Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Islamic Jihad leader calls for "third intifada," dismantling PA

Last month, in a very under-reported story, Fatah invited Islamic Jihad to be part of the PLO leadership.

Today, as always, Islamic Jihad is demanding that the PA be dismantled and that a third intifada be declared.

PIJ leader Sheikh Khader Habib spoke at a festival in solidarity with a prisoner who is on a hunger strike. He said that the PA was a "disaster for our people" and called for a new "jihad" against Israel.

He said that the PA was a "Zionist occupier of our political system," meaning that their joining the PLO is meant to replace it with an Islamist version.

But according to some idiots, its joining the PLO must mean that it is "moderating."

Women sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square

From Bikya Masr:

Heather still doesn’t know how she made it home on Wednesday night after being in Egypt’s Tahrir Square. The Arab-American arrived back at her Cairo flat without pants, having had them torn off downtown. She and her two roommates were victims of a mob attack by people in the iconic square on Wednesday, as protesters demonstrated against the military junta.

According to Heather, an Arab-American living in the Egyptian capital, she and her Swedish and Spanish roommates took to Tahrir as thousands were converging there to mark one-year since the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak.

“They started fighting over who was going to do what,” Heather told Bikyamasr.com in an exclusive interview. She came forward after seeing the report on a foreign woman who was stripped naked and assaulted only hours after her own incident.

“My roommates and I fell to the ground when they attacked us. The people pulled our pants off even as we yelled and tried to fight,” she continued.

The incident occurred around 7:30 PM local time, just as night was taking hold of the city. Heather said the attack happened “in the center of Tahrir.”

She said that after the men pulled their pants off, they continued to grab and grobe the women’s bodies. “It is disgusting. They put fingers up my ass,” she revealed.

Luckily, the women were somehow pulled from the violence by a man and a woman and taken to safety. She said she doesn’t recall exactly how she was saved from the violent attack.

“I was shaking and crying and the man and woman just grabbed us and pulled us out and took us out of the square.”

Later in the night, the issue of sexual violence toward women was sparked after an eyewitness reported on the micro-blogging site Twitter that a foreign woman was stripped, groped and assaulted by another mob of men in the square.

The woman, who’s identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident.

“I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness.

What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.”

There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands.

Throughout the day, sexual harassment towards women has been increasing and more and more reports of women being grabbed and groped began being reported.

Heather said that she came forward to talk about what happened to her “because people need to know what goes on. It is the only way to start making it a problem that will have to be dealt with.”

However, many people told her to not reveal what happened to her because she was told, “it would hurt the image of the revolution.” But Heather said after seeing the reports of others and their assaults, “I felt it was right to say something.”

According to studies conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Right (ECWR) in 2008, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment in Egypt.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of Egyptian men confessed to harassing women and 53 percent of Egyptian men faulted women for “bringing it on.”

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar@Israellycool)

Iran considering pre-emptive ban of oil exports to EU; China blasts sanctions

From Al Arabiya:

Many Iranian lawmakers and officials have called for an immediate ban on oil exports to the European bloc before its ban fully goes into effect in July, arguing that the 27 EU nations account for only about 18 percent of Iran’s overall oil sales and would be hurt more by the decision than Iran.

“The bill requires the government to stop selling oil to Europe before the start of European Union oil embargo against Iran,” lawmaker Hasan Ghafourifard told the parliament’s website, icana.ir. Debate on the bill is to begin on Sunday, he said.

18% is pretty high, actually, certainly enough to make a noticeable dent in the Iranian economy.

Meanwhile, China blasts the planned embargo:

China said Thursday EU sanctions on Iran announced earlier this week in response to Tehran’s suspected nuclear drive were “not constructive,” state media reported.

“To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches,” the foreign ministry was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency, in response to a question on the EU measures announced Monday.

China ̶ a key ally of Iran and its top trading partner ̶ has consistently opposed the use of sanctions, and advocates resolving disputes through “dialogue and consultation” instead.

