan state TV a few days ago:

Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, accused the Libyan opposition of working on the division of the country, committing atrocities during the current conflict, and working on converting the Libyans to Christianity.

He added that the opposition is only a very few people against the ruling regime, and they seek to divide the country and control the east of the country, rich with oil.

He said he has proof that the opposition, based in the city of Benghazi, east of the country, has a plan to divide the country into six provinces, and that the Libyans would not accept the existence of a conservative Berber province west of the country.

Saif al-Islam also accused the opposition of pushing a secular constitution, and of encouraging Libyans to convert to Christianity.

He called for "jihad" against the Christians and the Outlaws and the invaders, as he called them, saying the government was "ready to arm any Muslim who believes in jihad."

Notice how a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics turns people into peaceful, pragmatic moderates.

(Why did the BBC not report this in English?)

Gaza citizens' views of all the new fancy restaurants and hotels

Ma'an (Arabic) has an article about the surge of new fancy restaurants, hotels, spas and resorts in Gaza, and how their prices are so far out of reach to the average Gazan.

According to the article, the main customers in these hotspots are employees of NGOs, journalists and rich Gazans. An entire industry in Gaza has sprung up to service people whose entire jobs are to report on how horrid conditions are in Gaza.

The article also notes that many Gazans are going to these restaurants, enjoying the food and entertainment, and then they either skip out without paying or they tell the owner that they'll pay "next month" when they get their next check.

Gazans are interviewed about how difficult it is for them to save up money to go to fancy restaurants with their families, and how it is cheaper to just buy their own ingredients and make their own meals. Which sounds pretty much like most people on the planet.

I had seen a previous article that described one other customer for these new hotels and halls. Apparently, (again just like people everywhere,) Gazans will go into extreme debt to pay for fancy weddings for their daughters, and they don't want to look cheap.

Flotidiot whining reaches a new level

Screeching, perhaps.

A press release from the flotimbeciles:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Ann Wright, 0030 694 165 7310
Regina Carey: 0030 694 203 6296

Athens, July 12, 2011, At 10 am today, the shore electricity was cut off to the Audacity of Hope, the US Boat to Gaza, leaving us with no power. The boat has been imprisoned at the US Embassy/Greek Coast Guard dock, near Piraeus, Greece, just outside of Athens since we tried to sail to Gaza on July 1 when the Greek Coast Guard intercepted our small boat and hauled us into this compound.

Its over 100 degrees inside the boat, and a Russian ship loading grain is spewing grain and dust over the entire area. In addition, the off-loading noise the ship is making is above environmentally acceptable limit, sounding like a bad rock concert playing at the back of the boat! Six women are staying on board to protect the boat, since two boats heading to Gaza were already sabotaged in an attempt to prevent us from sailing to Gaza. Four of us are over 60. The Greek naval facility is co-located with a US Embassy compound which has one warehouse exclusively for the U.S. government, as well as a ramp for loading vehicles onto a ship. It also has a parking area for the wrecked cars of Americans who have been involved in traffic accidents plus a secure warehouse compound behind the ubiquitous high fence topped with razor wire and signs printed in both English and Greek in the US government block style lettering.

Tomorrow, they'll take a dip in the sea, and then write a press release that the water is too cold for their 60 year old bodies, and therefore demand everyone call the Greek Embassy to complain.

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar)