Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Funny Numbers: Avaaz cooks the books

In the run up to the Palestinian Arab UN stunt, an organization called Avaaz.org was all over the social media trying to get people to sign a petition in favor of statehood.

They claim to have over 1.1 million signatures on their petition. There is no way to verify that number because they do not seem to list the signers.

But they also claim that over a million people viewed their webpage calling for signatures. They even have a counter on the page that seems to increment every time someone views it.

Now, every time the page is loaded, a propaganda video is automatically played. That video is on YouTube.

And, according to YouTube, that video has been seen less than 35,000 times!

Which means that they are inflating the number of pageviews by a factor of 30!

Others have noticed this "astroturfing" by Avaaz as well, see this Jerusalem Post blog entry by Dr. Andre Oboler and the coverage by CiFWatch.

Palestine Today reports that the Minister of Tourism in Gaza, Dr. Mohammed Agha, said that there was a remarkable demand for tourism over the past two years.

Domestic tourism in 2010 reached $40 million in revenue.

This is all, he says, despite Israel's strenuous attempts to destroy Gaza's tourism industry.

I wonder why the Middle East Children's Alliance didn't display any drawings by Gaza children of them playing in water parks?

Egypt kills three Gazans. No one cares.

From Ma'an:

Three Palestinians were pronounced dead on Tuesday morning after Egyptian authorities pumped sewage inside a smuggling tunnel under the Gaza border on Sunday.

The ambulance and emergency services committee in Gaza said the three victims were found alive inside the tunnel. They were evacuated to the Abu Yousef an-Najjar Hospital in Rafah but were pronounced dead 30 minutes after arrival.

Nothing on this story in Egyptian newspapers Al Masry al Youm or in Al Ahram.

I cannot find any calls for apology or expressions of outrage against Egypt in the Palestinian Arabic media.

Jerusalem Arabs still prefer Israel to "Palestine" (updated)

From Ha'aretz:

A new opinion poll shows that despite hardships, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are relatively satisfied with their lives under Israeli rule. The survey, implemented by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in cooperation with Princeton University and the Beit Sahur-based Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, found that almost half of East Jerusalem Palestinian respondents said they prefered to remain under Israeli sovereignty.

Only 23 percent of respondents said they would definitely prefer Palestinian citizenship to Israeli citizenship.

Among the reasons respondents cited for wanting to remain under Israeli sovereignty were relative freedom of movement, relatively higher income, employment opportunities and social rights.

Apparently, these Arabs are not impressed with World Bank reports praising how well-positioned "Palestine" is to become a state.

(h/t Anne)

UPDATE: More details here:

A comparison of results from last November shows a significant improvement in perceptions of other issues.

For example, a majority (57 percent) are now satisfied with their standard of living, up from 44 percent in November. And just 43 percent now say they are dissatisfied on the issue of obtaining building permits -- down greatly from around 70 percent in the previous survey. Similarly, only 16 percent now report dissatisfaction with Jerusalem municipal officials, a significant improvement compared to 35 percent in November.

(h/t Yoel)

Those wily Israelis, supporting both sides of Syrian civil war

If you are an Arab and want to discredit your opponent, accuse them of collaborating with Israel.

We've seen it between Hamas and Fatah, and now we are seeing it between Syria and its opposition.

A couple of days ago a Lebanese newspaper wrote that Israel is working behind the scenes to keep Bashir Assad in power - over the objections of the French.

But today the Syrian government news agency writes that they found Israeli weapons in Homs!

It sounds like the entire Arab world is Zionist, if you ask the right people....

(Then again, some anti-Israel Jews like to accuse Arabs of being "collaborators" as well.)

(h/t Yoel)

Erdogan on CNN: Israel killed "hundreds of thousands of Palestinians"

From the transcript of Fareed Zakaria's interview with Tayyip Erdogan on CNN, Sunday:

They say that Palestine is bombing and disturbing the people of Israel, and many Israelis have been killed.

I'm very clear in my remarks. I would like to see accurate statistics of how many Israelis have been killed by the bombs thrown by Palestinians or with the rockets that were launched by them, 10, 20, 100, 200, how many? Please document it. Let us know.

