Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Israeli report on PA economy contradicts World Bank

The World Bank came out with a report on the Palestinian Arab economy a couple of days ago. Among its major points was this one:

Economic growth in WB&G has slowed down in 2011, and together with the shortfall in external financing, this has led to a fiscal crisis for the PA. No significant easing of Israeli restrictions has taken place in 2011, so that the Palestinian private sector’s potential remains thwarted. In addition, the PA’s inability to pay its bills to suppliers in a timely manner has hurt business confidence. Though the PA has sought to reduce its need for external assistance, lower economic growth and lower-than-expected donor assistance have resulted in an acute fiscal crisis. The crisis has meant that the PA is now also struggling to meet its wage payment obligations.

Everyone agrees that the PA is too heavily dependent on donor money in the public sector and that the private sector is the key to any chance for economic independence for the PA.

Even Israel.

In a new report released by the Government of Israel, it says:

The PA now faces a financial crisis. The factors fueling the crisis include: the Palestinian budget’s ongoing dependency on foreign aid and the shortfall in aid in 2011; the PA’s inability to finance the shortfall through bank loans; the lack of sufficient internal resources to generate income; and a relatively large public sector which consumes a large portion of the budget.

But contrary to the World Bank's assertion that Israel does nothing to help the private sector of the PA economy, Israel's report details a large number of initiatives done in the past year:

According to data collected by Israel's Ministry of Finance, trade between Israel and the PA continued to grow by 7% during H1 of 2011. Overall Israeli sales to the PA grew by 8% while overall Israeli purchases from the PA grew by 2%. The total volume of bilateral trade exceeded NIS 7.5 billon in the first half of the 2011.

The number of permits for traders has been increased by 1,000 and is currently 16,000.24

A growing number of Israelis are now entering Area A in order to procure goods and services. They provide a significant contribution to the Palestinian economy in the West Bank.25

According to data issued by the Israel Customs Directorate, in the first half of 2011, Palestinian imports (except Israel) amounted to NIS 3,127,395,640, a 17.44% increase compared to the parallel period in the previous year. Palestinian exports (except Israel) amounted to USD 45,458,095 in the first half of 2011, a 23% increase compared to the parallel period in the previous year.

Palestinian employment in Israel is one of the West Bank economy's major sources of income. According to the PCBS, compensation for employees in Israel in 2009 totaled USD 627 million, more than 9% of the West Bank GDP. The increasing importance of Palestinian employment in Israel is due to the high wages earned in the Israeli economy, and to the Israeli policy of increasing the number of employment permits (see below). Notably, the increase in the share of permit holders among employees in Israel is one of the reasons for the increase in the wages.

As of September 1, 2011, the number of West Bank Palestinians employed in Israel stood at 29,851. The maximum number of employment permits for Palestinians working in Israel, which amounts to 36,650, is not utilized in full. The number of Palestinians employed by Israelis in the West Bank is 24,503.

In 2011, Israel increased the number of permits for both seasonal and permanent employment of Palestinians from the West Bank in Israel. Working permits were issued as follows:

o Construction – 4,000 new permanent permits.

o Agriculture – 1,250 new permanent permits, 3,000 seasonal olive harvest permits for families39, 750 seasonal almond picking permits for families.

The validity of employment permits for factories and industrial zones in the West Bank was extended from six months to one year.

9% of the PA's GDP comes from Arabs working in Israel...and Israel is increasing the number of permits. Similarly, even though some 90% of the PA's exports go to Israel, there was a huge increase of exports to other markets. And Israel is facilitating this growth.

I'm not sure whether the 9% figure includes those who are working in Judea and Samaria communities, but any way you look at it the PA's push to stop workers from being employed by Jews in the territories would have a major negative impact on the PA economy.

The World Bank did not mention any of this, nor other Israeli moves to help the PA economy like upgrading crossings, transferring frequencies to the Wataniya Telecom Company and giving West Bank IDs to Gazans who live there.

The World Bank report seems to spin the truth; it will combine the West Bank and Gaza when convenient and separate them when that would make Israel look worse. But here we see that it simply ignores direct Israeli contributions to helping grow the PA's private sector.

Now, why might that be?

(I updated the font and colors after people complained that it was a bit too hard to read.)

PLO ambassador confirms: Palestine would be Judenrein

From USA Today:

The Palestine Liberation Organization's ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that any future Palestinian state it seeks with help from the United Nations and the United States should be free of Jews.

