Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Grapel may be in Egyptian prison for two more months

Egypt and Israel are adding the "final touches" to a deal to swap an Israel-American detained in Cairo for Egyptian prisoners detained in Israel, the official MENA news agency said on Saturday.

"MENA has learned that the final touches are currently being made for a deal to swap Israeli spy Ilan Grapel, accused of spying on Egypt for Israel, for about 16 Egyptian prisoners and three detained children," MENA reported.

Later Saturday, Egyptian state-owned daily Al Ahram reported that Egypt had secured agreement for 20 - 30 Egyptian prisoners be returned in exchanged for Grapel, citing a MENA report.

Al Ahram said the deal is likely to take place after a prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel concludes in two months, citing an Egyptian diplomatic source.

This is in contrast with earlier reports that the Grapel deal was imminent.

It sounds like Hamas pressured Egypt to link the Grapel deal with the Shalit deal. There is no logical relationship between the two.

And, again, no word about whether Israeli Bedouin Ouda Tarabin, who is also unjustly accused of being an Israeli spy, will be included in the deal. It would be tragic if Israel is ignoring Tarabin's plight.

Palestine Today talked with one of the terrorists released in the Shalit deal, Khaled Gaidi.

Gaidi was sentenced to two life terms in Israel in 1986. (The article says he was sentenced to 4 life terms.)

He claims to have been behind the murders of three Israelis. I could only confirm two of the victims.

One was Haim Azran, 32, a resident of Ashkelon who was stabbed as he shopped in a market in Gaza in September 1986. Yasir Arafat's Force 17 took credit at the time for that attack.

Yisrael Kitaro was a 43-year old taxi driver also from Ashkelon, was similarly stabbed to death in Gaza in October 1986 as he took his car to a garage for repairs.

Gaidi, who is now a member of Islamic Jihad, claims to also have killed another man, Abraham Abu Ghosh.

Gaidi now brags that it only cost three shekels to buy the knife that killed three Israelis.

He called on Fatah to stop negotiations, saying the "the enemy only understands the language of force and Jihad."

"Hawkish" Netanyahu offers partial building freeze, "moderate" PLO rejects it

From Ma'an:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to partially freeze West Bank settlement building if it will bring the PLO back to direct talks, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

But the PLO said it was unaware of any such offer, and said that anything short of a full freeze would not be acceptable.

According to Haaretz, Netanyahu's offer was made on Wednesday in talks with Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin.

During the meeting, which came a day after she held talks with President Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah, Holguin told Netanyahu that Abbas desperately needed a symbolic gesture on settlements if he was to return to negotiations, a senior Israeli official told the paper.

In response, Netanyahu said he would be "ready to make such a gesture if it would return Abbas to the negotiating table" and agreed to freeze all government-sponsored construction and all building on state land.

But he said he would not agree to freeze settlement activity by private developers on privately owned land -- which, according to a recent Palestinian study, constitutes around 80 percent of settlement activity.

The official said the offer would test whether or not Abbas was serious about returning to direct negotiations.

"Netanyahu said he was ready to test Abbas by making the gesture regarding settlements. 'If Abbas is serious about negotiations, he will renew direct talks,' Netanyahu said."

The Israeli official said the new proposal was relayed to Abbas on Wednesday, but PLO official Saeb Erekat on Friday said it was the first they had heard of it, and insisted that only a full halt to settlement, including in annexed East Jerusalem, would suffice.

"We want to hear officially from the Israeli government that they accept to stop settlement on all Palestinian lands, including in Jerusalem and natural growth, and to recognize the 1967 borders," Erekat told AFP.

Notice the precondition that has been added, almost unnoticed by the Western media, that Israel accept the so-called 1967 borders.

And, sure enough, Erekat showed his intransigence and unwillingless to compromise when the offer became official:

PLO official Saeb Erekat has rejected the distinction between government and private construction in Israeli settlements, the premise of Israel's "offer" for a partial building freeze reported by Israeli media on Friday.

Notice how Ma'an put the word "offer" iin scare quotes, as if Netanyahu isn't serious. Of course, there is an easy way to find out if he is - by accepting negotiations.

Will we be seeing any NYT editorials excoriating the PLO for their refusal to go back to the negotiating table?

Ha!

Egyptian Spring: Man jailed for insulting Islam on Facebook

From AFP:

An Egyptian court has sentenced a man to three years in jail with hard labour for insulting Islam in postings on Facebook, the official MENA news agency reported.

