Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Gay Saudi diplomat denied asylum in US

ALI Ahmed Asseri, the gay former Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles, has had his political asylum application denied by the Obama administration because of apparent fears that giving refuge to him might upset relations with the kingdom, according to Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident in Washington, D.C.

“This was a political decision by the Obama administration, who are afraid of upsetting the Saudis,” said Ahmed in a phone interview. “His initial interview with Homeland Security was very positive, but then they came back and grilled him for two days after they found out that he had worked in the public prosecutor’s office in Saudi Arabia. He had been an inspector to make sure that judicial punishments, such as lashings, were carried out within the law—not more, not less. They then accused him of participating in a form of torture,” explained Ahmed.

More than a year ago, I wrote about Asseri applying for political asylum after he claimed that the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles, where he had worked as first secretary in their legal department, found out he was gay after following him when he went out to socialize at gay bars. He told Michael Isikoff of NBC News that he feared he would be executed if he were forced to return to the kingdom, after the consulate refused to renew his diplomatic passport. The Saudi Embassy in Washington claimed at the time that Asseri’s tour of duty was over in the US, and that the Saudi government had asked him to return home.

Ahmed said that Asseri is planning to appeal the decision, and that this process could extend for several years.

Asseri has been reluctant to speak to the press, and is under medication for severe back pain. Ahmed says that he has encouraged him to do television interviews so as to publicize his plight and gain public sympathy, but that Asseri has so far refused.

It is unclear to which country Asseri would be sent to if the US government finally succeeds in denying him asylum.

The blogger later emailed to Benjamin Weinthal at JPost saying "As far as I know the US government has not yet officially commented on Asseri's denial of asylum, but from comments that I have read after I wrote my post, it seems that political asylum cases are often denied in first instance and then approved later when the applicant appeals."

Hamas not keen on Fatah's Arafat commemorations

There are reports that Hamas gunmen were ripping down signs with Yasser Arafat's picture, and arresting those who were putting them up, in Gaza on Saturday.

Similarly, Hamas factions in Lebanese camps tried to stop Fatah celebrations of Arafat's death anniversary, and boycotted the events that Fatah did put together.

Meanwhile, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said that there has still not been a meeting scheduled between Haams and Fatah leaders, and said that even if the meetings take place no one should be optimistic that a breakthrough will come as a result. He said that Mahmoud Abbas still has not fulfilled the unity agreement from May and that Hamas will refuse any elections until that agreement is implemented. He also said that there is no way that Hamas would allow Salam Fayyad to remain prime minister.

Unity!

Egyptians accusing Israel of 1997 Luxor massacre

From Wikipedia:

The Luxor Massacre refers to the killing of 62 people, mostly tourists, that took place on 17 November 1997, at Deir el-Bahri, an archaeological site and major tourist attraction located across the River Nile from Luxor in Egypt.

In the mid-morning attack, terrorists from the Islamic Group and Jihad Talaat al-Fath ("Holy War of the Vanguard of the Conquest") massacred 62 people at the attraction. The six assailants were armed with automatic firearms and knives, and disguised as members of the security forces. They descended on the Temple of Hatshepsut at around 08:45. With the tourists trapped inside the temple, the killing went on systematically for 45 minutes, during which many bodies, especially of women, were mutilated with machetes. A note praising Islam was found inside one disemboweled body.[4] The dead included a five-year-old British child and four Japanese couples on their honeymoons.[5][6]

The attackers then hijacked a bus, but ran into a checkpoint of armed Egyptian tourist police and military forces. One of the terrorists was wounded in the shootout and the rest fled into the hills where their bodies were found in a cave, apparently having committed suicide together.[7]

Now the leader of Egypt's Islamic-oriented Labor Party, Madgy Ahmed Hussein, is saying that he has discovered some secret information leaked by an unknown Egyptian official that the people behind the massacre were not Islamist. Oh, no. They were, of course, Israelis!

According to Hussein, who is running for president of Egypt, Israel was upset at Egypt's refusal to participate in the 1997 Doha economic conference, which it tied to progress in the Oslo process and somehow thought that its boycotting the conference would hurt Israel. Israel's anger at Egypt was behind the decision to massacre dozens of Egyptian tourists.

The ability to think clearly is an impediment to coming up with these sorts of theories.

He made these claims at a Labor party conference in Luxor Friday night.

Brigadier General killed in major Iran blast

From YNet:

More details emerging following explosion near Tehran: A senior officer in Iran's weapons industry was killed in Saturday's blast outside Tehran, officials in the country said.

The officer, identified as Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, held a rank parallel to brigadier general in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, the Fars news agency said. He reportedly served as a researcher at a Tehran university and headed the "Jihad Self-Reliance" unit, mostly tasked with developing arms and missiles following the embargo imposed on Iran since 1979.

