Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 08, 2012

Morning links

"Popular resistance" - 4 terrorists with 12 bombs, gun and knife caught at one of those inhumane checkpoints

Stonegate: Divisions in Hamas' leadership exposed in Sudan

Abbas' honoring a child-murderer is ignored by the Left

Volume of trade between India and Israel is now $5 billion annually; expected to triple when a free trade agreement is signed later this year. Sorry, Israel-haters.

Solving a problem begins by calling it by its proper name, at Treppenwitz

You know how the Left pretends to be against discrimination? Well, that doesn't apply to the ultimate evil of Jews wanting to live in their ancient homeland. Left wing group petitions High Court against allowing a Jewish settler from being a judge.

Over 100 mosques attacked over the past five years - in the Netherlands.

Israeli ophthamologists from Tel Hashomer Hospital go to Nablus to help treat eye diseases, do a surgery marathon. A young boy asked why the Jews were helping his grandfather; his parents answered "not all Jews are bad."

The biggest kids' store in the Middle East is in Israel - and owned by an Israeli Druse.

A flashmob of religious and secular women in Bet Shemesh:

Israelis saving the world again: an artificial pancreas.

US: MB will honor peace treaty. MB: No, we won't.

Who are you going to believe?

From Ha'aretz on Friday:

The Muslim Brotherhood gave the United States assurances regarding the maintaining of Egypt's peace deal with Israel, a top U.S. official said on Thursday, despite recent comments by party leaders claiming that the 1979 treaty did not bind Cairo's new regime.

From Israel HaYom today:

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday denied remarks made by U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland that the Islamist group made guarantees to the U.S. that it would continue to respect Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

In an interview over the weekend with the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Essam Arian, said, "We never promised that we would honor the peace treaty with Israel. The treaty is not sacred and we can and should make changes in it."

Another senior member of the party told the London-based newspaper Asharq Alawsat, "The movement's position is not to recognize the Zionist entity and not to recognize peace agreements with hostile entities, and this position will never change."

The truth? Egypt simply cannot risk the billions of dollars it receives from the US every year, so the Muslim Brotherhood will do the minimum necessary to appease the US while dismantling every discernible manifestation of an actual peace with Israel.

The ally from hell (Goldberg/Ambinder)

From Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic:

Nuclear-weapons components are sometimes moved by helicopter and sometimes moved over roads. And instead of moving nuclear material in armored, well-defended convoys, the SPD prefers to move material by subterfuge, in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic. According to both Pakistani and American sources, vans with a modest security profile are sometimes the preferred conveyance. And according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, the Pakistanis have begun using this low-security method to transfer not merely the “de-mated” component nuclear parts but “mated” nuclear weapons. Western nuclear experts have feared that Pakistan is building small, “tactical” nuclear weapons for quick deployment on the battlefield. In fact, not only is Pakistan building these devices, it is also now moving them over roads.

What this means, in essence, is this: In a country that is home to the harshest variants of Muslim fundamentalism, and to the headquarters of the organizations that espouse these extremist ideologies, including al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba (which conducted the devastating terror attacks on Mumbai three years ago that killed nearly 200 civilians), nuclear bombs capable of destroying entire cities are transported in delivery vans on congested and dangerous roads. And Pakistani and American sources say that since the raid on Abbottabad, the Pakistanis have provoked anxiety inside the Pentagon by increasing the pace of these movements. In other words, the Pakistani government is willing to make its nuclear weapons more vulnerable to theft by jihadists simply to hide them from the United States, the country that funds much of its military budget.

The article gets even scarier after that.

(h/t Yoel)

Report: Egypt demanding $500 billion from Israel for Sinai damage

Egyptian media is reporting that Egypt has prepared a 750 page document detailing Israel's liability for damage done to the Sinai while Israel controlled it from 1967 to 1982.

Rose El Youssef says that the report being given to the UN. It details how Israel supposedly ravaged the Sinai and hurt the Egyptian economy. It includes some 190 maps.

