Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

PA whitewashed torture death of prisoner

Palestinian security officials privately offered American diplomats candid details about the 2009 death of a detainee while they publicly refuted allegations of torture, according to a US diplomatic cable recently released by WikiLeaks.

Suspected Hamas member Haitham Amr, a nurse at a Hebron hospital, died less than a week after the PA’s General Intelligence division arrested him in June 2009.

Security officials claimed publicly that Amr fell to his death trying to escape through a second-story window. But the recently released cable, part of a full batch posted online in late August, reveals that General Intelligence officials told the US Consulate in Jerusalem that their initial account was "simply wrong."

Corroborating allegations of torture from the victim’s family and human rights groups, the cable says the PA’s own investigation found evidence that Amr was abused before his death.

...The PA never retracted its initial account, although Interior Minister Said Abu Ali conceded in October 2009 that there had been a "violation of the rights" of Haitham Amr.

Rights campaigners say the new information casts doubt on the credibility of a special military court which acquitted five officers who were charged in connection with Amr's death.

No PA security official has ever been criminally convicted of abusing persons in custody "despite hundreds of documented complaints of torture and other abuse," [HRW's Bill Van] Esveld says. "Given these serious and widespread abuses, the US should stop funding PA security agencies until the PA ends this record of impunity."

In 2010, the US provided $350 million to the PA for its security forces in addition to $150 million in direct budgetary aid, according to Human Rights Watch.

US government officials have consistently denied that American funds support security agencies accused of torture; they say most aid goes to the PA's National Security Forces.

News reports suggest otherwise. In December 2009, The Guardian quoted Western officials saying that the CIA works so closely with the General Intelligence and the Preventive Security organization that the Americans seem to be supervising the Palestinians' work.

PLO insults the US again

From Al Arabiya:

Yasser Abd Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said US policy now appeared confined to one point: stopping the Palestinians from embarking on their diplomatic initiative at the United Nations.

“The subject is not settlements, or Palestinian independence or the rights of the Palestinian people, or halting the criminal violations perpetrated by the settlers against the Palestinian people,” he said.

“All this is being ignored and the only issue has become the issue of us not going to the United Nations,” he told Voice of Palestine radio.

“This shows not only disdain for the Palestinian position, but also scorn for what is happening in the Arab region -- a state of revival seeking justice for the Arab peoples and justice for the whole region.”

The PLO feels free to insult the US anytime it pleases, without fear of any diplomatic backlash.

Earlier this year the Palestinian Arab delegation walked out during a speech by Hillary Clinton. Also earlier this year, the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the US was an "obstacle to peace" and "not an honest broker" These are all strong words in the diplomatic sphere, and the US would react harshly if any other entity would constantly insult it.

As usual, though, the PLO will get a pass.

Wikileaks: Hezbollah's intimidation of a Lebanese journalist

From a 2009 Wikileaks cable:

On March 13, Embassy Public Diplomacy (PD) staff met with Beirut-based, Lebanese journalist Tha'ir Abbas of the Saudi-owned newspaper, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat. Abbas, who is Shi'a, has been a PD contact for several years and is well-known for his objective reporting. While he does not write anti-Hizballah reports, he is known for not being a Hizballah supporter. His residence is located in Dahiyeh in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hizballah stronghold.

Abbas went to the United States in November 2008 to cover the U.S. presidential elections. Following his return to Beirut, three members of Hizballah visited him at home, he reported. One member entered the house and the other two stayed on the stairs near his apartment: one on the stairs leading up and one on the stairs leading down. Abbas asked the one Hizballah member who entered his house to stay in the doorway. This person told him that he wanted to ask him some questions. Abbas told him that he would answer his questions only near the door.