Beijing’s economic ties with Tehran have expanded in recent years, partly thanks to the withdrawal of Western companies in line with sanctions against the Islamic republic over its nuclear drive.

The Asian powerhouse also depends a lot on Iranian oil, and has strengthened its presence in the country’s oil and gas sector by signing a series of contracts worth up to $40 billion in the past few years.

"Dialogue and consultation?"

But this does bring up the question that if China is increasing its dependence on Iranian oil, could this eventually translate into military cooperation with Iran as well? while China has sold weapons and technology (and even perhaps chemical weapons technology) to Iran's military, as far as I can tell it has not allied with Iran militarily. Could this be an unforeseen consequence of Western sanctions on Iran?

Geopolitics is like a three-dimensional chess game where half the pieces are invisible and sometimes they move for no apparent reason.

New meme: Daily aid to Gaza proves it is a "ghetto"

Ma'an reports:

Israeli forces partially opened the Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza on Thursday in order to allow in 300 truckloads of commercial and agricultural goods.

Israel has also allowed two trucks of flowers and strawberries to be exported from the coastal enclave, Palestinian border crossing official Raed Fattuh told Ma'an.

Twenty-two cars will also enter Gaza together with communications equipment and cement for international projects, he said.

This is pretty much a daily event. Although Ma'an didn't mention it, yesterday there were 270 to 280 trucks loaded with aid and both commercial and agricultural supplies, including 12 trucks loaded with cement and iron for construction and 48 truck of gravel for UNRWA and USAID projects, as well as the construction of a French cultural center. On Tuesday there were 227 trucks of aid.

The amount of aid going through Kerem Shalom has been steadily increasing over the past year, almost doubling.

So how to the commenters at Ma'an view this?

Sarah from Holland says "Whenever I read this kind of messages, I think: feeding time! Say thank you! The zionists are so sick. They really forgot the holocaust, the getto's, how it feld to be humiliated and treated like animals. Zionists are NO Jews."

"AKeenReader" from the UK adds: "sarah/holland - your views are absolutley spot on. It seems they are taking revenge against the Palestinians for what happend to them, although if one experience such terrible acts you would expect them to understand human suffering. Seems they haven't learnt any lesson. Shame as they are digging their own grave. Maybe Iran's attitude towards Israel is to give some comfort to the Palestinains because Iran can deal with Israel unlike defenceless Palestinians. Soon time will tell."

These aren't Arabs saying this - they are "cultured" Europeans who are often more anti-semitic than the Arabs are. But their Jew-hatred is buried under the pretense of caring about Gazans, most of whom are doing economically better than the Egyptians just over the border (whom they naturally don't give a damn about. Guess why?)

By the way, Egypt closed Rafah yesterday to celebrate the January 25th revolution, and on Tuesday Gazans were complaining that there were extra restrictions on them passing through Rafah. Sounds like Egypt is imprisoning Gazans and treating it like a "ghetto," but you won't hear these European human rights defenders say a word about that. (They used to, claiming that Egypt was following Israeli policy, but they can no longer do that - so they just ignore it.)

Fatwa against driving a Chevy

From Now Lebanon:

A Salafi sheikh in Egypt has reportedly issued a fatwa that buying [or driving] a Chevrolet vehicle is haram because the American brand’s logo looks like the Christian cross.

Prominent Egyptian TV presenter Amr Adeeb takes the sheikh’s joke-of-a-fatwa to task, saying, “We’ve reached a really strange place with this.”

“The car’s been around [for a century] and only now did you notice there’s a cross on the car?”

Adeeb also notes that the car is not used or presented as a form of religious iconography: “Do we hold mass for it? Do we pray for it?” And his guest chimes in with a comment about the self-centered nature of the fatwa itself: “As if the people who came up with the logo were thinking that we want to put this special logo on the car just to piss us [Muslims] off?”

