Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Post Yom Kippur, pre-Sukkot open thread

A busy Sunday between holidays here at Chez Elder so here's an open thread.

Sunday links

A Jewish couple, trying to reach a Jerusalem hospital while the wife was in labor, was attacked by Arab stone throwers and "nearly lynched"on Yom Kippur.

Reports that relatives of the Fogel family murderers told Jews of Itamar "We'll Fogel you" while drawing their fingers across their throats.

A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Jaffa synagogue.

Reports that Egypt is demanding 81 prisoners in exchange for Ilan Grapel, and that even the Egyptians admit the case against him is weak. Which means he isn't a prisoner - he is a hostage.

The Union of European Football Associations has charged Legia Warsaw after its fans unfurled a massive "Jihad" banner against Israel's Hapoel Tel Aviv.

Barry Rubin has a nice roundup of important trends.

I don't know how popular it is, but Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a nice Arabic website.

(h/t Kramerica, CHA)

Jerusalem Greek Orthodox archbishop supports Assad

From Syria's SANA:

Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in Palestine and Jerusalem, Atallah Hanna, on Saturday stressed that Syria is the country of amity among all religions where people, Muslims and Christians, live under national unity led by President Bashar al-Assad.

During a reception to a delegation of Arab students who are studying at the U.S. universities, Archbishop Hanna stressed the need to differentiate between the honest reform calls and the calls that imply vandalism and sabotage to Syria.

"We support reform and see that there is a conspiracy that aims at sabotaging Syria. We call upon Syrians to confront the conspiracy and support the reform program led by President al-Assad", he added

Hanna was awarded our 2006 Dhimmi of the Year award for so blatantly disregarding his own religion in favor of Islam.

He was fired as spokesman of the Greek Orthodox Church in 2002 for refusing to sign a document condemning terrorism. He also called upon Arab Christians to join Muslims in suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. And he accused Israel of spreading AIDS among Arabs using promiscuous Jewish women.

Oh, Hanna was also awarded the "Jerusalem Prize" by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Culture in late 2004, well after his support for terrorism was widely known.

A mini-resort in Gaza

A man in Gaza recently developed a plot of land he owned in Khan Younis into a mini-resort with only two hotel rooms - and a pool.

He calls it Chalet Gardenia.

Just another indication of how Gazans are spending their money.

Christians in Egypt fear more Islamist pressure

From AP:

On her first day to school, 15-year-old Christian student Ferial Habib was stopped at the doorstep of her new high school with clear instructions: either put on a headscarf or no school this year.

Habib refused. While most Muslim women in Egypt wear the headscarf, Christians do not, and the move by administrators to force a Christian student to don it was unprecedented. For the next two weeks, Habib reported to school in the southern Egyptian village of Sheik Fadl every day in her uniform, without the head covering, only to be turned back by teachers.

One day, Habib heard the school loudspeakers echoing her name and teachers with megaphones leading a number of students in chants of "We don't want Ferial here," the teenager told The Associated Press.

Habib's was allowed last week to attend without the scarf, and civil rights advocates say her case is a rare one. But it stokes the fears of Egypt's significant Christian minority that they will become the victims as Islamists grow more assertive after the Feb. 11 toppling of President Hosni Mubarak. It also illustrates how amid the country's political turmoil, with little sense of who is in charge and government control weakened, Islamic conservatives in low-level posts can step in and try to unilaterally enforce their own decisions.

Wagdi Halfa, one of Habib's lawyers, said the root problem is a lack of the rule of law.

"We don't want more laws but we want to activate the laws already in place," he said. "We are in a dark tunnel in terms of sectarian tension. Even if you have the majority who are moderate Muslims, a minority of extremists can make big impact on them and poison their minds."

Habib's experience was startling because in general, Egypt's Christians, who make up at least 10 percent of the population of 80 million, have enjoyed relative freedom in terms of dress and worship. The vast majority of Muslim women in Egypt put on the headscarf, known as the higab, either for religious or social reasons, but there's little expectation that Christians wear it.

The demand that all students wear the higab was a decision by administrators and teachers at the high school in Sheik Fadl, 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Cairo in Minya province. They said the headscarf was part of the school uniform, necessary to protect girls from sexual harassment.

A top provincial Education Ministry official, Abdel-Gawad Abdullah, said in an interview with CTV, a private Egyptian Christian television network, that the ministry gives schools the right to decide on school uniforms, and that parents during screening and application can either accept or refuse.

"And if the father wants to move his daughter to another school, it is OK," he said. "All the girls, including the Christians, put on the head cover and they have no problem," he added.

Habib was finally allowed to attend last Tuesday.