"After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. He was responding to a question about the rights of minorities in a Palestine of the future.

Such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews, said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. National Security Council official.

Was he misquoted? Could he have really said "Israelis" or "Zionists"?

Nope. Areikat was interviewed in Tablet last year and said this explicitly:

So, you think it would be necessary to first transfer and remove every Jew—

Absolutely. No, I’m not saying to transfer every Jew, I’m saying transfer Jews who, after an agreement with Israel, fall under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state.

Any Jew who is inside the borders of Palestine will have to leave?

Absolutely. I think this is a very necessary step, before we can allow the two states to somehow develop their separate national identities, and then maybe open up the doors for all kinds of cultural, social, political, economic exchanges, that freedom of movement of both citizens of Israelis and Palestinians from one area to another. You know you have to think of the day after.

About two thirds of the nations of the world represented in the United Nations supports the establishment of a state that is, by definition, anti-semitic.

It would not just an "apartheid" state - it would be a state whose very basis would be the ethnic cleansing of every single Jewish man, woman and child.

We should be hearing the outraged condemnations from human rights groups any minute now. Of course.

Erdogan calls for a secular state, upsets the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Palestine Press Agency reports that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Egyptian Islamist parties are very upset at one sentence in Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's speech in Cairo yesterday where he said "I call on Egyptians to build a secular Egypt."

They are complaining that Erdogan is interfering in Egypt's internal affairs.

Some believe it was a mistranslation from Turkish to Arabic, and others are saying that when Erdogan says "secular" he doesn't mean it in the normal sense but he was really speaking to his constituents at home.

PalArab statehood bid unilateral - even within the PLO!

A quick rundown of Palestinian Arab politics:

The Palestinian Authority is the supposedly democratic institution that has administrative and some security responsibilities over sections of the West Bank.
Fatah is the terror group/ political party that dominates the PA.
Hamas is the terror group/political party that controls Gaza.
In the last election, Hamas took over the PA but then the PA's president gave the power back to Fatah.
The PA's president, Mahmoud Abbas, is also the leader of Fatah and of the PLO.
Abbas has been president of the PA well past the date that elections were due to be held. Hamas does not recognize him as president of the PA.
The PA works for the PLO. It is not independent at all.
The PA has no ability to engage in international diplomacy, only the PLO speaks to the international community concerning "Palestine."
Hamas, which controls some 40% of the Arabs in the territories, opposes the bid.
The PLO has a Palestinian National Council that is supposedly its main legislative body. It has not met since 2009.
The PNC chooses the PLO Executive Committee which is the main executive branch of the PLO.
The two groups are somewhat incestuous, as the Executive Committee is the main group that nominates candidates for the PNC and the Executive Committee is elected by the PNC.
The PLO is supposedly the party that is bringing the unilateral statehood bid to the UN.

All of this is necessary to understand the irony of this news story:

PLO central council member Nabil Amr said Tuesday that the Palestinian request for full UN membership is not a "bid" but rather a diplomatic activity.

The former ambassador to Egypt expressed reservations over the plan to seek state membership of the United Nations at the annual General Assembly meeting in New York, which opens on Monday.

...Regarding the PLO, Amr said members of the PLO executive committee "knew nothing" about what the Palestinian leadership was doing and had "no real, effective role."

If this is true, it means that the UN bid is not legal according to the PLO's own rules. The PNC never voted to approve the UN bid, and it is supposed to make all policy decisions.

The only conclusion?

Mahmoud Abbas is a totalitarian dictator, and the current UN bid is being led by someone who cannot even abide by the rules of the organizations he heads.

Richard Falk freaks over Palmer, lies as usual, says Israel has no right to self defense

From Reuters:

Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip violates international law, a panel of human rights experts reporting to a U.N. body said on Tuesday, disputing a conclusion reached by a separate U.N. probe into Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship.

The so-called Palmer Report on the Israeli raid of May 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists said earlier this month that Israel had used unreasonable force in last year's raid, but its naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled strip was legal.

A panel of five independent U.N. rights experts reporting to the U.N. Human Rights Council rejected that conclusion, saying the blockade had subjected Gazans to collective punishment in "flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law."

It is not until paragraph 10 that we find out the name of one of these "experts" - Richard Falk!

Richard Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and one of the five experts who issued Tuesday's statement, said the Palmer report's conclusions were influenced by a desire to salve Turkish-Israeli ties.

