Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 02, 2012

Summing up Cast Lead (Jonathan Sacerdoti in New Statesman)

A rare, and welcome, dose of reality in a decidedly liberal publication:

Three years ago, Operation Cast Lead saw Israel send troops into the Gaza Strip in response to the thousands of rockets and mortars launched into Israeli civilian areas. Which other government in the world wouldn't defend its citizens in such circumstances? If some wish to portray this operation as a "massacre", they would have to ignore the facts to do so.

John Stuart Mill wrote in 1862 that "war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things". Indeed today, even with laws, regulations and technology intended to lessen the horrors of battle, war is always ugly and tragic. But sometimes, it is still an essential response to something far uglier.

In 2006, following the Israeli disengagement and pullout from the Gaza Strip, there was an increase of 436 per cent in the number of Palestinian rockets launched towards Israel from that very territory. For some time, Israel resisted a large-scale military response to such acts deliberately aimed at civilians. As a result, the attacks got worse, and every country, including Israel, has the moral responsibility to defend its people from such actions.

Increased Palestinian terror attacks from Gaza were the cause of Operation Cast Lead. Yet Israel's is a conscript army. Indeed Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to protect its young soldiers (witness the efforts make to secure the release of the kidnap victim Gilad Shalit), and does not send them to war easily.

In the three years since the operation, there has been an unprecedented 72 per cent decline in the number of rockets launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza. No surprise, then, that Israel's Defence Forces Chief of Staff should call the operation "an excellent operation that achieved deterrence for Israel vis-a-vis Hamas". (However, that deterrence is still not enough to have prevented Palestinians from launching 1,571 rockets since the operation, including one attack with an anti-tank missile on a clearly identifiable Israeli school bus.)

Just as Israel's erection of a security fence to prevent homicide bombers from infiltrating Jerusalem saw a bigger than 90 per cent reduction in such attacks, Operation Cast Lead was undeniably effective in reducing terror attacks from the Gaza strip. The numbers speak for themselves.

Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, has repeatedly commented that, "during its operation in Gaza, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare." Furthermore, he points out that the steps taken in that conflict by the Israeli Defence Forces to avoid civilian deaths are shown by a study published by the United Nations to have resulted in, by far, the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare.

Kemp explains that by UN estimates, the average ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide is 3:1 -- three civilians for every combatant killed. That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan. But in Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to have been 4:1. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia. In Gaza, it was less than one-to-one.

Since the 22-day Gaza operation, Israel has also been demonstrably fastidious in its efforts to protect civilian lives while targeting combatants. The Israel correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly sites Israel's record this year, saying "the IDF killed 100 Gazans in 2011. Nine were civilians. That is a civilian-combatant ratio of nearly 1:10."

In fact, Israel's effort to combat the Hamas regime in the Gaza strip, while still safeguarding the rights of civilians, can be seen in her actions away from the battlefield as well. Despite the continued and sustained terror attacks from the area, around 60 per cent of Gaza's electricity comes from Israel, rather than from Gaza's other neighbour, Egypt, against whom no missiles are launched by the Palestinians.

Israel allows thousands of tonnes of goods to pass into Gaza weekly, and provides a large amount of the strip's water. If destroying infrastructure were truly Israel's aim, as some claim, this goal could be achieved without the risk to Israeli soldiers inherent in operations which see them sent into the Gaza strip.

It is time to stop blaming the Israeli government and defence forces for protecting Israeli civilians. Instead, we must demand that Palestinian leaders (and their apologists) work towards improving the welfare of their own citizens, rather than constantly attacking Israel's.

One point about the civilian to combatant death ratio:

I have not seen the statistics to back up the IDF's claim that only nine civilians have been killed this year in Gaza. PCHR's numbers make it look like the ratio is more like one civilians for every 3 terrorists killed. As we know, the PCHR is hardly reliable either, but they do give the names and ages of each victim.

Even if you take PCHR's numbers at face value, a 1:3 ratio is still nine times better than the 3:1 ratio that is considered normal for these kinds of wars.

(h/t Ian)

PLO members moving money from Jordan banks to foreign accounts

Jordan's Ad Dostour is reporting that there has been a large amount of money being transferred recently by Palestinian Arab officials from Jordanian banks to foreign banks.

The paper reports that a major investigation into PA corruption has been postponed. The conjecture is that PLO and former PLO officials are scrambling to hide their embezzled money before the investigation starts up again. (Or maybe some of them were tipped off.)

There have been a number of resignations lately in the PA because of embezzlement.