This Hizballah member asked Abbas about every member of his family, including his wife, Linda Ayyach, who is a journalist for Hiya Magazine, and his two children. Allegedly, the questions were: what type of cars Abbas and his wife drive; which school do the children attend (Note: They attend an evangelical school. End Note.); what are their political affiliation/s, even the political affiliation of his eight-year old daughter; whether Abbas supports Hizballah; and, what was the reason for his visit to the United States. One of the questions that caught Abbas' attention was whether he has access to the Internet in his house and the reason he does. Abbas said he answered all of the questions because, as he explained to PD, since he lives "in Hizballah's stronghold," he always tries to avoid problems and keeps a low profile.

Following that incident, Abbas learned through his contacts that the security wing of Hizballah has contacts with all the concierges in the area buildings who "spy" on residents and report back to Hizballah. After the visit, Abbas has noticed that he is often followed by another car. He told PD staff that his phone is tapped, that he has another phone which he uses for personal business, and he changes his personal telephone number constantly.

Abbas said he told his story to a person close to Sunni majority leader Saad Hariri, who in turn told Hariri. According to Abbas, Hariri, who sees Abbas on a routine basis and knows him well, allegedly called Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, but was referred to Nasrallah's political assistant, Hassan Khalil. Hariri told Khalil what happened, noting that Hizballah has no right to act in this manner, particularly with journalists "who work for Saudi-owned newspapers." Hariri warned that, by acting this way, Hizballah was damaging its relations with him.

After Hariri's phone call, Abbas claimed he received a phone call from Hizballah's media advisor at the time, Hussein Rahhal, who blamed Abbas for letting the story reach Hariri, and tried to belittle the incident. Since that phone call, Abbas has been harassed publicly several times by members of Hizballah. Once, he said, there was a hot exchange between him and a person who blocked his way while he was trying to leave the garage in his building. This person closed the garage for about two hours, making it impossible for Abbas to leave. On another occasion, Abbas was harassed by a Hizballah member who was about to hit him. Another time he received a phone call from a member of Hizballah when he published an interview with Ahmad Al-Asaad, an independent Shi'a figure who is critical of Hizballah.

Abbas said he lives in constant anxiety over the possibility of being harassed by Hizballah. He explained that he looked into the possibility of selling his house and moving away, but he ruled out the idea because of the high prices elsewhere. He characterized the atmosphere in the Dahiyeh as "extremely intimidating" following the July 2006 war between Israel and Hizballah, noting that Hizballah has its own police force now on every street in Beirut's southern suburb. He also said, "Hizballah members were extremely kind and open before July 2006, but now they are completely different." For them, he noted "everyone is an Israeli or an American agent until the contrary is proven."

This fits in well with what Michael Totten described in his book "The Road to Fatima Gate."

(h/t Yoel)

Hamas denies permission to public rallies in support of UN stunt

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas has said that it will refuse to allow any public demonstrations in Gaza that support the PLO's attempt to have the UN recognize "Palestine" as a state.

In general, Hamas has not rallied behind the UN stunt, although it has made some occasional noises that it will not publicly oppose the move.

Hamas' opposition seems to stem from its reluctance to do anything to legitimize Israel's existence and to limit Palestinian Arab claims on all of Israel.

Israel kills PRC terrorist firing mortars

From YNet:

A commander in the Popular Resistance Committees' military arm was killed Tuesday evening in a fire exchange in the Gaza Strip.

According to Palestinian sources, the operative killed in Khan Younis was Khaled Sahmoud, 23, who was in charge of the the al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades' mortar unit. The PRC claimed that he managed to fire five mortar shells before being killed.

If you want to read the combination of flowery eulogy for Sahmoud and insane condemnation of Israel along with the requisite gory photos of the dead terrorist, check out the autotranslated article from the PRC website.

Morning links

Arafat's dream: What happens after the UN accepts a Palestinian Arab state?

Latest anti-BDS rally in Australia

What a concept: Jews from Judea and Samaria discussing peace with their Arab neighbors!

