Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 19, 2011

Hezbollah is in financial trouble

YNet reports:

While Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah appeared to be in high spirits recently during a rare public appearance in a suburb of Beirut, his organization is experiencing a severe financial crisis, French daily Le Figaro reported over the weekend.

According to the article, which was based on information obtained by French intelligence agencies, the civil uprising against President Bashar Assad in Syria has significantly reduced the flow of money to the Lebanese terror group.

Moreover, the report said, Iran has recently cut its financial aid to Hezbollah by 25% due in part to the international sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

Le Figaro said the financial crisis has led some Hezbollah terrorists to deal drugs in north Lebanon. Just last week US prosecutors indicted a Lebanese national who they said led a massive international drug smuggling ring with links to Hezbollah.

The US Treasury and the FBI have banned American organizations from donating to Hezbollah, which is designated under US law as a terrorist organization.

Last month Nasrallah claimed Hezbollah had unraveled a web of CIA informants and officers in Iran and Lebanon. According to Le Figaro's report, the network caused significant damage to the Shiite group.

Hezbollah's financial woes are also the result of corruption, the report said. According to Le Figaro, the terror group's investment manager had embezzled close to $1.6 billion.

The report said that during a speech in Beirut two weeks ago Nasrallah chastised the organization's female members for becoming, as he put it, too "bourgeois" and spending too much of the organization's money. Le Figaro said this was yet another indication of Hezbollah's dire financial situation.

The Figaro article is behind a paywall, but you can read it here.

It also says that Imad Mugniyeh was the person responsible for the assassination of Lebanese president Rafik Hariri - without the knowledge of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Mugniyeh, assumed to have been assassinated by Israel, was actually killed by Syrian spies for his role in creating his own secret division both in Hezbollah and because he "infiltrated the Syrian 4th Division of Maher Assad, Bashar's brother." Mugniyeh's son was also assassinated in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah, according to Le Figaro.

4 Katyushas discovered in southern Lebanon

From The Daily Star:

Four Katyusha rockets were found in pipes in Hasbaya, southeast Lebanon, Monday, less than a month after rockets, both apparently aimed at Israel, were fired from the south in two separate incidents, one of which prompted return fire.

The sources said a Lebanese farmer discovered the 107 mm rockets as he plowed his olive grove on the outskirts of the village of Majidieh in Hasbaya, only 800 meters from the Israel-Lebanon border.

The farmer, identified as Ghazi al-Zahran, informed Hezbollah who in turn notified the Lebanese Army intelligence.

The rockets were originally reported to have been found ready to be fired.

A Lebanese Army unit, accompanied by explosives experts, and U.N. peacekeepers arrived at the scene to examine the four rockets, according to the security sources, who spoke to The Daily Star on condition of anonymity.

Hezbollah informed the LAF?

Since the rockets were found so close to Israel, it is literally unbelievable that Hezbollah was not involved in how they got there to begin with.

My guess is that Hezbollah was worried that the farmer also told UNIFIL, and decided to play it safe and act like it actually cared about the people under its control.

Politics invades Google Translate tools

Check out this Google-translated headline from Al Masry al Youm:

Two Palestinians killed in Tahrir Square ("liberation")?

The article says nothing about any Palestinian Arabs there. So what's going on?

Google offers two alternative translations:

The Arabic word being translated is شهيدان -"Shahidani" -which has the root word "Shahid", "martyr."

Whether by design, of by anti-Zionists contributing their own translations, or by the fact that the Arabic media is so overwhelmingly obsessed with reporting on Palestinian Arabs as "martyrs," Google's algorithms assumed that the word "martyrs" by default means "Palestinians killed."

This is not a reflection of reality - the percentage of Arabs killed by Israel is minuscule compared to those killed by other Arabs. This year alone, in Syria the death count is over 5000; in Egypt it is over 850, about 225 in Tunisia - and over 10,000 in Libya.

The hate for Israel is in the Arabic-speaking world is so entrenched that, by default, the word "martyr" is assumed to mean someone killed by the Jews even when odds are overwhelming that the "martyr" was killed by another Arab.

For years, Hebron parents kept mentally ill girl tied up

Palestine Press Agency reports that PA police found a mentally ill girl tied up in her parents' house in Hebron.

