Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Al Qaeda upset at Ahmadinejad for 9/11 conspiracy theories (UPDATE: Onion video)

A statement by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he questioned the role of al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks on the U.S. provoked the terrorist organization into issuing a statement in response asking the Iranian president to stop promoting conspiracy theories.

In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Ahmadinejad argued that al-Qaeda claiming responsibility for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was a bluff, aimed at manipulating people’s emotions. He also stressed that the attacks were pre-planned by the United States as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

In response, al-Qaeda issued a statement calling upon Ahmadinejad to stop making assumptions about 9/11 that are contrary to what really happened and to refrain from making a statement the group described as “ridiculous,” according to a report published on the ABC News website.

“Why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?” the statement read.

According to the statement, which was published in al-Qaeda’s English-language magazine, Inspire, Ahmadinejad views al-Qaeda as Iran’s rival because the group has managed to gain the respect of Muslims for standing up to imperialism and the United States.

“Al-Qaeda succeeded in what Iran couldn’t. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11, and what better way to do so than conspiracy theories.”

What's the world coming to when crazy jihadists and insane state sponsors of terrorism can't get along?

UPDATE: A couple of people mentioned an Onion spoof video that predicted this:

(h/t Michael M)

Saudi woman driver sentenced to flogging

From The Telegraph:

A Saudi woman has been sentenced to to 10 lashes for challenging a ban on women driving.

Amnesty International reported the sentence just two days after Saudi King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in municipal elections.

"Flogging is a cruel punishment in all circumstances but it beggars belief that the authorities in Saudi Arabia have imposed lashes on a woman apparently for merely driving a car", Philip Luther, an Amnesty regional deputy director, said in an emailed statement.

"Allowing women to vote in council elections is all well and good, but if they are still going to face being flogged for trying to exercise their right to freedom of movement, then the king's much trumpeted 'reforms' actually amount to very little," Mr Luther said.

Two other women are also believed to be facing charges related to driving, the Amnesty statement said.

Under Saudi Arabia's strict Islamic laws, women require a male guardian's permission to work, travel abroad or undergo certain types of surgery.

There is no law banning women from driving, but there is a law requiring citizens to use locally issued licences while in the country. Such licences are not issued to women, making it effectively illegal for them to drive.

It isn't that the Saudis are giving her lashes for driving - it is because she was driving without a license!

No doubt men would receive the same punishment. How dare the Islamophobic Western media imply that she was sentenced merely for driving!

Is Israel an apartheid state? (Dennis Prager video)

Nicely done:

(h/t jzaik)

UNRWA teachers strike in support of Hamas member

From Iran's PressTV, September 12:

Scores of UNRWA employees held a sit-in outside the headquarter of the largest international aid agency working in Gaza to protest what they described as arbitrary measures taken against their union leader.

Suheil al-Hindy, the head of UNRWA's workers union, was suspended without pay for three months because of his affiliation to the democratically-elected Hamas government.

A teachers' strike is scheduled for tomorrow in solidarity with al-Hindi, according to Palestine Press Agency. If that doesn't get al-Hindi reinstated, they plan to expand and extend the strike next week.

Al-Hindi openly praised suicide bombers at a UNRWA school in 2003. Instead of being fired then and there, he received a promotion and that is how he ended up becoming the union leader.

Terrorist logic on the anniversary of the 2nd Intifada

Today marks the eleventh anniversary of the start of the Oslo terror war against Israel from 2000.

Palestine Today is an Islamic Jihad newspaper that has two very different articles about this occasion. The first describes, to the uninitiated, how terrible the intifada was to ordinary Palestinian Arabs. Forgetting the inaccuracies in the descriptions, here is what they wrote:

Wednesday is the eleventh anniversary of the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada 28.09.2000, which came after the storming of the former Prime Minister "Israeli" Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's of the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, accompanied by his bodyguards, prompting crowds of worshipers to protest it.

