Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 28, 2011

BDS Fail in Brisbane

Danielle Keys reports on the counter-protest against the Socialist Alliance anti-Semites:

On Saturday the 27th of August at 1pm, the Socialist Alliance and "Justice for Palestine" met at Merivale Street, Brisbane to march down to Southbank to bully and intimidate the customers and staff of popular chocolatier 'Max Brenner'.

I, Danielle Keys, organised the counter-protest movement a month ago after seeing the Socialist Alternative at UQ handing out flyers about their protest. The flyers said to boycott Max Brenner as an agent of apartheid Israel. I thought it was so disgusting that I organised a facebook event just to see if some friends were interested in counter-protesting.

Little did I know that in a matter of weeks I would have many different groups approaching me to help support the cause, over 90 facebook friends attending and be in contact with the corporate management of Max Brenner. Little did I truly foresee that I would be speaking to almost every single newspaper I can think of as well as television and radio opportunities. I would have been happy to stand alone but I am really glad I didn't have to! The reason that people stand behind counter-protest movements I think is because as just individual people we get bullied by the disgraceful agendas of the loudest most empty vessels of humanity - the Socialist Alliance. They are the unwashed aggressors who exist off the fringes of society prepared to violently demonise anyone who disagrees with them. I really had enough of it and I'm glad to see I was not the only one!

I guess the only way to properly describe the events of yesterday is like this...

THE COUNTER-PROTEST WAS AWESOME!!!

When the Socialist Alliance marched down to Southbank they were not counting on being outnumbered by ordinary Australians telling them to go home and that their intolerance was not welcome. They quite seriously didn't bank on it and were very upset about it (ha-ha!)....

Anyone who was there would have seen how much fun it was. Everyone there was laughing, chanting, getting stuck into the SA, drinking hot chocolates and dancing around. The Socialist Alliance eventually walked away. Shamed into oblivion. They went and stood in a park somewhere continuing their little rant, where no one could hear them and no one could call them to account. This is unsurprising and indicative of their cowardice.

All fun and exciting times aside, there was a really powerful and beautiful element to this counter-protest movement. I was really humbled and overwhelmed by people from the Jewish community voicing their thanks for the support. It sounds insane but I never really thought of the Brisbane Jewish community when it came to organising this. I was so busy thinking of the political and ideological principles that I didn't properly see how personally vilified and offended the Jewish community felt over this. They came out in force to stand up for Max Brenner and say no to Socialist Alliance abuses. I met so many wonderful Jewish people and I felt so touched when they said how surprised and happy they were to see non-Jewish people standing by them in an event like this.

Here's one video of the protest/counter protest.

(h/t Ian)

Syria "news" agency caught lying with photos again

Sometimes, you can't trust your own eyes.

From Syria's SANA agency:

SANA reporters on Saturday denied existence of any gatherings or demonstrations at al-Abbasiyyin, Umayyad and Kefr Souseh Squares contrary to what some provocative satellite channels have aired this morning.

Notice the photo they use to prove that things were normal at that town square on Saturday morning?

Here's that same photo - in a SANA article from April:

In fact, that photo is all over the Internet.

Now, why did they use an old photo to prove that things were normal in the square today?

Gilad Shalit's Birthday Wish (video)

Sunday is Gilad Shalit's birthday.

The Hurricane Irene open thread

Don't know if I'll be able to blog at all during the hurricane and possible power outages, as I'm pretty much in the path of the storm.

Meanwhile, here's an open thread!

Now I have to sue Hezbollah

First Hamas rips me off, and now this!

Lebanon's Hezbollah scouts parade as they carry a Star of David symbol with a spider on it during a rally marking "Quds (Jerusalem) Day'' in Nabatieh town, southern Lebanon, August 25, 2011.

This looks suspiciously like the logo of the International Zionist Web, my nefarious organization created in 2006!

I gotta find a Lebanese lawyer.

At least Iranians admit their "Qods Day" rallies are anti-Israel

It is refreshing to see that Iran makes it very clear that their annual Qods Day demonstrations are not meant to show support for Jerusalem or support for Palestinian Arabs nearly as much as they are to show unbridled hate towards Israel. Such a difference from Western "pro-Palestinian" rallies that are anti-Israel hatefests.

Here's the description of the Iranian rally from FARS News Agency:

Iranians across the country alongside other people around the world held massive anti-Israel rallies on the last Friday of Ramadan in opposition to the continued occupation of Palestinian land by Israel.

In Tehran, millions of people gathered for the march, chanting 'Death to Israel' and holding anti-Israeli and anti-American signs.

The International Quds Day was started by the late Founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, in 1979 as a way of expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and underscoring importance of the holy Quds to Muslims.

International Quds Day is an annual event opposing Israel's occupation of Beitul-Muqaddas. Anti-Zionist rallies and demonstrations are held on the last Friday of Ramadan in Muslim and Arab countries around the world, and especially in Iran.