Meanwhile, the PLO plans to create a special committee to figure out exactly where all of its assets are hidden. According to the article, most of the PLO's real estate holdings are still unaccounted for. They are assumed to be in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

The New York Times' anti-Israel op-ed index (DG)

For six months, the former blogger previously known as Soccer Dad, now known by his initials DG, has been keeping track of the op-eds in the pages of the New York Times that had to do with Israel, seeing if they were pro-Israel or anti-Israel.

Here is his roundup of the past six months:

July 2011 - Anti-Israel 5 / Pro-Israel 2
August 2011 -  Anti-Israel 4 / Pro-Israel 0
September 2011 -  Anti-Israel – 14 / Pro-Israel 1
October 2011 - Anti-israel - 6 / Pro-Israel - 3
November 2011 - Anti-Israel - 6 / Pro-Israel - 2
December 2011 - Anti-Israel 4 / Pro-Israel 0

The final tally for the last six months of 2011, is 38 anti-Israel opinion articles and 7 pro-Israel opinion articles; a ratio of more than 5 to 1. (I double counted one of each at the end of October and beginning of November. The dates in the papers archive differ from the actual date appearing in the article.)

Clearly September was the worst month with fourteen anti-Israel op-eds. It's important to remember that in September Mahmoud Abbas was pursuing the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) at the UN. The opinion articles therefore served as providing support for the UDI effort.

Even though the official New York Times editorial position was that Israel and the Palestinians needed to negotiate, at least four of the op-eds I counted either implicitly or explicitly supported the UDI. Despite the official editorial stance, it's pretty clear that the editors of the New York Times were not especially upset by Abbas's effort to bypass the negotiations. (Additionally Abbas wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he explicitly spelled out his intent to use the UDI to pursue diplomatic action against Israel. An editorial appearing ten days later didn't even mention the op-ed.)

Perhaps the lowest blow was the publishing of an op-ed by Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert. Olmert argued that even though he made an offer to Abbas that was rejected, it was up to Netanyahu to make the same (or better) offer to Abbas because it was essential to make a deal. Aside from the absolutely incomprehensible negotiating advice (tell the guy who refused to negotiate in good faith that he hasn't lost anything) the op-ed was written by a disgraced politician, who has no credibility in Israel.

Prior to the UDI effort, it was reported that the PLO had hired a PR firm. Given the editorial support of the Palestinians by the New York Times, one has to wonder if the money was wasted.

I would argue that the PR firm might have been successful in pushing the NYT even further in the direction it already was going.

Ron Dermer's letter to the NYT a few weeks ago also tallied up its op-eds and found that 19 out of 20 were negative towards Israel in a three month period.

Corrupt Egyptian army sells pasta and rents wedding halls

Jadaliyya last week had an utterly fascinating article about the profit-making enterprises of the Egyptian army, and the corruption that comes from it.

Should the production of pasta, mineral water, butane gas cylinders, and gas station services qualify as classified military secrets? And does discussing these enterprises in public pass as a crime of high treason? The leaders of the Egyptian Armed Forces believe the answer is “yes.”

Until this very day, the role of the military establishment in the economy remains one of the major taboos in Egyptian politics. Over the past thirty years, the army has insisted on concealing information about its enormous interests in the economy and thereby keeping them out of reach of public transparency and accountability. The Egyptian Armed Forces owns a massive segment of Egypt’s economy—twenty-five to forty percent, according to some estimates. In charge of managing these enterprises are the army’s generals and colonels, notwithstanding the fact that they lack the relevant experience, training, or qualifications for this task.

The military’s economic interests encompass a diverse range of revenue-generating activities, including the selling and buying of real estate on behalf of the government, domestic cleaning services, running cafeterias, managing gas stations, farming livestock, producing food products, and manufacturing plastic table covers. All this information is readily available on the websites of relevant companies and factories, which publicly and proudly disclose that they belong to the army. Yet for some reason the military establishment insists on outlawing any public mention of these activities.

Why is the budget of the Egyptian army above public transparency and accountability? Is it because it is exclusively concerned with national defense and thus must remain classified? Not really.

....The part of the military’s budget that is kept secret has little to do with national defense and more with the huge profits the army accrues from the production of non-military goods and services. In other words, these budgetary items have to do with: how many bags of pasta and bottled water were sold last month; how much money “Wataniyya”, the military’s gas station, generated last year; how many houses “Queen”, the military’s cleaning services company, attended to this month and how many nurseries the same company is in charge of running; how many truckloads of fresh beef have the military’s high-tech slaughterhouses in East Uwaynat sold this year; how many cabins they managed to rent out in the north coast Sidi Crir resort last summer; and how many apartments they sold in Kuliyyat al-Banat residential buildings and at what price? All these items together make up the “classified” part of the army’s budget, which the military establishment insistently keeps off the public record and out of the reach of parliamentary and public deliberation as well as oversight. Attempting to discuss the army’s so-called classified activities in public could result in military prosecution and trial, because these are, supposedly, “national security secrets” that Egypt’s rivals—like Israel—must not find out about.