Among the ludicrous charges:

Israel destroyed the fishing industry
Israel destroyed 40% of the coral reefs
Israel took lots of oil from the Sinai
Israel stole 25% of the precious gems and marble, leaving worthless rocks behind
Israel took the entire contents of two gold mines, leaving nothing of value left
Israel disrupted international maritime trade through the Suez Canal, depriving Egypt of revenue
Israel killed 250,000 (!) Egyptians and injured a million more
Israel looted all Egyptian banks in Gaza the day before the Six Day War, in the "biggest military robbery in modern history"
Israel stole priceless artifacts from Egypt's museums in the Sinai and gutted archaeological sites there
Israel emptied out 30% of the fresh water wells in the Sinai, and placed there pipes that continue to drain Egyptian water towards Israel today
Israel stole millions of tons of valuable sand, worth $49 billion in today's prices
Israel used the Sinai to research desert agriculture Israel benefits from the research but the Sinai desert lands were weakened as a result
Israel destroyed Sinai's wildlife and stole many exotic animals to make medicines being sold to Europe
Israel shot down Libyan Airlines Flight 114 (that is true, details at Wikipedia; the plane strayed into Israel accidentally and purposefully refused to acknowledge the IAF pilots' attempts to contact them)
And, of course, Israel destroyed Egypt's air force "for no reason" at the beginning of the 1967 war

You can't make this stuff up.

I think if Israel managed to steal $50 billion worth of sand, then Egypt's cash flow problems are over - the rest of the sand in the Sinai must be worth trillions! Who needs oil when you have such valuable sand?

Movie night open thread

I am in the mood to watch The Princess Bride. I only saw it once and forgot most of it.

I know, I know. Inconceivable.

Unity! Hamas to charge Fatah member for "blasphemy"

On Friday, a delegation of four Fatah officials tried to get into Gaza but left in a huff after being forced to wait, they said for an hour, at the Erez crossing.

Hamas denied it, saying that they only waited for ten minutes.,

Now Hamas has upped the ante:

The row over a Fatah delegation that said it was denied entry to Gaza continued Saturday as Hamas said delegate Sakher Bseso may face prosecution for blasphemy.

Four Fatah officials tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday for reconciliation talks, but said they were refused entry by Hamas border guards. The group said they waited for 45 minutes at the Erez crossing before giving up and returning to the West Bank.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza swiftly responded that the delegation only waited for 10 minutes at the border, and refused to wait any longer for border guards to call their supervisors to arrange the group's entry.

The ministry said Fatah delegate Sakher Bseso "cursed God" and insulted the officers. On Saturday it announced that "certain officials" had started legal proceedings against Bseso for blasphemy.

"Bseso should be ready to stand in a court and be judged," the ministry said in a statement.

Bseso told Ma'an he did not curse God and reiterated that the delegation was visiting Gaza for talks to implement the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah.

Fatah spokesman Ahmad Assaf insisted Friday that the delegation was refused entry to Gaza and accused Hamas leaders of holding the strip hostage. Some Hamas leaders are not interested in reconciliation, Assaf said in a statement.

Can't you feel the love?

Latest Latma

I like the commercial about Ilan Grapel.

The fake refugees of 1948

In 1949, the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) held a months-long conference in Lausanne with Israelis, Arab countries and representatives of Palestinian Arabs to discuss how to solve the issues that came up from the 1948 war, including boundaries, Jerusalem and refugees.

The Commission was frustrated by both the Israelis and Arabs, as the Arabs wanted the repatriation of refugees to be the prerequisite for any other discussions, while Israel wanted the problem to be solved in context of a comprehensive peace plan. The Commission, with delegates from the US, France and Turkey, often sided with the Arabs and spent much of its time trying to find formulas to allow many or most of the refugees to go to Israel.

I came across a very interesting article in the Palestine Post, July 13, 1949, by Jon Kimche, regarding this Commission.

Perhaps the failure of the Commission is best indicated by its failure to have done anything about the 200,000 Arab refugees who have fled, not from Israeli occupied territory, but from Arab occupied Palestine. There was no political obstacle to their repatriation. Yet they continue to sit in camps and refugee villages without anyone lifting a finger to get them back to their homes. Next there are 200,000 destitute Arabs who are not refugees but who draw assistance form the relief funds or live in refugee camps. Their problem will not be settled by repatriation of genuine refugees. What are they waiting for? In other words almost half the total problem of the so-called refugees could have been tackled without waiting on Israeli agreement for anything. It detracts considerably from the humanitarian argument used to persuade Israel to do something quick while these conditions continue unbettered.

It seems to have been well known, at least among those who followed the issue, that a significant number of "refugees" did not come from the territory controlled by Israel!

This seems consistent with research that Efraim Karsh did to count the number of 1948 Arab refugees. He calculated between 583,000-609,000 refugees from Israeli territory during the war. But the UNRWA's first count of "refugees" done at the end of 1949 came up with 962,000! (I believe that they reduced that number in their second estimate to something lower than 900,000 after accounting for fraudulent claims, mostly for people who died and who didn't exist.)

The first UNRWA report accepted that there were over 150,000 destitute Arabs who were seeking aid from the Agency who were not refugees, so it is unclear if they were included in that initial number - or if they ended up being included anyway. UNRWA and other organizations at the time also freely admitted that the Arabs were exaggerating their numbers. "Many of the needy are now actually in poorer circumstances than the average refugee because the latter receives food, medical care and some clothing, little of which is available to the non-refugee."

