Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Israeli dancing group dropped from festival after refusing to change their name

From Australia's J-Wire:

A Melbourne Israeli Dancing group was dropped from participating in a Victorian dance festival after refusing organisers’ moves to drop all references to Israel.

The Machol Israeli Dancing Club was scheduled to appear at Multicultural Folk Dance Festival of High Country in the Victorian country town of Mansfield earlier this month.

The festival was organised under the auspices of the Victorian Multicultural Commission and a grant had been awarded to Marta Balan who according to a submission to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission approved the performance of the Machol Group.

When the participants’ names were released, Esther Blumenthal-Skop of Machol was surprised to learn that the name of the Machol Israeli Dancing Club had been truncated to Machol Group and all references to Israel had been removed with the club being described as a Jewish dance group.

No change had been made to other groups including Chinese, Hungarian, Armenaian and Ukrarnian Traditional Folk Dances and the Irish Reel and Jigs.

In her submission to VEOHRC, Blumenthal-Skop said she asked for an explanation and was told that the organiser would not be held responsible for consequences if the words “Israel” or “Israeli” were used to describe the group.

The submission states that Ms Balan agreed to the original wording but within hours Machol was told that choreographers had decided that the dance bracket was not suitable for the event…and that the artistic director was not made aware of this and was surprised at Machol’s non-appearance at the final rehearsal.

Chairman of VEOHRC John Searle told J-Wire: “The matter is now in the hands of the Victorian Muliticultural Commission and we await their findings.”

Here is a perfect case of where anti-Zionism is just as ugly and disgraceful as traditional anti-semitism is - but it cannot be called anti-semitism.

I really have to revive my attempt to get the word misoziony to be used for cases like this. I never liked "Zionophobia." It isn't fear of Israel - it is hate.

(h/t IsraelAwareness)

New Second Temple find causes Arabs to imply it was a myth

From Israel's MFA:

Who built the Temple Mount walls? Every tour guide and every student grounded in the history of Jerusalem will immediately reply that it was Herod. However, in the archaeological excavations alongside the ancient drainage channel of Jerusalem a very old ritual bath (miqwe) was recently discovered that challenges the conventional archaeological perception which regards Herod as being solely responsible for its construction.

In an excavation beneath the paved street near Robinson's Arch, sections of the Western Wall's foundation were revealed that is set on the bedrock - which is also the western foundation of Robinson's Arch - an enormous arch that bore a staircase that led from Jerusalem's main street to the entrance of the Temple Mount compound.

According to Professor Reich, "It became apparent during the course of the work that there are rock-hewn remains of different installations on the natural bedrock, including cisterns, ritual baths and cellars. These belonged to the dwellings of a residential neighborhood that existed there before King Herod decided to enlarge the Temple Mount compound. The Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of that period, writes that Herod embarked on the project of enlarging the compound in the eighteenth year of his reign (that is in 22 BCE) and described it as "the largest project the world has ever heard of".

When it was decided to expand the compound, the area was confiscated and the walls of the buildings were demolished down to the bedrock. The rock-cut installations were filled with earth and stones so as to be able to build on them. When the locations of the Temple Mount corners were determined and work was begun setting the first course of stone in place, it became apparent that one of the ritual baths was situated directly in line with the Western Wall. The builders filled in the bath with earth, placed three large flat stones on the soil and built the first course of the wall on top of this blockage.

While sifting the soil removed from inside the sealed ritual bath, three clay oil lamps were discovered of a type that was common in the first century CE. In addition, the sifting also yielded seventeen bronze coins that can be identified.

Dr. Donald Ariel, curator of the numismatic collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority, determined that the latest coins (4 in all) were struck by the Roman procurator of Judea, Valerius Gratus, in the year 17/18 CE. This means that Robinson's Arch, and possibly a longer part of the Western Wall, were constructed after this year - that is to say: at least twenty years after Herod's death (which is commonly thought to have occurred in the year 4 BCE).