"I am happy I did what I want and that no one can force something on me. But I am afraid of the students and the teachers," she told AP. "The teachers are not normal with me and I am sure they will give me low grades at the end of the year."

The idea that wearing the hijab stops sexual harassment in Egypt has been thoroughly debunked - and some think the veil even attracts unwanted attention!

A new poll by Al Ahram says that 70% of Egyptians feel the greatest danger in Egypt is security chaos, while 17.5% feel the greatest danger is an Islamist takeover. Unfortunately, I don't know how many Egyptians in general (without ranking the issues) feel that an Islamist takeover is a concern.

One other point: when a wire service like AP releases a story, it gets picked up by newspaper and and other media that subscribe to AP's services. Popular stories can be picked up by hundreds or even thousands of media outlets, depending on how important the editors of the media outlet feel that this story is.

This story was republished on websites of only 13 media outlets, according to Google News.

(h/t Mike)

Yep, Lebanon is nothing more than a Syrian satellite

I mentioned last week how there have been four recent incidents where Syrian troops entered Lebanon with impunity, and no official complaints by Lebanon in response.

Now Lebanon notes this as well:

Ali al-Khatib was originally from the Syrian border village of Meshrfeh, but married a Lebanese woman and moved across the border to the East Bekaa village of Ersal. The farmer was the reason two Syrian army tanks crossed the border into Lebanon on Thursday night, the second time this week, without sending either a notification before or an explanation afterward to the Lebanese authorities.

They shot Khatib dead before returning to their side of the border.

The entrance of Syrian troops into Lebanon to pursue Syrian nationals raises complicated questions on how much Lebanon can defend its own sovereignty and how the Syrian regime still has such a strong grip on Lebanon’s army and government. The Lebanese government did not file a complaint and did not summon the Syrian ambassador to Beirut to request an explanation.

“We asked Foreign Minister [Adnan Mansour] to summon the Syrian ambassador to inform him about Lebanon’s protest on this crossing, but he didn’t,” lawyer and former Labor Minister Boutros Harb told the National New Agency. “This is a [planned] crossing of the border between Lebanon and Syria, and a lack of respect to Lebanese sovereignty. Not summoning the Syrian envoy means that the cabinet is a partner of the Syrian regime in violating Lebanese sovereignty,” he added.

The March 8-led government’s Justice Minister, Shakib Qortbawi, defended the cabinet’s decision not to issue a statement on Tuesday’s incident, saying that the “issue is being handled by security forces.” There was also no reaction from the cabinet. Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdel Karim Ali said that the Syrian incursion was blown out of proportion in the Lebanese media for political purposes.

Analysts say that had this happened anywhere else, the reaction to the incidents would have been much greater: they would have triggered a diplomatic scandal, the ambassador of the offending country would have been publicly summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and presented with a complaint and a warning, and there would be a complaint filed with the Security Council.

But Lebanon’s March 8 government, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, did no such thing.

According to March 14 MP Mouin Merhabi, the incidents in Ersal are not the only occasions the Syrian army has crossed into Lebanon. Merhabi, who kept track of similar incidents in North Lebanon, said that “Two weeks ago, two men were kidnapped by the Syrian army from Akroum, North Lebanon, and then returned.”

“There was another incident when they shelled Lebanese army vehicles and broke one down. This is an infringement of Lebanon’s sovereignty,” he added.

According to lawyer and constitutional expert Marwan Sakr, there is no treaty that can provide an excuse for the Syrian incursions. The cooperation agreement signed between the Syrian Defense Ministry and its Lebanese counterpart in 1991 implies that a Syrian military operation cannot be conducted on Lebanon’s territory without prior consultations with the Defense Ministry in Beirut.

Lebanese have noted the irony of Hezbollah pretending to defend sovereignty from supposed Israeli aggression while at the same time completely submitting to the authority of Tehran and Damascus.

G'mar chatima tovah 5772 - גמר חתימה טובה

I want to wish all of my readers who observe the holiday a g'mar chatimah tovah, an easy fast and a meaningful Yom Kippur.

A large percentage of my recent webpage hits have been for people looking for a translation of that phrase, so here it is again:

Literally: A good final sealing
Idiomatically: May you be inscribed (in the Book of Life) for Good

I unconditionally forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

Specifically (as enumerated last year, courtesy of The Muqata):

If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize.
If you sent me a story and I didn't publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -- I'm sorry. (I sometimes get multiple tips for the same story and I usually credit the first one I saw, which is not always the earliest.)
If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.
I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all.
I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.

May this be a year of life, peace, prosperity and security.

(For those who want it, the Vidui of the Chida can be printed from here.)

