Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 18, 2011

Muslim Brotherhood going public in Libya

Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood, repressed under the regime of fallen strongman Muammar Qaddafi, has opened its first public congress inside the country for almost 25 years.

“This is a historic day for us and for the Libyan people,” its leader Suleiman Abdelkader told AFP at the opening late Thursday of the three-day congress in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Brotherhood officials said it was their first public meeting inside Libya in almost quarter of a century, although it met underground during Qaddafi’s rule for fear of reprisals or held their congress abroad.

The meeting of about 700 people was at a wedding hall in Benghazi, the eastern city where the revolt against Qaddafi began.

Officials of Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council, including Islamic Affairs Minister Salem el-Sheikli and Defense Minister Jalal al-Degheili, attended the opening in Benghazi.

The congress was due to elect a leader and discuss strategy, notably whether to form a political party, said Abdelkader.

The Brotherhood supports the idea of a “civil” state but founded on Islamic values, he said. “This country belongs to all its people and everybody must participate in its construction.”

As Libya emerges from a bloody civil war, many observers believe the next elections could pit religious political groups against secular parties, with better-organized Islamists such as the Brotherhood having a tactical advantage.

After so many years of secrecy, they said they were eager to show the Libyan public that there was nothing sinister about their group ̶ an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, that country's most popular and organized political force.

“There’s nothing secret. We’re not planning to destroy the country,” said Abdou Majid Saleh Musbah, 56, an engineer from Tripoli who joined the movement in 1979.

Just to make it Islamist.

City of David, then and now

Dan tweeted me with this wonderful photographic comparison of how the City of David looked in 1915 and how it looks today (actually 2005), from the BiblePlaces.com site:

View from Southwest, ca. 1915
Photo from the Jerusalem volume of the American Colony and Eric Matson Collection/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-matpc-05424.

View from Southwest, August 23, 2005

The Matson Collection has tens of thousands of beautiful old photos of the Land of Israel, some of them with astonishing clarity. It would be a wonderful project for any Israelis who are reading this to match the photos, duplicating the vantage point as was done here. I'd happily publish them.

Honestly, it would make a great coffee-table book!

UPDATE: For those who want to see photographs Silwan when the only people who lived there were Jews, go here.

USS Liberty tapes released by Israel's Channel 2

From Egypt's Al Masry al Youm:

Forty-four years after Israeli pilots bombed the American ship USS Liberty during the 1967 War, an Israeli news outlet Wednesday evening revealed purported evidence that the bombing was accidental.

According to the report, the pilots carried out the attack, killing 34 American seamen and injuring dozens more, because they mistook the American ship for an Egyptian vessel.

Although both Israeli and American reports previously concluded that the attack was an accident, some speculation persists that the bombing was deliberate.

The incident, widely remembered as the greatest crisis ever to have occurred between Israel and its long-time ally America, happened on the third day of the war, while Israel was fighting Egypt in the Sinai and Jordan in the West Bank.

Israel’s Channel 2 aired an audio tape purportedly proving that an Israeli pilot involved in the attack, as well as someone working in the squadron’s control tower, believed that the ship was Egyptian.

The control tower is recorded as directing a pilot to bomb the “Egyptian” target, but the pilot reports back shortly after the bombing that he thinks he saw an American flag on the ship’s staff. The control tower repeatedly directs him to circle back and confirm what he saw. Another clip has the control tower giving rescuers instructions about what to do with the sailors – depending on whether they turn out to speak English or Arabic.

“Within a short time, the sense intensified that the attack was a tragic mistake against Israel’s greatest friend, where Israeli pilots attacked an American supply ship,” the channel’s news caster reports.

According to the station, the tapes come from an American spy plane that happened to be circling above at the time, recording the conversation as it took place between the pilot and the control tower. However, the report does not explain how the news network got their hands on the tapes, nor does it seek to explain why the tapes are emerging only now, 44 years after the incident occurred.