Protesters unanimously condemned Zionists' crimes in the Palestinian occupied lands.

The fasting people carrying placards chanted 'Down with the US' and 'Down with the Israel' and other anti-Zionist slogans.

But in one way the Iranian and Western haters of Israel do have one thing in common in their fake love for Palstinian Arabs:

Many demonstrators were also wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, to show their solidarity with the people of Palestine.

Erekat: "Palestine" would still be subsidiary to the PLO

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat says that a declaration of a Palestinian Arab state would not affect the status of the PLO as "the sole legitimate representative for the Palestinian people."

He says that the PLO is the only party that can negotiate for "Palestine" - even after "Palestine" is established.

According to Erekat, the statehood demand next month will be submitted by Mahmoud Abbas to the Security Council in his capacity as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization as well as President of the State of Palestine, but the PLO will remain the mandate-holder in the final negotiations, including all final-status issues like "refugees," water, land and Jerusalem.

It is far from clear that he is saying that the PLO would be dissolved after negotiations.

So any Palestinian Arab state that would be declared next month would be perhaps the first state ever recognized that was run by a private organization.

Clueless anti-Israel protesters exposed (video)

Someone with a camera challenges anti-Israel protesters, including some Jews, in Harvard Square earlier this week.

The first person being asked questions is Nancy Murray who is a Director of Education at ACLU-Massachusetts.

(h/t Anna)

Report that Hamas is more serious about this truce. Rocket fired anyway.

From Palestine Press Agency:

Palestinian sources revealed on Friday instructions issued by the political echelon in the Hamas movement which controls the Gaza Strip to prevent other factions from firing rockets at Israel in response to the military escalation in the Gaza Strip.

The sources said that Hamas had given strict instructions to prevent any resistive elements from trying to launch rockets at Israel.

The sources noted that the forces of Hamas have begun to spread in the streets of the Gaza Strip, especially in the border areas, to prevent resistance fighters from firing rockets, saying that the orders issued by both the political and the military was to prevent rocket fire by force.

I did not see any reports of Hamas actively enforcing the Sunday night truce, which never really took effect.

This truce was announced for 1 AM. It held for about 14 hours, before a Grad was fired south of Ashkelon.

Derfner apologizes - but what does he really think?

Larry Derfner, columnist for the Jerusalem Post, has come under a lot of criticism for the vile article he wrote on his blog recently justifying Palestinian Arab terror and saying it was a "right."

He has now apologized in what is clearly an attempt for him to keep his job:

I have an apology to make for “The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror,” which I posted here and on Facebook on Sunday. I didn’t mean to say anything “good” about Palestinian terror against Israelis – I see nothing good in it whatsoever, and I thought I made that clear, but I see now that I didn’t.

I wrote that because of the occupation, Palestinians are “justified” in attacking, even killing Israelis, that they have the “right” to do so. Later on I stressed that I didn’t want them to kill my countrymen, and that I would do anything necessary to stop it. I meant those two points to show that I wasn’t “for” terrorism, that while I thought the occupation justified it, that didn’t mean I supported it. But I see now that the distance from “justified” to “support” is way, way too short – and I am as far away as anybody can be from supporting attacks on Israel and Israelis.

Writing that the killing of Israelis was justified and a matter of right took a vile image and attached words of seeming approval to it. This, I’m afraid, produced an “obscene” effect, as one critic wrote. I don’t want to write obscenity about Israel. I didn’t mean to, and I deeply regret it.

These three paragraphs are emphasizing that he does not approve of terrorism. But he did make that clear in his original disgusting article. The offensive part was that he said very clearly that terrorism was a "right" and it was "justified" - even if he personally disapproves.

Then he backtracks completely:

My intention was to shock people into recognition, but I ended up shocking many of them into revulsion, and twisting what I wanted to say into something I didn’t and don’t mean at all.

What I mean is this: The occupation does not justify Palestinian terror. It does, however, provoke it. Palestinians do not have the right to attack or kill Israelis. They, do, however, have the incentive to, and part, though not all, of that incentive is provided them by the occupation.

This is the exact opposite of what he wrote before:

If those who oppose the occupation acknowledged publicly that it justifies Palestinian terrorism, then those who support the occupation would have to explain why it doesn’t.

Palestinians have the right to resist [the occupation] – to use violence against Israelis, even to kill Israelis....But while I think the Palestinians have the right to use terrorism against us, I don’t want them to use it....Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack.

His attempt to reconcile the two makes it clear that his apology might be sincere in that he didn't mean to upset people so much, but he has not really changed his opinion. He's just suppressing it.

And one day in a couple of years he'll write an article complaining about how the horrible Israeli system forces people to self-censor their true feelings.

One can be sure that his compatriots in the anti-Zionist Left will not look at this apology critically at all. In fact, they are breathing a sigh of relief at being off the hook from having to publicly say whether they agreed with his original article or not.