I had not been previously aware of the number of "refugees" who fled from areas that ended up being in Jordan or Gaza. Perhaps they left out of fear that the Zionist forces would reach them. But it looks like many of them took advantage of the free food and medical care that UNRWA provided. I don't know if Kimche's numbers are accurate - they seem somewhat exaggerated - but it appears that a large proportion of the "refugees" in 1949 were nothing of the sort.

And chances are that many of them and their descendants are still defined as "refugees" today.

Gazans in Jordan: "We are like the living dead"

Al Quds al Arabi has an article about one of the most discriminated groups of Palestinian Arabs - the Gazans of Jordan.

Most of Jordan's Gazans fled there in 1967 because they or their parents didn't want to live under Israeli rule. Unlike the West Bank Palestinians who Jordan naturalized in 1949, these Palestinians from Gaza have been treated as if they don't exist.

There are over 100,000 Gazans in Jordan.

The article talks about Mohammed Khalil Shami, born in Aqaba in 1969, who has never left Jordan in his life. When he returned with his family on vacation in a nearby town, he was stopped at a checkpoint that other Jordanians could sail through. He was held for several hours.

Instructions from Amman on how to treat Gazans at any point in time are arbitrary and secret. In this case, Shami complained about how he could be treated like foreign spies when he has lived in Jordan his whole life?

People of Gazan descent in Jordan have restrictions on land ownership, business ownership and jobs. Some register their businesses under the names of Jordanian friends.

Shami says that Gazans in Jordan are "the living dead."

A pharmacist friend of his complains that pharmacists, among others, cannot get licenses. "We have received education in the best universities in and outside Jordan, our skills are very important but we are just ghosts - the ministries do not give us a license to practice our profession and no one wants to recognize our existence at all."

Others complain about things as simple as getting cell phones, not to mention health benefits. "Is there anything more humiliating than this?"

I had covered the disgraceful plight of Gazans in Jordan in 2010. I ended off asking these questions:

How many times have you read about this "open-air prison?" How many human rights groups have championed the cause of Jordanian Gazans? What op-eds have ever been written, shaming the Hashemite Kingdom on how poorly they treat their Arab brethren? How many flotillas and convoys are being organized to help out the women and children? How many people are working to divest from Jordanian products because of this shameful discrimination?

And the answer:

Zero, zero, zero, zero and zero.

(Related: Jordanian Gazans prove that Arabs don't really care about the "right to return.")

(h/t Arthur)

Tunisians greet Haniyeh: "Kill the Jews!" (updated)

From Point of No Return:

Cries of 'Out with the Jews!', 'Kill the Jews!' greeted the arrival at Tunis airport of the Hamas chief in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, StandWithUS (France) reports.

A few hundred people gathered on 5 January at the Tunis-Carthage airport to welcome Haniyeh. As they waited for him they sang antisemitic chants and slogans to the glory of Palestine and the liberation of Gaza. They carried Palestinian flags, the flags of the Ennahda movement, and the black flags of the Salafists.

Ismail Haniyeh was arriving in Tunisia from Turkey for a two-day visit.

CiFWatch adds that the clip also includes “Killing the Jews is a must!” (0:16) and “Chasing away the Jews is a must!” (0:20).

These must be those moderate Islamists we've been hearing so much about.

The YouTube comments include quite a few Tunisians who are deeply embarrassed about this.

UPDATE: Translation from commenter Sammish at the Point of No Return blog:

Speaker(One person):"Kick the jews:
Crowd:"Duty" [wajib] (It is a duty)

Speaker:" Expel the Jews"
Crowd: "Duty".

Speaker: "Kill the Jews"
Crowd: "Duty"

PA leader praises TV, radio for creating "culture of resistance"

Tayeb Abdel Rahim, secretary general of the PA presidency, spoke on behalf of Mahmoud Abbas at a ceremony honoring Palestinian Arab radio and television as a new cultural center opened in Ramallah.

In his speech, he said that every day the PA TV and radio broadcasters create new and beautiful programming showing the "genius of the revolution." He congratulated them and blessed Yasser Abed Rabbo, who is responsible for all broadcast media, for deepening the idea of a "Palestinian homeland" saying that the "culture of resistance" flows through their veins.

I didn't see him praising them on telling the truth, or on objectivity, or allowing any perspectives into Palestinian Arab TV besides the government line.

I didn't see any response from PA reporters, saying that their jobs are to report the news accurately and objectively, and saying that they are not simply parroting the official government positions.