A Cairo court found that Ayman Yusef Mansur "intentionally insulted the dignity of the Islamic religion and attacked it with insults and ridicule online".

The court said his insults were "aimed at the Noble Koran, the true Islamic religion, the Prophet of Islam and his family and Muslims, in a scurrilous manner," the agency reported.

He was arrested in August after police tracked him down through his internet address.

Egyptian law bans insults to religion. The law has been used in the past to try Shiite Muslims.

The specific law states:

Whoever exploits religion in order to promote extremist ideologies by word of mouth, in writing or in any other manner, with a view to stirring up sedition, disparaging or holding in contempt any divine religion or its adherents, or endangering national unity, shall be punished with imprisonment for between six months and five years or a fine of at least LE500.

Do you think that any Egyptian has ever been prosecuted for anti-semitism. which this law would ostensibly make illegal?

Chag Sameach part 2

Because of the final leg of this month's never-ending Jewish holidays, I will not be blogging until at least Saturday night.

Have a great remainder of the "yuntif"!

(h/t Bronfman Center at NYU via email)

BDS organizers get sued by Lebanese businessman!

From Al Akhbar:

Lebanese anti-Israel activists are being sued by a concert promoter for their boycott campaign against a popular British rock group.

Samah Idriss, director of Dar al-Adab publishing house, received a court summons this Thursday from Beirut's commerce court. Idriss is implicated in a lawsuit for his involvement in a Lebanese boycott campaign against the British rock group Placebo last year. Jihad el-Murr, who heads the company that organized the event, filed the suit on 10 July 2011.

El-Murr is suing Idriss, as well as three other groups involved in the campaign: the Aidoun Refugee Rights Center, the Campaign to Boycott the Supporters of Israel in Lebanon, and the Global BDS Campaign in Lebanon. El-Murr, a self-described famous businessman from a prominent family, is demanding US$180,000 compensation for his company’s financial losses allegedly caused by the boycott campaign.

Lebanese activists called for the boycott in protest of Placebo's performance in Tel Aviv four days before their concert in Beirut, that was scheduled for 9 June 2010 at the Forum de Beirut. Only in July 2011, a year after the event took place, did el-Murr notice the ‘financial losses’ he claims were caused by the campaign. He called the campaign against cultural normalization with Israel both “malicious and deceptive.” El-Murr argues that the 1955 Lebanese law supporting a limited boycott of Israel does not apply to the Placebo concert. “The famous rock band does not even deal with politics,” he added.

El Murr described the boycotts as "ridiculous" last year.

Placebo played in Israel on June 5th, and they did play in Beirut on June 9

It does not appear that the boycott effort in Lebanon had any effect because the concert hall in Beirut looks pretty full to me:

Which is a win-win - the Lebanese roundly ignored the BDSers and the only way for the BDSers to counter the lawsuit would be for them to admit that their efforts were fruitless!

(h/t Dan)

Where on Earth could this be?

Here is a photo of a pretty nice looking school. Do you know where it is?

It is in Ras al-Amud, an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, and it is one of the many Arab schools that Israel is spending millions building and upgrading.

From Israel21c:

When the 2011-2012 school year began in the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, millions of shekels in sparkling new or renewed classrooms, computers and sports facilities greeted 42,153 students and their teachers.

Many of the 59 public schools approved and budgeted under the Jerusalem Education Authority of the Ministry of Education have been neglected, undersupplied or overcrowded for decades. Since taking office in November 2008, Mayor Nir Barkat has been implementing improvements to get these facilities on par with schools in the western sector of the city, says Stephan Miller, advisor to Jerusalem's mayor.

"The mayor and municipal professionals work regularly with members of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem through the leadership of the community centers as well as organized groups of residents such as the Mayor's Forum of Eastern Jerusalem Principals and the Mayor's Forum for Welfare in Eastern Jerusalem," Miller tells ISRAEL21c.

"The completion of the Mayor's plan will lead to a significant change in education in eastern Jerusalem."

New schools, including approximately 200 classrooms, have been built in the eastern part of the city. The municipality is currently investing the unprecedented sum of NIS 300 million (about $69 million) in the planning and construction of 285 additional new classrooms for Arab schoolchildren.

This year alone, 42 new classrooms will be opened in new buildings, 18 at the start of the year and the remainder in coming months. Six additional kindergarten classrooms were completed in time for September, including one for special education. In addition, more than 40 public school classrooms were renovated and adapted to pupils' needs, with emphasis on the Shoafat refugee area in northeast Jerusalem.

