Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Tel Aviv U. scientists perform...levitation

We might still be able to make Marty McFly's 2015 hoverboard...

The science behind it:

(h/t jzaik)

What "justice" means (poster)

As a follow-up to this post last month about how "justice" is a code-word used to justify the destruction of Israel....

Indeed, the extremists are the ones who set the agenda by having veto power over anything they don't like. But beyond that, the very definition of "justice" used by the anti-Israel crowd is one where only one side is allowed to demand it and decide when or if they ever get it.

The New Libya - run by Sharia law (video)

Meet the new boss.

I like how the (male) crowd goes wild over the idea of polygamy.

(h/t Yoel)

A Muslim writes: What we can learn from Gilad Shalit

From Alt.Muslim (and at least one other Muslim site) by a Chicago doctor named Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa:

As Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Hamas more than five years ago, was finally released in a vast prisoner exchange, it made me think about the relentless pursuit of his release by Israel. Such a pursuit by one's family is both natural and understandable. Yet, not only was his family behind him, but the entire nation of Israel was behind him. So many times, Israelis - from government on down - mentioned that they will never abandon one of their own. No matter how one feels about the Arab-Israeli conflict, it must be said that the tenacity of the Israeli people over Gilad Shalit is truly admirable. I even saw someone wearing a shirt saying "Free Gilad Shalit" during the 2011 Chicago Marathon this year. And it begs a very important question: do we as Muslims have this same tenacity over "our people"?

Sadly, the answer is "no." In so many places around the world, Muslims are being slaughtered like animals, and the Muslim world hardly lifts a finger for their aid. Ideally, NATO warplanes should not have had to intervene in the Libyan civil war, because it should have been Muslims on the ground and in their air helping their own brothers and sisters defeat a maniacal and murderous madman. Rather than help the people of Bahrain gain more freedom for themselves, the Saudi government sent in its own troops to make sure the people's voices were not heard at all. Yes, Muslims all over the world rightly decry the injustice being committed against the Palestinian people. Yet, when some Muslims commit the very same injustices against their own people, the cries of condemnation by other Muslims are sometimes not as fierce or loud.

When Muslims were being massacred by fellow Muslims in Darfur - the silence of the worldwide Muslim community was deafening. And now as the Arab Spring turns into the Arab Autumn and Winter, there does not seem to be a credible response of the Muslim world to the daily murder of people in Syria and other places. Gilad Shalit knew that, no matter what, the entire Israeli nation had his back. Does the Muslim world have the back of its own, as its Lord had commanded it to do? Sadly, the answer is "no."

And what's worse, the response of some Muslims to the slaughter of their fellow Muslims around the world is - in and of itself - horrific and barbaric. A newspaper publishes provocative cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), seeking to intentionally provoke Muslims, and some Muslims respond with violence and property damage: the very thing the publishers of the cartoons wanted to show the world. Elsewhere, pitiful bands of misguided "holy warriors" claim to be defending Muslims by committing mass murder and mayhem, causing much more damage and strife to the entire world Muslim community. With "friends" like these, as they say, who needs enemies? Again I ask the question: does the Muslim world have the back of its own, as its Lord commanded it to do? Sadly, the answer is "no."

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was reported to have said, "Wisdom is the lost property of the believer, so wherever he finds it, he has more of a right to it." There is nothing wrong with learning from the good qualities of another people and seeking to make them our own.

Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the United States, told NPR: "Israel is a democracy that has a citizens army. And when we send our sons and our daughters off to defend our country, they have to know that if they fall captive or, God forbid, anything worse happens to them, that the state will do everything in their power to get them back. And that is the source of our strength." We would be all the stronger if we had that same sort of commitment to our own people as Israel had to Gilad Shalit.

(h/t Callie)

Saddam, Israel and the Bomb. And Pokemon.

A few months ago an article was published by Hal Brands and David Palkki that took a detailed look at secret Iraqi documents to understand Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions. There is a lot of good information in there. Excerpts:

On March 27, 1979, Saddam Hussein, the de facto ruler and soon-to-be president of Baathist Iraq, laid out his vision for a long, grinding war against Israel in a private meeting of high-level Iraqi officials. Iraq, he explained, would seek to obtain a nuclear weapon from “our Soviet friends,” use the resulting deterrent power to counteract Israeli threats of nuclear retaliation, and thereby enable a “patient war”—a war of attrition—that would reclaim Arab lands lost in the Six-Day War of 1967. As Saddam put it, nuclear weapons would allow Iraq to “guarantee the long war that is destructive to our enemy, and take at our leisure each meter of land and drown the enemy with rivers of blood.” Saddam envisioned that this war would cost Iraq some 50,000 casualties, to say nothing of Israeli losses.