The TV presenter concludes, “With all of the problems in Egypt, you’re concerned about the cross?... We’re calling for unity [in the country] and then you come up with [fatwas] like this?”

(h/t Onion Tears News)

Midweek open thread

In other words, I am too busy today to come up with another post.

So feel free to comment away!

Latest on Israeli thinking about Iran (NYT)

Ronen Bergman in the New York Times Magazine writes a long and important article that brings us up to date with what Israeli leaders are thinking with respect to a nuclear Iran. Some excerpts:

“From our point of view,” Barak said, “a nuclear state offers an entirely different kind of protection to its proxies. Imagine if we enter another military confrontation with Hezbollah, which has over 50,000 rockets that threaten the whole area of Israel, including several thousand that can reach Tel Aviv. A nuclear Iran announces that an attack on Hezbollah is tantamount to an attack on Iran. We would not necessarily give up on it, but it would definitely restrict our range of operations.”

At that point Barak leaned forward and said with the utmost solemnity: “And if a nuclear Iran covets and occupies some gulf state, who will liberate it? The bottom line is that we must deal with the problem now.”

He warned that no more than one year remains to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weaponry. This is because it is close to entering its “immunity zone” — a term coined by Barak that refers to the point when Iran’s accumulated know-how, raw materials, experience and equipment (as well as the distribution of materials among its underground facilities) — will be such that an attack could not derail the nuclear project. Israel estimates that Iran’s nuclear program is about nine months away from being able to withstand an Israeli attack; America, with its superior firepower, has a time frame of 15 months. In either case, they are presented with a very narrow window of opportunity. One very senior Israeli security source told me: “The Americans tell us there is time, and we tell them that they only have about six to nine months more than we do and that therefore the sanctions have to be brought to a culmination now, in order to exhaust that track.”

...In the end, a successful attack would not eliminate the knowledge possessed by the project’s scientists, and it is possible that Iran, with its highly developed technological infrastructure, would be able to rebuild the damaged or wrecked sites. What is more, unlike Syria, which did not respond after the destruction of its reactor in 2007, Iran has openly declared that it would strike back ferociously if attacked. Iran has hundreds of Shahab missiles armed with warheads that can reach Israel, and it could harness Hezbollah to strike at Israeli communities with its 50,000 rockets, some of which can hit Tel Aviv. (Hamas in Gaza, which is also supported by Iran, might also fire a considerable number of rockets on Israeli cities.) According to Israeli intelligence, Iran and Hezbollah have also planted roughly 40 terrorist sleeper cells across the globe, ready to hit Israeli and Jewish targets if Iran deems it necessary to retaliate. And if Israel responded to a Hezbollah bombardment against Lebanese targets, Syria may feel compelled to begin operations against Israel, leading to a full-scale war. On top of all this, Tehran has already threatened to close off the Persian Gulf to shipping, which would generate a devastating ripple through the world economy as a consequence of the rise in the price of oil.

The proponents of an attack argue that the problems delineated above, including missiles from Iran and Lebanon and terror attacks abroad, are ones Israel will have to deal with regardless of whether it attacks Iran now — and if Iran goes nuclear, dealing with these problems will become far more difficult.

...After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that. Instead there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear — rooted in the sense that Israel is dependent on the tacit support of other nations to survive — and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.

An insult to American Jews?

Last month, there was a big kerfuffle over some ads created by Israel's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption that were meant to encourage Israeli expats in America to return. The ads were a bit heavy-handed, but the reaction of anger was explosive.

Jeffrey Goldberg started it off with saying "I don't think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads." The Jewish Federations of North America said it was an "outrageous and insulting message." Abraham Foxman called them "demeaning." The ministry pulled the campaign because of all the publicity.

Now, an Israeli TV show (Eretz Nehederet) is lampooning American Jews as buffoons, taking aim at Jews who go to Israel on Taglit/Birthright trips. (Sorry, no English subtitles.)