...Of greater concern is how many of the army’s leaders have entered into networks of corruption and unlawful partnerships with private capital.

...As the managers of a state-owned economic empire built on corruption and oppression of working classes, military leaders have become decisively complicit in repressing labor and violating their rights.

Being an army general, a member of the National Democratic Party (NDP), and a Member of Parliament for ten years almost guarantees that one is part of a corruption network. General Sayed Mishaal perfectly fits this profile. Before becoming Minister of Military Production, Mishaal was a director of the National Service Projects Organization (NSPO). During that time, he was also a member of the NDP, and as an MP for Cairo’s district of Helwan for three consecutive terms from 2000 to 2011. He used to proudly brag about managing to name the military-produced bottled mineral water Safi after his daughter. Mishaal was removed from his post after the revolution as a result of referrals to the General Prosecutor accusing him of wasteful spending of the ministry’s funds. Mishaal’s victory in parliamentary elections in Helwan was made easy by the fact that he could mobilize the votes of tens of thousands of individuals who work at “Military Factory 99,” located in the district. Mishaal used to show up at the factory to celebrate and make merry with the workers during election campaign events, only to disappear and hardly return after his victory.

The name “Military Factory 99” has also become associated with the repression of workers, especially that labor-employer relations in the factory are not subject to traditional union or government regulations. In August of 2010, Factory 99’s workers broke out into intense protests after one of their colleagues died as a result of an explosion. The director of the factory, who was also a general, had brought in a number of gas cylinders in order to test them out, even though the workers were not trained to use them. When several cylinders exploded, he told the workers that it would not matter if one or two of them died. Then, when one of them did in fact die, they stormed his office, gave him a beating, and then staged a sit-in. Subsequently, the workers’ leaders were tried in military courts for charges of revealing “war secrets” on account that they spoke publicly about butane gas cylinders.

There's lots more in this well-researched article.

One of the commenters pointed to this article in Al Masry al Youm that alleges that army-owned chemical companies are creating an environmental disaster, killing animals and destroying nearby farms.

The army is the most stable institution in Egypt - and it is rotten to the core. Even without the prospect of the Islamist takeover, this does not bode well for the country.

(h/t Arthur)

Ilan Grapel writes about his incarceration in Egypt

From the Washington Post:

When I went to Egypt to spend the summer working at a nongovernmental organization that provides legal assistance to asylum seekers from Sudan and Iraq, I was no stranger to the Middle East. I had studied Arabic in Cairo and spent more than two years in the Israel Defense Forces. I hoped that my summer would prove that my Zionist ideals could coexist with support for the right of human migration and sanctuary. I also hoped to convince the Arabs I met that my Zionism did not have to be antithetical to their interests and that we could work together for peace.

But in post-revolutionary Egypt, my attempts to educate and interact with the local population led to my arrest, to solitary confinement and eventually to the threat of five simultaneous life imprisonments for “espionage” and “incitement.”

On previous visits, the friendships I developed overpowered the omnipresent anti-Israel propaganda of the Arab world. Some former adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood actually wished me luck when I left to do reserve duty in Israel. Most Egyptians I met and chatted with over coffee ended our conversations by admitting to holding misconceptions about Israelis. This reinforced my hopes for common ground.

So during the summer I emphasized my Israeli background, even when I entered Egypt as an American. I identified as a Zionist Israeli to all of my Egyptian friends, taught them Hebrew and showed them Israeli movies. In return, I received lessons in Arabic, Islam and Egyptian culture.

Some who do not know me considered my actions peculiar or harmful. But that condemnation only underscores a particular abyss into which the Middle East conflict has descended since once-influential Zionists and Egyptians considered cooperation to be beneficial, as did the early Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and Dawood Barakat, the former editor of the Egyptian daily al-Ahram.

On June 12, two dozen state security officials barged into my hostel room, handcuffed and blindfolded me, and transported me to their general prosecutor.

People ask, “Were you scared?” I was terrified and confused. Over time I also became angry and lonely. The initial 14 days were the “best” part of my imprisonment because there was at least human interaction. The prosecutor and I bantered about politics, religion and the Middle East conflict. The conversations were jovial, mostly innocuous, save for some random accusations: “Security reports inform us that you were smuggling weapons from Libyan revolutionaries into Egypt,” or my favorite — but perhaps irrelevant — charge: “Ilan, you used your seductive powers to recruit Egyptian women and that is a crime.”

