Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 09, 2012

Is Egypt calling Hamas' bluff on fuel?

Dar Al Hayat, via Palestine Today, reports that an Egyptian official claims that the fuel crisis in Gaza will be solved "within hours."

But there's a catch.

An Egyptian source said that Hamas wants to create a political crisis with Egypt using the electricity crisis that exists in Gaza. He pointed out that Egypt is working hard to resolve this crisis, but that existing Egyptian agreements on the topic are with the PA, not Hamas. He said that a delegation from Ramallah was due in Cairo tomorrow to discuss the issue and make arrangements for the transfer of fuel for Gaza's power plant..

However, he said that Egypt will supply diesel through the Kerem Shalom crossing in coordination with the Israeli side. And, he added, if Israel does anything to hamper the fuel transfer, only then will Egypt provide the diesel through the Rafah crossing to Gaza.

Egypt knows quite well that Israel has not done anything to limit fuel to Gaza through Kerem Shalom, and is willing to restart those transfers as soon as Hamas agrees. And they also know that Hamas is refusing the fuel from Israel because they cannot impose an additional tax on that fuel (beyond the PA tax) without risking a mass uprising of Gazans unwilling to pay the high prices.

In other words, if this story is true, Egypt is getting ready to publicly call out Hamas for their role in creating this artificial crisis, but is first giving them one more chance to quietly give in and start accepting fuel from Israel as they used to.

In an interview with Al Quds al Arabi, Hamas spokesman Salah Bardawil says that Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar met with Western and US officials in Cairo last May.

Bardawil said that Hamas wants to be part of the Arab spring, which led to the rise of Islamic movements in the Arab world. In that context he says that Hamas representatives held a back-channel meeting with Western officials, including Americans.

While he says that Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar was one of the people who met with Western officials in Cairo in May, he refused to provide details about the meeting.

Zahar today is talking further about the idea of Hamas having closer ties with Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad are classified as terrorist organizations by the US State Department.

"World to end, Palestinian women affected most"

There is an old joke about a headline in a politically correct newspaper, "World Ends, Women Affected Most."

It seems that the joke has been updated by Israel-haters who turn every UN Day into "bash Israel day."

From Ha'aretz:

The United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), scheduled to wrap up its annual session on Friday, is expected to pass a resolution condemning Israel's part in the degrading of living conditions for Palestinian women, while failing to mention the mistreatment of women in the ongoing crisis in Syria.

Friday's session will include such professional resolution as concerning "woman and natural disasters," "women hostages," women and girls and AIDS," and "mortality among women."

However, the panel is expected to also an eight-clause resolution, determining that the "Israeli occupation" in territories, including East Jerusalem, is the main obstacle for the advancement of the Palestinian woman.

Responding to the decision to condemn Israel, Israeli envoy to the UN Ron Prosor told Haaretz that the "council's bring levels of absurdity and cynicism to new heights."

"The thousands of Syrian women butchered, tortured, raped and trampled under Assad's iron boot don't even get a passing mention in the panel's decisions," Prosor added.

In private discussions and in response to official Israeli appeals, the panel's European members have attacked the wording of a resolution specifically addressing Palestinian women, and agree that it is not professionally motivated.

However, like similar resolutions accepted in last year's session, European representatives are expected to either back the draft or abstain the vote.

Prosor referred to this apparent pattern, saying that "under the protection of the European states' abstaining, the [CSW] turns its back on the tortured and murdered women of Damascus and continues to obsessively deal with Palestinian women."

"Does the resolution denounce 'honor killings' in the Palestinian society? Does the resolution discuss Hamas' repression of women in Gaza? Of course not. The UN continues to deal with the Palestinian issue without any connection to what's happening on the ground."

Naturally, no other country is singled out for its treatment of women by the UN. Because women's rights are jealously safeguarded in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Meanwhile you can read about the 58.1% of wives in Gaza who are exposed to violence by their husbands.

Or you can check out the top women executives in Israel.

In a related news item from the rarefied halls of international diplomacy:

The UN’s education, science and culture organization has just voted 35 to 8 for a resolution that condemns Assad for abuses, yet — despite vigorous efforts led by the U.S. — keeps the regime on its human rights committee.

“For UNESCO to keep President Bashar al-Assad on a human rights committee while his regime mercilessly murders its own people is immoral, indefensible and an insult to Syria’s victims,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, the Geneva human rights group that heads a campaign of 55 parliamentarians, human rights and religious groups demanding Syria’s expulsion.

