Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Intransigent Abbas keeps on adding preconditions to talks

The Quartet – which comprises the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia – will hold separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on Wednesday, the first contact of any kind that the two sides have had in 10 months.

But hopes for a breakthrough, never high to begin with, suffered a further setback as it emerged that Mr Abbas intended to hold Israel to a pledge made three years ago to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to his moderate Fatah party.

Desperate to wring concessions of his own, Mr Abbas has reminded Israel of a promise made by its former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to follow up any prisoner swap with Hamas by a similar deal with Fatah. Ahmad Tibi, an Israeli Arab MP with close links to Palestinian officials, said that Mr Abbas would now have no choice but to make fulfilment of the Olmert agreement a condition for renewing talks.

Or, as Ha'aretz wrote:

At the Knesset on Monday, MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al ) said that Israel should not be surprised if the two current conditions the Palestinians have set for restarting talks - a halt to construction in the settlements and recognition of the 1967 borders as a basis for negotiations - become three, the third being the prisoner release.

Of course, Olmert's conditional promises in the context of 2008 negotiations that Abbas himself broke off are meaningless today, as they were not an official Israeli offer (and from the context it sounds like it was meant to help Abbas give incentives to Hamas to release Shalit, something he didn't do.)

Over the summer, Abbas had three other preconditions that may still be in force: that the EU supports for reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah, that the EU supports the UN stunt, and a statement from the EU that the statehood stunt is not a contradiction to negotiations.

The upshot is that Abbas and his cronies are continuing their strategy of saying "no" to Israel, in hopes that by doing so they will get everything they demand without compromising. And as long as Western governments and the media do not call them on this duplicity, they have no incentive to change this strategy.

(h/t CHA, David G; see also Seth Mandel)

Iraq floated swapping 100,000 Jews for Palestinian Arabs in 1949

An amazing article in The Palestine Post from October 1949:

Jews in Iraq had been persecuted throughout the 1930s and they suffered a major pogrom in 1941, known as the Farhud.

This persecution continued throughout the decade, as this 1961 Israeli MFA article (that skeptically mentions the swap offer) notes:

How the Jews of Iraq Became Refugees

An eye-witness account, written by a visitor from overseas early in 1949 shortly after the conclusion of the Arab war against Israel, presents a graphic picture of the position of Iraqi Jewry at that time: “The Jews of Iraq” it stated, “are in a state of panic. They have been attacked in the streets, have had their businesses broken into and an alarming number have been murdered in cold blood. They have been dismissed from all branches of public and civil service, must submit to a curfew every evening and have been barred from most of the general amenities available to the ordinary citizen. Many have made desperate attempts to escape, but without success.”

When the United Nations Economic Survey Commission for the Middle East visited Baghdad in October 1949, the then Iraqi Premier was reported to have proposed that 100,000 Iraqi Jews out of some 160,000 to 180,000 be sent to Israel in exchange for 100,000 Palestine Arab refugees. The Jews were to leave their property in Iraq and take over the property in Israel of 100,000 Arabs. If this suggestion of a population transfer and mutual financial compensation was really made, it was soon dropped by the Iraqi Government. It was apparently found easier to terrorize the Jews into leaving by fixing a time limit for their departure and enacting legislation to seize their possessions for the benefit of the Iraqi exchequer.

In the third week of December 1949, a second wave of anti-Jewish pogroms began. Thousands were imprisoned on charges of “Zionism” or taken into “protective custody.” When, as expected, large numbers thereupon applied for exit permits to Israel, legislation was rushed through freezing Jewish accounts in the banks and forbidding the sale of property without special permit. Jews were permitted to leave with only 50 kgs of luggage per person. On 10 March, 1950, the Iraqi Government issued a decree blocking the property of all Jews who, on leaving the country, “had relinquished their nationality.” A special custodian of Jewish property was appointed, who began immediately to sell it by public auction.