While it is true that the first "insult" was from the Israeli government, and the second is on a humorous TV show, will American Jews get all upset over the skit in Eretz Nehederet? Is it an obvious "demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews"?

Is being insulted a function of the source, the content - or the observer?

For the record, I do not find either video to be insulting, and the Eretz Nehederet one is pretty funny in that black humor way that Israelis enjoy. The spoof doesn't make me think any less of Birthright.

Both of them contain a grain of truth that is hurtful to some - generally those who need to think a little harder about their own Jewish and Zionist identities.

The Arab-Jewish coexistence that the Left doesn't want you to see

If coexistence is a good thing, why don't you ever hear about this?

At Barkan Industrial Zone near Ariel, the biggest Jewish town in the northern West Bank, Palestinian workers at a plastics factory say they prefer to work with the Israelis because they get paid double than what they would make working for a Palestinian employers.

“We don’t talk politics. I come to here work,” machinist Ramadan Islim from nearby Salfit tells The Media Line. “We work together and for the five years I’ve been here there haven’t been any problems. What happens outside of the factory is the business of the politicians. We are here to work. We have a home and family to support.”

Yehuda Cohen, the plant’s manager, says he moved his factory here from near Tel Aviv because he needed the space. He adds that that the government did not offer him any incentives despite promises.

“After I came here, I can say that the Palestinian workers are the best workers that I can find in Israel,” Cohen tells The Media Line.

A lot of people who call themselves liberal would prefer to see Ramadan Islim unemployed rather than work happily in a Jewish-owned factory in Samaria.

A lot of people who call themselves liberal would prefer to see Ramadan Islim and Yehuda Cohen hating each other to justify their own political opinions and demands.

A lot of people who call themselves liberal are anything but.

(h/t Ian)

Two Oscar foreign language nominations have Jewish themes

Two of the Academy nominees for Best Foreign Language Film have Jewish themes.

One of them is "In Darkness," from Poland:

From acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland, In Darkness is based on a true story. Leopold Socha, a sewer worker and petty thief in Lvov, a Nazi occupied city in Poland, one day encounters a group of Jews trying to escape the liquidation of the ghetto. He hides them for money in the labyrinth of the town’s sewers beneath the bustling activity of the city above. What starts out as a straightforward and cynical business arrangement turns into something very unexpected, the unlikely alliance between Socha and the Jews as the enterprise seeps deeper into Socha’s conscience. The film is also an extraordinary story of survival as these men, women and children all try to outwit certain death during 14 months of ever increasing and intense danger.

The other is Footnote, from Israel:

Footnote is the story of a great rivalry between a father and son. Both eccentric professors have dedicated their lives to their work [in the Talmud department at Hebrew University.] The father seems a stubborn purist who fears the establishment. His son, Uriel, appears to strive on accolades, endlessly seeking recognition.

But one day, the tables turn. The two men switch places when the father learns he is to be awarded the most valuable honour one can receive. His desperate need for recognition is betrayed, his vanity exposed. Uriel is torn between pride and envy. Will he sabotage his father’s glory?

Footnote is the story of insane competition, the admiration and envy for a role model, bringing father and son to a final, bitter confrontation.

It looks like the favorite to win though is the Iranian film "A Separation."

How the EU should treat UNRWA - if it wants "peace and stability"

From UNRWA:

The European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Filippo Grandi, signed today at UNRWA’s Gaza Training Centre a € 55.4 million financing agreement towards the Agency’s General Fund.

The EU High Representative Catherine Ashton said during her visit [to Gaza] that "the continued EU support to UNRWA is an essential element of the EU strategy to bring peace and stability to the region. The € 55.4 million contribution we are signing today represents our ongoing commitment to Palestine refugees.

If the EU wants to bring peace and stability to the region, it would not support UNRWA.