(I'm not even going to bother to expand on the racist assumption that Palestinian Arabs have no free will to decide whether to attack Jewish civilians or not, that somehow Israeli actions "force" them to murder. Well, a small percentage of them. For some unexplained reason 100% of PalArabs aren't attacking Jews every day, as racists like Derfner expect them to.)

(h/t Noah Pollak)

"Egyptians plan to destroy all Gaza tunnels"

From Palestine Press Agency:

Egyptian sources in El Arish report that in the coming days we will witness a huge Egyptian military campaign for the destruction of all smuggling tunnels in the border area with Gaza.

Major-General Mohamed Farid Khamis, Hejazi, commander of the Second Field Army, said during a meeting with sheikhs and tribal leaders in northern Sinai that the Egyptian armed forces have taken an irreversible decision to destroy all tunnels.

The move aims to prevent the infiltration of extremist groups through the tunnels to Sinai to carry out terrorist operations.

Egypt has been very concerned over Gaza groups' influence on fomenting terror in the Sinai. I have my doubts over what percentage of tunnels they will actually find and shut down, but even destroying 50% would have an impact.

The amount of goods and people that can cross through the official Rafah crossing is still quite small. Inevitably, this will affect the amount of goods available in Gaza, especially construction materials.

How will the Egyptian government spin this action in a way that doesn't make them look like Zionist stooges?

Will they demonize the Gaza terror groups and describe them as enemies of Egypt? Will Hamas react angrily and start insulting the "new" Egypt? Which side will Egyptian media support?

Things might get very interesting.

Israeli ambassador to US holds Ramadan Iftar meal

From CNN:

The Israeli ambassador to the United States is hosting a dinner celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Thursday, marking the first time an ambassador from the Jewish state has hosted such a dinner in the United States, the embassy said.

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren is hosting the dinner at his residence, with about 60 guests expected, including imams, rabbis and officials from the White House, Congress and the State Department, according to Israeli Embassy spokesman Lior Weintraub.

Oren told CNN that the unusual dinner is fitting at a time when the future of the Middle East is uncertain, as the Arab Spring has unseated regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and as Libya appears poised on the brink of a revolution.

“We’re in the middle of a huge transition in the Middle East and we see risks, but we also see opportunities there,” he said. “We want to be able to tell people in the Middle East what those opportunities are.”

“There’s a lot of misinformation about Israel and we want to show we’re open to dialogue and reconciliation,” he said. “We can begin to build bridges on an interpersonal level.”

Thursday’s Ramadan dinner, called an Iftar, will feature a call to prayer, during which the dining room at the ambassador’s residence will be turned into a Muslim prayer space, the embassy said.

All food served at the meal will be halal, meaning it has been prepared according to certain Muslim customs. The meal was prepared under the direction of a Muslim chef, the embassy said.

Oren said he hopes the meal at the Israeli ambassador’s residence becomes an annual tradition.

“Israel has a very large and vibrant Muslim population, with Muslim members of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and in science and academics and I’m their ambassador as well,” Oren said. “This is very much a state function for us, not just about reaching out.”

This is a great idea, and it should have happened long ago.

(I hope that the food is kosher as well!)

More from HuffPo:

The evening's 65 guests include prominent Muslims and Jews, such as Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at American University; Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and the founding rabbi of the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., and the New York Synagogue in Manhattan; and Abdullah Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University. A representative from the ambassador's office said it would release a full list of attendees after the dinner.

"My job is to reach out to different communities, including communities that have been connected with Israel and those who have not," Oren said in an interview Thursday. "Israel is a country with a large and respected Muslim minority. I just got back from Jerusalem two days ago and it's all decorated for Ramadan. They're an important part of our society."

The ambassdor, who has a Ph.D. in near eastern studies from Princeton University, also said he has a "personal interest" in Islam and the religion's traditions.

"I have a large background in Islamic philosophy and theology. I spent an entire year reading the Quran in Arabic," he said, adding that there is "a lot of disinformation" about the religion in the United States and Europe today, such as "when people talk about Shariah," or Islamic law, or about women who wear veils.

"Israel doesn't have mineret bans, doesn't have veil bans, doesn't have burka bans. We have Muslim members of the Knesset. They are an integral part of our society," Oren said.

Egyptian media: Israel ambassador fled home in fear of riots

Egypt's El Fagr newspaper reports that Israel's ambassador to Egypt, Yitzchak Levanon, has gone into hiding in fear of tomorrows demonstrations that might have been planned outside his home.

What the paper didn't mention was that there was a fatwa issued to kill every Israeli in Egypt, which might contribute to his fear if this is true.

Within the past week there has been a violent demonstration outside the Israel embassy, and the Muslim Brotherhood has demanded that Ambassador Levanon be expelled from Egypt.