This bit of archaeological information illustrates the fact that the construction of the Temple Mount walls and Robinson's Arch was an enormous project that lasted decades and was not completed during Herod's lifetime.

This dramatic find confirms Josephus' descriptions which state that it was only during the reign of King Agrippa II (Herod's great-grandson) that the work was finished, and upon its completion there were eight to ten thousand unemployed in Jerusalem.

Palestine News Network had this as the top story. While the article is pretty accurate, here was their headline:

New archeological discoveries undermine the narrative about the Jewish temple in Jerusalem

It will be recalled that the PA has said that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem at all.

(h/t Yoel)

Anti-semitic crimes so prevalent in US, they aren't reported

From Bella at It's Complicated:

When, almost two weeks ago, a particularly serious anti-Jewish hate crime was committed in Brooklyn, the NY Times first reported it only in it's Metro section blog and then sat on the story for a full weekend before doing a follow up. In the meantime both NY tabloids, The Daily News and The NY Post reported it throughout the weekend as a matter of urgency. But they're just tabloids.

Coincidentally, I happened to be perusing the Southern Poverty Law Center's website and was surprised to discover that Antisemitism is not listed as a specific 'ideology' (apart from Holocaust Denial) in its Intelligence Files. I found that rather confusing and wrote to Mark Potok asking for an explanation. He very graciously responded with a phone call and explained that because Antisemitism is to be found among just about every hate group/ideology -- from Left to Right -- it cannot be made to fit into SPLC's morphology. What I heard was that Antisemitism is so ubiquitous in our society that somehow it defies categorization.

So prevalent, so expected is it in our society that the press barely mentions it when, as Jeffrey Goldberg posted today, the FBI reports that crimes against Jews qua Jews tops the list of all religion-based crimes in the US. That is, 65.4% are committed against Jews, as opposed to, for example, 13.2% against Muslims.

This gets us back to Mark Potok of SPLC, who cited, in an Huffington Post article, a 50% increase in hate-crimes against Muslims, but, as Goldberg remarks, didn't mention anti-Jewish crimes. I guess that just doesn't rate a mention.

I don't know the reason that anti-Muslim hate crimes spiked this year. I do have a couple of observations, though.

In a "Caution to Users," the FBI warns against drawing conclusions about hate crimes from one year to the next:

Some data in this publication may not be comparable to those in prior editions of Hate Crime Statistics because of differing levels of participation from year to year.

When Muslims want to report hate crime or violations of civil rights, they can find a link off of the main page of the CAIR website to a form they can fill out. I assume that CAIR works pro-actively to report these to relevant law-enforcement agencies as bias crimes. I am not aware of any similarly widely-available method for Jews to report anti-semitic crimes.

The ADL has reports on anti-Muslim hate crimes. CAIR has a few mentions of specific anti-semitic acts but it seems perfunctory.

And the CAIR site has this interesting part about Islamophobia:

Islamophobia has resulted in the general and unquestioned acceptance of the following:

Islam is monolithic and cannot adapt to new realities.

Islam does not share common values with other major faiths.

Islam as a religion is inferior to the West. It is archaic, barbaric and irrational.

Islam is a religion of violence and supports terrorism.

Islam is a violent political ideology.[i]

As such any criticism by Muslims of American policy towards the Muslim world is dismissed as being “reactionary,” “anti-Semitic” and “irrational.”

In this short section, CAIR shows that it has an even more simplistic and dismissive view of their critics than the critics have of Muslims!

(h/t O)

Rifts re-appearing between Hamas leadership

AFP reports:

President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal will meet in Cairo this week despite the unrest rocking Egypt, Hamas and Fatah officials said on Tuesday.

Egypt has been shaken in recent days by renewed protests calling for the ruling military council to step aside and allow an interim civilian government to take power.

But officials of the rival parties said the unrest would not derail a planned meeting between Mashaal and Abbas later this week.

The talks will go ahead "as scheduled on Thursday," Hamas official Ismail Radwan told AFP in Gaza, in remarks which were confirmed by senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad.

