Over 100 killed yesterday in Syria

From Al Jazeera:

Activists on Monday reported the deaths of more than 60 Syrian army defectors and at least 48 civilians.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Rami Abdel Rahman, the founder of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the defectors were trying to flee from their base in Kan Safra to Kafar Ouwaied in Jabal al-Zawyeh when they were shot dead by members of Syria's regular army.

Meanwhile, the Local Co-ordination Committees activist network said 14 civilians were killed in the province of Deraa, 12 in Homs, nine in Kansafra in the province of Idlib, three in Damascus, three in Qoriya in Deir al-Zor, three in Hama, two in Saraqeb, and one in a Damascus suburb.

This happened while Syria signed an agreement with the Arab League aiming at stopping the killing.

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JPost publishes an op-ed from a "friend"

An op-ed by James Adler in JPost:

There is a common thread linking The Jerusalem Post’s attack on Thomas Friedman last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s refusal to write an opinion column for The New York Times and an attack on my views by Haifa resident Ella Berkovitz on the Post letters page last Thursday. In all three instances, the individuals in question showed they prefer to take the easy road of crowd-pleasingly attacking the New York Times and one of its senior columnists, without addressing the fact that similar views are held by the United States government and most Western democracies.

To begin with, Berkovitz’s honorable and intelligent letter drew a comparison between Palestinian Israelis and Jewish residents of the West Bank. She is certainly correct that Israeli Arabs live on a nearly equal footing with Jews in Israel, and that the Israel we love and are so proud is an admirable and egalitarian democracy. So if Arabs can live as citizens in Israel, goes the argument, why can’t Jews live in Palestine?

But the comparison is fallacious because the Palestinians had lived throughout Palestine as 98 percent of the population for many centuries before 1948. In contrast, Israel has only recently settled the West Bank, outside her internationally recognized boundaries.

It amazes me that intelligent people, people who think that they love Israel, get basic facts so wrong.

Jews lived in Judea and Samaria continuously since the fall of Judea. Jews lived in Hebron and in the Old City of Jerusalem, for example. Adler's implication that Jews only moved there after 1967 institutionalized the anomalous 19-year history of the area being Jew-free as if that is the status quo. This is incredibly offensive, yet he cannot conceive of that. And it appears that he knows this, because he changes the terminology from "Jews" (as the letter writer wrote) to "Israelis." What a friend, using semantics to avoid the truth!

And he does it again by referring to the 1949 armistice lines as "internationally recognized boundaries." He carefully doesn't call them "borders" because he knows very well that they weren't internationally recognized as borders at all. The "boundaries" are merely an accident of where the Jewish and Arab armies ended up when the cease fire went into effect. No one considered them national borders; they were simply armistice lines.

Adler knows the truth - he just wants to fuzz it a little.

[T]he post-1967 settlement drive occured at a time when we already had a country to call home, and Jews around the world had a safe haven to run to in case of persecution. The Zionist dream had indeed been met. Israel had no choice but to fight the Six Day War, but there was no need to plant civilian communities around the newly conquered territories in the aftermath of that victory.

So according to this lover of Israel, Jews have no right to live in the heart of their historic homeland because the Jordanians expelled them from it. They have no right to visit their holy places. They must be barred from the Cave of the Patriarchs, the Western Wall, the Temple Mount (obviously) and Rachel's Tomb, and only be allowed to visit if the magnanimous Palestinian Arabs allow them to. Since these same Palestinian Arabs are known to be so moderate and tolerant towards Jews, this is no problem at all.

One would expect a graduate of Harvard Divinity School to be a little sensitive to the feelings of those for whom the Land of Israel is more than just a "refuge" with no religious significance whatsoever.

Most modern Israeli historians conclude that the yishuv – the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine – knew full well that as a tiny minority, it needed to “cleanse” the area in order to create a Jewish majority and to make the new state viable. Jewish leaders at the time said as much, and carried through. Those are the historical facts and are well known around the world. That is also the (obvious) reason why Palestinians, even women and children, were not then allowed to come back home. In this light, it is Dermer’s view, not Friedman’s, that could not survive elementary fact checking.

Perhaps Adler considers Ilan Pappe to be the foremost Israeli historian, but in fact it is a distinct minority view that the Zionists actively worked to expel most of the Arabs in their territory. A minority were expelled, yes. A larger minority - including many community leaders and wealthy businessmen - left quite voluntarily to get out of the way, especially in the early days of fighting. But the vast majority fled out of fear and in response to wild rumors of Israeli massacres.