Until recently, scholars seeking to divine the inner workings of the Baathist regime were forced to resort to a kind of Kremlinology, relying heavily on published sources as well as the occasional memoir or defector’s account. This is now decreasingly the case. The transcript of the March 1979 meeting is one of millions of Baathist state records captured during and after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. These records, many of which are now being made available to scholars, include everything from routine correspondence to recordings and transcripts of top-level meetings between Saddam and his advisers. When combined with previously available primary and secondary sources, they illustrate the dynamics of the regime and the logic of Saddam’s statecraft to an unprecedented degree.

The Iraqi records indicate that the views Saddam expressed in March 1979 did not constitute a mere rhetorical flourish or an aberration in his strategic thought. In meetings and discussions with his top military and civilian advisers between 1978 and 1982, Saddam repeatedly returned to the subject of how an Iraqi nuclear capability could be used against Israel. This was a critical strategic and identity issue for Saddam. Although Saddam styled himself as the transcendent leader who would unite the Arabs and defeat the “Zionist entity,” in private he concluded that Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the Middle East made taking major military action to accomplish this goal an unacceptably risky proposition. In the face of an Iraqi or Arab attack, Saddam believed, Israel could simply threaten to use nuclear weapons against its enemies, thereby forcing them to halt their advance.

Saddam came to see nuclear weapons as a powerful coercive tool for dealing with Israel. Saddam’s aim was not to launch a surprise first strike against Israel; rather, he believed that an Iraqi bomb would neutralize Israeli nuclear threats, force the Jewish state to fight at the conventional level, and thereby allow Iraq and its Arab allies to prosecute a prolonged war that would displace Israel from the territories occupied in 1967. In short, Saddam expected that an unconventional arsenal would permit Iraq to achieve a conventional victory, thereby weakening Israel geopolitically and making him a hero to the Arab world. Although Saddam expressed this view most frequently in the period before his regime suffered two major geopolitical setbacks in the early 1980s—the Israeli attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and the downturn in Baghdad’s military fortunes in the Iran-Iraq War— he did return to this same basic logic at least once in the late 1980s, and he seems to have reluctantly relinquished the idea only after the 1990–91 war and its aftermath crippled Iraq’s advanced weapons programs and severely constrained Iraqi power.

While various observers have argued that the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 merely convinced Saddam of Israel’s hostility and led him to redouble his efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, the captured records do not indicate that the opposite course—permitting Iraqi nuclear development to proceed—would have been the wiser choice for Israeli offcials at that time.Indeed, in these records Saddam makes the case for preventive Israeli action far more persuasively than Israel’s own ofªcials could have done at the time.

Because Saddam believed that he was destined to lead the Arab world in confronting Israeli designs, for him it followed logically that the Jewish state placed special emphasis on targeting his regime. During the roughly thirty years in which Saddam dominated Iraqi politics, he and his advisers identifed a wide variety of nefarious Israeli intrigues. ...One of the more ludicrous accusations of Zionist perfidy came in 2001, when the Directorate of General Security (DGS) reported to Saddam that the television series Pokemon was in fact an Israeli plot to contaminate the minds of Iraqi youths. “Pokemon” was Hebrew for “I’m Jewish,” the DGS reported.

Saddam’s perceptions of Israeli perfidy were also colored by the anti-Semitism that suffused his worldview. Saddam often claimed in public that his opposition to Israel was based on anti-Zionism rather than anti-Semitism, a stance that was well suited to the international political climate of the 1970s, when the “Zionism is racism” campaign was at its height. As a review of the Iraqi records makes clear, however, there was no clean divide between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in Saddam’s thinking. Saddam often referred to Israelis as “the Jews,” and anti-Semitic ideas were ubiquitous in his private comments on Jews and Israel. Discussing Israeli politics, Saddam referred to “the Jews” as nefarious, clever characters. “This is the way the Jews are,” he said. “I mean, they are smart, or, rather, wicked.”