Ah, Richard Falk. A man who is a the proven liar and twister of international law who explicitly supports terror against Israel and compares Israel to Nazis is opining about the impartiality of someone else's report.

But let's look at the legal arguments of his team. Their press release says:

“In pronouncing itself on the legality of the naval blockade, the Palmer Report does not recognize the naval blockade as an integral part of Israel’s closure policy towards Gaza which has a disproportionate impact on the human rights of civilians,” stressed the experts.

“As a result of more than four years of Israeli blockade, 1.6 million Palestinian women, men and children are deprived of their fundamental human rights and subjected to collective punishment, in flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law,” they said. “Israel’s siege of Gaza is extracting a human price that disproportionately harms Palestinian civilians.”

Their main argument in this press release is that Israel's naval blockade cannot be separated from its closure of Gaza. Yet Palmer addresses this issue head-on, in paragraph 70:

At this juncture, a word of clarification is necessary. The naval blockade is often discussed in tandem with the Israeli restrictions on the land crossings to Gaza. However, in the Panel’s view, these are in fact two distinct concepts which require different treatment and analysis. First, we note that the land crossings policy has been in place since long before the naval blockade was instituted. 239 In particular, the tightening of border controls between Gaza and Israel came about after the take-over of Hamas in Gaza in June 2007. 240 On the other hand, the naval blockade was imposed more than a year later, in January 2009. 241 Second, Israel has always kept its policies on the land crossings separate from the naval blockade. The land restrictions have fluctuated in intensity over time 242 but the naval blockade has not been altered since its imposition. Third, the naval blockade as a distinct legal measure was imposed primarily to enable a legally sound basis for Israel to exert control over ships attempting to reach Gaza with weapons and related goods. 243 This was in reaction to certain incidents when vessels had reached Gaza via sea. 244 We therefore treat the naval blockade as separate and distinct from the controls at the land crossings. This is not to overlook that there may be potential overlaps in the effects of the naval blockade and the land crossings policy. 245 They will be addressed when appropriate. Likewise, the restrictions on the land crossings to Gaza are part of the context of our investigation, and our recommendations in Chapter 6 address the situation there. 246 But the legal elements of the naval blockade are analyzed on their own.

As usual, Israel bashers ignore the substance of the argument and just use repeated assertions as proof. These "international law experts" cannot marshal a single argument against Palmer so they resort to calling themselves experts and assuming that people are too stupid to actually compare the arguments.

But Falk himself is even more deceptive. He just co-wrote an article that also attacks Palmer and pretends to address the legality of Israel's naval blockade.

The most significant finding of the report is its most dangerous and legally dubious: the conclusion that Israel’s blockade of Gaza, in effect since mid-2007, was somehow, despite being severely harmful to the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza, a legitimate act of self-defense.

The word "blockade" has a very specific legal meaning, and almost always refers specifically to a naval blockade (sometimes air.) When Falk says that Israel's "blockade" started in 2007 he knows he is lying - it started in 2009, during the Gaza war.

Falk then says something that would be considered incredible if he already hadn't made a career of trampling on international law to demonize Israel:

The report gives considerable attention to the illegal rockets fired into Israel by Palestinian militants mainly associated with Hamas, and notes, appropriately, that “stopping these violent acts was a necessary step for Israel to take in order to protect its people.” But while that justifies protective action, it does not make the case for a valid claim of self-defense under international law.

Yes, Falk is making another argument that Israel is not allowed to do anything in self-defense beyond sitting there and trying to shoot rockets out of the sky.

Palmer disagrees:

74. Israel was entitled to take reasonable steps to prevent the influx of weapons into Gaza. With that objective, Israel established a series of restrictions on vessels entering the waters of Gaza. These measures culminated in the declaration of the naval blockade on 3 January 2009. There were a number of reasons why the previous restrictions were inadequate, primary among them being the need for the measures to be legally watertight.

Falk, characteristically, is silent in responding to the actual legal arguments and instead makes up lies about the naval blockade - which is, in the end, not preventing a single shipment of humanitarian supplies from getting to Gaza.