Following the bombing, the damaged boat made its way to an American naval base in Malta, and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol apologized to American President Johnson. Israel agreed to compensate the injured and the families of those killed to the tune of several million dollars, even though it declined to take responsibility for the incident – a fact which the report says “contributed to the proliferation of conspiracy theories regarding the affair.”

“The tapes decisively reveal that the incident was an accident,” it concludes.

The NSA released three tapes showing the same facts - and their English translations - years ago.

However, I do not believe that there was any indication earlier that any Israeli pilot thought he had seen the US flag, so this looks like it is indeed a new tape.

(h/t Yoel)

Pro-PalArab writer tacitly admits the UN is corrupt

The Sydney Morning Herald has an amazing op-ed by Richard Woolcott, former Australian ambassador to the UN.

Our national interest requires a rethink on the Middle East.

The importance of Australia's candidature for election next October as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term (2013-14) should be better understood and supported by our politicians and the Australian public.

Unfortunately, our prospects have been undermined by our recent vote against Palestine's admission to the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

...Putting it bluntly, I consider that if we again vote against Palestinian ''statehood'' when it comes to the General Assembly, we are most unlikely to be elected to the council. At worst we should abstain.

...We can and should win a seat on the Security Council. But I fear we will be defeated again, as we were in 1996, if we continue to vote against upgrading Palestinian representation, especially when it comes before the General Assembly. This will be a matter for regret and it will not be in our national interest.

Woolcott is saying that the UN decides on UNSC membership based in no small part on their anti-Israel attitude!

This year, Lebanon is the head of the UNSC. A state that is effectively ruled by a terror group whose very raison d'etre is the destruction of another UN member state has no problem obtaining a leadership position at the Security Council. But Western states who support a liberal democracy in the Middle East and who are reticent about unilaterally strengthening a corrupt entity that has no defined borders or population (part of the very definition of a state to begin with) must toe the anti-Israel line in order to get ahead at the UN.

We must thank Woolcott, a UN insider, for exposing how deeply corrupt and systemically anti-Israel the UN is.

(Mark Leibler answers Woolcott here.)

(h/t Ian)

My mail is down

For some reason my main Yahoo mail account is not working and has not been working since yesterday evening. If you need to send me something, or you did send something since last night, please resend to elderofziyon -at- gmail.com .

On the good side...it's Friday.

A small example of muddled anti-Zionist thinking

Just in case anyone thinks that the "Russell Tribunal" that I mentioned yesterday has any objectivity whatsoever, here is a paragraph from their London final report:

Israeli corporations are world leaders (with significant turnovers) in developing weapons technology, which is used during military operations against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, such as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) developed by Elbit Systems. A significant number of foreign states, including EU and western states, procure Israeli weapons technology, such as the UAVs (for instance Australia, France, Canada, UK, Sweden and USA). Recent evidence suggests that drone attacks may involve high civilian deaths in military operations. For instance, a 2009 report published by the Brookings Institution, suggested that it was difficult to confirm civilian deaths in drone attacks, but that reports suggest that for every one military target killed it results in approximately 10 civilian deaths.

Israel is a leader in drone technology. Other countries buy Israeli drones. Other countries may accidentally kill many civilians with drones - Israeli or otherwise.

Therefore, the tribunal broadly implies, Israel is responsible for the deaths of everyone killed by every drone worldwide! Otherwise what is the relevance of mentioning the Brookings report?

And if you look at the Brookings report itself, you see that they were talking only about targeted drone killings by the US in Pakistan. And the author concludes that the reason for the poor record is not because targeted killings by drones are inherently problematic:

To reduce casualties, superb intelligence is necessary. Operators must know not only where the terrorists are, but also who is with them and who might be within the blast radius. This level of surveillance may often be lacking, and terrorists' deliberate use of children and other civilians as shields make civilian deaths even more likely.