The sense that Jews and Israelis were devious individuals motivated by sinister designs was a virtual article of faith within the Iraqi regime. At Iraq’s Special Security Institute, students were told that “spying, sabotage, and treachery are an old Jewish craft because the Jewish character has all the attributes of a spy.” This assessment fit nicely with Saddam’s own beliefs. In one extended monologue on the subject, Saddam told his inner circle that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a notorious anti-Semitic forgery) was an accurate representation of Jewish/Israeli aims. “The Zionists are greedy—I mean the Jews are greedy,” he said. “Whenever any issue relates to the economy, their greed is very high.” Indeed, Saddam believed that the Protocols provided a blueprint of sorts for understanding Israeli designs: “We should reflect on all that we were able to learn from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. . . . We should identify the methods adopted by these hostile Zionist forces; we already know their objectives. "

Saddam believed that the conflict would be a pan-Arab war under Iraqi leadership. On some occasions, he indicated that the outright destruction of Israel was envisioned; more often, Saddam seemed to foresee military action designed simply to force Israel back to its pre-1967 borders. [Footnote: For evidence of the more extreme aim of destroying Israel, see SH-SHTP-A-000-635, “President Saddam Hussein Meeting with Ministers”; SH-PDWN-D-000-341, “Speech at al-Bakr University”; and Kevin M. Woods, Williamson Murray, and Thomas Holaday, with Mounir Elkhamri, Saddam’s War: An Iraqi Military Perspective of the Iran-Iraq War, McNair Paper, No. 70 (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 2009), p. 94..]

...In 1981, an Israeli air raid destroyed the Osirak reactor, setting the Iraqi program back by several years.

After the destruction of the Osirak reactor, Saddam acknowledged that the Israeli airstrike was a reasonable response to Iraqi nuclear development. In one meeting, he bragged that Iraq’s technological progress “made Begin spend sleepless nights.” At another gathering with his advisers, he conceded, “Technically, they are right in all of their attempts to harm Iraq. . . . They might hit Iraq with an atomic bomb someday if we reach a certain stage. And we are prepared, and if God allows it, we will be ready to face it.”

In Saddam’s view, Israel had good reason to feel alarmed by Iraq’s growing power and technological advancements. The destruction of the Osirak reactor did not put an end to Saddam’s desire for a nuclear capability and an eventual collision with Israel. Saddam’s government reinvigorated the nuclear program during the 1980s, and by early 1990 Iraq was perhaps only a few years away from developing a rudimentary nuclear weapon. In a meeting in early 1990, Saddam predicted that Iraq would have “one or ten” nuclear weapons within a half-decade, and as before, he argued that these capabilities would make possible the liberation of Arab lands. “Now, if the Arabs were to have a nuclear bomb,” Saddam hypothesized, “wouldn’t they take the territories that were occupied after 1967?”

During the period between late 1988 and early 1990, in fact, Saddam again began to tout the idea of waging a war of liberation against Israel. Hamdani recalls that Saddam instructed the Republican Guard leadership to prepare for the eventual launching of such a conflict, and that his unit “continued training, attending lectures and workshops to raise our army’s standards in preparation for the war with the Zionists.”

During the Persian Gulf conflict in 1991, Saddam thus viewed his arsenal of chemical weapons, complemented by biological weapons and delivery systems, as a deterrent to Israeli nuclear retaliation. Saddam recognized that his chemical weapons were not as powerful as Israel’s nuclear weapons, yet told his advisers, “If we want to use chemicals, we will exterminate them, you know.” He boasted that Iraq had acquired chemical weapons whose destructive power was “200 times more” than that used against Iran, adding that at most one or two countries could match the quality or quantity of Iraq’s chemical or biological weapons arsenals.

As one of Saddam’s advisers told him prior to the Gulf War, Iraq’s acquisition of binary chemical weapons and longrange delivery systems had ended Israel’s regional dominance and replaced it with a balance of forces. This new “balance of forces” increased Saddam’s confidence in 1991 that he could attack Israel with conventional warheads without facing WMD reprisal. “Iraq is in possession of the binary chemical weapon,” Saddam told an interviewer a month before invading Kuwait. “According to our technical, scientific, and military calculations, this is a sufficient deterrent to confront the Israeli nuclear weapon.” The West was furious about Iraq’s acquisition of binary chemical weapons, he explained on another occasion, because “they thought they could strike us. Well, let them try.”

According to the state-controlled Iraqi media, the imperialists and Zionists had recognized Iraq’s new “parity with the Arab nation’s enemies.” For Saddam, chemical weapons were now playing the deterrent role that he had earlier intended for nuclear weapons.