But on the other hand, we know that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed. Only as a result of the Gaza attack, thousands of people were killed. These are very clear remarks. The Israeli people are only resorting back to the issue of genocide in history.

...How do you think Palestine is capable of killing as many Israeli people as claimed? Let's stop deceiving each other because the human race will no longer be deceived. Everybody knows what Israel is about.

Palestinian Arab opposition to partition, 1947

The entire Arab world reacted angrily at the concept of partition of Palestine, which was gaining currency in 1946 and early 1947. But the Palestinian Arabs themselves did not make any official statement about it until late January.

Here, we can see the arguments used against partition by Jamal eff. Husseini, the PalArab delegate to the Anglo-Arab Conference on Palestine:

Another Palestinian Arab leader, who was exiled after his role in the 1936-39 Arab terror spree, used a somewhat different argument - that partition would be bad for the Jews as well:

This bizarre logic was refuted in October, when the Arabs of Palestine threatened to strike yet again against the concept of partition. This op-ed explains how that threat was the best proof for the necessity of a Jewish state: It is also a nice summary of the Jewish position on settling the land.

There is a lot to learn by looking at history.

Surprise! Al Jazeera reporter was a Hamas member

From JPost:

Samer Allawi, Al Jazeera’s former Afghanistan bureau chief, reached a deal with the Israel State state prosecutors office on Sunday under which he will receive a suspended sentence of three years after he confessed to conspiring in Hamas operations.

Allawi, a Palestinian, was arrested in August on the border between the West Bank and Jordan at The Allenby Crossing.

During an investigation with The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Allawi said he was recruited to Hamas in 1993 and he served there until 2004 in a senior committee that oversees Hamas operations abroad and is responsible for fundraising.

In 2001 and 2003 he traveled to Syria where he reported on his activities to Mousa Aba Marzook, deputy to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus.

Aba Marzook offered Allawi to become an official Hamas representative in Iran, but he rejected the offer.

During the interrogation with The Shin Bet, Allawi said he attended a meeting in 2000 in Saudi Arabia in which he said he would be part of a terror operation on behalf of Hamas. He also offered to use his position as a reporter to promote Hamas interests.

In 2006, Allawi traveled to Qatar and met with additional Al Jazeera reporters, who The Shin Bet said were Hamas operatives, and discussed the possibility of using their position to advance Hamas by critizing the US military in Afghanistan.

During his interrogation, The Shin Bet said he also discussed his activities as a member of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1988 till 1992 during which he said that he participated in a rebel raid on an Afghan military base and participated in guerrilla operations against Soviet forces.

Al Jazeera was indignant over his detention - but they never denied that he was a member of Hamas.

And for some reason I don't think they'll be too upset that he offered to use his position at AJ to promote Hamas.

One of the released Iranian hostages is Jewish

From The Jewish Exponent:

By now, the whole world knows the name and face of Joshua Fattal, the 29-year-old Elkins Park native who spent 26 months in an Iranian prison before being reunited with his family last week in Oman and arriving back on U.S. soil on Sunday.

But one aspect of the story that has largely gone unreported is the fact that Fattal is Jewish.

Josh's father, Jacob Fattal, was born in Iraq and moved to Israel before ultimately settling in the United States. Josh Fattal became a Bar Mitzvah at Rodeph Shalom's suburban campus. He traveled to Israel several times, the last time just before meeting up with his friends in Syria and going on to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they crossed the border to Iran and were arrested.

It's no accident that the Jewish side of the story has largely been kept under wraps, according to family friend Brian Gralnick and others familiar with the situation.

And it doesn't take much imagination to guess the reasons why: The Iranian government is virulently anti-Israel and has a history of charging Jews with spying for Israel.

While it stands to reason that Fattal's captors knew his religion or learned it during interrogations, his family did not want to take any chances and risk having information get out into the public sphere that could endanger their son even further.

And, since the families of the three captives worked so closely together, forming a united front, the idea was to keep the focus on three American citizens who were wrongly imprisoned, rather than single out one because of his Jewishness.

So, despite the fact that Laura Fattal appear frequently in the media as she and the other families waged a public campaign for their children's release, she and other family members declined to be interviewed by the Jewish Exponent. The family also rejected offers of several Jewish organizations to intervene.