...Was my trip reckless or “wrong”? No. Despite the peril, the U.S. government sends Peace Corps volunteers to volatile regions because of the benefit of grass-roots diplomacy. Hasbara, the Hebrew term that refers to efforts to explain the Israeli viewpoint, has much to gain from such a strategy, given the pernicious myths about Israel and Jews prevalent in much of the Arab world.

My hasbara provided a viewpoint that changed the mentalities of former Muslim Brotherhood members, the prosecutor and my guards, whose last words were “Shalom, we hope you forgive us.” Israelis and Arabs can continue to maintain the status quo of mutual avoidance or they can dare to coexist. To those who wrongly held me, I say simply, I forgive you.

It looks like my early impression of Grapel was right on the money. He's dangerously naive.

Of course most Arabs are friendly on an individual basis. That doesn't mean that every Israeli or Jew in an Arab country is safe!

It is one thing to work for coexistence in an official capacity, where you know that you are backed by an organization or government that provides some level of protection. But for a Jew - and former IDF soldier - to go into a country where anti-semitism and Israel hatred is off the charts, in your own personal capacity, is simply stupid.

Not only that, but Grapel did not even address the circumstances of his release. He was traded for 25 Egyptian prisoners in Israeli jails. Even though none of them were said to be security prisoners, Grapel has established a precedent where hostile countries (or cold peace partners) can arrest any Israeli citizen under any pretext, and expect to get something concrete in return.

Also, besides the released prisoners, Grapel's reckless decisions reportedly has netted Egypt with F-16 fighter jets.

Starry-eyed peaceniks can endanger many people with their idealism.

And Grapel is clueless as to why this might be a problem.

New Year's open thread

I'm working on other projects today and maybe tomorrow, so here's an open thread so I don't feel so guilty about not blogging quite as much as usual.

Israeli Druse singer banned from Ramallah

From JPost:

The Palestinian Authority banned a well-know Israeli Druse singer from appearing at a New Year’s Eve party in Ramallah.

The decision to ban Mike Sharif, known as “The Druse Boy,” was taken following strong protests and threats by many Palestinians who oppose “normalization” with Israelis.

Sharif was raised in a village in the North and is one of the popular singers not only among Israeli Arabs but throughout the Arab world. He started his career as a singer at the age of seven.

The Palestinians were angered by the fact that Sharif was presented as an Israeli and that some of his songs were in Hebrew. Some said it was unacceptable that Israeli songs would be sung in Ramallah on the third anniversary of Operation Cast Lead. Others said they didn’t like the fact that a member of the Druse community, whose sons serve in the IDF, would appear at a party in Ramallah.

PA policemen raided the hall where the party was supposed to take place and ordered the owners to cancel Sharif’s appearance, eyewitnesses said.

The organizers of the event were forced to replace the Druse singer with another performer.

This is not a private institution that decides not to hire the singer - this is the Palestinian Authority stepping in to ban a singer, after he has already been hired, because he is Israeli!

Ramallah is looking a lot more like Gaza City lately, isn't it?

Here is Sharif singing an Arabic/Mizrahi-style song, in Hebrew, when he was younger:

(h/t DF, OnionTearsNews, Eliahou)

Third anniversary of Nizar Rayyan's death

On January 1, 2009, Israel warned Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan to leave his home with his family before the IDF would bomb the weapons cache underneath his apartment building.

He refused, attempting to use his wives and children as human shields to protect Hamas weaponry.

The IDF saw a large number of people leave the apartment building and concluded that the buildings were empty before bombing it:

During this episode, which was widely reported by NGOs, Ri‘an and members of his family were killed in an aerial strike that hit their home. Ri‘an was a senior Hamas operative, but he was not the target of the attack, although the IDF legitimately could have treated him as a military target due to his central role in planning and executing terrorist attacks. Instead, the operational goal of the strike was to destroy Hamas‘ central compound in the Jabaliya refugee camp. The compound included several buildings that served as storage sites for large quantity of sophisticated weapons. The IDF limited the planned attack to the weapons storage site and did not seek to injure or harm Ri‘an or, of course, any members of his family.