Links

Tablet interviews the Columbia student who was steered away from Joseph Massad's courses

MEMRI shows us an Iranian e-book: "The Holocaust: The Jews' Greatest Lie."

Evelyn Gordon asks "How Often do Palestinians Have to Spell Out Their Goal?"

The New York Times has a fascinating account on how Zionists - and Zionist intelligence - managed to convince a hostile UNSCOP to recommend partition in 1947.

YNet looks at how to obtain atonement for a nasty talkback.

I missed this JPost piece where a German concentration camp inmate had written a Rosh Hashanah machzor (prayer book) on torn paper bags.

And, in a most inappropriate Yom Kippur eve link, the 8 best Jewish moments on South Park. You might want to wait a couple of days before clicking that one....

(h/t Ben, CHA)

American Jewish "settlers" are more liberal than messianic

From Ha'aretz:

Something strange happened among the hills and red-roofed settlements of the West Bank: Western left-leaning radicalism moved in with right-wing Zionist ideology. At least that's the claim of an American doctoral student, who says American immigrants to Israel who move to the settlements are not stereotypical gun-toting extremists but rather represent a larger and more diverse dynamic than they are given credit for.

"Stereotypes exist because they also have some elements of truth to them, but there is a much wider, more nuanced story behind that," Sara Hirschhorn, 30, said. American Jews who settled in the West Bank represent "a very heterogeneous and dynamic movement," she added. "It doesn't necessarily fit into any preexisting categories. In addition to that, I believe that my findings bring the discussion out of this typical left/right discourse that we have developed when we talk about the settler movement. There is a very wide spectrum, which certainly runs the gamut of everything you can imagine."

Hirschhorn's dissertation, which she is doing at the University of Chicago, presents the first known attempt to draw up a comprehensive demographic profile of Americans within the Israeli settlement movement. Her findings seem to imply they are somewhat overrepresented: According to Hirschhorn, who had access to confidential records from the American consulate in Jerusalem, 45,000 settlers have American citizenship, or about 15 percent of the Israeli West Bank population. In comparison, Americans make up less than 8.5 percent of all Israeli Jews, based on estimates of 500,000 Americans among Israel's 5.8 million Jews.

"Jewish-American immigrants [to the territories] were primarily young, single, and highly identified as Jewish or traditional but not necessarily Orthodox in their religious orientation," Hirschhorn said. "They were primarily political liberals in the United States, voted for the Democratic Party and have been active in 1960s radicalism in the United States, participating in the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle against the Vietnam War. This perhaps does not necessarily correspond to the idea we might have in mind about who these people were before they came to Israel."

Hirschhorn started working on her dissertation three years ago. It is based on archival research and 25 interviews with various leading American-Israelis active in the settlement movement.

"Many of them were activists in the U.S. long before they became activists in Israel," Hirschhorn told Anglo File recently in Jerusalem. "A lot of them were heavily involved not only in secular activism but also in Jewish activism, especially around Beitar and other Jewish-Zionist youth movement in the U.S., some more right wing and some more left wing."

Many Americans who moved to the settlements after the Six-Day War see what they're doing in Israel as an extension of their radicalism in the United States, Hirschhorn said. "They would also say that what some of them consider what they're doing in the territories in part as an expression of their own Jewish civil rights."

"In coming to Israel and participating in the settlement movement these American Jews continued in their radicalism," the Massachusetts native said. "While many other from their generation went back to a more conventional lifestyle - becoming soccer mommies and moving to Scarsdale [and affluent New York suburb] - here they moved to a hilltop on the West Bank."

Hirschhorn added that many Americans who move to the West Bank are trying to recapture the pioneering idealism of the state's Zionist founders, while others are driven by a Biblical imperative to settle the land.

I never thought about the link between '60's style radicalism and those who choose to live in Judea and Samaria for ideological reasons, but there seems to be something to that. I'd love to see this paper when it is published.

Bodyguard saved Israeli ambassador's life during Sadat assassination

An interesting story at Al Masry al-Youm:

A former bodyguard recently recalled saving the life of the Israeli Ambassador Moshe Sasson during the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The Israeli guard, who declined to reveal his identity, recounted the experience with his back to the camera during an interview on Israel’s Channel 10 news program which aired Thursday evening.

“I grabbed the ambassador, threw him on the ground, tossed over the chair and covered him with my body,” he said. “I lowered his head and people looked in our direction. No one understood what was happening.”

While Thursday marked the 38th anniversary of Egypt’s crossing of the Suez Canal during its 1973 October War with Israel, it also marked the 30th anniversary of Sadat’s assassination in 1981 during an annual victory parade to honor the event.