Also, his use of the word "cleanse" in quotes appears to be a libel. I am not aware of that word being used by any of the Zionist leaders, even in the out of context or false quotes attributed to them - usually, the word is "transfer," a word that the British used as well in the Peel partition plan.

If I am right, Adler is using the terminology of the Israel haters, claiming that Israel "ethnically cleansed" the Palestinian Arabs - which is the worst kind of libel.

[T]he Post editorial repeats that fallacy there was a conflict even before the the settlements began and so that the settlements are irrelevant. Yes, there was already a conflict – for the obvious reasons just stated – but the fallacy here is a simple one; time moves on. In contrast to Khartoum’s “three nos,” the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative has been on the table for a decade, but Israel has resolutely ignored in order to keep its settlements.

Time does move on, abut the Palestinian Arabs have not modified their goals of destroying Israel. One only has to look at Saeb Erekat's JPost op-ed piece last week:

[W]e have engaged Israel and the international community and exerted sincere efforts to achieve our inalienable right to self-determination through the establishment of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state on the territory occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

As Adler no doubt knows, the "right of return" and "Resolution 194" are code words for destroying the Jewish state. He may downplay it but the fact is that this has been a consistent motif of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arabs altogether since 1948 - including the heralded 2002 Arab Peace initiative. Wishful thinking that this demand will just disappear will not make it so, and it has been drilled into the minds of generations of Arabs as non-negotiable.

In other words, it is the encapsulation of Arab intransigence, and it has not changed one bit. And the Palestinian Arabs themselves are quite clear that they view the two-state solution as a mere stage to ultimately destroy Israel.

Unfortunately for the Post, and for Ron Dermer, and for Ella Berkovitz, the democratic world just isn’t buying the transparent fallacies put forth by current Israeli hasbara (public diplomacy). It’s not just Tom Friedman, The New York Times or their “liberal Northeastern Jewish” readers. Israel is unfortunately on a path to over-extend itself demographically and to force upon itself either a one-state solution or an unjust apartheid state. That will lead violent uprisings and a worldwide South Africa-style BDS movement, and eventually to national suicide.

Another pundit falls for the "all or nothing" fallacy. There is a large range of solutions between the Palestinian Arab maximalist demands and any danger to Israel's demographic nature.

Israel has made many peace offers; all of them were rejected. Any of those plans would have forestalled the apocalyptic predictions of frightened Jews like Adler. Yet the Adlers, the Friedmans, the Walts and other who pretend they love Israel insist that the world must pressure Israel, and only Israel, to continue to sweeten the peace offers even further, rather than pressure the Palestinian Arab leadership to accept them.

Palestinian Arabs, seeing the overwhelming acceptance by leftist Jews of their maximal demands as being normative, have no incentive to compromise on those demands.

Which means that Jews like Adler are encouraging Palestinian Arab intransigence.

Does that sound like something a friend to Israel does?

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EoZ Facebook changes

Facebook disabled my account because I didn't use my real name. It will take time for me to get things back up and running as a Facebook Page, since I am no FB expert.

Meanwhile, the new page is here if you want to "Like" it while I try to get it working in whatever free time I have.

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Poor Egyptian sheikh didn't get martyred while killing Jews

Isn't it tragic when someone who wanted to die while killing Jews gets offed by his own?

Sheikh Emad Effat, who was killed at the age of 52 on Friday by military police with a gunshot to his heart, was a revolutionary Islamic scholar who affected the lives of hundreds of students he tutored and taught at Al-Azhar Mosque and Dar al-Iftaa, the Muslim world’s premier institution for legal research.

Effat was killed in Tahrir Square when military police violently cracked down on a sit-in by the cabinet building. His family and students suspect that he may have been targeted because of his criticism of the ruling military council and, most importantly, due to his last fatwa, which forbade voting for parliamentary candidates associated with the Mubarak regime and former members of the dissolved National Democratic Party.

...According to Effat’s wife and students, he had longed for martyrdom over the past 30 years. His e-mail is even called “shaheed_elazhari” (Al-Azhar martyr).

“He initially wanted to die while liberating Jerusalem from the hands of Israelis, but then when Egypt’s revolution erupted, he wished to be martyred in Egypt because those who kill their own people are not considered Muslims,” read the statement.

About 35,000 have been killed in the "Arab Spring" so far, so I guess that there are a lot of Muslims who are "not considered Muslims."

But the ones who publicly call for - and cheer - the death of Jews? Sure, they are as Muslim as can be!

(h/t Jawa Report via O)

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Reconciling the two narratives of Jews in Arab countries

Arabs and some others like to claim that Jews lived in harmony with Arabs before Zionism. They will bring examples of how well Jews were treated.