Palmer has the last word:

80. As a final point, the Panel emphasizes that if necessary, the civilian population in Gaza must be allowed to receive food and other objects essential to its survival. However, it does not follow from this obligation that the naval blockade is per se unlawful or that Israel as the blockading power is required to simply let vessels carrying aid through the blockade. On the contrary, humanitarian missions must respect the security arrangements put in place by Israel. They must seek prior approval from Israel and make the necessary arrangements with it. This includes meeting certain conditions such as permitting Israel to search the humanitarian vessels in question. The Panel notes provision was made for any essential humanitarian supplies on board the vessels to enter Gaza via the adjacent Israeli port of Ashdod, 281 and such an offer was expressly made in relation to the goods carried on the flotilla. 282

81. The Panel therefore concludes that Israel’s naval blockade was legal.

Facebook group causes Gazans to start family feuds

Palestine Press Agency and other Arabic media report that while Facebook is helping Arabs rise up against their rulers in other parts of the Middle East, in Gaza it is helping tear families apart.

A Facebook page called "Secretary of the Devil," that is currently blank, supposedly started indecent rumors about Gazans, especially Gazan women and girls in the Nuseirat camp.

According to reports, it caused some knife fights in the camp between families.

Hamas police arrested a number of young men and extracted some confessions.

The truth about the peace process (video)

Another good video hosted by Danny Ayalon:

The fake child artists of Gaza (updated)

From HuffPo:

Bowing to pressure from the Bay Area's Jewish community, Oakland's Museum of Children's Art has decided to cancel its planned exhibition of drawings by Palestinian children documenting their experiences during the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Organized by the Middle East Children's Alliance, "A Child's View of Gaza" was supposed to run from September 24th through mid-November; however, the public reaction against displaying the pictures convinced the museum's board of directors to halt its plan.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

It had become a distraction to the main objective of bringing arts education to all children, said museum board member Randolph Bell.

"We were getting calls from constituents that were concerned about the situation," Bell said.

"We don't have any political stake in this thing. It just became apparent that we needed to rethink this."

"We understand all too well the enormous pressure that the museum came under. But who wins?" asked Middle East Children's Alliance president Barbara Lubin in a press release. "The museum doesn’t win. MECA doesn’t win. The people of the Bay Area don’t win. Our basic constitutional freedom of speech loses. The children in Gaza lose."

Pictures from the exhibit, which were culled from art therapy sessions at a number of Gaza children's centers, show images like a bomb painted with American and Israeli flags crashing into a street filled with dead bodies, helicopters destroying a city and a boot decorated with a Star of David stomping on a Palestinian flag.

Well, we wouldn't want to be considered censors, so let's look at the artwork that is available online. Here is every one I could find.

Now, let's compare these to those from a similar story from 2002.

A display of pictures in a State Street coffee house drawn by Palestinian children has stirred commotion among the UW-Madison community.

The 4-day pictures display that began Sunday, entitled \Innocence Under Siege: Palestinian Children's Perspectives of the World Around Them," is presented by the Palestinian Humanities and Arts Now, a Chicago-based group, in conjunction with Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition. The pictures were along the wall at Espresso Royale Caffe, 650 State St., until last evening.

Images were drawn by middle school aged Palestinian children and focus predominantly on violence in the Middle East. One picture, for example, shows a woman cradling the bloody body of a man, probably her husband, with a person holding a gun in the background. Other pictures show Israeli tanks and Palestinian towns and children surrendering.

"Our organization put the pictures up because they present a reality and experiences that are completely silenced in the United States media," said UW-Madison senior Sarah Kaiksow, co-chair of the UW-Madison chapter of Al-Awda. "I feel like for any true peace to be negotiated between any two parties in any conflict, the reality of what those people are facing needs to be negotiated."

But members of Madison's Jewish community, including those of UW-Madison's Hillel, say they are offended by some of the artwork, including pictures on which a child wrote things like "Death for Israel," "From North to South it's only Palestine" and "Bloodshed is the language of Israel." That particular picture was drawn by an eighth-grader.

I am not an art expert, but the second set of pictures from 2002 look like they were actually done by grade-schoolers - and the newer ones look like they were done by adults trying to draw in a childish style.

The symbolism, the coloring and the motifs seem, at the very least, to have been heavily prompted by adults. Kids don't come up with this stuff on their own.