In an effort to ensure that it destroyed only the storage facilities, and did not harm civilians residing in the buildings, the IDF issued several warnings before the attack. These included not only general leaflets and telephone calls, alerting civilians to avoid facilities serving Hamas and other terrorist groups, but specific phone calls to the residents of the targeted buildings, notifying them of the planned strike and warning them to evacuate the premises. The IDF also fired two separate rounds of preliminary warning shots with light weapons, 13 minutes and 9 minutes before the strike, providing sufficient time for residents to evacuate. The residents evidently understood these early warnings, as a group of them did leave the building, a fact confirmed by IDF surveillance before proceeding with the strike. The IDF observed this group evacuation and drew the reasonable conclusion that the buildings (including Ri‘an‘s house) were empty. Only then did the IDF launch the strike.

Following the strike, secondary explosions were visible. This confirmed that Hamas used the buildings for weapons storage, and therefore it was a legitimate military objective according to the Law of Armed Conflict. Only later was it discovered that, Ri‘an and his family chose to remain in the building after others had evacuated, leading to their death.

The deaths of the Ri‘an family members were tragic. Even so, it must be underscored that the IDF took appropriate steps to tailor its military strike to a proper military objective (the weapons storage site) under the cover of a civilian residence, and to extricate civilians from possible harm. To that end, the forces complied with international norms by giving effective advance warnings to at-risk civilians. That some civilians heeded these warnings, while the Ri‘an family apparently did not, does not render the IDF‘s action unlawful.

At the time of the strike, Reuters described Rayyan as "a 49-year-old cleric regarded as one of Hamas's most hardline political leaders."

Rayyan is listed as a "civilian" in the PCHR list of people killed in Gaza during the war.

The Al Qassam Brigades website is celebrating the third anniversary of his death, and illustrates this "civilian" with this photo:

His 16-year old son, Ghassan, killed with him, was described as an "al-Qassam shahid" by terrorist websites. And Rayyan had already sent one of his sons to his death on a suicide mission that killed two Israelis in 2001. That son was 16 as well.

A month after Rayyan was killed, NYT reporter James Bennet wrote in The Atlantic about an interview he had of Rayyan a few years earlier, showing his twisted and hateful worldview. But as I wrote at the time, Bennet never seemed to have published the details of that interview while Rayyan was alive.

Could it be because the New York Times wanted to keep the fiction alive that there was a difference between Hamas terrorists and its "political" wing?

Jeffrey Goldberg had interviewed Rayyan as well in 2006 and published details after his death (I don't know if he had printed this at the time):

Periodically, advocates of negotiation suggest that the hostility toward Jews expressed by Hamas is somehow mutable. But in years of listening, I haven’t heard much to suggest that its anti-Semitism is insincere. Like Hezbollah, Hamas believes that God is opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine. Both groups are rhetorically pitiless, though, again, Hamas sometimes appears to follow the lead of Hezbollah.

...Nizar Rayyan expressed much the same sentiment the night we spoke in 2006. We had been discussing a passage of the Koran that suggests that God turns a group of impious Jews into apes and pigs. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, among others, has deployed this passage in his speeches. Once, at a rally in Beirut, he said: “We shout in the face of the killers of prophets and the descendants of the apes and pigs: We hope we will not see you next year. The shout remains, ‘Death to Israel!’”

Mr. Rayyan said that, technically, Mr. Nasrallah was mistaken. “Allah changed disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, it is true, but he specifically said these apes and pigs did not have the ability to reproduce,” Mr. Rayyan said. “So it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people.”

I asked him the question I always ask of Hamas leaders: Could you agree to anything more than a tactical cease-fire with Israel? I felt slightly ridiculous asking: A man who believes that God every now and again transforms Jews into pigs and apes might not be the most obvious candidate for peace talks at Camp David. Mr. Rayyan answered the question as I thought he would, saying that a long-term cease-fire would be unnecessary, because it will not take long for the forces of Islam to eradicate Israel.

Potentially huge geniza find in Afghanistan

From JPost:

Screenshot from Channel 2 report (unclear if this is actual or illustrative)

The Jewish scholarly world is abuzz over the discovery of ancient Jewish scrolls in a cave in Afghanistan’s Samangan province, Channel 2 reported on Friday.

According to Arab Affairs correspondent Ehud Yeari, if validated the scrolls may be the most significant historical finding in the Jewish world since that of the Cairo Geniza in the 19th century.

“We know today about a couple of findings,” Haggai Ben-Shammai, Professor Emeritus of Arabic Language and Literature at Hebrew University was quoted as saying. “In all, in my opinion, there are about 150 fragments. It may be the tip of the iceberg.”

The scrolls, which were part of a geniza, a burial site for sacred Jewish texts, date from around 1,000 years ago and are in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and ancient Persian.