During the march, Israeli ambassador sat close behind Sadat.

According to the news network, Israeli investigations conducted shortly after the assissination revealed that the body guard’s quick response – along with that of a colleague – saved the ambassador’s life.

“The shots went on for 51 seconds, which is a long time,” the body guard said. “They shot bursts from 4 AK-47s. They would just use up their ammo and reload, and there was no one fighting back from our side.”

During the military parade, six planes soared over the platform where Sadat was sitting with his retinue. The body guard says that while everyone looked toward the sky to view the display, he and a fellow body guard fixed their eyes on the street below.

“Suddenly, we saw a truck stop and an officer get out,” he said. “The officer ran toward the platform with something in his hand and threw it – people watched but didn’t understand what was happening. Then there was a big explosion.

“They were shooting people, and they were being killed and wounded - a terrible panic. Most of the bullets didn’t hit Sadat but instead struck our area. We thought it was a military coup.”

In addition to Sadat, 11 others - including a Coptic Orthodox bishop, the Cuban ambassador, and an Omani general - were killed. Another 28 were wounded, including Vice President Hosni Mubarak, four US military liaison officers, and Irish Defense Minister James Tully.

A Muslim's journey from anti-semite to Zionist

From Kasim Hafeez in TheJC:

The reality is that there is real anti-Israel and antisemitic feeling on British university campuses. How do I know this? Because until recently I was antisemitic and anti-Israel. Until recently, I was the one doing the hating.

Growing up in a Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers. My views were reinforced when I attended Nakba Day rallies where speakers predicted Israel's demise.

My hate for Israel and for the Jews was fuelled by images of death and destruction, set to the backdrop of Arabic melodies about Jihad and speeches of Hizbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah or Osama Bin Laden.

There was also constant, casual antisemitism around me. My father would boast of how Adolf Hitler was a hero, his only failing being that he didn't kill enough Jews. Even the most moderate clerics I came across refused to condemn terrorism against Israel as unjustified.

What changed? In Waterstones one day I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section. To this day I don't know why I actually pulled it off the shelf, but I picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel.

In my world view the Jews and the Americans controlled the media, so after a brief look at the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda".

But I decided to buy it, eagerly awaiting the chance to deconstruct it so I could show why Israel had no case and claim my findings as a personal victory for the Palestinian cause.

As I read Dershowitz's systematic deconstruction of the lies I had been told, I felt a real crisis of conscience. I couldn't disprove his arguments or find facts to respond to them with. I didn't know what to believe. I'd blindly followed for so long, yet here I was questioning whether I had been wrong?

I decided to visit Israel to find the truth. I was confronted by synagogues, mosques and churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities playing huge parts in all areas of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It was shocking and eye-opening. This wasn't the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about.

After much soul searching, I knew what I had once believed was wrong. I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me.

As an outsider, I ask why so many in the Jewish community are closing their eyes to the constant stream of anti-Israel hated spewed out from all facets of British society.

And while pro-Palestinian organisations burn Israeli flags, urge boycotts of Israel and protest against appearances by Israeli politicians or artists, UJS's response is shameful. It is not the time for UJS or any other group to engage in hollow flag-waving to show their "progressiveness". Let Israel's democratic history speak for itself.

Instead of meekly trying to avoid coming across as too pro-Israeli or too Zionist, it is time to make the facts known, to defend Israel against delegitimisation. It is time to stem the tide of Israel bashing before it becomes even more mainstream and consumes even more people like me.

"Palestine": A cause or a state? (Taheri)

Amir Taheri in Al Asharq al Awsat writes a provocative essay:

A recent creation, the modern state is the political expression of a nation’s existence. One must first have a nation and then look for a state to express its existence.

Is Palestine a nation, in the modern sense of the term as described by Herder at the end of the 18th century?

You might be surprised, even angered, by this question. However, none of the dozens of political parties that have claimed to represent the Palestinians in the past seven decades ever described itself as national.

Words such as “nation” and “national” do not feature in the designation of such movements as Al Fatah and Hamas. Instead, they, and many other smaller ones, use adjectives such as “Islamic” or “people’s”. The subtext is that the Palestinians are, at most, “a people” but not a nation. They are regarded as part either of a larger, and mythical, Arab “nation” or an even more problematic Islamic Ummah.

Wedded to leftist or Islamist ideologies, Palestinian political formations systematically rejected the concept of the nation, the backbone of modern statehood.

The contrast with modern national liberation movements throughout the world is telling. For all of them the word “nation” is the key to their identity. Thus, we have the African National Congress in South Africa, and the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria. Even Communist-dominated Vietcong described itself as a National Liberation Front.