Now, since the escalation in rocket attacks at the end of October Israel has killed some 16 terrorists in Gaza with targeted drone attacks - and not one civilian. And while their record is not always perfect, at the time this report was written it was well documented that it was far better than a 10:1 ratio of civilian to terrorist deaths.

Moreover,if you accept the logic of the report, any country that manufactures drones should share the blame for every civilian death, since there is no indication in the Brookings report that Israeli drones were used in Pakistan.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce the latest attack drone - from the United Arab Emirates:

Emirati group Adcom Systems introduced an armed drone at the Dubai Airshow on Thursday, developed at a time when many military powers continue to import the unmanned aircraft increasingly used in warfare.

The MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) plane should begin testing in early December and be available to customers in February, Ali al-Dhaheri, the president of the Abu Dhabi-based company, told AFP.

The device, known as United 40, can carry eight 60-kilometre (37-miles) range “Nemrod” missiles in its fuselage. Those are also developed by Adcom and are to be tested in January.

Adcom Systems, a conglomerate of 37 companies, mainly manufactures drones used for air force training.

Dhaheri stressed that the technology for the United 40 was developed by his company.

“All systems are ours. We are a leading innovator in aerodynamics,” he said.

My, my. What would the "tribunal" say to this?

This tiny example shows how deeply anti-Zionist hate affects people. You can be sure that the "tribunal" tried very hard to make their report seem as unbiased as possible, carefully choosing their words to forestall any accusations of them having an agenda. Yet they are so blinded by their seething hate for the Jewish state that they wouldn't even notice how untenable their words are.

And last night a book based on the London joke of a tribunal was released at an event that was filled with people who share that hate.

Israelis mapping every grave in Mount of Olives

From AP:

A Jewish group in Jerusalem is using 21st-century technology to map every tombstone in the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, a sprawling, politically sensitive necropolis of 150,000 graves stretching back three millennia.

The goal is to photograph every grave, map it digitally, record every name, and make the information available online. That is supposed to allow visitors to find their way in the cemetery, long a bewildering jumble of crumbling gravestones and rubble surrounded by Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Beset for many years by neglect, it is among the oldest cemeteries in continuous use in the world.

Around 40,000 graves have been mapped so far by the team, which began work in 2008. They expect to finish recording all of the intact gravestones -- an estimated 100,000 in total -- by the end of next year. The rest are either so old they are unrecognizable or lie underneath later layers of burial.

Mappers look at aerial photographs, consult handwritten burial records dating back to the mid-1800s, walk along the rows of graves and dig through piles of dislocated tombstones, noting names and dates.

"This place has been used for burial since there have been signs of life in Jerusalem," said Moti Shamis, a member of the mapping team. "The cemetery is a mirror of the city -- in wartime, we see more graves. When new groups of Jews reach the city, the names on the graves change."

Like so much in Jerusalem, this project is linked to the city's fraught politics. The mappers are from an organization called Elad, affiliated with the settlement movement, which also works to move Jews into east Jerusalem in an attempt to prevent the city's division in any future peace deal.

Elad has made it its business to develop sites of Jewish importance in east Jerusalem, reinforcing the Israeli presence in the part of the city the Palestinians want as their capital.

Jews began burying their dead on the hill that later became known as the Mount of Olives about three millennia ago. It was a convenient site a short walk from the city walls. Over the centuries, burial here became linked to a prophecy in the Book of Zecharia according to which the Messiah would approach Jerusalem from the mount, splitting it in two. Those interred on the hill, this belief posited, would be the first to be resurrected.

The mount became, and remains, a sought-after place to be buried for Jews in Israel and abroad.

"As a place of burial it differs from almost every other on earth, in being, as no other is, a witness to a faith that is firm, decided and uncompromising until death," wrote Norman Macleod, a missionary, after a visit in 1864. "It is not therefore the vast multitude who sleep here, but the faith which they held in regard to their Messiah, that makes this spectacle so impressive."