One scroll, whose replica was shown to the cameras, is apparently a dirge written for an important person whose identity has not been determined.

Other texts said to be found include an unknown history of the ancient kingdom of Judea, passages from the book of Isaiah and some of the works of Rabbi Saadia Gaon, a medieval sage.

In addition, rings with Jewish names like Shmuel Bar Yosef inscribed in Hebrew on them have surfaced.

The area in which the findings were discovered is on the so-called Silk Road, a trade route that connected Eastern Asia with the Middle East and Europe which Jewish merchants often traveled.

Yeari quoted sources as saying the scrolls were first moved to Peshawar province in Pakistan and from there had been sold to antiquities dealers around the world in Geneva, London, Dubai and Jerusalem.

He said the Prime Minister’s Office and several Jewish businessmen had expressed an interest in buying the scrolls from dealers and collectors but that the process was in its early stages.

The Cairo Geniza, which the said discovery was been compared with, has produced 280,000 texts providing a wealth of information on almost every aspect of Jewish history.

The last couple of paragraphs make it sound like the actual site of the findings is not under any sort of control, which could make it much harder to research properly. It might require some Indiana Jones-style archaeologists to properly deal with this!

(h/t Yoel)

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt insists it will never recognize Israel

From Al Masry al Youm:

Dr. Rashad Bayoumi, deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, told the newspaper Al Hayat of London in an interview published Sunday: "Is there a requirement that the government recognize Israel? .. This is not an option at all, whatever the circumstances, we will not recognize Israel at all, they are an usurping criminal enemy occupier entity."

He stressed that the Brotherhood "will not recognize the state of Israel under any circumstances," suggesting that the group "would put a peace treaty with Israel to a referendum."

Bayoumi stressed that "none of the members of the group will ever sit in the future with Israelis," adding: "I will not allow myself to sit down with a criminal .. We will not deal with Israel in any way."

And on the peace treaty, Bayoumi said: "We will take legal procedures against the peace treaty, it does not oblige us at all."

He explained: "The Brotherhood respects international conventions, but we will take legal action against the peace treaty with the Zionist entity ... It is the right of any party to reconsider the treaty."

If this is how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will behave when it becomes part of the government, then is there any question how Hamas would behave even if it joins the PLO?

The Islamic winter is upon us.

Egypt Muslims burn Copt homes after Mohammed drawing posted

From Al Masry al Youm:

The prosecutor’s office in the Upper Egyptian Governorate of Assiut has ordered the detention of Gamal Abdallah Masoud, a Coptic high-school student accused of posting images on his Facebook account that Muslim residents described as “offensive” to Prophet Mohamed.

Masoud denies posting the images, claiming that they were shared on his Facebook account without his permission.

As news of the images spread on Friday afternoon, angry Muslim residents from four villages in Assiut gathered to pelt security forces with stones after fire-bombing Masoud’s house. The house was empty at the time and the attackers failed to break into it due to tight security measures.

Masoud was taken by security forces to an unknown location to be interrogated over the alleged incident.

In Salam village in Damaira, a group of angry residents also set the homes of two Coptic families on fire. However, no injuries were reported as security forces and fire fighters arrived on the scene in time to put out the flames. The protesters attempted to set a third home on fire, but security forces intervened and secured the homes of Copts in the villages of Adr and Salam.

Clashes erupted again in the afternoon between security forces and the residents of the villages of Adr and Baheeg, with hundreds gathering to call for the Coptic man’s removal from the village. They bombarded security with stones and set fire to the agricultural waste around his home, forcing security forces to use tear gas to disperse them.

Last October, an Egyptian court sentenced a young Coptic man to three years in prison for posting opinions on his Facebook account that were thought to be offensive to Islam and Prophet Mohamed.

According to some accounts, the drawing showed four women asking Mohammed's hand in marriage.

If someone finds the cartoon, please send it to me.

Avi Issacharoff's analysis of Hamas

One of the better political analysts in Israel, Avi Issacharoff, wrote an intriguing analysis in Ha'aretz yesterday about whether Hamas has really changed

Using information that is not readily available, the dynamics of the split between Hamas leadership in Damascus and Gaza, a topic I wrote about a few days ago:

The announcement of the new mode of struggle sparked a series of angry reactions by senior figures in Hamas' political wing in Gaza; they, who had been considered more pragmatic, perhaps even moderate in their approach, endorsed a much tougher approach than Meshal's. However, this was not a case of a conservative ideology flying in the face of the new line articulated by Meshal: What really irked the Gaza officials, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Interior Minister Fathi Hamad, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar and others, was that they were not consulted before the announcement of the new policy was made.