The article does make clear that Iraqi work on nuclear weapons was severely curtailed after the 1991 Gulf war, but Saddam's obsession to acquire WMDs was no myth.

(h/t Zach N)

Kent State professor yells "Death to Israel"

From KentWired:

Ismail Khaldi

Ishmael Khaldi, Former Deputy Consul General at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, spoke at Bowman Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 25. Khaldi wrote "A Shepherd's Journey", his autobiography about becoming Israel's first Bedouin diplomat.

Former Israeli diplomat Ishmael Khaldi’s lecture was going smoothly until an altercation with a Kent State professor threatened to derail Tuesday night’s event.

After the speech at Bowman Hall ended, Khaldi opened the floor to a Q-and-A session. The first person to ask a question was history professor Julio Pino.

Julio Pino

Standing at the back of the auditorium, Pino asked Khaldi how he and his government could justify providing aid to countries like Turkey with blood money that came from the deaths of Palestinian children and babies.

This is not Pino’s first brush with controversy. In 2002 he wrote an opinion column for the Daily Kent Stater praising a suicide bomber. In 2007 he made national headlines when the The Drudge Report featured a story accusing him of contributing to a blog called Global War, which refers to itself as a “jihadist news service.”

The crowd fell into an awkward silence as the two continued to exchange words from across the auditorium.

“It is not respectful to me here,” Khaldi said.

Pino responded by saying “your government killed people” and claimed Khaldi was not being respectful to him.

“I do respect you, but you are wrong,” Khaldi said. “It’s a lie.”

The exchange ended as Pino stormed out of the auditorium shouting “Death to Israel!”

One person in the crowd retaliated by shouting “Shame on you!”

Khaldi came to Kent State to talk about his journey from a Muslim Bedouin minority living in a tent to a respected diplomat in the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Khaldi discussed the current state of the Middle East and the many misconceptions he said American citizens have concerning Israel and its people.

After the altercation with Pino, Khaldi moved on to more questions, but he still referred back to his thoughts on the heckler.

“Is this what that professor is telling you?” Khaldi said. “It is my responsibility to tell you the truth and build relationships.”

After the speech ended, the remaining students in the auditorium could be heard admonishing the professor’s behavior.

One student in attendance said, “I get it’s freedom of speech and all that, but that guy just makes us [the university] look bad.”

You can see a copy of Pino's 2002 piece praising a female suicide bomber along with a critique here. Lots more about him here.

(h/t anonymous)

Abbas says he'll reveal something "important and dangerous" soon

Palestinian Arab media are buzzing about a dark hint that Mahmoud Abbas gave in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper that he will reveal something "important and dangerous" that is happening soon.

There is some speculation that when the UN Security Council bid for statehood is defeated, and because of the inability of Fatah to successfully negotiate any elections with Hamas, together with Abbas' repeated promises not to run in any new elections for president of the PA, that Abbas may dissolve the PA altogether.

In fact, Saeb Erekat hinted at this yesterday, telling Palestine Radio "Either there is power to the movement of Palestinians from occupation to independence, or Netanyahu has to assume [Israel's] responsibilities seriously from the river to the sea."

Isn't that how people who crave independence act - by dissolving all the existing autonomy they have?

A move like this would have a number of benefits for Abbas. He would remain the leader of the PLO, which would remain the only recognized representative of Palestinian Arabs. Also, he wouldn't have to worry about a Hamas takeover in any election, something he is clearly worried about since he is avoiding the elections that he promised for "after September."

But the downside is pretty bad for Abbas as well. It is hard to imagine the world pressuring Israel to fully take over Areas A and B, let alone Gaza. There could be a serious backlash against the entire Palestinian Arab cause if they are so willing to throw away their gains that the West supported and pushed for in the past twenty years.

Abbas has made promises of major announcements before that didn't pan out, but this is something to keep an eye on.

Morning links (updated)

Turkey finally accepts Israeli offers for earthquake aid; temporary structures and equipment for field hospitals on their way.

Meanwhile, Turks complain that their leaders are more interested in helping Palestinian Arabs than their own people.

The IDF rescues an elderly Lebanese woman caught in the border fence. (UPDATE: It happened a year ago. Sorry!)

In the wake of the Grapel deal, Netanyahu says on his Facebook page that he "has instructed the relevant authorities to do their utmost in order to bring about the release of Israeli citizen Ouda Tarabin, who has been imprisoned in Egypt for over 11 years." That is a bit vague.