After receiving a tip, police searched the house and found the girl, outside, without clothes, with her hands and feet bound.

The girl's father and brother admitted to keeping her tied up for many years.

PA police took the girl and fed her. They coordinated their care with social service agencies.

The police issued a statement appealing to all parents to provide appropriate care for their children, even if they have special needs, noting mentally ill children need more care and should not be neglected and abused.

This is huge: Israel offers to sell natural gas to India

The Economic Times (India) reports:

Israel, which suddenly finds itself flush with natural gas, has offered to export it to India. The offer was made by Israeli finance minister Yuval Steinitz to the Indian government during his visit here last week. In his conversations with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, Steinitz is believed to have said that Israel was looking to export gas to India.

According to sources, the two countries will be setting up committees to do a feasibility survey of the offer. The discussions are expected to intensify during a rare visit by foreign minister SM Krishna to Israel in early January.

India sources most of its natural gas from Qatar and Oman. Iran, which could have been a major supplier of LNG, cancelled a huge deal to India after it had been signed, following India's vote against its nuclear programme in the IAEA. A gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan too has run aground on security considerations. Within the country, India's much hyped Krishna-Godavari gas basin has run into trouble after disagreement over pricing resulted in a drop in production. So India is in the market for big gas flows.

Israel, which had been energy deficient for decades and locked in potentially unstable energy relationships with Arab countries that have been bitterly opposed to it, stumbled on a bonanza when huge quantities of natural gas were discovered off its northern coast. Gas is expected to start flowing from the Tamar field in 2013 and from the Leviathan in 2016. Varying estimates give Israel control over some 400 bcm of gas. It promises to reduce Israel's dependence on Arab states like Egypt and Jordan and offers the prospects of billions of dollars in revenue.

Israel has already started the process of picking out export routes to Europe, through Greece and Cyprus. In the east, energy-hungry India offers the best market that is also free from political troubles for both countries.

Israel and India have grown closer in the past decade through a strategic partnership that includes defence, count-terrorism and intelligence. It has also flourished despite the fact that India has strong traditional relations with the Arab world.

India is not only energy-deficient, it is overly dependent for oil from West Asia, many countries of which are in the midst of unprecedented political ferment. The Indian growth story would be severely impacted in the event of higher energy prices, or a shortage brought about by external factors. For the past decade, Indian governments have been engaged in diversifying energy sources -- from nuclear to renewable, gas to wind, India wants it all.

This could be a harbinger for a giant geopolitical shift.

The entire reason the liberal West is so friendly towards autocratic and Islamist Arab regimes is because of energy. If the center of world energy production moves away from the sands of the Gulf, the importance of the Arab world diminishes proportionately.

And the funding for terrorists and terrorist states will also start to vanish when the energy revenue towards oil-rich Arab states goes downward.

Similarly, Israel's political status would grow as it becomes seen as a stable supplier of energy to nations who do not want to be dependent on Gulf oil - with all the strings, visible and invisible, that the Gulf states attach.

The importance of this cannot be over-emphasized. Israel's becoming an energy exporter will have immense implications for the world, and all for the better.

Bombs for the "peaceful resistance"

Mahmoud Abbas has been saying lately that Hamas has agreed that all "resistance" will use "peaceful means." And Hamas has also told their fans at The Guardian that "violence is no longer the primary option."

Yesterday, Egyptian security forces in the Sinai seized a cache of bombs that were on their way to Hamas in Gaza.

No doubt they were the peaceful types of bombs, though.

NYT publishes "facts" too good to check (CAMERA)

Here's CAMERA showing yet again how lazy and credulous New York Times reporters are:

Leave it to the New York Times to simply take the word of any Palestinian who tells a tale of woe that puts Israel in a bad light; apparently such stories are simply too good to check. This time the occasion was the release of 550 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the second group of prisoners released as part of the deal freeing the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Ethan Bronner’s report, Israel Frees Palestinians in 2nd Stage of Exchange, named only one of the Palestinian prisoners being released, Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who, readers are told, was arrested three years ago at the age of 15 for “throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.” Here is the full passage about the young miscreant:

Sarah Abu Sneineh came with her family to greet her grandson Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who was arrested three years ago at age 15 for throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.