The two leaders are due to finalize details of a reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas which was signed in May but has yet to be implemented.

There's one missing ingredient in this meeting - the Hamas leadership from Gaza!

There has been friction for years between the Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and the Gaza-based Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud al-Zahar. And while the "unity" meeting between Meshal and Abbas is grabbing headlines, Gaza's Hamas leaders are making noises that could result in their effectively torpedoing any agreement.

Palestine Press Agency reports that Zahar is questioning the possibility of a breakthrough in Cairo, and saying that Hamas in Gaza would insist on guarantees that a reconciliation agreement would be implemented. "Otherwise, the entire reconciliation will fail."

"From my experience with Abu Mazen [Abbas], it would be wrong to be optimistic (...) He was forced to reconciliation when doors were slammed in his face and he had no choice but to reconcile," he said.

He says that Abbas reneged on agreements made last May and he wants guarantees that it will not happen again, even if it means Egyptian and other observers on the scene.

Two more unexplained explosions at terrorist sites

First at a Popular Resistance Committees site:

An explosion was reported late Tuesday at a site operated by the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades reported no injuries following the blast near Rafah, which locals blamed on Israeli aircraft. An Israeli military spokeswoman denied the reports.

And later at a Hezbollah arms depot:

A huge explosion shook a Hezbollah stronghold near Siddiqin in the southern coastal city of Tyre overnight, a security source told The Daily Star Wednesday.

The source said the cause of the blast, which was heard shortly before midnight, could not be determined due to the heavy security blanket by Hezbollah.

Lebanese security forces were unable to access the scene of the explosion after the resistance group set up a security perimeter around the blast site, which is located in a valley called Wadi Al-Jabal al-Kabir between Siddiqin and Deir Ames, the source added.

Local media said the explosion likely took place at a Hezbollah arms cache.

"There are no comments so far," Hezbollah’s office said when contacted by The Daily Star.

As Ehud Barak saud after the giant and mysterious Iranian blast last week - may these multiply.

(h/t CHA)

Egypt and Turkey: Middle East basket cases (Spengler)

The big story that is finally being told.

From David P. Goldman (Spengler):

The mainstream media has finally picked up the story I’ve been telling since February about Egypt’s impending economic collapse. The country is nearly out of money. Under the headline, “The Egyptian pound has a distressed future,” The Financial Times reported Nov. 16, just before the last days’ slaughter on Tahrir Square, “Investors are betting against the Egyptian pound, expressing their belief that it is soon to take a dive through the futures market while the spot market is held up by Egyptian government support. The pound’s twelve-month non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) weakened 2.8 per cent on Wednesday on fears that Egypt’s reserves, which are being used to support the currency, might be reaching critical levels. The spot market, in contrast, held steady – but for how long?”

Reuters reports this morning:

CAIRO Nov 22 (Reuters) – Egypt’s pound fell to its weakest against the dollar since January 2005 on Tuesday as mass protests against army rule prompted the cabinet to tender its resignation and threw polls into doubt, giving a fresh jolt to a shaky business climate.

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has sought to defend the currency during the nine turbulent months since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, but now traders said the pound could soon break through 6 to the dollar as investors run for cover.

They said demand for dollars among local companies and individuals had grown with the street clashes that have left 36 people dead since Saturday. Voting in the three-phase poll for the lower house of parliament is due to start on Nov. 28.

Egypt’s stock market is in free-fall, down 50% since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. What’s interesting is that Turkey’s stock market isn’t far behind.

The economic crisis overwhelming the Middle East stretches from Libya all the way through to Turkey. The problems are of a different order, to be sure. As I reported earlier, Egypt’s spendable foreign exchange reserves are down to just $13 billion and falling daily as the central bank buys its own unwanted currency from the market in order to postpone the inevitable collapse in the change rate. Why not just devalue? The probable answer is that the generals and their civilian front men are moving as much money as they can out of the country before Egypt goes bankrupt. Last month the generals fired all the private-sector board members of the central bank, as I reported at Asia Times Online. Everything that can be sold abroad for cash is being sold. Al-Ahramreported Nov. 19 that there is no enforcement of the ban on rice exports, because controls have simply broken down. Egypt subsidizes rice at a fraction of the world market price, so traders have an incentive to sell it overseas. Not only the country’s capacity to buy food in the future, but its existing stocks of food are disappearing. And Egypt imports half its caloric consumption.