The municipality also built new sports facilities in south central Beit Tzafafa and in Isawiya in the northeast.

Another NIS 750,000 (more than $170,000) per year has been approved for programs to advance gifted and outstanding pupils, strengthen girls' education and reduce school violence. An additional NIS 1.5 million is newly designated for the public schools' organizational expenditures.

The municipality and the Education Ministry have shared costs for these initiatives, says Miller, and further upgrades are still to come.

"As you can imagine, from vision to construction takes time, and the mayor has moved swiftly since taking office to fast-track these plans," says Miller, "which is why they are ready so early in his first term."

New classrooms wouldn't be as valuable without updated equipment inside them. So with the assistance of Israeli branches of companies such as Ernst & Young and Intel, the municipality rang in the new school year by distributing 1,720 mobile and desktop computers to schools, kindergartens and teachers in eastern Jerusalem.

An additional 350 new donated computers were given to schoolchildren to take home.

There was more good news for teachers: Seven classrooms in six schools in the eastern part of the city were converted into technologically sophisticated learning centers with the installation of interactive whiteboards, which can display educational software, web sites, past lessons and other features. Teachers and principals alike have been receiving computer training courses to maximize their use of these new tools.

"We are committed to investing in eastern Jerusalem and reducing the gaps, which are the result of years of neglect," said Barkat upon announcing the improvements at the start of September. "We cannot countenance a situation in which Jerusalem pupils have no classrooms, roads or basic infrastructures. These investments will lead to an increase in residents' quality of life."

If you want to have fun, ask people who claim to be "pro-Palestinian" if they support Israel improving Arab schools in Jerusalem.

By the way, it is possible that the school pictured above is the same one where, before construction, archaeologists found a handle with the name "Menachem" inscribed on it in Hebrew.

(h/t Cheryl)

Freed would-be suicide bomber Wafa al Bass tells Gaza kids to be like her

Ynet reports:

"A would-be Palestinian suicide bomber freed by Israel in the prisoner swap for soldier Gilad Shalit told cheering schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip the day after her release on Wednesday she hoped they would follow her example.

"I hope you will walk the same path we took and God willing, we will see some of you as martyrs," Wafa al-Biss told dozens of children who came to her home in the northern Gaza Strip.

Biss was travelling to Beersheba's Soroka hospital for medical treatment in 2005 when Israeli soldiers at the Erez border crossing noticed she was walking strangely. They found 10 kgs (22 lbs) of explosives had been sewn into her underwear.

A member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, Biss was sentenced to a 12-year term for planning to blow herself up.

After she spoke, the children cheered and waved Palestinian flags and chanted: "We will give souls and blood to redeem the prisoners. We will give souls and blood for you, Palestine."

How nice, refreshing and peaceful.

In case you forgot who she is:

Egyptian journalist insists she didn't pressure Shalit

From AFP:

An Egyptian journalist under fire for interviewing Gilad Shalit as Hamas handed him to Egypt denied on Wednesday that the Israeli soldier had been pressured to give the interview.

Shahira Amin, celebrated in Egypt for quitting her job as a state television reporter during the uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February, conducted Tuesday’s interview for the state-owned Nile Television.

An Israeli official accused her of violating “all the basic ethical rules of journalism” by interviewing Shalit, just moments after he had spent five years in captivity and was being released at the start of a prisoner exchange.

But Amin told an Egyptian chat show that she asked Shalit to do the interview and he consented.

The interview was conducted on no-man’s land in the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, she said. Shalit was accompanied by Hamas members and Egyptian intelligence agents.

“He was tired. I sat with him at first for two minutes and said: ‘I understand you want to see your parents as soon as possible and don’t want to give interviews,’” she said.

“But the world wants to know how you are doing so don’t deprive us of some words,” she said. “If he had refused, we wouldn’t have pressured him.”

The Egyptian Gazette, a government-owned English daily, reported on its website on Wednesday that the head of Egypt’s state television also said that no one forced Shalit to conduct the interview.

When you are just released from captivity but not yet free, and a masked member of the group that has been threatening your life every day for five and a half years is standing right behind you with his hand practically touching your back, how much free will do you have to say "no"?

No, no pressure at all.

New variant of Stuxnet discovered

From eWeek:

A new worm targeting industrial control system manufacturers has a strong resemblance to Stuxnet, leading researchers to dub it "Son of Stuxnet"

Symantec researchers have discovered a new worm in the wild that has the potential to attack and cripple industrial control systems, much like Stuxnet did.