FresnoZionism asked an art professor for an opinion on these pieces. Here's what she said:

The paintings (color drawings) are highly sophisticated especially in relationship to detail. Did you see the barbed wire? Also, there is a carefully drawn Star of David in each work. The authenticity of the painting is remarkable for a child’s hand. The drawing of the planes and helicopters, the man in the tower, the dynamic brushstrokes that are well conceived and controlled all seem to project a more mature approach to art. Could these “children” be in their late teens, college age, or young adults [MECA says they were 9 to 11 years old]? According to the the quote, “much of the artwork was produced by children.” I wonder how “much”? Also, it is possible that the “children” were directed by an adult who supervised and perhaps completed the initial drawing?

In fact, the last picture from the first set above is clearly based on an image by anti-semitic artist Latuff:

An artistic acquaintance wrote this about the artwork:

I've been an avocational artist my entire life and have some experience with the styles of amateurs. The sureness of the color application -- especially in the dense, complicated scenes (which are obviously all done by the same person) -- is at variance with the primitive (faux-primitve, frankly) nature of the sketching. It's the use of color especially that gives it away to me as the product of an older person. But the complexity of the composition in the big scenes is uncharacteristic of 9-11-year-olds as well. Certainly the politicized content is atypical.

The sureness of stroke in these pictures is something you almost never find from a very young artist. The biggest giveaway I see in this regard is not actually in the complex, refined drawings, but in the more primitive ones. For example, the confidence with which the concertina wire is sketched in, in one of the primitive crayon drawings, is just not characteristic of the young. I was accounted an exceptional artist in my K-12 years, and I couldn't have achieved that confident, bold, rapid-stroking effect until I was at least 16. It's one of the hardest things to do, and you really do lack the coordination and focus for it when you're younger. A kid would draw that laboriously, with a lot of short, stubby strokes strung together -- or he would simply achieve a cruder, less symmetrical and more tentative effect.

These drawings don't look like those of unusually accomplished children. They look like trained artists imitating the style of a child.

Moreover, what do child artists do immediately after they finish their work? They sign them. I cannot find one signature in the new set of images, although each of the older ones have them.

Even more interesting, one would think that a children's art exhibit showing such precocious examples of drawing would want to publicize the names of the artists - and elaborate on their own personal stories from which sprung such eloquence and experience. The artist's story is often more compelling than the art. But, for some bizarre reason, we are deprived of this information. Could it be that the organizers don't want the children to be interviewed?

Ultimately, it is up to the exhibitors to prove the authenticity of provenance of the works. Identify these young savants.
And if this is a hoax, well, what museum would want to be associated with something like that?

The Middle East Children's Alliance is trying to pressure MOCHA to change their mind and show these questionable pieces. You may want to contact the museum and support their decision, and also ask them the provenance of the drawings.

UPDATE: I updated this a little in The Algemeiner, and in the comments there also identified there the names of some of the art experts who chimed in here.

Saudis keep enforcing their illegal boycott against Israel

Al Arabiya reports that the Saudi Interior Ministry has, over the past few months, managed to discover a few companies that were trying to sell Israeli-made products in the Kingdom.

Some were joint ventures between Israel and foreign companies, and others were set up by Israeli Arabs. The products were agricultural - seeds and fertilizers.

The Saudis allege that some of the products were laundered through other Arab countries, and that Saudi Arabia is reviewing their relationships with them.

The interior minister stressed that the Kingdom will not turn a blind eye on this phenomenon, and will develop the necessary controls to prevent the entry of Israeli products and goods to the land and the Saudi markets.

The interesting part?

Saudi Arabia pledged back in 2005 to end its boycott of Israel as a condition of joining the World Trade Organization.

In the six years since, the Saudis have continued to publicly enforce that boycott - and suffered no consequences in the WTO.

The kingdom even continued to publicly flout its promise after Congress passed a unanimous resolution calling on the Saudis to drop the boycott as they had promised.

And in 2009 members of Congress were again angered to find out that nothing had changed.

So it goes. The WTO will never expel Saudi Arabia for breaking its pledge, the President will not bring the issue up in international bodies (just as his predecessor didn't) and an Arab nation can flout the law with no consequences.

Arab media has the best videos

Recently, Israel opened to the public an amazing tunnel that was originally a drainage ditch that goes from Kfar HaShiloach (Silwan) to the Temple Mount. Ha'aretz reported on this in January.

The Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation recently started making a fuss over this, and released a great video of the tunnel that I couldn't find the original of:

Here, for contrast, is a video of the tunnel made in June by a Christian:

Egypt foreign ministry: Don't say peace with Israel is "forever"

Al Masry al Youm says that there were some media reports quoting Egyptian ambassador to Israel, Yasser Reda, as saying that Egypt's diplomatic relationship with Israel is "eternal."