Al Qaeda in Yemen cuts off a boy's hand

From the Yemen Post:

According to residents in the southern Yemeni province of Abyan, alleged al-Qaeda militants would have severed the hands of 2 people, including that of a 15-year old boy. [I don't know why it says "would," from the article and others it is clear that they did. - EoZ]

Eyewitnesses told the press that they were summoned to the execution, forced to watch while the Islamists cut off the hands of the accused, using a sword.

They later on paraded around the town with the amputated limb, warning that theft would not be tolerated under al-Qaeda's rule.

The 2 men had been apparently found guilty of stealing electric cables in Jaar, one of the towns "Ansar al Sharia" group seized a few months back.

How dare anyone criticize someone's religion!

(This story was picked up by AFP but got very little coverage.)

Hamas reiterates it wants Israel destroyed.

Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh made another widely reported speech in Gaza today explaining in very precise terms what Hamas' position is on the PLO bid for statehood.

He said that Hamas supports the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state, under two conditions: Never recognize Israel and never concede a single inch of "Palestine."

Haniyeh also bristled at the suggestion that Hamas and the US had anything in common in opposing the PLO bid at the UN. He said American didn't want the PLO to go to the UN in order to extract more concessions, while Hamas was against it because it implied that they were giving too many concessions.

He stressed that Hamas wants "liberation first and then the state," saying that a state is not created by UN resolutions or compromises but by "steadfastness and resistance."

He added that he was always interested in unity with the PLO.

Less widely reported was that he made this speech in front of a group of Islamic scholars, stressing how important their role is in the future "Palestine" he envisions.

He also praised Nizar Rayan. Rayan was the spiritual authority of Hamas and liaison between its "political" and "military" wings who strongly supported suicide bombing and who was killed in the Gaza war when he refused to leave his home and save his wife and kids after Israel warned him they were going to bomb.

Despite the crystal clear message, you can bet that in the coming year some credulous Western reporter will say that Hamas is pragmatic and willing to accept Israel's existence, if only implicitly, because of some artfully ambiguous statements Hamas will make in English.

Fact checking the detractors of the fact checkers of Abbas

AP issued a "fact check" of Abbas' speech on Friday.

Roi Maor of +972 magazine pretends to demolish AP's arguments, using his own bizarre definitions of "facts."

It is too tedious to list each of the three texts here, but if you are interested, follow the links. Here is my response on the 972mag site::

Abbas was wrong that the Pals live "under the only occupation in the world." Maor changes the definition in order to argue, but in fact there are quite a few. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_occupations

Abbas didn't use the term "prisoners of conscience" but "political prisoners." Some are indeed political, some are terrorists. Both AP and Maor are wrong here.

Abbas said that Palestine is the Holy Land and specifically mentioned the (purported) Muslim and Christian history there, deliberately excluding the older and uncontested Jewish ties to the land. it was obviously not an oversight. AP is correct, Maor is wrong.

AP is accurate in saying that the Palestinians rejected two peace offers. Maor doesn't prove otherwise, merely claiming it is "inaccurate."

AP accurately notes that the conflict predates settlements. Maor ignores this.

So while AP wasn't perfect, Maor is being quite deceptive in his tendentious argument against it.

Saudis give women the right to vote, run for office

Good news:

Saudi King Abdullah announced on Sunday he was giving women the right to vote and run in municipal elections, the only public polls in the ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom.

He also announced that women would have the right to join the all-appointed Shura (consultative) Council, in an In a five-minute speech opening a new term of the council.

“Because we refuse to marginalize women in society in all roles that comply with sharia, we have decided, after deliberation with our senior ulama (clerics) and others... to involve women in the Shura Council as members, starting from the next term,” he said in a speech delivered to the advisory body.

“Women will be able to run as candidates in the municipal election and will even have a right to vote.”

Women’s rights are regarded as a litmus test for the government’s appetite for social and political reform. Saudi Arabia adheres to a strict version of Islamic law that enforces the segregation of the sexes.

“This is great news,” said Wajeha al-Huwaider, a Saudi writer and women’s rights activist, according to Reuters. “Women’s voices will finally be heard.”

“Now it is time to remove other barriers like not allowing women to drive cars and not being able to function, to live a normal life without male guardians.”