The new worm, dubbed Duqu, shares a lot of the code with Stuxnet, leading Symantec researchers to believe it was either created by the same team or by another group with access to the Stuxnet source code, Symantec researchers said in a 46-page whitepaper released Oct. 18. Unlike Stuxnet, which was designed to attack a very specific type of computer system, Duqu does not have appear to have a clear target.

Discovered a little over a year ago, Stuxnet is considered one of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever developed. It compromised several industrial control systems at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility. Observers believe Iran's nuclear program had been set back years by the malware. Despite the fact that researchers around the world have analyzed Stuxnet, the source code is "not out there," according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of F-Secure, noting that "only the original authors have it."

"Duqu is essentially the precursor to a future Stuxnet-like attack," Symantec Security Response researchers wrote on the Symantec Connect blog. The researchers did not speculate on its origins.

Considering the time and resources required to develop tools like this, Lookingglass’ CTO Jason Lewis told eWEEK that a nation state was the likely author.

Duqu's primary purpose at the moment appears to be intelligence-gathering from industrial control system manufacturers, according to Symantec. ...

"The key thing missing here, unlike Stuxnet, is we don't know what they are looking for," Symantec said.

At the moment, Duqu only creates a back door on infected systems and connects with a command-and-control server somewhere in India, according to Symantec. The backdoor is open precisely for 36 days, after which the malware self-destructs.

The C&C server appears to not have sent any instructions yet, Symantec said. The short 36 day lifecycle implies there is a specific target, according to Lewis.

According to McAfee's analysis of the worm, the malware installs drivers and encrypted DLLS that can act as keyloggers on the system to monitor all processes and messages. It also has no mechanism to replicate itself.

McAfee researchers Guilherme Venere and Peter Szor are fairly confident that Duqu was created by the same developers responsible for Stuxnet. They based their conclusions on the fact that both viruses utilize similar encryption keys and techniques, injection code and fraudulent digital certificates which had been issued to companies in Taiwan. The digital certificate keys appear to be real, which also make the programs look legitimate.

I don't know how difficult it is to modify Stuxnet to do other things, but the description here isn't making much sense to me. I cannot see the value of using already-known exploits to try to gather new infomation when everyone with any concept of computer security would have already put up defenses against it.

On the other hand, Symantec says that this code uses a new stolen digital certificate from Taiwan that had not been breached before, and that the code seems to have been written in December 2010. A normal hacker is not usually able to steal digital certificates - that requires real-world espionage.

(h/t CHA, Zach)

Hamas flag in one hand, gun in the other

A photo taken during yesterday's celebrations in Kfar HaShiloach (Silwan), Jerusalem. I am not sure if this is one of the released prisoners.

Wonderful.

Archbishop Hanna was taking part in these peaceful celebrations as well:

Lots more photos from this Arabic site.

(h/t Moshe)

NYT uses Shalit as pretext to slam Netanyahu

An absurd editorial in the NYT:

Now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has compromised with Hamas, we fear that to prove his toughness he will be even less willing to make the necessary compromises to restart negotiations. And we fear that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and his Fatah faction, who were cut out of the swap altogether, will be further weakened.

Just this one paragraph oozes anti-Israel bias.

Couldn't the NYT have equally have the concern that Abbas would become ideologically more militant as a result of the deal to gain more street cred among the happy hordes of terrorist worshippers who came out to celebrate yesterday?

No, their fear is only that Israel, by showing flexibility, will become more intransigent - without a word about Abbas' preconditions.

Yes, those new preconditions, added only a year or two ago, that Israel must stop all building in Judea, Samaria and most of Jerusalem before negotiations. The NYT is calling these "necessary compromises" but in fact it is evidence of the PLO's strategy of saying no to everything until it gets what it wants, unilaterally.

One has to ask: If Mr. Netanyahu can negotiate with Hamas — which shoots rockets at Israel, refuses to recognize Israel’s existence and, on Tuesday, vowed to take even more hostages — why won’t he negotiate seriously with the Palestinian Authority, which Israel relies on to help keep the peace in the West Bank?

One "has" to ask that question?

Israel and Hamas were never in the same room during the Shalit negotiations, as far as I can tell - Hamas bragged that they didn't even sign the same piece of paper as Israel.

And the NYT is using this as evidence that Israel is more amenable to negotiating with Hamas than with the PLO? Even when Israel has been the one party that has been begging for negotiations to restart and the PLO has been the one refusing?