Islamist or leftist, Palestinian political movements treat Palestine as a “cause” rather than a political project.

But what is that “cause”?

This was clearly put by Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in a speech in Tehran on 3 October. “Our aim,” he said, “is liberating all of Palestine from the River to the Sea.” In other words, the cause is not to give Palestinians a state but to destroy Israel.

Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, leader of the Islamic Jihad for Palestine was even more explicit. “When we come to power we shall not allow the Zionist regime to live a single moment,” he said in Tehran.

According to the daily Kayhan of 4 October, both men paid tribute to “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei as the man who should have the final word on Palestine.

Mishal said: “The esteemed Commander of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khamenei, is our Guide and Leader. His wishes will be the cause of the Palestinians. Our sovereign and master is Khamenei.”

This, of course, is not the first time that Palestinian leaders have auctioned “the cause”. There was a time when Abdel Nasser was bootlicked as “guide and master”. In 1991, Yasser Arafat sold “the cause” to Saddam Hussein. A few years later in Oslo, he re-sold it to Shimon Peres.

In his speech, Khamenei promised that, once Israel is destroyed, he would organize a referendum in which Palestinians from all over the world and some citizens of Israel would decide what to do with “liberated Palestine”. Mischievous tongues in Tehran say that one option could be to attach “liberated Palestine” to Khamenei’s “imamate” empire. This is not fanciful. After all, Nasser, too, had hoped to annex “liberated Palestine” for his Arab Republic. Saddam Hussein had dreams of turning Palestine into Iraq’s “counter on the Mediterranean”, a scheme that would have also required the destruction of Jordan as an independent country. Hafez al-Assad fancied Palestine as part of “Greater Syria”.

Mishal and Shallah’s flattery towards Khamenei implies that there is no Palestinian “nation”. A sovereign nation would not demand that the leader of a foreign country decide its future.

The quest for a Palestinian state starts with the Palestinians themselves. They must decide whether they are a modern nation or a fragment of larger entities beyond their control.

...[A]s a member of the United Nations, a state cannot adopt the destruction of another UN member as its “cause.”

Palestine must choose what it wants to be a “cause” or a state.

I would add that Hamas explicitly calls for the creation of a pan-Islamic state of which "Palestine" would be a part.

Taheri is correct even in regards to the PLO. The PLO's charters from 1964 and 1968, even though they are titled the "Palestinian National Charter," say nothing about the "Palestinian nation" but quite a bit about the "Arab nation." Neither of them call for a "Palestinian state."

It is not news to readers here that the primary Palestinian Arab goal has always been to destroy Israel and not to build a state. But Taheri has stumbled on to a very interesting proof that a state is not their goal.

(h/t Zvi)

Report: USAID halts operations in PalArab territory

Al Quds al Arabi reports that USAID has suspended all of its projects in the Palestinian Arab territories.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee had halted some $200 million in funds for the Palestinian Arabs, it was reported earlier this week, and these were USAID funds.

Some projects have halted already, some can run for a few weeks before running out of money. According to a PA official quoted in the article, the projects that are affected include "roads, water, health and other projects related to state building."

He also said that the White House is exerting efforts to lift the ban but there is no timeframe for such a decision

Some 50 Arab employees have already been asked not to work, and a couple of hundred more will lose their jobs by November.

USAID money to the territories is earmarked for governance, rule of law, civil society, health, education, social services, economic development and humanitarian assistance.

US funds that goes directly to the Palestinian Authority has not been affected.

In the Arab world, especially in Egypt, there have been recent protests against USAID, with people charging that it is a spy agency. Egypt has recently rejected USAID funds because of conditions saying, among other things, that they cannot be used for terrorism.

2 Arabs arrested for the double murder of the Palmers

From YNet:

Two Palestinians from Halhul were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion they murdered Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan near Kiryat Arba last month. The two were arrested following an investigation involving the police, the Shin Bet and the IDF.

Asher Palmer z"l

A gag order has been placed in the identities of the detainees and the details of the investigation.

During their interrogation, the suspects admitted to throwing the stone which caused the deaths of Asher and Yonatan. The stone was hurled from a driving car. Police are also looking into the possibility that the two are behind 17 other cases involving stones being hurled at Israeli vehicles.

Initially the police had described it as a tragic car accident.

The stone was large enough to shatter the windshield and break the steering column. To hurl that from a moving car can only be described as premeditated murder. Of course, the Palestinian Arab leadership condones stone throwing (and Molotov cocktails) as "non-violent resistance."

Indeed, no Palestinian Arab official has condemned the murders.