Turkish opposition leader slams government's "fake enmity over Israel"

Germany expels Israeli academic from conference because he teaches in Ariel (update: he is reinstated)

A UNESCO designated Jewish heritage site is being destroyed in Lviv, Ukraine - and UNESCO says nothing

BDS fail? A Greek singer who is performing in Israel referred to it as a "fascist state" last month.

Egyptian government press is calling Jews the descendants of pigs and apes. But it is a cultural thing and must be protected.

The PA honors the terrorists who bombed the Sbarro's pizza shop

Israel: From underdog to pariah

Lubavitchers start a biker gang (more here)

(h/t Yoel, jzaik, Russell)

"Happy Holocaust"

From Der Spiegel:

Much has been written about the village of Jamel near Wismar in the far northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Hitler salutes in the streets, firing practice in local forests and outsiders chased away. The small run-down settlement has become a dark symbol of the growing reach of neo-Nazi ideology.

In the run-up to Sunday's local ballot in the state, a journalist from the website VBS TV arrived in Jamel. Although she was familiar with the village's larger-than-life reputation, she was shocked to see a large rusty barbeque inscribed with the phrase "happy holocaust."

The grill was in the barbed-wire encircled garden of the office of the far-right extremist National Democratic Party (NPD). The backyard was overlooked by a watchtower and a red, black and white old German Reich flag of the type used by the far-right scene.

"I was shocked and I just couldn't believe what I saw. It felt really surreal," VBS TV journalist Barbara Dabrowska told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "It was like in a bad American movie that tries to come up with the most ridiculous idea for how to make Nazis look really terrible. ... They probably meant it as a joke, but I was annoyed by their either stupid or incredibly provocative approach."

I briefly discussed the NPD here.

(h/t a new blog, Onion Tears News)

Tuesday night movie: The Chosen

I was not a big fan of Chaim Potok's books but as I recall this was not a bad movie. (From Hulu, with some commercials.)

(h/t Israel Video Network)

Wikileaks: Fearful Jews emigrating from Iran

From a Wikileaks cable from August 2009:

Morris Motamed, a former two-term MP for Iran's Jewish community, told IRPO that four Jewish youths were arrested by Basij militiamen while participating in the June 20 street demonstrations in Tehran. The four teenagers spent one night herded into a parking lot with dozens of other detained demonstrators. According to their families, the whole group was badly beaten with batons and stun guns throughout the night before being moved to a police station, where the physical abuse continued. Two of the young men were released after "two or three days" but the other two were transferred to Evin Prison and held 18 days. According to Motamed, who said he maintains ties with many former and current IRIG officials from his days as an MP, the two young men were released after he spoke with Hossein Ali Amiri, who is the deputy to Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Shahroudi. The two were re-arrested in their homes on July 18 by "IRGC security."...Motamed said that at least one of the young men picked up July 18, Yeghoutiel Shaoolian, was among the detainees prosecuted in the August 1 show trial. He said that Shaoolian's mother told him that at some point during his incarceration her son made a taped statement in which he confessed to spying for Israel. Motamed believes that Shaoolian's confession may be linked to the testimony of the "unnamed spy" referenced in the six-part indictment released by the government in advance of the trial. Motamed, who was an MP during the trial of the 13 Jewish Iranians arrested in 1999 in Shiraz and Esfahan on espionage charges, fears a repeat of that ordeal, which he says had far-reaching repercussions for Iran's Jewish community.

Motamed said that the consensus of the community is that only about 20,000 Jews now remain in Iran and noted that emigration has increased over the past two years following President Ahmadinejad's increasingly strident rhetoric against Israel and his public questioning of the Holocaust. Though Jewish Iranians "continue to love Iran" they are being compelled to leave, mostly out of fear that they will become targets of a government backlash should Israel confront Iran militarily. Motamed said he lives in fear of an Israeli strike because the Jewish community has no ability to protect itself from what he believes would be a wide-scale attack on Jews and Jewish interests. He said that while economic opportunity and the chance to live somewhere as a "first-class citizen" do factor into decisions to leave, the uptick in departures is driven mostly by fear of the future. Motamed noted that as a community leader, he has been asked for many years his opinion by Jews weighing their options. Until two years ago, he told people they had to make the decision themselves. Now, he said, he recommends moving out of Iran to every Jew who asks his opinion. He estimated that 80 percent of Jews emigrate to the United States, while the rest relocate to Israel or Europe. (Note: Motamed's wife is emigrating to the U.S. and he is considering his options.)