To speed up the departure of the Jewish community, the Iraqi Government set a time limit for it, fixing 21 June as the final date. As a further incentive a series of laws was enacted designed to make the position of the Jews in the country untenable. Restrictions were imposed on their movements. They were barred from schools, hospitals and other public institutions. They were refused import and export licences for carrying on their business. At the same time the arrests continued. So effective were these oppressive measures that by mid-July 1950 over 110,000 Iraqi Jews had registered for emigration and by June 1951 had left for Israel. By the end of 1951, the number of Iraqi Jews transferred to Israel amounted approximately to 125,000. Most of them were brought over by chartered aircraft. They arrived utterly destitute, carrying small bags which held all their belongings. Such was the end of what had been for centuries the most prosperous and cultured Jewish community of the East--a community which could trace its history back for more than 2,000 years, centuries before the Arabs had come to Iraq.

And, no, the anti-semitic slander that Jews were behind some of the anti-Jewish attacks in Iraq at the time has been proven a lie.

Anyway, the offer itself is most intriguing. Chances are that the Arab League at the time forced Iraq to withdraw the offer in order to keep the refugee issue festering, the way that Arab leaders had been doing for decades.

But imagine if Iraq's initial 1949 offer had been matched by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and the Gulf states.

The refugee issue would have been solved sixty years ago.

"Foul Palestinian recipe" - by Durra

From The Telegraph, in their continuing series of amusing signs and labels found by their readers:

Since the entire second intifada was fueled by the Al Dura hoax, calling it a "foul Palestinian recipe" seems about right.

Durra is a Syrian food company. This product isn't on their website, but you can find their foul Lebanese recipe there if you want as well as all of their foul products.

(h/t ploni)

Hamas earthquake article an object lesson in Arab paranoia

The Hamas-run Palestine Times newspaper has an article praising Tayyip Erdogan for refusing Israel's offer to help after Sunday's earthquake. This article is a perfect example of Arab paranoia, of seeing schemes and conspiracy theories everywhere.

Although Recep Tayyip Erdogan is long known for his courage against Israel, what Netanyahu did not expect was for the Prime Minister of Turkey to be smarter when he rushed to abort his plan to exploit the earthquake to achieve political gains at the expense of the blood of "freedom flotilla" martyrs.

Israeli President Shimon Peres held a telephone conversation with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul during which he expressed his condolences t the deaths of citizens in the Turkish earthquake. Not only did he offer condolences, but Israel also offered to provide assistance. Yet it received a blow when Ankara strongly refused, and thus Netanyahu missed an early opportunity to to exploit the tragedy of the earthquake to end the isolation of the Zionist entity and to circumvent the demands of Erdogan regarding the flotilla massacre , which includes an apology and compensation for victims.

Given that Turkey was among the first countries that provided assistance to Israel to extinguish a massive fire that broke out in the forest of the Carmel Mountains near Haifa in December, and also Tel Aviv provided aid to Turkey in the aftermath of an earthquake several years ago, many interpret Erdogan's decision in the earthquake disaster as a new message to Netanyahu that the relations between them will not return to normal at all without an apology for the massacre of Freedom Flotilla.

Some also see a link between Erdogan's new anti-Israel position and mention in some Turkish media about the involvement of the Mossad in simultaneous attacks waged by the PKK on October 18 on the eight sites of the Turkish army in the province of Hakkari, near the Iraqi border, which resulted in 24 Turkish soldiers killed and wounded about 20 others. The PKK did not resume its attacks on Turkish forces until after Erdogan's challenge to Israel.

Parsing Bad RachelA - did she call for "genocide"?

The anti-Israel left is putting on a big show of fake disgust at a blog post by Rachel Decter Abrams (wife of Elliott Abrams, half sister of John Podhoretz) where, they claim, she is advocating genocide against Palestinian Arabs.

They then go on to demand that any group or person associated with her denounce her awful, terrible, rhetoric.

As is usual (with both sides), this is an attempt to score political points more than any real expression of outrage. However, it is worth looking at exactly what Rachel Abrams wrote.