No wonder the country is blowing up. An out-of-control kleptocracy is frantically trying to close on townhouses in Chelsea and apartments in the 16th arondissement before the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves run out. What will ensue, will be horrifying.

Turkey is in no danger of starvation, to be sure, but it faces a severe economic setback: Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s Islamist prime minister, spurred the country’s banks to lend huge amounts to consumers in advance of last June’s national elections. Bank lending rose at by 40% in 2010 and by another 40% in 2011, and Turks bought consumer goods from abroad, running up a balance of payments deficit exceeding 10% of GDP (the same level as Greece). Most of that is financed by short-term debt. Turkey won’t go bankrupt–it’s overall debt levels are manageable–but its economy will have to shrink by a good 5% to staunch the bleeding. That will deflate the neo-Ottoman balloon that Erdogan has been floating, and make it much harder to suppress Turkish grievances in the impoverished Eastern corner of the country.

There is no center of power, no reorientation, no neo-Ottoman empire, no Shi’ite crescent, no Arab Spring, no coherent description of what is occurring in the Middle East. There is only catastrophic social breakdown, civil unrest, despair and violence. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, they will be used. We cannot fix the Middle East. We can only protect ourselves from the fallout, starting with acquisition of WMD by a terrorist state. The last sentence of my book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) quotes Virgil’s warning to Dante in Canto III of the Inferno: Non ragionam da lor, ma guarda e pasa. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving.

"Humanitarians" visit Gaza, vow to fight Israel

From IMEMC:

A solidarity convoy made it into the Gaza Strip on Monday evening, through the Rafah Border Terminal, between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Members of the "Freedom Spring" convoy will be holding meetings with political and social figures in Gaza.

Representatives of Arab Spring movement are part of the convoy and plan to hold a meeting with Ismail Haniyya, Prime Minister of the dissolved Hamas-led government in Gaza, and several Palestinian officials, in addition to holding meetings with Gaza businessmen, representatives of women movements, and representatives of local NGO’s.

Dr. Salah Sultan, head of the “Egyptian Popular Committee Against the Judaisation of Jerusalem”, stated that convoy members came to Gaza to aid it and its people, and will “return as fighters and liberators of Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa Mosque”, the Hamas-affiliated Palestine-Info reported.

“We will stand with you, the world will stand with you, to defend Jerusalem, especially after the Zionists declared plans demolish the historic Moghrabi (Magharba) Gate in Jerusalem that links between the Al Boraq Wall and the Al Aqsa Mosque”, Sultan added.

On his part, Dr. Arafat Madi, head of the European Campaign to end the Siege on Gaza, stated that this convoy carries two messages; solidarity, as activists from more than 40 countries are part of this convoy, and to tell the people of Gaza “that they are not alone in the struggle against the Zionist occupation, that will vanish and end soon”.

So peaceful!

What is the progressive case for Israel?

An avowedly left-wing and pro-Israel organization in Great Britain, Engage, was set up to counter anti-Israel boycotts. Its website has some interesting articles.

Here's part of one recent article by its founder, David Hirsh:

What is the progressive case for Israel? Why should a nation state need somebody to make its case? What is the progressive case for France or for Poland? Before the French Revolution, the question of France was still open. Was Marseille to be part of the same Republic as Brittany? When there was a political movement for the foundation of France, then there was a case for and also a case against France. When Poland was half engulfed by the Soviet Union and half by the Third Reich, there was a progressive case for Poland. But today, thankfully, Poland exists. It doesn’t need a ‘case’.