Saturday's blast killed at least 17 people and wounded 16 others, some of them gravely.

A former spokesman for the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, in Washington, citing reliable sources inside Iran, said Saturday that the explosion hit the Modarres Garrison of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps west of Tehran. Alireza Jafarzadeh said the garrison belongs to the IGRC's missile unit and the blasts "resulted from the explosion of IRGC missiles."

Although Iranian reports did not refer to the possibility that the base was struck from the air, some assessments indicate that the explosion may have been the result of a military operation based on intelligence information.

WaPo adds:

The blast followed a sharp increase in recent years in explosions at industrial sites, key gas pipelines and Revolutionary Guard bases, which some here attribute to sabotage by the United States.

In October 2010, 18 servicemen were killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot on a Guard Corps base near the western city of Khorramabad.

In May, a blast at an oil refinery during a visit by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad killed four people.

Either Iran's military procedures are embarrassingly sloppy, or there has been some very effective sabotage going on.

Cars torched in anti-semitic Kristallnacht arson in Brooklyn

From CBS New York:

There’s shock and outrage in Brooklyn today after several cars were torched and numerous pieces of anti-Semitic vandalism took place in Midwood.

The incident was discovered at around 5 a.m., when residents awoke to see cars burning.

At least three cars were set ablaze and dozens of pieces of anti-Semitic graffiti were plastered along benches. The cars were damaged and the benches vandalized along Ocean Parkway between Avenues I and J. Among the vandalism: “KKK” scrawled nearby, as well as numerous swastikas.

“People are nervous, people are concerned,” Assemblyman Dov Hikind said. “The police are putting extra manpower into the community at synagogues and all over.”

The incident occurred on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Hitler’s Nazi’s launched a pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria.

“I’m used to swastikas, but three cars destroyed is a whole new dimension,” said Hikind. “Three cars completely destroyed as if someone had dropped them bomb on them is just a real tragedy.”

UPDATE 1/11/12: It might have been an elaborate insurance scam.

Latin Americans for Israel - a lot of them

From Daylife/Reuters:

Members of the movement, "Raise your voice: Peace in Holy Land", holds up a sign during a rally against the creation of a Palestinian state by unilateral decree in Tegucigalpa, November 10, 2011. The sign (C) reads, "No to the division of the State of Israel".

Who is behind this?

"Raise your Voice: Peace in the Holy Land" has a video (Spanish with English subtitles) that provides an answer:

The website for Paza en Tierra Santa is impressive - tens of thousands of people have shown their support, and it includes much of Latin America as well as Spain in its activities.

The person behind it, Dr. William Soto, last year presented a petition for the release of Gilad Shalit that contained half a million signatures!

Popular, grassroots support for Israel is not only found in the US and Canada, but also among Christians in Latin America. So much so that last year a cheesy Spanish-language music video singing the praises of Israel became a bona-fide hit, with millions of views.

There should be more publicity for this, as well as cooperation between this organization and English-language pro-Israel groups.

Nephew admits he can't prove Arafat was poisoned

I mentioned yesterday that Yasser Arafat's nephew and former "foreign minister" Nasser al Kidwa has been a broken record for years - always saying he was on the verge of proving Arafat was poisoned by Israel, and promising to be able to prove it Any Day Now.

He promised that he would release the French medical report translated to Arabic, and somehow this was considered news.

Nasser al Kidwa

Al-Qudwa says the report will answer "many questions," as it is the Palestinian people's right to get a clear answer about how Arafat died. The document has not previously been seen in Arabic.

The report by French doctors describes a platelet disorder and speculates on its cause, al-Qudwa says. The doctors ruled out cancer and an acute infection, he told Ma'an.

A third possibility was poisoning, al-Qudwa says, but the records show that doctors were unable to conclusively determine what poison, if any, was in Arafat's system.

"We have said that it is poisoning," he hinted.

There are many conditions that result in low platelet counts - including AIDS.

Anyway, this "news" - and Kidwa's allegations - are a bit old. From the New York Times, November 23, 2004:

Yasser Arafat's death remained a mystery Monday when his nephew said he could not rule out that the Palestinian leader had been poisoned.

Two hours after receiving his uncle's medical records, 558 pages long, from the French authorities, Nasser al-Kidwa told reporters that according to the files no trace of any known poison had been found in Arafat's body.

But he insisted that a "question mark" remained over the exact cause of Arafat's death Nov. 11 in Paris and was likely to remain for some time.

"We don't have proof that it was a case of poisoning, and we don't have proof that it wasn't," Kidwa, the Palestinian envoy at the United Nations, said at a news conference in the French capital.

While he stressed that Palestinian officials trusted the French doctors who treated Arafat during his last 12 days and accepted that toxicology tests ruled out any known poisons, Kidwa refused to exclude the possibility that other, unknown substances played a role in Arafat's death.