The uprising marked the use of arms and the large number of martyrdom operations and martyra, killing 4412 Palestinians with 48,322 wounded. There were Israeli incursion to the West Bank and Gaza Strip most notably during 'Defensive Shield' and 'Summer Rain'.

This resulted in the liquidation of the uprising and the assassination of many Palestinian leaders, and the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, the destruction of national institutions of power, and the seizure of large areas of the West Bank, in addition to the destruction of property of citizens, and the arrest of a very large number of Palestinians.

In 2002 Israel began building a wall of annexation and expansion of apartheid on the Palestinian territories, and in the end of 2006 it reached a length of 402 km, along a winding path.

The wall isolates more than 5 thousand Palestinians in the 'closed ' areas of between the Green Line and the wall, and the Israeli government claims that the purpose of the wall is to protect Israeli citizens from Palestinian attacks.

The agriculture and the economy sectors lost millions of dollars as a result of the confiscation of vast tracts of agricultural land and uprooting of thousands of fruit trees, in addition to besieged cities, which prevented the movement of goods and products between Palestinian cities.

Israel continues to impose a suffocating siege on the Gaza Strip, and practiced various forms of aggression against the people of the sector and most recently the war by the end of 2008.

To any sane observer, this description is one of abject failure, of how much the intifada hurt the Palestinian Arab people and how much further they are to a state than they were before they decided to start a terror war.

Yet the very next article praises this same terror war that caused so much suffering. It reproduces an Islamic Jihad press release on the occasion:

In memory of Al-Aqsa Intifada ... Confrontation and resistance for liberation and independence

...
We in Islamic Jihad. Taking this anniversary, we remember the eternal, we would like to underline the following: -

First, the intifada has proved vital, and our ability to cope, with regained the option of jihad and the resistance his presence, and the illusions of settlements being imposed on us to force us to surrender have fallen.

Second, the defeat of the Zionist colonial project the Western contingent on the continued and escalating resistance in Palestine and all the occupied part of the Islamic world, not the language of begging and negotiation, and adoption of this approach demonstrates the strength and vitality of this nation.

Third, it behooves us as Palestinians, to accelerate in the embodiment of national unity, in order to address the evil plots and schemes of Zionism, and we must summon up the energies and unite in preparation for the battle to liberate Palestine and Al-Aqsa.

Fourth: The achievement of the Renaissance sought in our nation is linked to its unity, and the elimination of dependency and normalization with the Zionist enemy, and therefore Palestine must remain the central Muslim issue, from Tangier until Jakarta, they turn and support for the resistance as a spearhead against the Zionist project.

In conclusion: a tribute to the souls of the martyrs who had their blood and fuel the confrontation and resistance, and a tribute to our wounded and our prisoners venerated heroes in the prisons of the Zionist oppression and injustice, and greeting to the masses of our people and rebellious masses of our nation on the path out of the system of tyranny and oppression.

How can one reconcile the two viewpoints? Did the intifada cause huge amounts of pain and suffering, or was it a great victory?

The answer is that the purpose of the terror war is not to help Palestinian Arabs. It is to hurt Israel. Israel would have been seen to benefit from a peace agreement and it would have forced Arabs to recognize Israel on a formal, paper level - something which is inconceivable to most Arabs. The intifada managed to kill over a thousand innocent Israeli civilians and it caused Israeli society to spent millions of man-hours on security issues, checkpoints, rocket shelters, guards and so forth.

It caused fear. That made the terrorists feel relevant. This is the "unity" that Islamic Jihad is mentioning - the Palestinian Arabs initially fully supported all the terror attacks and celebrated them.

Palestinian Arab pain and suffering is utterly irrelevant in the view of these terrorists. Arab blood is cheap, according to Islamic Jihad, and as long as it is used to make an Israeli Jew feel a bit of terror or to take extra precautions before entering a bus, it is all worth it.

This is why the intifada is considered a victory. And this is (another reason) why peace is simply not possible.