There are reasons to be ambivalent about nationalism. Nationalist movements have often stood up against forces which threaten human freedom. Nationalism offers us a way of visualising ourselves as part of a community in which we look after each other. But being part of something also means defining others as not being part of it, as being excluded from it. The left should fight for freedom with the nationalists but we should also remember the dangers of nationalism. Like John Lennon, we should imagine a world where people no longer feel the need to protect themselves against external threat, but until it exists, it is wise for communities to retain the possibility of self-defence.

Progressives in France or Poland might hope to dissolve their states into the European Union, or into a global community. In that sense there is still a possible case to be made for Poland or for France. But nobody thinks that either has to justify their existences to anybody outside. Not even Germany after the crimes of the Second World War had to justify its existence.

...But as the Holocaust had defeated the Socialists and the Bundists, so these other criticisms were answered, not by argument or reason but by huge, irreversible events in the material world; in this case by the UN decision to found Israel and by the defence of the new state against the invading armies of neighbouring states which tried to push the Jews out. The Jews, armed by Stalin via Czechoslovakia, in violation of a British and American arms embargo, were not pushed out. About 700,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were forced out during the war and were not allowed back by the new state of Israel. For them this was truly a catastrophe but the Israel/Palestine conflict was never inevitable. It was the result of successive defeats for progressive forces within both nations. It is still not inevitable. Neither could the fact of the conflict possibly de-legitimise a nation. Nations exist and do not require legitimacy.

Isaac Deutcher, Trotsky’s biographer, who had been a Socialist anti-Zionist before the Holocaust, wrote the following in 1954:

I have, of course, long since abandoned my anti-Zionism, which was based on a confidence in the European labour movement, or, more broadly, in European society and civilization, which that society and civilization have not justified. If, instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped to save some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler’s gas chambers.[2]

Deutscher was not embracing Zionism as an ideology, he was recognising that the debate was over. Israel now existed in the material world and no longer just in the imagination. Antisemitism treats ‘the Jews’ as an idea rather than as a collectivity of actual human beings; an idea which can be opposed was transformed into a people which could be eliminated. To think of Israel as an idea or as a political movement rather than as a nation state makes it possible to think of eliminating it too.

Israel needs to find the peace with its neighbours, amongst whom hostile and antisemitic movements have significant influence. It needs to continue to fulfil contradictory requirements, as a democratic state for both its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, but also as a Jewish state, guaranteeing the rights of Jews in particular. There is nothing unusual about a social institution finding pragmatic and difficult ways to fulfil contradictory requirements.

But what if it turns out that Zionism’s promise to build a ‘normal’ nation state was utopian. Perhaps the poison of the Holocaust is not yet spent. Maybe Israel is, as Detuscher thought, a precarious life-raft state , floating in a hostile sea and before a careless world. Perhaps the pressure on Israel from outside, and the unique circumstances of its foundation are creating too many agonising internal contradictions and fault-lines. Whereas people used to tell the Jews of Europe to go home to Palestine, now they tell the Jews of Israel to go home to Europe. Whereas ‘the Jews’ were thought to be central to the workings of capitalism, today Israel is said to be the keystone of imperialism. If the Palestinians have come to symbolise the victims of ‘the West’ then ‘the Jews’ are again cast in the symbolic imagination as the villains of the world. Perhaps Israel is precarious and perhaps we have not yet seen the final Act of the tragedy of the Jews. And if it comes to pass, there will be those watching who will still be capable of saying, with faux sadness, that ‘the Jews’ brought this upon themselves.

(h/t D)

Syria-phobia!

You've heard of Islamophobia.

You may have heard of Iranophobia.

Now, we have Syria-phobia!

Syria's U.N. ambassador is accusing Britain, France and Germany of declaring political and diplomatic war against his country by sponsoring a U.N. resolution that would condemn Syria's human rights violations.

Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said the three European nations are "suffering from Syria-phobia."

If it is a phobia, it must be irrational! I mean, that's science!

Egyptian officials seek to assure Israel

From Israel HaYom:

Against the backdrop of a mass civilian uprising in Egypt, senior Egyptian diplomats have relayed a calming message to Israel declaring their commitment to preserving peace between the two countries, Army Radio reported Tuesday. The diplomats said the peace agreement with Israel was of strategic importance to Egypt.