Some official Jordanian anti-semitism on Wikileaks

From a July 2009 Wikileaks cable:

Another intensely debated amendment concerned Article Twenty-Nine, which outlines restrictions on non-Muslim religious NGOs in Jordan. The amended article as submitted by the government to parliament allows non-Muslim religious organizations to provide "social and charitable services" as long as those services are not part of a proselytizing campaign. During the debate, MP Mamdouh Abbadi warned that the article as written would allow "Jews, Buddhists, and Baha'is" to establish religious charities in Jordan. He proposed an amendment that would only permit Christian organizations to form non-Muslim religious charities. IAF deputy Suleiman Sa'ad, warning deputies of the potentially nefarious influence of foreign religious charities, proposed a further amendment which would only allow non-Muslim religious organizations to operate in Jordan if their members were Jordanian. Abbadi countered that non-Jordanian religious organizations have set up hospitals and other service-oriented programs which provide valuable services to the Jordanian public at no cost to the government. In the end, Abbadi's amendment carried the day and Sa'ad's amendment was defeated -- only Christians will be allowed to establish non-Muslim religious organizations, but there will be no requirement that they be of Jordanian nationality.

Allowing Jews, Buddhists and Baha'is to open up charities in Jordan? How obscene!

Do Muslims ever apologize to non-Muslims?

Ma'an Arabic reports that a delegation of rabbis apologized for the arson against a mosque apparently done by Jews from Judea and Samaria a few days ago. Last year there was an apology by well-known rabbis for a similar incident.

Not condemnations - but apologies.

In light of this, as well as the recent kerfuffles over Israel's apologies and statements of regret to Egypt and Turkey, the question must be asked: do Muslims and Arabs ever apologize to the West for their actions?

There are some very rare occasions when one sees an Arab or Muslim apology to non-Muslims.

Abu Abbas, who masterminded the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1986, apologized ten years later for the killing of Leon Klinghoffer, saying it was a mistake.

An Egyptian and an Arab American citizen apologized on behalf of their people for 9/11.

And, in a very moving gesture, Jordan's King Hussein made a heartfelt apology for the murders of seven Israeli schoolgirls at the "Island of Peace."

Outside of these isolated cases, I am having a hard time finding any apologies by Arabs to non-Arabs. It is slightly easier finding Muslim apologies to other Muslims. Mahmoud Abbas apologized to Kuwait for the PLO's support of Saddam Hussein, for example. Turkey once apologized to the family of a man beaten to death in prison. Saudi Arabia apologized to Indonesia for beheading a maid without informing them. All of these are rare enough, but they are to Muslims.

A telling counterexample: in 1972, Japan apologized to Israel for a terror attack perpetrated by the Japanese Red Army at Lod airport - and Arab nations were incensed at that apology.

Finding apologies to the Muslim world by the West is easy. But given the tens of thousands who have been killed and mistreated by Muslims and Arabs, and the ubiquitous demands by Muslim leaders for non-Muslims to apologize for a huge array of perceived grievances, where are all the Muslim apologies?

Unity! Gaza and West Bank are in different timezones

I noted last week that Hamas decided to adopt a different date for moving from Daylight Savings Time than Fatah did, meaning that Gaza is now in a different time zone than the West Bank.