Here is the entire post:

GILAD!!!!!!!!!!

He’s free and he’s home in the bosom of his family and his country.

Celebrate, Israel, with all the joyous gratitude that fills your hearts, as we all do along with you.

Then round up his captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.

Admittedly, the last paragraph is a very poorly written run-on sentence, and not easy to parse.

Here I will put in parentheses and color to try to clarify Rachel's meaning and extract her asides and asides to asides from her main point:

Then round up his captors (the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood, and use women [those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others] and their offspring [those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god] as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are,) and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.

To make it easier, I'll take out the extraneous stuff:

Then round up his captors - the savages who dip their hands in blood, and use women and their offspring as shields - and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea,...

A little analysis shows that this must be the correct intention. Her use of dashes as parentheses show that "women and offspring" are being used as human shields by the terrorists, although she makes an exception for those who are terrorists in their own right ("those who aren't strapping bombs..." and "those who haven't already been pimped out...")

In short - Rachel Decter Abrams was calling for the death of Gilad Shalit's captors, period.

While admittedly the sentence structure is terrible, before someone accuses another of genocidal intent, it would behoove them to make an effort to actually read what was written. Otherwise, the accusation is simply slander.

But I have a feeling that these poseurs who are so quick to accuse another of genocidal intentions will not have the ethics to admit that they were wrong, and to apologize to her. Ethics are for the other guys.

Australian professor warns research with Israelis could offend Muslims

From the University of Sydney:

The Office of Deputy Vice-Chancellor, International will be hosting the University of Sydney- Israel Research Partnership Forum: “Shared Challenges, Future Solutions” on 31 October 2011. The Forum brings together academics from the University of Sydney and leading Israeli institutions to discuss research innovations in key thematic areas including medicine; water, food and agriculture; pedagogy of teaching second languages and Dead Sea Scrolls; energy and information technology. The aim of the Forum is to acknowledge and develop new research collaborations in areas of mutual national and global concern.

Date: Monday, 31st October 2011
Time: 9.00am to 5.45pm
Location: Theatre 101, New Law School Building Annex, Camperdown Campus
Cost: Free

An associate professor at the university and self-styled expert on "peace journalism" thinks this is a bad idea - because it might offend Muslims:

UNIVERSITY of Sydney scholars set to exchange ideas with visiting Israeli experts on neuroscience, tissue regeneration and other cutting-edge research areas are being warned the event will offend potential Muslim undergraduates.

Associate Professor Jake Lynch, director of the university's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, has urged his colleagues to withdraw from the research gathering, and the university administration to cancel it.

Not surprisingly, Lynch is a supporter of BDS - and a purveyor of bizarre "Jewish lobby"-style conspiracy theories.

But usually when he attacks Israel he represents his position as being his own. Here, he seems to be pretending that this is the position of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

And even though Lynch is a strident critic of Israel, note how he is framing the argument - that potential Muslim students would avoid applying to the university because they are so offended!

Which means that, by his logic, if any potential students at U of S may be offended by anti-Zionism as well as by illogical arguments from a member of the faculty, then the university is duty-bound to fire him.

(h/t sophie)

Palestine Today reports that prominent Saudi Sheikh Awad al Qarni has offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who kidnaps an Israeli soldier.

He made the offer on a Facebook page that has some 700 fans so far.

In 2009 he issued a fatwa to attack all Israelis and Israeli interests anywhere in the world.

How Turkish diplomats saved Jews from the Holocaust

From Hurriyet Daily News:

“Turkish Passport” is an unusual story about the Holocaust; it is unusual simply by having the word “Turkish” in its title, since Turkey was a neutral country during WW II. The documentary, directed by former advertisement director Burak Cem Arlıel and written by Deniz Yeşilgün and Gökhan Zincir, is a surprising recount of Turkish diplomats in France and other European countries who had saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews by issuing them Turkish passports.