Yitzhak Levanon, Israel's outgoing ambassador to Egypt, who recently returned to Egypt after being recalled in September when the Israeli Embassy was attacked by an angry mob, met with two senior Egyptian ministers who assured him that strategic ties with Israel would hold steady. Levanon was set to return to Israel on Tuesday.

Israeli officials had earlier expressed concern over the growing turmoil, telling Israel Hayom that "relations between our countries have actually improved recently, as evidenced by the Shalit deal, the release of Ilan Grapel, management of the gas pipeline issue, and ongoing cooperation in Sinai. We hope our cooperation will continue."

Egypt's calming message comes on the heels of the resignation of Egypt's government Monday, resulting from the rising civilian death toll and ever-growing rage from protesters who have streamed into Tahrir Square demanding an immediate end to military rule and the establishment of a civilian government.

Meanwhile, Iran is trying to convey the exact opposite message. From FARS:

Secretary-General of the Egyptian Amal Party Majdi Hussein condemned the Zionist regime for its hostile efforts to thwart the Egyptian people's uprising and revolution, and stressed once parliamentary elections are held in the country, Cairo will cut its ties with Israel.

"Although the relations between Egypt and Israel have been undermined after the collapse of Mubarak's regime, we are still unsatisfied with these conditions and serious efforts will be made after the elections to cut relations with the Zionist enemy completely," Hussein told FNA on Monday.

He said as it was shown in the Egyptian youths' raid on the Israeli embassy in September, which forced the Israeli ambassador to flee Cairo, the relations between Egypt and Israel are declining.

Everything is going to depend on the elections, assuming Egypt is still having them.

But no matter who ends up winning, we can expect massive anti-government rallies in Tahrir Square will become regular occurrences. Having toppled two governments with rallies, Egyptians might think that a few thousand loud people are a substitute for real democracy.

Jordan proposed EU deal to Abbas

It looks like King Abdullah's visit to the territories yesterday was not simply a social visit.

From Albawaba:

Palestinian sources confirmed that Jordan's King Abdullah II, who visited Ramallah Monday conveyed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a European proposal to resume negotiations with Israel.

The Palestinian sources were quoted as saying that "the European initiative calls for the resumption of negotiations on the basis of the Quartet statement issued last September, without the Palestinian insistence on the freeze of settlement. This is in exchange for a promise by the European Union, including France and Britain, to support the application for U.N. membership of the State of Palestine within the 1967 territories in September 2012 if negotiations with Israel fail over the next year. "

Al Quds al Arabi has the same story.

If this is a real EU offer, it will not help peace at all. On the contrary.

If there is anything we know about Palestinian Arab leadership it is that they are patient and willing to wait until circumstances are more favorable to them. Certainly they feel no pressure to act quickly. The idea that Israeli settlements are constantly gobbling up new land in the territories is a myth - if it was true then Palestinian Arabs would feel the need to make an agreement sooner rather than later before they lose their entire potential country.

But they don't act the way that people act when time is not on their side. Instead, we hear words like this from Abbas:

I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements. Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life.

Given all this, a deal like that would give carte blanche for Abbas to pretend to negotiate, stonewall at every meeting for a year, and then tell the UK and France that he held up his end of the bargain - time for them to push for a state of "Palestine" at the UN that would include all the territory he demands without having to negotiate.

If the EU wants to provide incentives to get negotiations started again, there are other ways to do it. This one is a disaster waiting to happen.

The funny thing is that Abbas very well might reject this anyway, because his fake Arab "honor" would not allow him even this symbolic backing down.

That Arab sense of honor does not stop him from outright lies, though:

For his part, Abbas said after the meeting "if Israel stops settlement activity and recognizes international authorities, we are ready to return to negotiations. These are not preconditions, but commitments and agreements between us and the Israelis."