A book written in 1871, called "An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians," by Edward William Lane and Edward Stanley Poole, shows both sides of the story.

First the good news:

The Jews, in every country in which they are dispersed (unlike any other collective class of people residing in a country which is not their own by inheritance from the original possessors or by conquest achieved by themselves or their ancestors), form permanent members of the community among whom they dwell: a few words respecting the Jews in Egypt will therefore be not inappropriate in the present work.

There are in this country about five thousand Jews (in Arabic, called "Yahood," singular "Yahoodee"), most of whom reside in the metropolis, in a miserable, close, and dirty quarter, intersected by lanes, many of which are so narrow as hardly to admit of two persons passing each other in them.

In features, and in the general expression of countenance, the Oriental Jews differ less from other nations of Southwestern Asia than do those in European countries from the people among whom they live; but we often find them to be distinguished by a very fair skin, light-reddish hair, and very light eyes, either hazel or blue or gray. Many of the Egyptian Jews have sore eyes, and a bloated complexion; the result, it is supposed, of their making an immoderate use of the oil of sesame in their food. In their dress, as well as in their persons, they are generally slovenly nd dirty. The colours of their turbans are the same as those of the Christian subjects. Their women veil themselves, and dress in every respect, in public, like the other women of Egypt.

The Jews have eight synagogues in their quarter in Cairo; and not only enjoy religious toleration, but are under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish empire. In Cairo, they pay for the exemption of their quarter from the visits of the Mohtesib; and they did the same also with respect to the "Walee, as long as his office existed. Being consequently privileged to sell articles of provision at higher prices than the other inhabitants of the metropolis, they can afford to purchase such things at higher rates, and therefore stock their shops with provisions, and especially fruits, of better qualities than are to be found in other parts of the town. Like the Copts, and for a like reason, the Jews pay tribute, and are exempted from military service.

Sounds like things were pretty good. But then the authors dig a little deeper:

They are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general, and are said to bear a more inveterate hatred than any other people to the Muslims and the Muslim religion. ...It is a common saying among the Muslims in this country, "Such a one hates me with the hate of the Jews." We cannot wonder, then, that the Jews are detested by the Muslims far more than are the Christians.

Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against the Kur-an or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

A Jew has often been sacrificed to save a Muslim, as happened in the following case.—-A Turkish soldier, having occasion to change some money, received from the seyrefee (or money-changer), who was a Muslim, some Turkish coins called 'adleeyehs, reckoned at sixteen piasters each. These he offered to a shopkeeper, in payment for some goods; but the latter refused to allow him more than fifteen piasters to the 'adleeyeh, telling him that the Basha had given orders, many days before, that this coin should no longer pass for sixteen. The soldier took back the 'adleeyehs to the seyrefee, and demanded an additional piaster to each; which was refused: he therefore complained to the Basha himself, who, enraged that his orders had been disregarded, sent for the seyrefee. This man confessed that he had been guilty of an offence, but endeavoured to palliate it by asserting that almost every money-changer in the city had done the same, and that he received 'adleeyehs at the same rate. The Basha, however, disbelieving him, or thinking it necessary to make a public example, gave a signal with his hand, intimating that the delinquent should be beheaded. The interpreter of the court, moved with compassion for the unfortunate man, begged the Basha to spare his life. "This man," said he, "has done no more than all the money-changers of the city: I, myself, no longer ago than yesterday, received 'adleeyehs at the same rate." "From whom?" exclaimed the Basha. "From a Jew," answered the interpreter, "with whom I have transacted business for many years." The Jew was brought, and sentenced to be hanged; while the Muslim was pardoned. The interpreter, in the greatest distress of mind, pleaded earnestly for the life of the poor Jew; but the Basha was inexorable: it was necessary that an example should be made, and it was deemed better to take the life of a Jew than that of a more guilty Muslim.

The Jews in Egypt generally lead a very quiet life: indeed, they find few but persons of their own religion who will associate with them....The more wealthy among them dress handsomely at home; but put on a plain or even shabby dress before they go out: and though their houses have a mean and dirty appearance from without, many of them contain fine and well-furnished rooms. ...

Avarice is more particularly a characteristic of the Jews in Egypt than of those in other countries where they are less oppressed. They are careful, by every means in their power, to avoid the suspicion of being possessed of much wealth. It is for this reason that they make so shabby a figure in public, and neglect the exterior appearance of their houses. They are generally strict in the performance of their religious ordinances; and, though overreaching in commercial transactions, are honest in the fulfilment of their contracts.