Al Arabiya elaborates:

Palestinian divisions have for the past years seemed endless, yet they were mostly political. Now, another problem has emerged: Gaza and the West Bank look like two officially separate countries, with a one-hour difference between them that confuses Palestinians and adds to their despair as far as unity in the Occupied Territories is concerned.

Until a few days ago, both the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank were within the same time zone, and both adjusted clocks backward before the start of the holy month of Ramadan so that sunset, when the fast is broken, would come one hour earlier.

After the end of Ramadan, the West Bank went back to its daylight saving time and advanced the clock one hour, while Gaza remained in wintertime so that, for example, when it’s midnight in Gaza, it is 1:00 am in Ramallah.

The time difference is all the more absurd now that two adjacent universities are using two different time zones. Al-Azhar University, located in Gaza yet affiliated to Fatah, announced working according to summertime, while the Islamic University right next to it is using wintertime. The two campuses are separated by a wall.

“This is ridiculous,” said student and blogger Khaled al-Sharkawi. “I live in Gaza but my university is following the West Bank time zone.”

The university case is repeated in several other examples. Private banks and international organizations in Gaza follow West Bank time, while schools, hospitals, and public institutions follow Gaza time. The website Date and Time, which tells you the time anywhere in the world, lists both times for Palestinian territories.

Gazan journalist Sami Abu Salem points out how the time difference between Gaza and the West Bank has become a joke for Palestinians.

“When it is 5:00 o’clock in Gaza and you ask someone in the street about the time, they tell you it’s 5:30, and when you ask why they added half an hour they answer that they don’t want to be biased towards Hamas or Fatah.”

Student Hamman Mubarak approaches the issue in a much more bitter way.

“There’s no problem with time difference. We are two republics and are divided about everything anyway,” he wrote in one of his tweets.

The tweet of IT specialist Ola Anan approached the issue politically and playfully imagined the confusion that might happen when Palestine asks for official recognition at the UN this month.

“I wonder if they will recognize the Palestinian state according to Gaza time or West Bank time.”

For writer Samir Abu Shetat, the difference in time is just one more addition to the internal divisions between Palestinians.

“It is this bitter division that turned our lives into hell,” he said. “The division splits our backs like it split our nation and our people.”

“I pray to God to unify our clocks.”

How's that unity coming along?

And the question is a good one: who will be represented in that new UN seat they are angling for?

Iran hacked Dutch digital certificates to spy on Iranian citizens

From The Register:

The Google webmail of as many as 300,000 Iranians may have been intercepted using fraudulently issued security certificates made after a hack against Dutch certificate authority outfit DigiNotar, according to the preliminary findings of an official report into the megahack.

Fox-IT, the security consultancy hired to examine the breach against DigiNotar, reveals that DigiNotar was hacked on or around 6 June – a month before hackers begun publishing rogue certificates. Between 10 July and 20 July hackers used compromised access to DigiNotar's systems to issue rogue 531 SSL certificate for Google and other domains, including Skype, Mozilla add-ons, Microsoft update and others. DigiNotar only begun revoking rogue certificates on 19 July and waited more than a month later to go public about the problem. The fake *.google.com certificate – which was valid for code-signing – wasn't revoked until 29 July.

The compromise was used, in part, to spy on Iranian internet users, using the forged Google SSL certificate to run man-in-the-middle attacks.

"The list of domains and the fact that 99 per cent of the users are in Iran suggest that the objective of the hackers is to intercept private communications in Iran," [Fox-IT] adds.

In English, this means that Iran apparently forged the certificates that are used to ensure that web traffic to various websites - like Google - is correctly encrypted. This means that Iran was able to spy on email and web traffic that even the most conscientious user would have assumed was safe from prying eyes.

Or, as Israel Hayom describes it:

In theory, a fraudulent certificate can be used to trick a user into visiting a fake version of a Web site, or used to monitor communications with the real sites without users noticing.

But in order to pass off a fake certificate, a hacker must be able to steer his target’s Internet traffic through a server that he controls. That is something only an Internet service provider, or a government that commands one, can easily do.