Egypt's Foreign Minister, Mohamed Kamel Amr, worked quickly to say that this is simply not true.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that "these expressions or descriptions are contrary from known diplomatic phrasing. There is no such things "eternal relations" between countries. In addition, it is impossible that a career diplomat and veteran ambassador such as Ambassador Yasser Reda, known for his patriotism and efficiency, would make such a statement."

Notice that the Foreign Ministry didn't say anything like "Of course, we want our relations with Israel to continue and to be strengthened." No, their reaction to the idea of a permanent peace with Israel is more akin to...horror.

Glad they cleared that up in such a diplomatic way.

Sometimes, the enemy of my enemy is just freaking crazy

From Al Arabiya:

The head of al-Qa’im district, in Iraq’s western province of al-Anbar, has confirmed that about 160 families have had their Iraqi citizenships revoked, citing their Syrian origin as the reason for the action, DPA reported on Sunday.

Farhan Aftikhan said that among the people who had their citizenship revoked were government employees and army and police personnel, all of whom had their nationality certificates, food-ration cards, and citizenships annulled by the Iraqi government.

He added that these families have been Iraqi citizens for years and hail from the tribes in Anbar province.

While the district’s chief official said the government did not cite a “real” reason for the cancellation of the citizenships, the affected families cited “sectarianism” and pointed out that other Iraqi families are classified as Iranian, Pakistani and Afghani citizens.

One former Iraqi citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, said when he went to Baghdad to renew his 61-year-old father’s citizenship, and during the process an officer with the rank of a lieutenant in the nationality department destroyed his father’s papers and revoked the entire family’s citizenship.

He added that he doesn’t own papers to prove that he is Syrian, and is now stateless.

In an unrelated but similar story:

Forces on both sides of the Libyan war have committed war crimes and the country risks descending into a bloody cycle of attacks and reprisals unless order can be established, human rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday, as Muammar Qaddafi’s forces launched surprise attacks on three fronts.

Qaddafi’s actions against civilian protesters were a crime against humanity, while arbitrary detentions, torture of prisoners and widespread abductions were war crimes, the London-based charity said in a report.

Amnesty also criticized Libya’s opposition forces and said Qaddafi’s fall from power after 42 years had left a “security and institutional vacuum” that they exploited to carry out revenge killings and torture.

Arabs treat Arabs worse than dirt and no one gives a damn. The "good guys" are little better than the ones they replaced.

Arabs were never one people; they were always divided - whether it was into tribes or nations. And they've always killed each other.

But Arabs are unified on one topic and one topic only: hating Israel. That wouldn't change one tiny bit no matter what Israel does. Anyone who claims otherwise is simply lying (often to themselves.)

Morning links

Video of clueless anti-Israel marchers in Berkeley on 9/11

Another video of Islamic terrorist rally in London on 9/11

Good news! Al Qaeda is grabbing Libyan missiles - including surface to air missiles! See, they aren't all going to Gaza!

Islamic nations continue to refuse to adhere to a universal definition of terrorism

WaPo editorial - Once again, Israel is scapegoated

WaPo op-ed - Israel's hostile neighborhood

(h/t jzaik, David G, Yoel, Yigal)

Iranian F-5 crash - video

An Iranian F-5 crashed on Friday in Tabriz. It was practically unreported in English anywhere:

This one post in Stop Fundamentalism claims that Iranian fighter planes have been intimidating anti-government protesters:

Despite Iranian government’s military and security preparations to prevent further protests from taking place in the Azerbaijan province of Iran, last Saturday many cities in this northern province including Tabriz, Orumieh, Khoy, Salmas witnessed massive street demonstrations by Iranian people.

Eyewitnesses report of heavy use of violence by the security forces. Some eyewitnesses indicate that military fighter planes, flying low on top cities, have been used to intimidate protesters. The crash of a military plane in Tabriz has been associated to the efforts by government to use its fighter jets to crackdown on Iranian people.

At the same time a football match in Tehran Azadi Stadium turns to be another excuse for Iranian youth to show dissent.

Sporadic breakout of protests in Iran show how the opposition to the regime of Ayatollahs still exists despite 2009-2010 clampdowns.

There are a number of Persian language articles about the crash.

(h/t Dan)