The project is mapping only the Jewish cemetery, which includes several burial monuments from the time of the second Jewish Temple, about 2,000 years ago. Among the oldest graves that still bear names is one of a medieval scholar, Ovadia of Bartenura, an Italian who came to Jerusalem and died here around 1500.

The work of the mappers has solved several mysteries, one of them that of the missing grave of Shmuel Ben-Bassat.

Ben-Bassat was a soldier who died in combat in the war that surrounded Israel's creation in 1948. He was buried on Jan. 14 of that year, before Jewish forces lost the cemetery, along with the rest of east Jerusalem, to the Jordanian army.

For the next 19 years Jordan controlled the cemetery, paving over part of it to build a road, using gravestones to pave paths in a nearby military camp and abandoning the rest to disrepair. When Israel recaptured the Mount of Olives in 1967, the soldier's family could find no trace of him.

Going through old burial records as part of the new project, the mapping team discovered a note saying he had been interred "next to Gader Gurjis and in front of Deborah, the widow of Reuven Mirabi." Those graves still existed. Ben-Bassat now has a military gravestone.
...
Elsewhere in the cemetery lies Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the man responsible more than any other for reviving Hebrew as a spoken language, and a national hero in Israel. He was buried here in 1922. Nearby is Menahem Begin, buried in 1992 in a modest grave that makes no mention of the fact that he was Israel's prime minister.

Begin requested burial here, rather than in the country's national cemetery alongside other Israeli leaders, because he wanted to be close to two fighting comrades who killed themselves with grenades moments before they were to be hanged by the British in a Jerusalem prison in 1947.

AP fails to mention that Arabs continue to vandalize Jewish graves at Har HaZeitim today. The most recent incident was on November 6 with at least five tombstones smashed. This website has photos and videos documenting the destruction of graves happening now (including Arabic graffiti.) Much of the recent desecration is documented in this video created by an organization dedicated to protecting the ancient holy site:

The Mount of Olives - Har HaZeitim - is one of those areas on the east side of the Green Line that must remain under Jewish control. We saw how Jordan desecrated it during the 19 anomalous years that part of Jerusalem was Judenrein, and we see how Arabs will go out of their way to desecrate it today, with the tacit encouragement of the PA.

The project to map the graves is very important. The project to protect it from Arab vandals is even more vital. But most important of all is to ensure that this hallowed ground where so many luminaries are buried remains, forever, in Jewish hands.

Saudi religious police may force women to cover their sexy eyes

Bikya Masr reports:

Women with sexy eyes in Saudi Arabia may be forced to cover them up, according to the spokesperson of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) in the conservative Gulf kingdom.

Spokesman of the Ha’eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet said the committee has the right to stop a women whose eyes seem “tempting” and order her to cover them immediately.

Saudi women are already forced to wear a loose black dress and to cover their hair and in some areas, their face, while in public or face fines or sometimes worse, including public lashings.

The announcement came days after the Saudi newspaper al-Watan reported that a Saudi man was admitted to a hospital after a fight with a member of the committee when he ordered his wife to cover her eyes. The husband was then stabbed twice in the hand.

Wouldn't it be more efficient to just gouge their eyes out when they are born? It's not like they'll ever have to drive or anything....

Israel's (formerly) secret electronic war plans

Eli Lake at the Daily Beast reports on Israel's ability to wage cyberwar and attack infrastructure electronically.

It's very interesting, but do we really want Iran to know this stuff?

For much of the last decade, as Iran methodically built its nuclear program, Israel has been assembling a multibillion-dollar array of high-tech weapons that would allow it to jam, blind, and deafen Tehran's defenses in the case of a pre-emptive aerial strike.

A U.S. intelligence assessment this summer, described to The Daily Beast by current and former U.S. intelligence officials, concluded that any Israeli attack on hardened nuclear sites in Iran would go far beyond airstrikes from F-15 and F-16 fighter planes and likely include electronic warfare against Iran’s electric grid, Internet, cellphone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers.