According to AP, technology experts cite a number of reasons to believe the attack is connected to Iran. Notably, several of the certificates contain nationalist slogans in Farsi, the language spoken by most Iranians.

“This, in combination with messages the hacker left behind on DigiNotar’s Web site, definitely suggests that Iran was involved,” Ot van Daalen, director of Bits of Freedom, an online civil liberties group, told AP.

Robert Fisk really wants to blame 9/11 on Israel

From Robert Fisk in The Independent:

I'm drawn to Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan whose The Eleventh Day confronts what the West refused to face in the years that followed 9/11. "All the evidence ... indicates that Palestine was the factor that united the conspirators – at every level," they write. One of the organisers of the attack believed it would make Americans concentrate on "the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel". Palestine, the authors state, "was certainly the principal political grievance ... driving the young Arabs (who had lived) in Hamburg".

The motivation for the attacks was "ducked" even by the official 9/11 report, say the authors. The commissioners had disagreed on this "issue" – cliché code word for "problem" – and its two most senior officials, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, were later to explain: "This was sensitive ground ...Commissioners who argued that al-Qa'ida was motivated by a religious ideology – and not by opposition to American policies – rejected mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... In their view, listing US support for Israel as a root cause of al-Qa'ida's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy." And there you have it.

So what happened? The commissioners, Summers and Swan state, "settled on vague language that circumvented the issue of motive". There's a hint in the official report – but only in a footnote which, of course, few read. In other words, we still haven't told the truth about the crime which – we are supposed to believe – "changed the world for ever". Mind you, after watching Obama on his knees before Netanyahu last May, I'm really not surprised.

When the Israeli Prime Minister gets even the US Congress to grovel to him, the American people are not going to be told the answer to the most important and "sensitive" question of 9/11: why?

Fisk believes that if the US would have dumped Israel as an ally - during the Oslo process, naturally - Bin Laden wouldn't have attacked America!

So simple! So clear! And there is even a book that says so!

(Actually, the book says that the hijackers and KSM were obsessed with "Palestine" - Fisk wants us to make that last logical leap that there would have been no attacks if it wasn't for Israel.)

Too bad that the words of Bin Laden himself make it clear that he threw in "Palestine" in order
to buttress his anti-American arguments. It wasn't his top issue by any stretch.

To find this out, all you need to do is read two fatwas issued by Bin Laden against America - in 1996 and in 1998.

The 1996 fatwa says explicitly that the major issue for Bin Laden was US forces in Saudi Arabia:

The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajakestan, Burma, Cashmere, Assam, Philippine, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Erithria, Chechnia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves.

The people of Islam awakened and realised that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world.

The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places -the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims- by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah").

And in his 1998 fatwa Bin laden was kind enough to enumerate his grievances in order of importance:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

In 2002, Yasir Arafat - clearly frustrated that his PLO was being compared to Al Qaeda - said that Bin Laden never did anything for "Palestine":

"Why is bin Laden talking about Palestine now?" Mr. Arafat said. "He never helped us. He was working in another, completely different area and against our interests."

In the Muslim world, if you want to gain a following, you have to blame everything on Zionism. OBL's words make it clear that his attachment to that cause was a cynical attempt to broaden his appeal to would-be jihadists, not a reflection of Al Qaeda's single-minded focus against America.

But Fisk knows better. His own hate for Israel is so visceral that he must find reasons to blame 9/11 on Israel, however elliptically. Which makes him no better than any of the crazy 9/11 conspiracy theorists - the same crazy people who are demolished in that same book that Fisk quotes so approvingly.

(h/t jzaik)

Palestinian Arabs deported to Gaza - by Egypt

You know how it is an international incident every time Israel sends a Palestinian Arab to Gaza?

Yesterday, Egypt deported three Palestinian Arabs to Gaza. They had entered Egypt illegally, via the tunnels.