This also explains Egypt's invitation to Haniyeh to visit Cairo, where he hasn't set foot for five years (because the Egyptians forbade it ). Egyptian intelligence, which initiated the intra-Palestinian reconciliation and is close to achieving that goal, wants to avoid last-minute obstacles and surprises.

The new-old power struggles in the top ranks of Hamas between those who are "inside" and those who are "outside" Palestine signify the second, dramatic metamorphosis the organization has undergone in the past few months. The Hamas leadership abroad - those who are described as being ensconced in Damascus and Tehran - has lost some of its status (and also some of its assets ) in the wake of the palpable crisis it finds itself in vis-a-vis the Syrian and Iranian regimes. Politically, Meshal, his deputy Mousa Abu Marzook, senior official Izzat Rishak and their colleagues have been weakened, as compared to the weight of the Gaza group. The "outside" leaders are currently trying to find new premises to rent across the Arab world, after the organization decided to leave Syria (which in turn led to a decision by Iran to cut its aid to Hamas ); within just a few weeks, they lost their political, military and financial mainstays.

Still, Meshal remains the organization's "big boss." He did not hesitate this week to emphasize that the decision to switch to popular resistance was approved by all the senior officials of the organization, not by him alone. For those seeking clarifications of Haniyeh's reactions, Meshal's close aides have explained that the prime minister is above all apprehensive about losing his position. Haniyeh's anger probably intensified when he learned that for now, at least, Hamas does not intend to run a candidate in the Palestinian presidential elections next May.

The historical decision to modify the character of the Palestinian struggle - alongside Hamas' agreement to join the Palestine Liberation Organization (and in large measure to accept the written agreements with Israel ) - does not necessarily attest to a strategic shift in terms of goals. It's possible that Meshal and his aides realize that for now they need to forgo terrorist attacks in favor of new and more effective ways of achieving their goals: Indeed, Meshal and his colleagues admit that they have not completely abandoned the armed struggle and that they reserve the right to resist the Israeli occupation "using all means." Meshal also emphasized that Hamas does not intend to disarm or to stop the organization's huge arms buildup in Gaza.

Other fascinating findings, some of which we knew and some we didn't:

Indeed, Hamas' financial situation in recent months has become increasingly dire: Tehran has slashed cash payments to Gaza, and revenues from smuggling activity via the Strip's tunnels have fallen off, due to the lifting of the Israeli siege of Gaza. The changed economic situation compelled Hamas to take a number of drastic steps, such as firing several hundred members of the organization's security apparatus in Gaza. (The official Hamas version states that 150 members of the security forces were dismissed on account of "moral problems." ) In addition, Hamas forces seized control of several bank branches (of the Palestine Bank and the Palestinian Islamic Bank ) in Gaza and "withdrew" money from them by force. The third step being taken to keep the Hamas coffers full is to raise taxes.

Hamas' ostensibly "clean" image is also not what it used to be: More and more senior figures in the movement have become entangled in corruption scandals, though these are rarely reported in the media. The most prominent person involved is Ayman Taha, one of the leaders of Hamas in the Strip, who was exiled to Cairo because of his involvement in one scandal, and continues to operate from there.

Of late, a few less-senior figures in Hamas - some of whom were suspected of corruption, and others of whom tried to report such affairs - have undergone peculiar accidents. For example, Ahmed al-Mamluk was killed two weeks ago, according to Hamas, "while carrying out a jihad mission." His family says he was supposed to be meeting with a senior Hamas official to discuss a number of corruption cases. A similar "accident" befell Ali Nayef al-Haj, who was killed in an "internal explosion" in November; Mohammed Zaki al-Hams, who died in a road accident in early November; Mohammed al-Mahamoum, who died last June from electrocution in a Hamas outpost; and Ashraf Faraj Abu Hana, who drowned in a swimming pool last March. Hamas says this is a chance series of accidents, but the families have radically different versions.

Another challenge faced by Hamas in recent months is the activity of Islamic Jihad. The fact that Hamas has been observing a cease-fire on the Israeli front has sparked considerable domestic criticism in Gaza, and many activists have recently left and joined Islamic Jihad. Amazingly, Jihad is able to spot the "rebels" and recruit them even from Hamas-controlled mosques. It seems safe to say that Hamas' new policy will only heighten such challenges and further weaken its ability to exercise full control over events in Gaza.

Issacharoff thinks that unity between Gaza and Fatah is likely, even as he acknowledges that security forces in each territory are arresting members of the other party and apparently trying to sabotage the process.