Vigilante Muslims attack pro-Jewish Muslim in St. Louis

From Nonie Darwish at FrontPage Magazine:

About a year ago, I posted an Arabic language poem titled “Tears at the Heart of the Holocaust” on my website, ArabsForIsrael.com. The poem expressed its Arab author’s love for the Jewish people and his mourning over what happened to them in the Holocaust. The brave poet, Mr. Alaa Alsaegh, is an immigrant to the US from Iraq, who now lives in Missouri. Such poems did not sit well with the Muslim community, which caused Mr. Alsaegh to be alienated from it. He received threats because of his support for the Jewish people, was called an infidel and a traitor to Islam, but he continued with his writing of poems and did not take the threats too seriously.

...[O]n August 14, 2011 and in broad daylight and heavy traffic, he was viciously attacked on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri. According to Mr. Alsaegh, as he was driving at 10:30 in the morning on Compton St. near Park Ave., a small white car cut him off and hit his car, while another car stopped behind him. The occupants of the cars, some of whom wore security guard-type uniforms, quickly entered Alsaegh’s car, pointing a gun at him. They pushed his upper body down against the steering wheel, stabbed him and pulled off his shirt to expose his back. Then, with a knife, they carved the Star of David on his back while laughing as they recited his pro-Jewish poem. Mr. Alsaegh believes that the attackers could be Somalis, but he was not sure. After the attackers fled the scene, Mr. Alsaegh was surrounded by witnesses to the crime and was taken to the hospital. The photo representing this story was taken at the hospital.

...This incident has been totally ignored by the mainstream media.

After this article was published, a St. Louis TV station finally covered the story, confirming the details:

Alsaegh's Facebook page is here; you might want to support him.

(h/t DJK)

Latma Rosh Hashanah greetings (video)

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Fatah site slams Obama's Rosh Hashanah message

Yesterday, President Obama released a generic Rosh Hashanah message:

Palestine Press Agency, which is oriented towards Fatah, reports the story fairly straight.

But here's how it illustrates the article, in a graphic that it proudly puts its own logo on:

Given that prompting, it is of course obvious that the talkbacks will have messages like this first one:

How it possible to stand this despicable person... Obama is the dog of dogs loyal to Israel's interests and who has long been racing to give them the loyalty and obedience; in the end, he is just a slave with their slaves, do not count on him, he has the most hatred for the Palestinians and Muslims, but the curse of God upon the sons of Zion and those who follow them.

Must see video: The photographer behind the scenes

An outstanding video that exposes the Pallywood that is created by photographers and their willing actor subjects:

Photojournalism Behind the Scenes [ITA-ENG subs] from Ruben Salvadori on Vimeo.

(h/t Caroline Glick via Lauri)

Most Israeli Arabs are "proud to be Israeli"

The Israel Democracy Index survey 2011, released their results a few days ago. One question they asked was intriguing: How proud are you to be an Israeli?

Among Jews, the vast majority - nearly 88% - said they were either "very proud" or "quite proud" to be Israeli.

But the Arab response was positive as well. 52.8% said they were proud, as opposed to 41.6% who said they were not.

Nearly 64% of Israeli Arabs said they were "certain" they wanted to live in Israel for the long term, with another 18% saying they want to but are not certain.

Not all the news is good, though. In response to the statement "It is never justified to use violence to achieve political ends" over half the Arabs (55%) strongly or somewhat disagreed.

Tutu seems to change his mind on boycotting Israel (video, updated)

Desmond Tutu has been the patron saint of the BDS movement, always available to promote any boycott of Israel.

A video just released by the Is Rael students organization of their meeting with Desmond Tutu in Cape Town on August 8 seems to show that Tutu is saying the opposite, that "boycott is not the way." Not only that, but he says that Israel has the right to live as an "independent sovereign state, whose boundaries are secured and recognized."

The impression I get is not so much that he changed his mind but that he is senile and more interested in playing to his audience than in worrying about anything like consistency.