Essentially, when Jews weren't wantonly killed too often, it was considered as if they had wonderful lives living under their Islamic masters.

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Egyptian protesters burn down library. Israel blamed

From Al Arabiya:

The fire that broke out in a Cairo library that houses thousands of rare documents raised concerns over the government’s and the army’s ability to protect historic sites at times of upheaval and drove several experts to warn of a possible intervention by foreign entities to preserve the heritage at risk.

Legal and archeological experts described failure to contain the fire that devoured large parts of the Scientific Complex in downtown Cairo and to rescue the priceless maps, manuscripts, and books kept inside as a disaster and warned that the possibility of similar acts of sabotage would make foreign intervention very likely.

...The fact that the fire targeted the Scientific Complex and maps of Egypt’s borders in particular raises a lot of questions about a possible conspiracy, according to [professor of archeology, Mamdouh al-]Masry.

“Was setting the complex on fire intentional in order to eliminate evidence of the borders between Egypt and Israel? Is Israel up to something especially after the Islamist victory in parliamentary election?” he said.

Egyptian archeology professor Ayman Hassan al-Dahshan agreed that a conspiracy is involved in the library fire.

“Why did the military make sure they take photos of the fire minute by minute but did not make an effort to rescue the building and arrest the saboteurs?”

Dahshan argued that the military council is either an accomplice in the act for some unknown reason or has lost control and is unable to control acts of sabotage and to distinguish between protestors and thugs.

“In all cases, what happened to a library that houses the heritage of the most vital country in the Middle East is definitely meant to undermine the state.”

Yes, those expansionist Zionists clearly want to grab some Egyptian land, and the best way to do that is to create a protest where a fire can plausibly break out and burn lots of books that may or may not include a few that show Egypt's border with Israel.

The massive fence they are building probably has wheels, so they can move it a few meters every few days, until the entire Sinai is back in Israeli hands - and Egypt will have no recourse, because all their maps would be burned! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

(h/t Vandoren)

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Arabs claim 15 centuries of ...loudspeakers!

From The Independent:

A highly contentious Bill which threatens to inflame Arab religious and ethnic sensitivities in Israel by clamping down on mosques using loudspeakers for the call to prayer has split the Cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr Netanyahu expressed sympathy this week for the principle behind the Bill, promoted by Anastasia Michaeli, a Knesset member in the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party led by the Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

Ms Michaeli's so-called muezzin Bill would actually ban the use of such loudspeakers in any place of worship, but is clearly directed at mosques used by Israel's mainly Muslim million-plus Arab minority. She has said the Bill comes from "a world view whereby freedom of religion should not be a factor in undermining quality of life".

Mr Netanyahu made it clear that he wanted the issue addressed, saying in reference to curbs in Belgium and France, where officials have imposed bans on street prayer, that "there is no need to be more liberal than Europe".

The Bill has outraged Arab religious authorities, with the former mufti of Jerusalem, Ekrima Sabri, asking yesterday: "How could Israel change something which Muslims have been practising for the last 15 centuries in Jerusalem and Palestine and everywhere?"

I knew that the Muslims claim to have been in the forefront of science, but I had no idea they had invented loudspeakers - even before Mohammed was born!

(h/t Daniel)

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Palestinian Arab woman dies of cancer in London. Israel blamed.

From The Guardian:

Israeli authorities made the wife of the Palestinian ambassador in London interrupt a course of chemotherapy in order to return to Jerusalem or risk losing her residency rights, a trip that hastened her death from cancer, her family claim.

Samira Hassassian was infected by a virus on her plane journey back to London in May and died three months later, aged 57. Her husband, Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian envoy to the UK since 2005, said the Israeli government had extended her Jerusalem identity papers in 2010 for a year after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2009, but refused to grant a second extension this year, although the disease had by then metastasised to her bones and she was several weeks into intensive chemotherapy.

"They forced her to go back," Hassassian said. "The doctors had told me she had maybe until the end of the year, so this trip just expedited the process, but it also caused her pain and suffering."

These are the first three paragraphs of the article, which means that they are the only parts that people are likely to read. But if you dig deep in the remaining paragraphs you discover that the Israeli embassy adamantly denies that they had forced her to go to Israel, saying that her extension was not in doubt and that they would never force a sick patient to travel.

In fact, as CiF Watch reports, Samira Hassassian chose to go to Israel to seek a second opinion from Hadassah Hospital on her medical condition.

Furthermore, as CiF Watch notes, there is no way to know that she caught a virus on a 5 hour airplane trip and not before or after the flight. The fact that the Guardian states that as a fact and not as an allegation is scurrilous.

Much more on this slander at CiF Watch.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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