I think that Fatah will move at least as much towards Hamas and the other way around. In fact, on Saturday, Tayseer Khaled, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that in the coming year the PLO will effect a gradual reduction of the level of relations with Israel, leading to cutting ties altogether.

Hamas, meanwhile, continues its hardline rhetoric, with Haniyeh emphasizing that Hamas "will never recognize Israel at all" and calling for every Arab nation to build a "Jerusalem Army" to help fight for the Jewish capital.

So if they are going to unify - something I still think is unlikely - it will be because Fatah is more interested peace with Hamas than with Israel. And the possibility that Hamas will engineer a takeover of the PLO is not something to be dismissed lightly.

Should Israel Get Some Credit?

Guest post by Challah Hu Akbar aka CHA

On January 26, 2011, Treasury designated Ayman Joumaa, as well as nine individuals and 19 entities as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers. According to Treasury, Joumaa’s network “used LCB [Lebanese Canadian Bank] to launder narcotics proceeds.” In addition, Treasury said that “Hizballah derived financial support from the criminal activities of Joumaa’s network.”

When Treasury designated the Lebanese Canadian Bank, on February 10, 2011, “as a financial institution of primary money laundering concern” it said that “Joumaa's organization uses, among other things, Hizballah couriers to transport and launder narcotics proceeds. Joumaa's organization pays fees to Hizballah to facilitate the transportation and laundering of narcotics proceeds.” According to Treasury, the investigation’s findings “exposes the terrorist organization Hizballah’s links to LCB and the international narcotics trafficking and money laundering network.”

The New York Times recently reported on the connection between the Lebanese Canadian Bank and Hezbollah and on December 15, a complaint was filed by the US government, which stated that “some of the funds move to LCB’s U.S. correspondent accounts via suspiciously structured electronic wire transfers to multiple U.S.-based used car dealerships—some of which are operated by individuals who have been separately identified in drug-related investigations.”

While much of the focus has since been on the 30 car dealerships reportedly tied to the Hezbollah scheme, one minor detail has been lost from the NY Times report.

For the United States, taking down the bank was part of a long-running strategy of deploying financial weapons to fight terrorism. This account of the serpentine, six-year inquiry and what has since been revealed is based on interviews with government, law enforcement and banking officials across three continents, as well as intelligence reports and police and corporate records.

So, what happened in February 2005, six years prior to the LCB's designation?

Israeli National Security Council Counterterrorism Director General Danny Arditi met with Treasury U/S Stuart Levey and his delegation on February 14 in Ramat Hasharon, near Tel Aviv…During his briefing for the USDEL, Brigadier General Danny Arditi was joined by his Deputy for International Coordination Amnon Zehavi, Advisor for Terrorism Finance Lt. Col. Udi Levi, Advisor for Intelligence Uzi Shaya, NSA Legal Advisor Roy Dick, Israeli Embassy officer Eynat Shlien, Advisor for Intelligence Lt. Col. Amon Prodik, and a military staffer. Treasury U/S for Enforcement and Head of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey was accompanied by Senior Advisor Adam Szubin, DAS Daniel Glaser, Senior Advisor Anne Wallwork, Public Affairs Specialist Molly Millerwise, IRS Senior Analyst Mark Weber, USSS Agent Jacqueline Marengo, USSS Agent Scott Salo, and Embassy notetaker.

…Levi charged that at least two banks (the Lebanese-Canadian Bank and the Societe Generale de Banque au Liban) are "connected directly to the financial infrastructure of Hizballah." In addition, he said, a Bank of America branch in the tri-border area of South America is handling Hizballah funds. Shaya added that the Chavez government is allowing Hizballah to operate in Venezuela. Levi claimed that several NGOs in the United States are also supporting Hizballah and asked for them to be included on the USG lists of organizations that finance terrorism. He agreed to provide further details on the banks and NGOs during the next terrorism finance meeting in Washington.

Should Israel get some credit?

Hamas cracks down on fortune tellers and mannequins

From Ma'an:

The Hamas-run government has launched a series of campaigns targeting fortune-tellers, mannequins and cigarette vendors in the Gaza Strip.

Police sources told Ma'an that 142 fortune tellers were forced to sign an agreement at the Ministry of Interior pledging that they would not practice their craft.

As well as predicting the future, fortune tellers sell amulets for protection and are sometimes called on to solve personal or family problems.

Another campaign targets boutiques displaying lingerie on mannequins. Police officials told Ma'an that security forces inspected clothes shops across the Gaza Strip and warned owners not to display naked mannequins, lingerie or "indecent advertisements."

The question is - if I place pictures like this on my site, is it more likely repel Hamas readers - or attract them??