(h/t LK)

UPDATE: I am told that the full, unedited video makes it clear that Tutu did not speak out against boycotting Israel.

Arabs threatening America, 1948

The parallels between how Arabs are reacting to the US promise to veto the PLO statehood stunt and how they reacted to American support for a Jewish state in 1947-48 are remarkable.

Here's another example, where Arabs threaten economic sanctions against the US.

Note the final part, about how those undesirable Jews immigrating to the Middle East would become a permanent danger for peace from Turkey to East Africa.

That attitude has never really changed.

Gazans are still firing rockets at Israel

The Gaza NGO Safety Office (GANSO) has not updated their normal biweekly reports of rocket and other activity, but they do send out alerts when they find out about significant incidents that could affect the safety of NGO workers in Gaza.

And that includes Gaza rockets.

Even though there have been very few rockets reaching Israel in September, that doesn't mean that there weren't a lot more attempts: (HMR="Home Made Rockets")

MU, 06 SEP: Overnight Pal. ops fired 1 HMR from Gaza.

07 Sept, 1630hrs: Israeli media sources report 1 HMR fired from Gaza landed in Israeli territory.

MU, 08 SEP: Overnight Pal. ops. fired 2 HMR from MA

MU, 10 SEP: Overnight Pal. ops. fired 1 HMR from E of Al Maghazi, the rocket exploded prematurely.

MU, 11 SEP: Overnight Palestinian operatives fired 1 Grad rocket from west of Khan Yunis.

MU, 13 SEP: Overnight Palestinian operatives fired 1 HMR from east of Jabalia, NG

MU, 14 SEP: Overnight Pal. ops. fired 2 HMR from MA towards Israeli, 1 rocket exploded prematurely and the other one dropped short and landed in the Pal. terr.

MU, 17 SEP: Pal. ops. fired 1 HMR from E of Al Maghazi towards the Green line.

MU, 20 SEP: Overnight Pal. ops. fired 3 HMR from Gaza Strip. No injury or damage reported.

22 Sept, 1650hrs: Pal. ops. fired 1 HMR from Al Maghazi towards the green line, but the rocket dropped short and landed E of Al Maghazi, MA

MU, 24 SEP: Overnight Pal. ops. attempted to fire 1 HMR from N of Beit Lahiya, however the rocket exploded prematurely.

MU, 25 SEP: Overnight Pal. ops. fired 2 HMR rockets from Middle Area. One of the rockets exploded prematurely and landed in the Pal. terr.

MU, 26 SEP: Overnight Palestinian operatives fired 1 HMR from Deir Al Balah towards the Green line.

That's 17 Qassams and one Grad fired towards Israel, of which at least 6 and probably more landed in Gaza itself or exploded prematurely.

But it isn't like the terrorists ever stopped firing rockets towards Israeli civilians.

Funny Numbers part 2: Fatah member doubles number of PalArabs

This video from MEMRI is notable for a couple of reasons:

For one thing, it is just another indication of how ticked off the Palestinian Arabs were from Obama's UN speech.

But more interestingly is the astonishing ease by which Jibril Rajoub lies about the number of Palestinian Arabs there are.

He claims that there are 18 million PalArabs, of whom some 8 million live in Israel and the territories and the other 10 million in "refugee camps."

In reality, even the most generous (and questionable) statistics say there are 11 million Arabs of Palestinian descent worldwide.

2.5 million are in the West Bank and 1.5 million in Gaza according to Palestinian Arab estimates. Some 1.5 million live in Israel, which adds up to 6 million - 2 million less than Rajoub claims.

But his "diaspora" numbers are really out of whack - he doubles that number.

Even more ridiculous, he claims that all of the PalArabs outside "Palestine" are in "refugee" camps, when in fact only a small percentage - about one million - are in camps, according to UNRWA.

We've seen Palestinian Arabs make stuff up before. And why shouldn't they? No one really challenges them.

(h/t Dan)

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.