For example, Israel has developed a weapon capable of mimicking a maintenance cellphone signal that commands a cell network to “sleep,” effectively stopping transmissions, officials confirmed. The Israelis also have jammers capable of creating interference within Iran’s emergency frequencies for first responders.

In a 2007 attack on a suspected nuclear site at al-Kibar, the Syrian military got a taste of this warfare when Israeli planes “spoofed” the country’s air-defense radars, at first making it appear that no jets were in the sky and then in an instant making the radar believe the sky was filled with hundreds of planes.

Israel also likely would exploit a vulnerability that U.S. officials detected two years ago in Iran's big-city electric grids, which are not “air-gapped”—meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack—officials say.

A highly secretive research lab attached to the U.S. joint staff and combatant commands, known as the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), discovered the weakness in Iran’s electrical grid in 2009, according to one retired senior military intelligence officer. This source also said the Israelis have the capability to bring a denial-of-service attack to nodes of Iran’s command and control system that rely on the Internet.

Tony Decarbo, the executive officer for JWAC, declined comment for this story. The likely delivery method for the electronic elements of this attack would be an unmanned aerial vehicle the size of a jumbo jet. An earlier version of the bird was called the Heron, the latest version is known as the Eitan. According to the Israeli press, the Eitan can fly for 20 straight hours and carry a payload of one ton. Another version of the drone, however, can fly up to 45 straight hours, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

Unmanned drones have been an integral part of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, gathering intelligence and firing missiles at suspected insurgents. But Israel's fleet has been specially fitted for electronic warfare, according to officials.

The Eitans and Herons would also likely be working with a special Israeli air force unit known as the Sky Crows, which focuses only on electronic warfare. A 2010 piece in The Jerusalem Post quoted the commander of the electronic warfare unit as saying, “Our objective is to activate our systems and to disrupt and neutralize the enemy’s systems.”

Palestinian Arab welfare, 1958

From AP, July 31, 1958:

This reporter only interviewed those in refugee camps.

There were actually tens of thousands who did get jobs in Iraq, Kuwait and other Gulf states, and have lived there for decades. But their Arab host countries refuse to give them citizenship even if they were born there and will die there.

Hundreds of thousands were expelled from Kuwait after the first Gulf War and tens of thousands were chased out of Iraq after the second.

And over a million more were stripped of their Jordanian citizenship in 1988.

Because they are so useful as pawns against Israel, you can be sure that the intractable refugee problem of 1958 will never be solved as long as Arab nations refuse to grant the Arabs of Palestinian origin the same rights of naturalization they grant every other Arab. This apartheid system is part of the legal codes of these countries and no one is bothered by it because it serves the political purposes of Arab leaders.

The only people being screwed are the Palestinian Arabs themselves, and who cares about them? Certainly not their so-called leaders. Certainly not any of the NGOs that pretend to love them so much. Certainly not Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Certainly not the UN, and (at least since 1960) certainly not UNRWA.

After all, only one nation welcomed their Palestinian Arab refugees as full citizens after 1948, and as we all know, that country is guilty of apartheid.

PA jails man for "cursing God" (corrected)

Ma'an Arabic reports that a man was arrested for "cursing God" during an argument with his father in Qalqilya.

According to Article (273) of the Jordanian Penal Code No. 16 of 1960 that the West Bank uses as the basis for its laws, this offense is punishable for 1 to 3 years in prison.

The entire code is interesting - it is the same one that is lenient for honor killings that was supposedly modified by Abbas.

Other laws:

Breaking the fast during Ramadan - up to one month in prison.
Desecrating or destroying any place of worship with intent to insult that religious group (not only Islamic) - between one month and two years in prison.
Publishing something that insults religion - up to three months in prison.
Publicly insulting religion in speech - 1-6 months in prison.