UNWRA was meant to be a temporary agency with the purpose of helping provide short-term relief services to Palestine refugees (both Arabs and Jews) while encouraging resettlement in their new countries via works programs (the W of UNRWA.) Arab countries refused to allow the resettlement of the Palestinian Arabs in their countries - something that the oft-cited UNGA 194 mentions as a goal of the UN Conciliation Committee for Palestine - and as a result the works programs vanished, leaving a sizable population kept miserable as part of six decades of pan-Arab policy on permanent UNRWA welfare.

UNRWA's definition of "refugee," that Ashton sickeningly accepts, includes both people who have citizenship and people who are already resident in British Mandate Palestine, which flies against every normal definition of refugee used anywhere else. Adding them up and you see that 80% of the so-called refugees aren't refugees - even if you allow for the definition to include descendants until the end of time, as UNRWA jarringly does.

If the EU really wanted to bring "peace and stability" to the region, it would insist that the UNRWA definition of "refugee" be changed to be more in alignment with that of the Refugee Convention of 1951, amended in 1967. In a couple of years, most of the "refugees" would disappear. Then, change the mandate of UNRWA back to its original intention.

Rather than enabling a UN agency whose current policies do not even allow for any refugees to lose that status, the EU should pressure the host countries to integrate and naturalize Palestinian Arabs who have lived there for decades, if they so desire. A five year plan should be made to phase out UNRWA altogether, and to move its ever-increasing budget to the host countries to allow them to build permanent communities to replace the camps.

That would represent human rights. That would help the cause of peace. And that is what the EU should be doing.

(h/t Dan)

What's under the abaya? Sometimes, nothing.

From Bikya Masr:

Kuwaiti police have reportedly arrested three women for not wearing any clothes underneath their abayas at a cafe in the Salmiya commercial complex, the al-Rai daily newspaper reported.

Two of the women were from Gulf countries and are not Kuwaiti, police sources said.

The report said that a local boy told his mother that he had seen one of their naked bodies. The mother then called the police and they were arrested.

The newspaper added that the women, one of whom was a minor – allegedly told police that they had just had sex in an apartment, consumed alcohol and “had become drunk.” They had then gone to the cafe afterwards.

Police reported to have phoned the father of the two GCC girls, but he said he could not come to Kuwait as he was busy. The girls have been referred to the Criminal Investigations Department.

According to Marwa Tarek, a women’s rights activist and blogger in Kuwait, the women could face a number of criminal charges, especially if they are accused of being lesbians.

“The crime and penalty for being gay is not a nice one here and they could be facing years in prison if the accusations they had consensual sex are proven true,” she told Bikyamasr.com.

Tarek said that she questions how the boy saw any of them naked, as the abaya usually covers the entirety of the body and is difficult to see through.

“The boy was probably peeking underneath and then told his mother. It is the boy who should be in trouble, not the three women who did nothing wrong except be in public. I know a lot of women who often wear nothing underneath their abaya because it is so hot and nobody can see,” she added.

Remember this old controversial commercial featuring a 15-year old Brooke Shields?

I don't know how smart it is for a women's rights activist to tell Arab men that sometimes there is nothing underneath an abaya. Arab harassment of covered women was already sky-high.

(h/t CHA)

"Palestinians trying to derail peace talks with Israel" (The Telegraph)

From Con Coughlin in The Telegraph:

Most people in the West believe the main reason the talks are not going anywhere is because of Israel's refusal to compromise on its settlement building programme. But while the Netanyahu government's insistence on building settlements is certainly an obstacle, I am told by Western diplomats close to the exploratory talks that are currently taking place in Jordan between the two sides that the real reason they are running into difficulty is because the Palestinian delegation, led by the veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, is refusing to take the talks seriously.

For example, I am told by a Western diplomat working for the Quartet that when the Israeli delegation arrived for a meeting last weekend in Amman, the Jordanian capital, to present their latest security proposals, Mr Erekat simply refused to enter the room.