"I am not asserting anything, but we are not in a position to exclude anything," he said.

This is in contrast to comments from the Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, who said the night before Arafat died at the Percy Military Training Hospital outside Paris that doctors had ruled out poisoning "completely."

Kidwa said the truth about Arafat's death was not just a matter for one person or one family, but for all Palestinians.

"The Palestinian people have the right to know," he said, pledging to share the medical report with the Palestinian leadership "as soon as possible."

When Arafat arrived in France for treatment at the end of October, his aides disclosed that he had a low count of platelets, which aid blood clotting, and a high count of white blood cells. They later revealed that the Palestinian leader suffered a brain hemorrhage that sent him into a coma.

Medical experts say the low platelet count makes hemorrhages more likely, but it is unclear what condition caused Arafat's platelet count to be low in the first place. A wide range of illnesses, from cancer to liver disease, could be consistent with such a condition.

And today, even with all the press rehashing things we knew for seven years, Palestine Todayreports:

Kidwa said during a ceremony last night to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the death of Arafat, "We renew our conviction of the responsibility of" Israel "for poisoning Arafat, but we recognize we have failed to get a definitive answer."

So expect to see identical news stories next year, and the year after....

Egypt closes Pyramids in fear of Jewish Masonic numerology plot

Just - wow:

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) closed the Great Pyramids on Friday after protesters said various groups, among them Jews, planned to attend a numerologist ceremony on the Giza Plateau.

Egyptian media reported that some Egyptians feared that the event would be used by Jewish Masons to reclaim the Pyramids as ancient Hebrew structures, denying Egyptians their claim to the pharaonic monuments.

One SCA employee claimed that a crew of 1,200 Jews were planning to attend the event, crowning the mightiest of the three structures with a Star of David in order to assert the claim that Jewish slaves built the pyramids, and not the ancient Egyptians, Egyptian daily Al Ahram reported.

Former SCA Secretary General Abdel Halim Noureddin told Al Ahram Jewish Masons have been trying to cap the Great Pyramid since 1931 with the Jewish emblem, so this instance should not be surprising.

According to a report from British daily the Telegraph, a Polish numerologist group had, in fact, received permission from the Egyptian government to hold a ceremony at the pyramids in order to protect the world from "cosmic forces" aimed at destroying Earth next year.

The resulting commotion surrounding the event, including the attendance of Jewish Masons, pushed the SCA to cancel the event, called the "Ceremony of Love."

I really have to start a new site just to feed wild rumors to the Arab press. Who needs an air force- we can get them to do whatever we want by just planting a few well-chosen stories.

(h/t Amiyena)

Palestine Today reports about how Gaza terrorists are unanimous in their anger at Israel for threatening Iran's nuclear program.

A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, called the threats a "Zionist orgy" taking place with no international criticism.

He re-affirmed that "the Zionist occupation and their threats are the real reason for the instability and chaos in the region and the entire Middle East."

Islamic Jihad's Sheikh Nafez Azzam said that it was a form of bullying and that Israel is holding world peace hostage with its actions.

The PFLP's Kayed al-Ghoul said that "Zionist threats prove once again that the [Zionist] colonial project is intended to provide support of capitalism in the region, and to keep the Muslim nations under control in order to plunder their resources. These threats prove that the so-called statelet (Israel) is a tool of the U.S. administration in the region." He also said that Israel aims to punish Iran for its support for the resistance forces in Gaza and Lebanon.

If these exact words were chanted by the "human microphones" at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations - no one would blink.

UNESCO complains about an Israeli editorial cartoon

UNESCO has made a formal complaint to Israel - about an editorial cartoon in Ha'aretz!

Israel's ambassador to UNESCO didn't know whether to laugh or cry when a senior official at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization called him in for a tongue-lashing on Wednesday. The reason? A cartoon published in Haaretz.

The November 4 cartoon, a riff on the government's anger at UNESCO's decision to accept Palestine as a full member, showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak sending an air force squadron to attack Iran, with Netanyahu ordering, "And on your way back, you're gonna hit the UNESCO office in Ramallah!"

When he met with Eric Falt, UNESCO's assistant director general for external relations and public information, Ambassador Nimrod Barkan was stunned to be handed a copy of this cartoon and an official letter of protest from UNESCO's director general, Irina Bokova. Falt told Barkan the cartoon constituted incitement.

"A cartoon like this endangers the lives of unarmed diplomats, and you have an obligation to protect them," Falt said, according to an Israeli source. "We understand that there is freedom of the press in Israel, but the government must prevent attacks on UNESCO."

Barkan pointed out that the government has no control over editorial cartoons printed in the papers. "Ask yourselves what you did to make a moderate paper with a deeply internationalist bent publish such a cartoon," he suggested. "Perhaps the problem is with you."