The king did not address the issue of women being allowed to drive. Although there is no written law against women driving, they are not issued licenses, effectively banning the practice.

Women in Saudi Arabia must also have written approval from a male guardian – a father, husband, brother or son – to leave the country, work or even undergo certain medical operations.

There is a long way to go, but this is a very welcome step in the right direction.

Palestinian Arab intellectuals are all against Abbas

Even though Mahmoud Abbas has achieved more popularity than he ever had before in the wake of his vitriolic speech against Israel at the UN, it is hard to ignore that it is difficult to find any Palestinian Arab columnists who support his UN move.

And their objections to him are, invariably, that he is not being intransigent enough.

The themes that they hammer on are pretty consistent: Abbas is giving up on asserting the "rights" of taking over Israel. He is only insisting on "22% of historic Palestine." He is giving up on the option of violent resistance. He is not representing all Palestinian Arabs. His political party is corrupt.

For these people, and the leftist friends they have made, nothing is satisfactory short of the destruction of Israel. Only that would bring the "justice" they claim to crave so much - at the expense of the people they are pretending to help. (By and large, these "intellectuals" live in Western countries)

The Western media ignores the extreme anti-Israel sentiments of these mostly Western-educated commentators. The press will characterize those opposed to Abbas' supposed moderation as Islamists and wild-eyed fanatics, but never will the media notice the people who wear suits and teach in Columbia and Oxford whose views are just as intolerant and bigoted as those of the terrorists. Just read Electronic Intifada or Palestine Telegraph, for example.

So even if, by some miracle, Abbas wakes up and realizes that the only way his people can prosper is by negotiating and compromising with Israel, he will have zero support from the influential Arab intellectuals in the media and academia. Even if there is a peace agreement, there will always be a steady drumbeat for war (in the name of, as always, "human rights" and "justice.")

And as we have seen in Egypt and Turkey, paper agreements can disappear in an instant. All it takes is a single excuse, real or imagined.

Which means that the best possible scenario for peace is still pretty dismal.

Morning links

Mudar Zahran on the real reasons Abbas went to the UN:

Today Abbas is an illegitimate "president," who has overstayed his term two years by refusing to hold free elections; unable to enforce his government's authority on the Gaza Strip, or even to return to his own house there which was seized by Hamas when it took over the Gaza Strip in 2005, forcing out Abbas's Palestinian Leadership Organization [PLO] in a matter of days. Hamas has since consolidated its rule over the Gaza strip, with no sign of Abbas and his fellow PLO leaders being able to restore their authority there. Hamas has consistently shown carelessness, to say the least, toward any "reconciliation" with Abbas, and has not offered any concessions whatever in that regard....[But] At the UN, Abbas was the Palestinians' hero. He was speaking their woes and representing their worries to the world. It did not mater to the average Palestinian that Abbas and other PA officials were living richly while Palestinians suffered; it did not matter that Abbas's political opponents were still being held in Palestinian jails merely for disliking Abbas; nor did it matter that Abbas -- who was requesting for a Palestinian state— was and still is a Jordanian citizen. Abbas seems to have been forgiven by his people for all his sins simply because he invested in an emotionally-charged up speech.

Elliott Abrams at NRO: Abbas strikes out.

The rapturous applause that greeted Mahmoud Abbas, appearing before the U.N. General Assembly in his role as chairman of the PLO, was deceiving. The collection of states that swooned when he mentioned Yasser Arafat’s 1974 appearance in the same hall will never give him a state — nor even the foreign-aid money to pay his delegation’s hotel bills.

His statehood project depends on Israel and the United States, and to a lesser extent on the Europeans (and a bit of Gulf Arab financing). His U.N. gambit has annoyed or offended all of those parties.

GIYUS: Is there still hope for peace?

The UN is a massive joke by David Akin at the Toronto Sun

CAMERA: LA Times remakes Ben-Hur into a "Palestinian nobleman"

Naharnet reports "Israeli Commandos Helped Hizbullah ‘Minister of Infrastructure’ Escape Lebanon"

Anti-Semitism: the real issue that dare not speak its name at The Australian

Arutz-7: The gun of Asher Palmer - the man who was killed with his son when their car was hit by rocks by Palestinian Arab terrorists - was missing from its holster.

"Death to Jews" in Paris Muslim march.