A StandWithUs video on the two sides of the Shalit deal:

Condi Rice was amazed at how much Olmert planned to concede to reach a peace deal - and Mahmoud Abbas rejected it outright. But other reports say that Livni killed the offer. (UPDATE: Full article here.)

A sukkah was vandalized in Jerusalem by Swedish "pro-Palestinian" activists.

44% of Italians have negative impressions of Jews.

Yisrael Medad uncovers some interesting history: Jewish stamp impressions from as early as the sixth century BCE throughout Israel.

Students from India can apply for scholarships to study in Israel!

And here's a video from a couple of years ago, showing someone that obviously doesn't exist if you read the media - an Israeli Arab who is very happy to live in Israel:

(h/t Daled Amos, Onion Tears News, jzaik, silke, Israel Awareness, CHA, Yoel, Yaaqov)

20 Gazans were shot during the celebrations last week

Celebrate good times, come on!

On Tuesday, 18 October 2011, 20 Palestinians, including 6 children and 3 women, were injured due to shooting in celebration of the release of Palestinian prisoners. These incidents constitute a form of misuse of weapons and assaults on the rule of law prevailing in the Occupied Palestinian civilians.

According to information available to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), on Tuesday, 18 October 2011, 11 Palestinians, including 4 children and two women, were admitted into Shifa Hospital as they were injured by bullets and shrapnel during celebrations of the release of prisoners:

1) ‘Awni Zuhair Salah, 24, from al-Boreij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, seriously injured by a bullet to the head;
2) ‘Alaa’ Abu Salem, 14, injured by shrapnel to the left shoulder;
3) Hilal Samara, 24, injured by shrapnel to the hands;
4) ‘Abdul Rahman Sa’id Silmi, 28, injured by shrapnel to the right shoulder;
5) Sahar Mohammed ‘Amara, 41, injured by shrapnel to the right shoulder;
6) Saifuallah Fares Salama, 5, injured by shrapnel to the thigh;
7) Mohammed Khalifa, 24, injured by shrapnel to the right hand;
8) Shahd Nahidh Abu al-Kas, 7, injured by a bullet to the neck;
9) Karam Mahmoud Hammouda, 19, injured by shrapnel to the right hand;
10) Einas Ahmed Shahin, 23, injured by shrapnel to the shoulder; and
11) Rimas Hassan al-Jadba, 2, injured by shrapnel to the hand.

In Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, 3 Palestinians, including a child, were injured due to shooting in celebration of the release of prisoners:

1) Nader Hassan Abu Khousa, 24, seriously injured by a bullet to the neck;
2) ‘Ata Mohammed Khalil, 28, injured by a bullet to the right thigh; and
3) Du’a’ Wa’el Enmash, 2, injured by a bullet to the right foot.

In the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, 6 Palestinians, including a child and a woman, were injured due to shooting in celebration of the release of prisoners:

1) Ibrahim ‘Awad Qishta, 21, injured by a bullet to the right shoulder;
2) Ghadeer Suleiman al-Nahhal, 17, injured by a bullet to the face;
3) Mohammed Mohammed Salha, 21, injured by a bullet to the left leg;
4) Tariq Ibrahim al-Masri, 34, injured by a bullet to the left leg;
5) Rasga Sameer Kabaja, 27, injured by a bullet to the head; and
6) Khaled Hamdan al-Buhdari, 33, injured by a bullet to the back, and was transferred to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for additional medical treatment.

One could almost come to the conclusion that human life is not as valuable for Palestinian Arabs as for Israelis.

(h/t Mike)

Released terrorists quite proud of their murders

Ahlam Tamimi, one of those behind the Sbarro pizza attack and who was released in the Shalit deal, has no regrets:

And Muhammad Abu Attayah is anxious to get back to the business of killing Jews:

When they talk about "jihad" I'm sure they mean the contemplative, peaceful kind.

(h/t jzaik, Benjamin)

Ahmadinejad reiterates: There are only 10,000 Zionists

In an interview with Fareed Zakaria for CNN, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats a bizarre claim he made last week:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: People everywhere, ordinary people, what problems do they have? From the very beginning, we're against Zionists. Zionists are neither Christians nor Jewish. They have no religion. Religion is wealth and money.

Fareed Zakaria: But what do you mean by that? Every person in Israel is by definition a Zionist because they believe in a state for the Jewish people.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (through translator): No, no. Zionism is a complicated and terrible party. And to most they have 10,000 members, and 2,000 main members.