Based on extensive research of four years, “Turkish Passport” tells the story of Turkish diplomats and those saved by them through interviews with the survivors, the relatives of the survivors and the relatives of the Turkish diplomats, as well as re-enactments. It was definitely a period when Turkish bureaucracy was not as stalled, and when a Turkish passport was literally a lifesaver.

The film recounts stories of Turkish diplomats like Behiç Erkin, Turkey’s ambassador to France, who issued passports to French Jews of Turkish ancestry and helped ship them off to Turkey in rescue trains. The diplomats issued passports to anyone who could utter a few sentences in Turkish...

The "tens of thousands" is an exaggeration but certainly many Jews - in the hundreds - were saved by a network of Turkish diplomats. Most of them, but not all, were Turkish Jews.

Here is a news story about the film:

And the trailer:

The website for the movie has some fascinating material.

Erekat's lie of the day

Chief PLO negotiator and Western darling Saeb Erekat just can't help himself. He lies every time he opens his mouth.

The latest example comes from Palestine Press Agency:

Saeb Erekat said the statements of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who claimed that President Mahmoud Abbas is the biggest obstacle to peace and must be removed, are extremely dangerous and an invitation to assassinate and kill President Abu Mazen.

Erekat told the radio station 'Voice of Palestine' that he made contacts with both the United States and the European Union and Russia to have them denounce these dangerous statements.

Erekat said, "We understand that there is a price for everything, but when it comes to public incitement to kill President Abu Mazen, this is what we reject."

Here's what Lieberman said:

If there is a true stumbling block to peace, it is Abu Mazen. When [Abbas] talks about quitting, it’s not a threat, it’s a blessing, I can only hope that he leaves soon. Anyone who replaces him will be better than he is.

Incitement to kill Abbas?

After all these years, Erekat knows that Western diplomats and the media will not call him on his astounding record of lying, so he will continue to do so with impunity.

Turkey still refusing earthquake help (updated)

From Reuters:

Turkey is much better placed to deal with its latest earthquake since overhauling its emergency operations in the past decade, but international experts questioned on Monday its decision to rebuff many outside offers of help.

The country has plenty of experience in dealing with earthquakes after living through a "seismic storm" over the past century, but that hasn't always translated into prompt relief.

Disaster response has much improved since a 7.6 magnitude quake in the Western city of Izmit killed 17,000 people in 1999.

Nevertheless, experts said the region's rising economic power still lagged the level of organization seen, for example, in Japan -- raising questions about Ankara's rejection of foreign help after Sunday's 7.2 magnitude quake in southeastern Turkey.

"It would be better to accept all the help you can get," said Matthew Free, immediate past chairman of the Institution of Structural Engineers' earthquake field investigation team, who helped after the Izmit quake. "It's not a good time to be proud ... saving lives is the top priority."

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who flew to Van in southeast Turkey to assess the damage from the Ercis quake, said the country could cope by itself.

He declined offers of help from, among others, the United States, Britain and Germany, as well as neighboring Israel and Armenia, which both have strained relations with Ankara. Turkey has accepted help only from Iran, Azerbaijan and Bulgaria.

How many lives could have been, and still could be, saved?

While it does not appear that Turkey is singling out Israel in refusing aid, it is acting irresponsibly with the lives of its citizens.

UPDATE: Turkey is now asking for equipment from Israel and other countries.

One of the most important collections of ancient Islamic texts is in Israel

From Ha'aretz:

The National Library in Jerusalem is to begin displaying old Muslim religious texts from its collections, including some that are quite rare. Among the texts to be displayed as part of a special series on the history of Islam, are also two Korans from the ninth century, just 200 years or so after the writing of the first Koran.

In addition, the public will be able to view three Korans from the 11th and 12th centuries that come from Antalya, Andalusia and Persia. Most of the manuscripts are part of the collection of the Jewish scholar Abraham Shalom Yehuda. Upon his death, Shalom Yehuda, a prominent early 20th century Islamic studies researcher, donated his collection to the National Library. The collection includes 1,184 old manuscripts, of which around 100 are Korans, and is deemed one of the Western world's most important collections of ancient Muslim manuscripts.