Any lawyers want to go after the many insults to Judaism and Christianity we've seen there over the years?

(CORRECTION: I originally made a mistake and reported this as happening in Gaza. h/t StamEhad.)

A little anti-semitism from Belgium

The secretary-general of the Belgian teacher's union wrote an interesting letter to the editor of the Jewish News:

The Palestinian people have just stirred. A small minority thought it could not. Fortunately [they became] a member of UNESCO. [In response, Israel] suddenly decided to expand the settlements.

If this is their response, I will be happy as a union leader ACOD to put the situation of Jewish schools in Antwerp under the spotlight. I fear you are going to be scared.

Hugo Deckers,
General Secretary ACOD

This prompted the Jewish News to remind Belgians that teachers in Jewish schools have nothing to do with Israeli policy and that they have the right to hold opinions that may be contrary to those of Mr. Deckers.

A Jewish organization in Belgium gave a sarcastic response:

Let us say immediately that in our view, Mr. Deckers certainly has nothing against the Jewish students. But, given his duties, what else could he do? Had he been in charge of agriculture he would have attacked the Jewish farmers. Nothing personal!

...If he was aware of wrongdoing [the Jewish schools] have committed, is he not guilty of waiting for Israel to increase its colonies before denouncing them?

The union distanced themselves from his comments and Decker ended up apologizing.

It seems a shame, though, that I did not see any comment from the Belgian Jewish community actually defending the right of Israel to build in its capital city. Both articles took pains to distance the Belgian Jews from Israeli actions, with the subtext being that the actions themselves are indeed embarrassing and problematic.

While this might indeed be the opinion of the Jewish leaders in Belgium, this could be a manifestation of a deeper fear that Belgian and other European Jews have in expressing their political opinions publicly. They know that they would be subject to anti-semitic attacks if they were too forthright in supporting Israel.

More recently, Belgium's Pax Christi called for the boycott of Israeli goods like Osem snacks - specifically in Jewish neighborhoods.

(h/t Rudi)

The wonderful UN (video)

The Land of Israel group has produced another entertaining video.

(h/t Mike)

From Fox NY:

A vandal altered a sign at a subway station in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn to make it read "Avenue Jew," according to Assemblyman Dov Hikind. A subway rider saw the graffiti, photographed it, and contacted Hikind's office.

The photo shows the letters "e" and "w" in blue spray paintin at the end of the "J" in the Avenue J sign. The station is located at the intersection of Avenue J and East 16th Street.

Police removed the sign and are investigating it as a possible bias incident, according to a news release from Hikind's office. But the NYPD has not confirmed that information.

"Education and vigilance are our only weapons in fighting against this blatant hatred," the Brooklyn Democrat said in a statement. "We must send a message to those who perpetrate these vile acts that we will not tolerate their behavior. These cowards need to know that we will find them wherever they lurk, and when we do, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law."

The station is in Midwood, the same section of Brooklyn where someone torched several cars and scrawled anti-Semitic and racist graffiti last week.

Midwood has a large Jewish population and is home to several orthodox synagogues.

I don't find this so offensive; actually I think it is kind of funny. The word "Jew" is not an epithet. When people like Dov Hikind (who certainly tirelessly fights for the Jewish community in Brooklyn) start acting as if the word Jew without any context is automatically offensive, that is a much bigger problem to me.

Put it this way: a proud but misguided Jewish kid could have done this, too.

This is not to minimize the recent, horrific anti-semitic attacks in Midwood (attacks that the "progressive Jewish left" like MJ Rosenberg, Max Blumenthal and the 972mag crowd were silent about, as they instead tweeted endlessly about their anarchist heroes at Occupy Wall Street.) There is a definite problem that needs to be addressed.

But this graffito* is not necessarily it.

*Yes, I couldn't resist being pedantic.

(h/t DoZ)