I also don't see the people who pretend to care so much about freedom of expression saying anything about this speech that proves (as if people didn't know) that the Palestinian Arab media are nothing but organs of propaganda and incitement.

Fatah/PA leader Sha'ath: "We are not abandoning armed resistance"

For the past several days, Fatah leader Nabil Sha'ath has been in Gaza working on unification with Hamas.

In an interview there, he was asked about Hamas' position that armed resistance is still necessary.

"If you wish to end the siege on the Gaza Strip you must agreed with the program of President Abu Mazen which calls for peaceful resistance to achieve the Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza on the border of 1967 and its capital Jerusalem."

In response to Hamas's rejection of the option of popular resistance and adherence to armed resistance, he said Hamas was divided on this issue, and Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas political leader spoke of the popular struggle in Cairo at length and Hamas went to Khartoum to agree to that.

Shaath said the adoption of the popular resistance does not mean giving up the armed struggle ...international law and morality gives the right of armed resistance, but it is better to resist the military and not attack civilians, pointing out at this time that any use of armed struggle would be more costly than its results, expressing his belief that Hamas agrees.

He said he did not ask the Hamas movement to abandon the option of armed resistance which is a right, and President Abu Mazen said in a statement that all options are open.

Shaath said that at this time popular resistance is preferable in addition with political pressure on Israel such as attempts to gain statehood at the UN.

See? Unity stands a chance - as long as Fatah keeps moving closer to Hamas' positions!

Don't expect the Western media to make a big deal over the fact that the "moderate" Fatah is saying pretty much what Hamas says about "armed resistance."

Israel-haters just make things up; their fans eat it up

It doesn't always take years for history to be re-written. Sometimes it takes only 19 days.

From John Glaser at Anti-War.com:

Israel may betray its earlier promise to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in the second phase of a prisoner swap agreement that secured the release of one captive Israeli soldier.

That agreement has already resulted in the release of 477 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for five years. That first exchange took place in October, and Israel had agreed to release another 550 – a total of 1,027 – within two months of Shalit’s release.

But now a government-appointed panel in Israel recommended in a secret report Thursday to back out of the deal. Defense Minister Ehud Barak would not divulge details of the report but said Israel has “no choice but to overhaul the rules” now that Sgt. Gilad Schalit has been freed.

You may recall that Israel fulfilled the second half of the Shalit deal, releasing 550 prisoners, on December 18th.

Was this perhaps an older article written by Glaser in early December and somehow released yesterday?

Nope. The quote from Ehud Barak is accurate and was made yesterday. As reported by AP:

Israel is rethinking its policy on prisoner swaps to avoid the kind of lopsided deals that saw Israel recently trade more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for a lone Israeli soldier.

A government-appointed panel submitted its recommendations in a secret report Thursday and details were not divulged. But Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel has "no choice but to overhaul the rules" now that Sgt. Gilad Schalit has been freed after five years in captivity in Gaza.

Barak told Israel Radio, "We have to get off the slippery slope we ventured on 25 years ago."

Over the past three decades, Israel has carried out a series of wildly uneven prisoner swap deals. In some cases, the freed prisoners returned to violence against Israel.

Glaser clearly knew that the Shalit deal was completed, because the same source that he got the Barak quote from said that Israel traded more than 1,000 prisoners for Shalit.

The only conclusion is that Glaser simply made it up.

And since Israel haters travel in packs, his article has already been copied without any thought on other anti-Israel sites.

Glaser writes about two articles a day for the "news" section of Anti-War.com.

(h/t Arnold)

UPDATE: To his credit, one of the reposters corrected his post. And it appears that this site at least is not one of the mindless anti-Israel sites.

UPDATE 2: The Anti-War.com post has been taken down. No correction that I could find. The headline is still on the front page at the moment, linking to an error page. (update: now gone)

UPDATE 3: Anti-War did publish an apology.

PA cartoon: Jews would have killed Mohammed as a child because he was Arab

From Palestinian Media Watch:

Narrator: "When Muhammad was 12 he went with his uncle Abu Taleb to trade in Syria. A surprise awaited them on the way":

Wise man: "This boy is the prophet foretold in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament."

Uncle: "Muhammad, my brother's son, is a prophet?"

Wise man: "Yes, I advise you to take him back with you. If the Jews find out that the prophet of this time is of the Arabs and not of them, they will kill him."

Uncle: "Don't worry, no one will find out about him, I'll protect him as long as I live."

Peace partners!

(h/t Jack)

IDF aid missions help thousands around the world (video)

From the IDF:

As is usually the case with facts that don't portray the IDF as genocidal monsters, this video is already causing Israel-haters' heads to explode.