Of course, Israel has never agreed to stop building within existing settlements nor to base negotiations on the 1949 armistice lines (which is what he means by "international authorities.")

Not that this is Abbas's first lie. He lied here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, for starters. He habitually lies without anyone calling him on it, and therefore has no incentive to act like a responsible human being.

(h/t CHA)

How Hezbollah caught the CIA spies

From AP:

Hezbollah has partially unraveled the CIA's spy network in Lebanon, severely damaging the intelligence agency's ability to gather vital information on the terrorist organization at a tense time in the region, former and current U.S. officials said.

Officials said several foreign spies working for the CIA had been captured by Hezbollah in recent months. The blow to the CIA's operations in Lebanon came after top agency managers were alerted last year to be especially careful handling informants in the Middle East country.

Hezbollah's longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted in June on television he had unmasked at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of the organization, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group closely allied with Iran.

Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, American officials concede that Nasrallah wasn't lying and the damage spread like a virus as Hezbollah methodically picked off the CIA's informants.

The Lebanon crisis is the latest mishap involving CIA counterintelligence, defined as the undermining or manipulating of the enemy's ability to gather information. Former CIA officials have said the once-essential skill has been eroded as the agency shifted from outmaneuvering rival spy agencies to fighting terrorists. In the rush for immediate results, former officers say, tradecraft has suffered.

CIA officials were warned their spies in Lebanon were vulnerable. Those told include the chief of the unit that supervises Hezbollah operations from CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and the head of counterintelligence.

The State Department last year described Hezbollah as "the most technically capable terrorist group in the world," and the Defense Department estimates it receives between $100 million and $200 million per year in funding from Iran.

Backed by Iran, Hezbollah has built a professional counterintelligence apparatus that Nasrallah — whom the U.S. government designated an international terrorist a decade ago — proudly describes as the "spy combat unit." U.S. intelligence officials believe the unit, which is considered formidable and ruthless, went operational around 2004.

Using the latest commercial software, Nasrallah's spy-hunters unit began methodically searching for traitors in Hezbollah's midst. To find them, U.S. officials said, Hezbollah examined cellphone data looking for anomalies. The analysis identified cellphones that, for instance, were used rarely or always from specific locations and only for a short period of time. Then it came down to old-fashioned, shoe-leather detective work: Who in that area had information that might be worth selling to the enemy?

No doubt Iran has been heavily involved in Hezbollah's anti-espionage efforts. Even so, there have been stunning failures in both Israeli and US intelligence in Lebanon.

The Israeli mother who helped bring Sadat to Israel

Yesterday's podcast on the BBC "Witness" series adds an interesting detail to the story of how Sadat decided to go to Israel.

According to the interviewee, Sadat's cameraman who videotaped his original speech where he said he would go to Israel, the process started a number of years earlier.

An Israeli woman, Ruth Liss, wrote a letter to Anwar Sadat's wife Jihan after the 1973 war. As People magazine wrote in 1980:

After the 1973 Yom Kippur War Jihan received a letter from an Israeli mother, Ruth Liss, whose frogman son had been killed placing explosives in an Egyptian harbor. The woman appealed to Mrs. Sadat "as a woman and a mother" to help find her son's body. "Believe me, I was crying," Jihan recalls. "The letter was so human. I too have a son." Impulsively, she asked the minister of defense to search for the body (it was never recovered)—and wrote back to Liss without consulting her husband. "All my friends advised me not to do it," she recalls. "They said I could not write to the enemy and that I would harm my husband politically." Later, after the letter was mailed via France, she told Sadat. He reprimanded her and subsequently, on learning she had answered another letter from an Israeli student, Anwar grumped, "You are making trouble for me."

According to the interview, up until then Israelis were not recognized in Egyptian society except as caricatures, of Golda Meir's big nose and Moshe Dayan's eyepatch.

In the podcast, the interviewee says that Sadat was furious when Jihan told him she wrote to an Israeli, asking how dare she write to the enemy, but then he saw that the Israeli media were very appreciative towards Jihan's letter. He told his wife that he had never seen such a warm reaction from the Israeli people. "I want to reach the Israeli people as much as you did in two sentences," he is reported to have said.