“He was just a schoolkid when he was arrested,” she said as she waited for him outside the tomb of Yasir Arafat. “We want him to go back to school. Only education is the way forward.”

Now, as should be obvious to Bronner and his editors, if Israel really imprisoned Palestinian children merely for putting up flags or throwing stones, there would be tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Israeli jails, instead of less than two hundred. Whatever young Abu Sneineh did, it had to involve something much more serious than what Bronner reported.

In fact, it is not hard to find out what he did – the Israeli Prison Service on Dec. 14 published a full list of all the prisoners about to be released. The english press release on the IPS website states that:

The Ministry of Justice will operate an information center as of today and until the date of execution of the agreement, where information regarding prisoners on the list can be obtained ...

and also has a link to the prisoner list in English. Helpfully, the press release also includes the telephone numbers of the information center: 02-6466801/3/4. So all an enterprising reporter had to do was call one of those numbers to discover what the Palestinian teenager had been convicted of.

Now, the list in English includes the name, dates of birth and arrest, the length of the sentence and prisoner ID, but not the crime; the list in Hebrew is more complete and includes the crime also. (IMRA has all these links.)

So what do we learn from these lists? Az al-Din Shhada Akram Abu Snina, prisoner ID 855043360, was convicted and sentenced for “Weapons training; attempted murder” and possession of “weapons / ammo / explosives.”

So not throwing stones and hanging flags – attempted murder and possession of weapons, including ammunition and explosives.

Why did Bronner apparently just accept what he was told by Abu Sneineh’s grandmother? Why did he not bother to look up the lists on the IPS website, or to just make a phone call to find out exactly what Abu Sneineh’s crimes really were?

And why did the ludicrous claim that Israel imprisons children for years just for throwing stones and hanging flags ring true to Bronner? (Of course, throwing stones is one thing, seriously wounding someone by throwing stones is another matter entirely, and could well lead to a prison term.)

Whatever the answer to these questions, one thing is certain – the New York Times owes its readers a forthright correction that sets the record straight regarding the real nature of what Abu Sneineh did to earn himself a prison sentence.

And as bad as Bronner is here, rest assured that wire service reporters are even worse.

Even the BBC - regarded by the world as the gold standard in accurate reporting - did exactly the same thing during the last prisoner release.

They have a meme that has gotten stuck in their collective heads by years of Palestinian Arab lies. In this case, the meme is of a corrupt Jewish state wantonly arresting and imprisoning minors for years minor offenses.

Since that is what they truly believe, they do not bother to be skeptical when they are told this is what happened by people who are known to lie - like relatives of the prisoners.

Good reporters are trained to be skeptical. But when they have a re-existing bias, they will not show skepticism towards "facts" that fit that bias.

You can also be sure that the bias extends up the editorial food chain. Obviously no editor asked Bronner to do what any journalist out of school is trained to do - to verify the facts with the other side.

UPDATE: The NYT quietly changed the story. The paragraph now says

Sarah Abu Sneineh came with her family to greet her grandson Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who was arrested three years ago at age 15 for weapons training, attempted murder and possession of explosives.

Since it is not a "correction" that they had to make public, it seems unlikely that anything will change next time.
(h/t T34)

UPDATE 2: It now has a correction on the bottom. (h/t Alex)

A Dead Sea Scrolls vignette

Jordan is complaining to UNESCO about the exhibition of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls currently being shown in US cities (the exhibit is in Times Square at the moment.)

This prompted me to look up what happened when Israeli troops took over the Rockefeller Museum that housed most of the Scrolls in 1967:

During the war, the Jordanians had fortified the Palestine Archaeological Museum and put gun emplacements in its main tower. The museum was strategically located outside the north-east comer of the Old City overlooking vital north-south roads in the Jerusalem area.

On June 6, Israeli paratroopers entered the building and secured it after feeble Jordanian resistance. One lieutenant—like most Israelis keenly interested in archaeology—immediately began to search for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the display case was empty. Avraham Biran, director of the Israel Department of Antiquities, had received a call that same day from Carmella Yadin, Yigael Yadin's wife. She told him that Yadin had been notified that the museum would soon be in Israeli hands and asked if Biran would go to the museum and make sure that the scrolls and other antiquities were safe.