My man in the Jordan conference room says that he was surprised at Mr Erekat's behaviour, especially as the topic under discussion was supposed to be one of the two main topics the Palestinian delegation wanted on the agenda for the Jordan talks, which are a precursor for the more formal talks that are supposed to take place once both sides have agreed a negotiating framework.

Mr Erekat's refusal to enter the negotiating room and hear what the Israelis had to say does not bode well for the Quartet's attempts to get the two sides to resume full negotiations, and raises questions about just how serious the Palestinians are about getting a peace deal. With Israel feeling increasingly isolated as world attention focuses on the fall-out from the recent revolts in Libya, Egypt and Syria, there is a growing suspicion among Western diplomats that the Palestinians are working on the basis that, if they draw out the process, they will be able to strike a better deal with Israel.

If that is the case, then they are badly mistaken. The real enemy in the Middle East today is Iran, not Israel, and by playing into the hands of Islamist militants who seek Israel's destruction, the Palestinians could see their cause being overtaken by a far greater regional conflict.

I have previously shown that the Arabic press is saying the same thing, that the Palestinian Arabs never had any intent to negotiate seriously with Israel during this round of talks in Amman and instead have been planning their diplomatic and legal offensive against Israel.

Their lack of good faith has been clear from even before the start of these current talks, as they fought against the Quartet to even do these cosmetic negotiations since September.

(h/t P)

UPDATE: Abbas just said that he does not want to continue the Amman talks, trying (as usual) to blame Israel.

Hezbollah upset at Arab participation in Herzliya Conference

I noted on Sunday that some Arab media were noticing that someone from Qatar would be speaking at the fairly prestigious annual Herzliya Conference in Israel. Looking at the preliminary agenda, I saw also speakers from Jordan, Egypt and the PLO.

Hezbollah is not happy:

Hezbollah said in a statement it issued that “the information about the intentions of some countries, organizations, and Arab figures to take part in Herzliya conference on “the Zionist national security”, which will be held next month, raise concerns due to the negative indications and the normalization signals that this step holds and that signifies the participants’ commitment to the Zionist entity’s security and their attempts to consolidate it.

“While Hezbollah denounces this dangerous approach by some Arabs, it also warns that this Arab participation in the enemy’s security conference comes as the Zionist settlement in the occupied territories is increasing, and as Al-Quds is being Judaized, and tens of Palestinian MPs are being arrested.

...“Moreover, if this participation was the result of personal certainty, than this is a bigger disaster and an indication to their disengagement from the Palestinian cause, and if this participation was a submission to American pressure, than this is an even bigger disaster, since it reveals the participants’ submission to the American will, even if that was on the accountability of the nation and its central cause, the Palestinian cause and its holy capital Al-Quds,” the Hezbollah concluded.

PalArabs plan pots and pans protest against Hamas, Fatah

I wrote this morning that I was astonished that the people in Gaza and the West Bank who protested against Hamas and Fatah selfishness had not caught on to the fact yet that their "unity" has been a sham to shut them up.

Now, Ma'an Arabic reports that 160 Palestinian Arab media figures and intellectuals are calling for a mass protest on February 1 against the PalArab leadership for precisely this reason.

Their document refers to the nearly five years of Palestinian division, their leaders' violations of human rights, the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. It notes the reconciliation agreement signed in Cairo in May "which has not yet become a reality." It calls for a political system that offers a decent living and is "pluralistic and democratic, open to all cultures, a system that respects women and ensure their freedom and equality."

It goes on to say that "the use of methods of peaceful protest organized and sustained and directed clearly against both sides of the split is a key factor to the success of our campaign."

The first phase is to organize a pan-Palestinian Arab protest on February 1 at 7:00 PM where people will go in the streets and bang pots and pans on roofs and from open windows for ten minutes.

The document does not name Fatah or Hamas by name.

The protesters are smart, calling not for people to gather in central squares where they can be harassed by security forces but to protest loudly from their homes.

Last time, Hamas tried to sabotage the popular protests; it will be most interesting to see how they react to this, if it gains traction.