Incidentally, Hamas was willing to give something up - Gilad Shalit. The PLO has offered nothing. Perhaps if the Times had ever pressured Abbas to compromise on land, there would have been peace by now. Instead, by writing editorials like this, they give Abbas more reason to stick to his favorite word - "No."

The newspaper of record is twisting facts to fit its views, and this editorial proves it as much as it can be proven.

See also Jewlicious.

The pledge that released prisoners signed

From IMRA:

Raanan Gissin told IMRA today that the Palestinian prisoners being released today in the Shalit deal are signing the same standard form as was signed by prisoners released in the past.

The following is IMRA's translation of the Hebrew version of the declaration signed by convicted Palestinians released by Israel. The text was provided to IMRA by the IDF Spokesperson's Office (the same text was signed by those who had not been sentenced yet with minor changes):

Declaration and Commitment

I the undersigned (name) (ID)

1. It was brought to my attention that beyond requirements and as a good will gesture by the Government of Israel, within the framework of its relations with the Palestinian government and the renewal of the efforts for peace, the military command decide to ease my sentence, subject to my signing this declaration and commitment.

2. I hereby declare that I oppose all terror and violent actions and I hereby commit to desist from all actions against the security of the State of Israel or the security of the region in general and include in this terror or violent activities, and support or aid to it, in any way including:

A. To desist from returning and carrying out a crime of the type of crimes that I was convicted of as well as any other crime;
B. Not to belong to a terror organization or illegal group of any kind;
C. Not to engage in inciting activities, and included in this incitement to carry out terror or act illegally against the peace process;
D. Not to be involved and not to support or aid terror activities against any person and any act of violence or action that may cause the public or any part of it damage or fear or any other damage;
E. To desist from illegally entering the area of Israel or the Israeli communities in the territories.

3. I am aware that the remainder of the prison sentence that I was sentenced by the court in the region is conditional, as of the day of my release, for the course of three years, and the condition is that I will not carry out a crime that could hurt the security of the area or the security of the State of Israel and including that desisting from any act of terror or violence and support or aid for such activities, in any way, as detained in Paragraph 2.

4. Likewise I am aware that if I violate a condition of the conditions of the release the court will have the right to activate the remainder of the sentence that was in effect prior to my release and to decide that I bear this punishment in addition to any other punishment that is imposed on me.

5. I hereby confirm that the wording of my commitment and declaration was explained to me in Arabic and that after its significance was made clear to me I signed the document out of my free will.

Date
Signature of the prisoner
Confirmation
I the undersigned Name Rank Personal Number Position

From Ma'an:

Released prisoners pledge to continue resistance

Sounds like Israel can start rounding them up again.

(h/t Cheryl)

NPR declares Hamas' Gaza to be a state

From NPR:

STEVE INSKEEP, host, Morning Edition: Now, of course you used the phrase, at the moment – as the days go on, the attention will turn back to where the peace process, or the lack of the peace process, goes next. What does this prisoner exchange mean for relations between Israel and Hamas, the group that had been holding – had been holding the soldier?

SHEERA FRENKEL, NPR reporter in Israel: I think that, as time goes on, we're already beginning to see(ph) murmurs of groups that are asking why Israel has released so many prisoners. And I think, as time goes on, there's going to be more and more people questioning whether Israel should continue to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for soldiers. In the long run, there's hope that this will create diplomatic ties that may eventually lead to Hamas and Israel making peaceful borders, eventually, in the future, some sort of dialogue through the Palestinian Authorities in the West Bank that will lead to peaceful times ahead. But that's the optimism at the moment, and I think this is a very optimistic moment. The pessimistic Israelis, and I do think, in the coming days, it will be the majority of Israelis, will say that this is a brief respite and that, likely, he will not be the last Israeli soldier that is captured by a neighboring state.

Congratulations, Hamas. You have achieved state recognition by the (partially) US-government funded public radio network.

Maybe you can open some embassies now.

(h/t notmidwest)

"Human Rights" Watch

Human Rights Watch does it again:

Yea... let's open the borders now we released some murderers! Of course no word of HRW demanding the same from Egypt. Of course no word on the prisoners with blood on their hands, who got released in this swap. No word on how Shalit came out of prison - weak and pale, while his "counter-prisoners" were strong and of good health. No word on Shalits words for the wish of peace and no word for released Hamas prisoners who want to continue rather today than tomorrow with their fight.

In which parallel universe is HRW living? Seriously.