So part of the impetus for Sadat's gamble may have been from how Israeli society embraced his wife's contact with a grieving Israeli mother.

(h/t Mike)

UNGA condemns human rights abuses in Iran

From Al Arabiya:

The U.N. General Assembly on Monday passed an annual resolution condemning human rights abuses in Iran with a record number of votes in support.

The resolution, which was introduced by Canada, “expresses deep concern at serious ongoing and recurring human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The 193-member assembly passed the resolution condemning “torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” by Iranian authorities with 86 votes in favor, six more than last year, 32 against, down eight from 2010, and 59 abstentions.

The resolution condemned “flogging and amputations” carried out in Iran and deplored a “dramatic increase” in the use of the death penalty, particularly against minors. Many human rights groups say events have deteriorated in Iran over the past year.

Iranian government representative, Mohammad Javad Larijani, an advisor to the country’s supreme leader, called the resolution “substantially unfounded and intentionally malicious” in a speech to the General Assembly’s human rights committee.

“The document is an onslaught on the good conscience of the international community and an unforgivable insult to the whole institution of the U.N.,” Larijani said.

Among the abuses listed in the resolution were torture, excessive use of the death penalty, discrimination against women, persecution of journalists and religious minorities, including members of the Baha’i faith, as well as the detention of key opposition leaders from the 2009 presidential election.

Larijani also attacked Canada, Europe and the United States for what he said were their “serious human rights violations.”

Among the examples he gave was “increasing discrimination against immigrants, Muslims and other people of foreign origin in Europe, United States and Canada.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague welcomed the committee’s adoption of the nonbinding resolution on Iran, which will be confirmed with a second vote in a General Assembly plenary session next month.

“Iran has shown scant evidence of cooperation with the U.N. to improve its human rights record,” Hague said in a statement. “The fact that this resolution passed by a record majority shows the international community is strongly united in its condemnation of human rights abuses in Iran.”

Russia and China, which have vetoes in the U.N. Security Council, were among those that voted against the resolution, highlighting the divide between Moscow and Beijing, which have close commercial ties to Iran, and the West, which would like Tehran to face new U.N. sanctions over its atomic program.

Syria, which faces a special human rights vote on Tuesday over its deadly crackdown on opposition protests, spoke out strongly for its Iranian ally.

This is obvious proof that the UN is a Zionist tool. Or at least that's what Iranian newspaper will say in a few hours.

PA Arafat music video extols peace.... Just kidding!

From Palestinian Media Watch:

On the recent anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death, official Palestinian Authority TV produced and broadcast a music video praising Arafat.

The lyrics of the song glorify death, describing how "death for the sake of Palestine is good," and how "I have poured the blood of self-sacrifice on your path."

The song honors Arafat as someone who was "friends with the rifle," who "declared the revolution and continued to fight," "did not tire," and "did not give up on the principles."

The music video commemorating Arafat was broadcast daily for a week on PA TV, which is directly under the control of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' office.

Lyrics:

Yasser Arafat - I have written your name in my heart,

I have poured the blood of self-sacrifice on your path.

How can I forget my nation's catastrophe (i.e., establishment of Israel) as I say: Death for the sake of Palestine is good.

All the soldiers stood at attention.

They stood at your grave, saluting you

with the weapon of rebellion loaded,

with bullets which flew and greeted you.

Yasser and the rifle were friends as testified by [fights in] the trenches and alleys.

The homeland cries out "I'm missing [you]" and the nation speaks and eulogizes you, Yasser. All the soldiers stood at attention.

You declared the revolution and continued to fight. No, you did not tire.

You did not give up on the principles. The heavier your burden, the more it strengthened you, Yasser. All the soldiers stood at attention.

We swear at your grave, by Allah, not to forget your name and your oath.

We have not abandoned your weapon. Your oath is an obligation which we will carry out, Yasser. All the soldiers stood at attention.