Fareed Zakaria: What does it mean to you? So what does Zionism mean? The rest – you say only 10,000 people in Israel are Zionists?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (through translator): No, I don't say they are all there. Some of them are in Europe, some of them are in the United States, and it constitutes a racist group and they consider themselves superior to others.

When he said it last week, the implication was that there are 10,000 Zionist Americans. Now we see that the number is a count of Zionists worldwide!

So it isn't, as I thought, that 0.003% of the US population controls the country. It is that 0.00014% of the world's population controls the world!

BWA-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Nominations now open for the Second Annual Hasby Awards

It is time to solicit nominations for the Second Annual Hasby Awards!

As with last year, the Hasby Awards are given for the best specific examples of Hasbara (Israel advocacy) that occurred in 2011.

You can see last year's winners here.

Good Hasbara, in my opinion, has two components: It is effective in changing people's perceptions of Israel and it reaches a large audience.

So think about the best videos, events, speeches, articles, graphics, or any other items that would qualify and write your nominations in the comments.

Last year I announced the winners live at Yeshiva University during my Hasbara 2.0 talk. If you have a venue to offer for this year's awards ceremony, let me know!

Media has lots on the prisoners, little on the terror

From the Washington Post:

A week ago, Yahya Dabassa Ibrahim was on a hunger strike, rotting away in an Israeli prison where he expected to spend the rest of his life.

But the Oct. 18 prisoner swap between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas landed the Bethlehem native in a surreal place: the Gaza Strip’s brand-new luxury hotel.

The eight-story Al-Mashtal Hotel, which opened in late July, is an oasis of fluffy white duvets, stunning ocean views, steaks cooked to perfection and sparkling swimming pools. Its splendor is startling in this blockaded territory where dozens of bombed buildings lie in ruin, heaps of garbage dot nearly every street and the Mediterranean shoreline is speckled by evidence of the tons of raw sewage dumped into the ocean every day.

As he sat in the hotel’s dimly lighted courtyard on a recent evening, Ibrahim, a convicted bombmaker, struggled to describe how dramatically his luck had changed.

Ibrahim, 50, served roughly 10 years of a life sentence. He was among the prisoners who went on a hunger strike in recent months after Israel took away certain perks, including access to television, and limited visits by relatives.

He was accused of manufacturing explosives that were used in attacks in Israeli cities, according to news reports. Ibrahim said he didn’t want to discuss the incidents that led to his incarceration, but he made it clear that he didn’t regret participating in militancy.

“We sacrificed part of our lives not to stay in hotels like these, but to liberate Palestine,” he said.

This terrorist is Yihya Ibrahim Abd al-Hafez Daamsah, who helped coordinate the Cafe Moment bombing of 2002. He was serving a life sentence. Since the Washington Post doesn't want to delve into the details of exactly why he was in prison, I will.

From Israel's MFA:

11 people were killed and 54 injured, 10 of them seriously, when a suicide bomber exploded at 22:30 PM Saturday night, March 9, 2002, in a crowded Moment cafe at the corner of Aza and Ben-Maimon streets in the Rehavia neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

The bomber walked into the cafe, located at the corner of Aza and Ben-Maimon streets about 100 meters from the prime minister's residence, and detonated a powerful explosive charge that completely gutted the restaurant.

The names of the victims:

- Limor Ben-Shoham, 27, of Jerusalem;
- Nir Rahamim Borochov, 22, of Givat Ze'ev;
- Danit Dagan, 25, of Tel-Aviv;
- Livnat Dvash, 28, of Jerusalem;
- Tali Eliyahu, 26, of Jerusalem;
- Uri Felix, 25, of Givat Ze'ev;
- Dan Imani, 23, of Jerusalem;
- Natanel Kochavi, 31, of Kiryat Ata;
- Baruch Lerner-Naor, 28, of Eli;
- Orit Ozarov, 28, of Jerusalem;
- Avraham Haim Rahamim, 29, of Jerusalem

Limor Ben Shoham	Nir Borochov	Danit Dagan	Livnat Dvash
Tali Eliyahu	Uri Felix	Dan Imani	Natanel Kochavi
Baruch Lerner-Naor	Orit Ozerov	Avraham Rahamim

(h/t Allan)

Intransigent Abbas keeps on adding preconditions to talks

From The Telegraph:

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.