After Barkan reported the conversation to the Foreign Ministry, it cabled back: "What exactly does UNESCO want of us - to send our fine boys to protect UNESCO's staff, or to shut down the paper? It seems your work environment is getting more and more reminiscent of 'Animal Farm.'"

I could be wrong, but I interpreted the cartoon as being against striking Iran by pointing out the absurdity of an airstrike on UNESCO "on the way back" - meaning it is the exact opposite of incitement. Or perhaps the cartoonist was against what he felt was Israel's disproportionate reaction to UNESCO accepting "Palestine" as a member.

Either way, it appears that the Islamic-dominated UNESCO is teaching that organization how to properly react to cartoons that they find distasteful.

Another possibility is that now that UNESCO is now including Hamas as part of the "unity" Palestinian Arab delegation, perhaps they think that since at least one of their members has no problem attacking UN facilities when it serves their purposes, all of their members must be the same.

You know, equality.

Or maybe now that UNESCO is hurting financially,they just want some free security provided by Israel.

Egyptians say that gas pipeline bombs came from...Israel!

Egypt's Rose el-Youssef newspaper is reporting that Egyptian security sources are linking the latest gas pipeline bomb to a fugitive Egyptian businessman who had strong ties with Israel before the Egyptian revolution.

Hussein Salem is co-owner of the East Mediterranean Gas Company and was a close friend of Mubarak. He helped broker the agreement to sell gas to Israel and is not a popular person in Egypt because of that. He is being tried in abstentia for siphoning off billions in the deal. He is currently being held in Spain.

Nevertheless, Egyptian security sources have spun a theory where Salem instructed his people to sabotage the gas line so he can sue Egypt and recover the millions of dollars he loses for not being able to send gas to Israel. Salem's Israeli business partner, Yossi Meiman, is said to be involved in the scheme where the sophisticated explosives came from Israel, presumably smuggled over the border by Israeli Bedouin.

Hamas confirms this theory, telling Egyptian security officials that they do not have the type of explosives that were used in the bombing, and saying it must have come from Israel.

Well, there you have it!

Who wants peace? And who doesn't? (video)

A good one:

Gaza children have really crappy amusement parks

Gaza children celebrated Eid al Adha in an amusement park in Gaza City - but they didn't look happy about it.

They know that their amusement parks aren't nearly as good as Disney World or Six Flags. So while their parents try hard to buy them cheap toys to make them happy, they know, deep down, that their amusement parks are really crappy.

Flotillas are desperately needed to bring decent roller coasters, log flumes and teacup rides to the impoverished sector. Otherwise, Gaza children are forced to take junky rides like this one.

This is what an open-air prison amusement park looks like, and it isn't pretty.

But you must force yourself to look at the horror and see what the reality is for Gaza children - every day.

Call Viva Palestina, ISM and Free Gaza to ask how you can help improve Gaza's amusement parks. Because, otherwise, it is a crime against humanity.

And if anyone gets killed because a ride is not maintained properly, it is a slow genocide against all Gaza kids.

Iranian anti-semitic film trailer - translated

I mentioned earlier this week an anti-semitic Iranian film, and uploaded the trailer to YouTube.

MEMRI now has a translation, and it is even worse than it appeared.

Title: "Saturday Hunter"

Woman: I am Jacqueline, your beautiful nurse.

Cut to another scene

Rabbi Hanan to grandson Benjamin: You should be grateful to God that He did not create us as women.

Cut to another scene

Rabbi Hanan to woman: In order to fend off immorality, I hereby purify this woman.

Cut to another scene

Rabbi Hanan: This is the rule of Hanan.

Cut to another scene

Rabbi Hanan: Marry me.

Woman: I can't.

Rabbi Hanan: I will buy you God's paradise for all eternity.

God, shave all our sins away from our skins and our bones.

Woman: But I am a Christian. I don't understand the Jews.

Rabbi Hanan: We don't insist on religious women.

Cut to another scene

Title: "Saturday Hunter"

Rabbi Hanan to Arab: We are the children of Abraham. Now, who are you?

Cut to another scene

Benjamin: In the Holy Book it is written that killing is forbidden.

Rabbi Hanan: You idiot, the killing of Jews is forbidden.

We seek peace.

Footage of battlefield

We are civilized people

Footage of battlefield

This is war, you infidels. Don't you get it? It's war.

Footage of battlefield

The whole world is waiting for you in silence.

Benjamin: Oh, God!

Rabbi Hanan: God waits for you in silence as well.

Footage of battlefield

Rabbi Hanan: You must not betray the Jews.

Palestinian: I never want to taste failure or humiliation.

There is nowhere for you to flee. They will kill you.

Cut to another scene

Rabbi Hanan: Never reveal your inner thoughts to anyone.