Biran needed no arm-twisting. He took two other archaeologists with him to the museum, where they were obliged to go in the back door, since the paratroopers were still engaged in a fire -fight in the front with Jordanians on the city walls.

Some of the paratroopers immediately conscripted Biran to give them, during the battle, an impromptu lecture and tour of the antiquities of the museum. The archaeologist was happy to oblige and led a few of the soldiers around the premises, with the sound of shooting and breaking glass coming from the front of the building. The next day, after the entire city had been secured, the paratroopers left. Some of them dutifully signed the guest registry as they filed out, complete with banal comments ("Fantastic," "Very pleasant").

In many ways, the Scrolls serve as a microcosm of the entire Israel/Arab conflict. During the 19 years that Jordan controlled the Scrolls, no Jewish or Israeli scholars were allowed to study them. Likewise, Jordan did not allow Israeli archaeologists to visit the Qumran site. Jordan made the scrolls Judenrein, just like the Old City of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

More photos from the "open-air prison" of Gaza

Electronic Intifada writers normally spend their time telling the world how Gaza is a war-torn hell on Earth where desperate citizens have lost so much hope that they have no choice but to embrace fully-justified terrorism.

But the blog also wants to tell its regular readers another narrative, that Hamas is not so bad and that things are really quite normal there (despite Israel's crippling siege, naturally.)

If you want to gain sympathy and money from EU-funded NGOs. you stick with the first story. If you want to score points for Hamas among fellow terror supporters, you tell the second.

And you hope that people who believe the first don't see the second, because all those billions of dollars meant to stave off poverty and hunger might very well go *poof!*

Here is an example of the second narrative in photos:

(h/t Omri)

A certain op-ed columnist for a certain prestigious newspaper loves to talk about what he calls "Fayyadism," the notion that a non-elected prime minister for a non-elected government who has virtually no public support is the potential savior of Palestinian Arab nationalism because of his moderate, pragmatic, Western-oriented mindset.

Last week, Fayyad said something that is completely at odds with history as well as religion. He said that Christmas was an opportunity to "celebrate the Palestinian identity of Jesus Christ."

I am no expert on Christianity, but I was under the impression that Christians believe that Jesus had a message for the entire world, not for one narrow set of people who were not going to be invented until some 1900 years later.

If the most moderate and most pragmatic leader in Palestinian Arab history can falsify history and insult hundreds of millions so easily, how can anyone expect that any Palestinian Arab leader would ever be trusted to say anything truthful?

The star-struck columnist would of course pooh-pooh this incident as simply politics, or playing to the crowd, or something. He would never notice the irony that the current government headed by Fayyad would have executed their citizens for selling land to Jesus, the Jew.

I'll give Fayyad credit for one thing, though. He is known for pushing transparency in government - and this lie is about as transparent as one can be.

(h/t Dan)

Ditzy girl loves Saudi Arabia on YouTube

From Al Arabiya:

Corissa Chantelle surprised her Youtube viewers when she donned a green T-shirt, a color similar to that of the Saudi flag, and sung in jubilation for the kingdom’s Independence Day anniversary.

Chantelle, 22, who has a desire to meet King Abdullah, has a channel on YouTube, and nearly every Thursday she posts a video expressing her infatuation with Saudi Arabia and its culture.

On the videos, which so far have attracted more than 2.8 million viewers, she speaks some Arabic words and sentences and tries to throw in some Saudi Arabian vernacular.

...She also an avid supporter of the Saudi Ettihad soccer club and would like to see them play in their stadium, but the kingdom’s conservative rules would not permit her to enter the stadium. However, she says she would not mind standing outside the grounds to support her team.

In one of her YouTube videos, Chanetelle wore a black Abaya, which was a gift from a friend from Saudi.

Here she is in all her ditzy glory:

Israel will pump its own gas from Tamar field in 2013

From YNet:

The biggest deal in the history of the Israeli economy is underway: The Israel Electric Corporation on Thursday received permission from the company's board of directors to purchase natural gas from the Tamar gas field, located some 90 kilometers (56 miles) west of Haifa.

The deal is estimated at $10-20 billion for the next 15 years.

The Tamar gas field is owned by several partners, led by the Delek Group controlled by businessman Yitzhak Tshuva and American company Noble Energy.