Several of Shalom Yehuda's are among the most beautiful of the ancient Korans and feature unique decorations. "He had a great eye for books," says Dr. Raquel Ukeles, the curator of the National Library's Islam and Middle East collection and the initiator of the series.

The rare manuscripts will be displayed as part of a series of seminars at the library. Each day of the program will also feature the participation of researchers or Muslim clerics. According to Ukeles, there were no rejections of her invitation to come to the National Library from Arab clerics, only enthusiastic favorable replies. "Most Jewish Israelis, and even the Muslim Israelis, don't know much about Islam. For me, it's an opportunity to create an encounter between the university and other worlds, where they can get acquainted with each other," she said.

The program is part of the library management's relatively new policy which is aimed at opening its collections to the general public and not just to researchers. However, Ukeles also notes that even Muslim scholars are unaware of the Shalom Yehuda collection and its importance. "I discovered that it's a secret of sorts; hardly anyone knows about it. Part of the fun in the series is that we are opening it to the general public," Ukeles said.

Abraham Shalom Yahuda was one of the most important collectors of Islamica in the world before his death in 1951.

If some of those ancient Korans deviate at all from today's accepted text, this could become very interesting.

Daily Show take on the conflict (video)

I had missed this very funny bit from The Daily Show last month:

(h/t Ruchie)

Egypt, Israel agree on Grapel deal

From Al Arabiya:

Egypt and Israel said Monday they have finalized arrangements to exchange an alleged Israeli spy for 25 Egyptians held in Israeli jails, on the heels of a Hamas-Israel prisoner swap.

“Egypt has agreed to release Ilan Grapel and at Egypt’s request Israel has agreed to free 25 Egyptian prisoners,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

According to the statement, the Egyptians lined up for release –including three minors – are not security prisoners.

Egypt’s official MENA news agency said the swap is expected to take place “in the next two days.”

The deal is subject to the approval of Israel's 14-member security cabinet which is due to convene on Tuesday, the statement said. But it is highly unlikely to reject the agreement.

Ouda Tarabin is still not being discussed.

Partial list of terrorists released by Israel - and what they did

Here is my quick attempt to put together information from the IDF, Israel's Prison Service and Wikipedia to come up with the most comprehensive list of prisoners released by Israel last week, what they were charged with and any details I could grab about their acts of terror, when available.

I auto-translated the Hebrew for the charges, which is why it sounds a little weird.

List of Prisoners Released by Israel 10-15-11 v1

Taking apart a Guardian idiot

The Guardian published a jaw-droppingly stupid article last week, by Deborah Orr:

It's quite something, the prisoner swap between Hamas and the Israeli government that returns Gilad Shalit to his family, and more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners to theirs. The deal is widely viewed as a victory for Hamas, the radical Islamist group that gained power in Gaza after years of frustration at the intractability of the "peace process". Conversely, it is being seen by some as a sign of weakness in Israel's rightwing prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

All this, I fear, is simply an indication of how inured the world has become to the obscene idea that Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives. Netanyahu argues that he acted because he values Shalit's life so greatly.

Yet who is surprised really, to learn that Netanyahu sees one Israeli's freedom as a fair exchange for the freedom of so many Palestinians? Likewise, Hamas wished to use their human bargaining chip to gain release for as many Palestinians as they could. They don't have much to bargain with.

At the same time, however, there is something abject in their eagerness to accept a transfer that tacitly acknowledges what so many Zionists believe – that the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbours.

I don't know, but I think that Israel would have accepted a deal where they only release one mid-level Hamas militant in exchange for Shalit, which would be a 1:1 exchange and might make Deborah Orr much happier that the lives of "chosen" aren't worth so much.

But rather than fully fisk her here, you can read the many articles that destroy her imbecilic piece:

Honest Reporting
Pro-PalArab Simian Ovoid
CiFWatch
Professor Alan Johnson
Normblog
Jeffrey Goldberg
Alan A at Harry's Place