According to estimates, starting in 2013, the Tamar drilling will produce natural gas at a sufficient quantity to meet the State of Israel's energy needs for 15 to 20 years.

And not a minute too soon.

Early this morning, the gas line from Egypt to Israel and Jordan was firebombed for the tenth time this year.

Other, much larger gas fields off Israel's coast should be going live over the next decade, potentially enabling Israel to be an exporter of energy.

Abbas lie #3871: Hamas gives up violence, accepts "1967 borders"

The president of the Palestinian Authority continues to lie, and the media continues to eat it up.

The latest:

Fatah and Hamas agreed that future Palestinian resistance to Israel will utilize popular and peaceful means, rather than military moves, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared Saturday.

In an interview with the Euronews channel in Brussels, Abbas recounted his meeting with Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal about a month ago.

"We set the agreement's pillars, and Hamas agreed with us that resistance will be popular and adopt peaceful ways, rather than military resistance," the Palestinian president said. "The solution is the establishment of a state in the 1967 borders, and Hamas agreed to that, as well as to holding the elections on May 5, 2012."

Let's go over some of the things Hamas leaders said at the 24th anniversary rally last week:

"Resistance is the way and it is the strategic choice to liberate Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea and to remove the invaders from the blessed land of Palestine," Haniyeh told the crowd, which chanted: "We will never recognize Israel."

"Hamas, together with other stubborn resistance factions, will lead the people towards uprising after uprising until all of Palestine is liberated," Haniyeh said, referring to territory that includes the occupied West Bank and what is now Israel.

Denying speculation that Hamas would turn its attention to nonviolent resistance, Mr. Haniya said: “Today we say it clearly. Armed resistance and armed struggle are the strategic way to liberate the Palestinian land from the sea to the river.”

Abbas has floated this idea a few times in recent weeks. The only English-language version I had seen was in Hurriyet in late November - and it is self-contradictory:

The militant Islamic group Hamas is ready to accept a Palestinian state within 1967 and is open to a discussion of recognizing Israel, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday.

“I would wish that Hamas would agree to this,” Abbas told reporters during a visit to Vienna. “Maybe this will be an issue to talk about in our next meeting.”

Abbas also said the group, which runs Gaza, would only conduct “peaceful” resistance.

So is he saying what Meshal really said, or what he hopes Meshal would say at the next meeting?

Since Abbas hasn't met Meshal since then, it looks like Abbas was just trying to massage his lie.

Of course, no Hamas-oriented website has noted this supposedly profound change in policy for the terror group. Because it never happened, it never will happen, and it never could happen.

But Abbas knows that no matter how ridiculous the claim is, he'll manage to snag a few credulous Western reporters to believe him.

Videos of Egyptian police beating women and men

Al Masry al Youm reports:

Internet users are circulating a video that appears to show members of Egypt's army assaulting an older female activist called Khadiga al-Hennawy.

Hennawy was near the cabinet building on Qasr al-Aini Street on Friday when clashes erupted between protesters and security forces.

In the video, two officers are seen dragging Hennawy by the hair. One lets go of her hair to kick her, before other officers join in, beating her with batons and dragging her out of view.

Another video released Saturday shows police mercilessly beating a man and a woman, whose clothes they tear off.

So macho.

(h/t CHA)

Fatah declares "war on normalization" with Israel

Palestine Press Agency quotes Al Quds al Arabi saying that Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah-dominated PA has decided to declare "open war" on all cooperation between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis, formal or informal.

Fatah official Hatem Abdel Qader confirmed the report, saying "Yes...Let it be known to everyone that we will prevent any Israeli-Palestinian meeting in Jerusalem, and will try to thwart any Palestinian-Israeli meeting held in the Palestinian territories, whether in Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv", adding "There is formal approach we have in the Fatah movement to prohibit and prevent the holding of these meetings."

The article says that activists from the Palestinian national factions in Jerusalem on Monday "foiled" the "Conference of the Israeli-Palestinian Confederation" at the Ambassador Hotel in the eastern part of Jerusalem, where the hotel management said that they could not guarantee the safety of the conference attendees because of threats.

Speakers scheduled at the conference included Shlomo Ben-Ami, Sari Nusseibeh and Uri Avnery.

Which side wants peace again? From reading the media, it is so hard to tell.