“The world squandered a golden opportunity to expose the Assad regime’s lack of legitimacy. Politics trumped human rights, with too many UNESCO diplomats fearful that if Syria were removed for gross violations, their own regimes would be next.”

“Today’s appalling decision calls into question the credibility of UNESCO’s mission to promote human rights. Syria’s membership is a lingering stain upon the reputation of the UN as a whole,” said Neuer.

After UNESCO elected Syria to its human rights committee in November, UN Watch launched a campaign to reverse the decision, prompting the US and Britain to initiate today’s debate at UNESCO.

“While today’s text rightly condemns Syria’s violations — a welcome first for UNESCO — the promised call to oust the regime from UNESCO’s human rights panel has been completely excised. We’re left with words, but no teeth.”

“By maintaining Assad in a position of global influence on human rights, UNESCO today has sent absolutely the wrong message. It an unconscionable insult to the suffering people of Syria,” said Neuer.

Bibi on Fox News

I don't know, but Greta Van Botox's face is so distracting it is hard for me to concentrate on the interview.

Youths leaving Gaza to work in Libya

PalPress reports that many Gaza youth are leaving their homes to help build up Libya.

For $900, Gazans can get the proper permits to enter Libya to work. Most of the work needed is physical labor, mostly in construction - no university degrees needed.

Young men in Gaza, disillusioned at the high rate of unemployment, are happily shelling out the $900 to be able to get out of Gaza.

Palestinian Arab officials are concerned at the drain in resources, worried that they might never come back. One official, Abu Iyad Misbah, was quoted as saying "Youth is the mainstay of society, but what is happening in Palestine is to the contrary: everyone wants to migrate from his homeland to live in the homelands of others."

The article goes on to say that nothing is being done to keep the youth in Gaza.

It should be noted that in the 1950s a significant number of Palestinian Arab males went to work in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq and also Libya to get jobs and get away from the UNRWA-run camps. Many of their descendants are still in Gulf countries, although the Palestinian Arabs were expelled from Kuwait before the first Gulf War and most of those in Iraq were chased out during the second. Qaddafi expelled most of the Libyan Palestinians as well for political reasons in the 1990s.

Hamas assaults journalists from BBC, Sky News

Palestine Press Agency and Wafa report that Hamas beat three journalists today, and abducted one.

According to the story, the beaten journalists were Mohammed Mashharawi from Sky News, Adnan al-Barsh from BBC Arabic service, and Amer Abu Omar. They were covering a mass wedding in Gaza.

Mashharawi was reportedly abducted by Hamas.

There is nothing on this in the media yet.

Mohammed Mashharawi

Ironically, Adnan al-Barsh said last year that he and other Palestinian Arab journalists would never abandon their desire to report on the truth and support the cause of their people - no matter how much Israel intimidates them. It will be most interesting to see if he reports on his own little run-in with the people who control the place he works.

In fact, it will be interesting to see which, if any, Western media and human-rights organizations make a stink over this.

(I found videos of Mashharawi on Al Quds TV, which is Hamas' station, from last year.)

20,000 women escaped the Holocaust by working as maids in England

From the BBC:

As the Nazis tightened their grip on power in the late 1930s, Jews in Germany and Austria began to fear for their safety. Many fled abroad using well-documented methods such as the Kindertransport. But less well known is the story of thousands of Jewish women who fled to the UK by getting jobs as domestic servants.

When Natalie Huss-Smickler arrived in England in 1938 as a 26-year-old, she found her new job as a domestic servant something of a shock compared with her secretarial work back home in Vienna.

"My first job in England was very, very hard," she says. "I had to work from 8am to 11pm with an hour's break, cleaning and scrubbing and looking after the house, with half a day off a week.

"After a few weeks I complained, saying it's a bit too hard. The lady of the house said, 'If it's too much for you, I'll send you back to Hitler.'"

Natalie was one of an estimated 20,000 Germans and Austrians, mostly women, to take advantage of the domestic service visas being issued by the British government in the late 1930s. The woman, predominantly Jewish, took the work to escape from the Nazis.

This number means domestic service visas were hugely significant in saving Jews, about double the number saved by the celebrated Kindertransport - but their story has largely been forgotten.

The holder of a domestic service visa had a priceless ticket to get out of the Nazis's reach - even if it did mean that many middle class women, who may even have had servants in their own households, were cooking, cleaning, making beds and scrubbing floors for the first time in their lives.

Anthony Grenville, of the Association of Jewish Refugees, says the women who came over using the domestic service visas were mostly from well-to-do Viennese families and "completely unprepared psychologically" for their new lives.

"The British government brought in a visa requirement for refugees seeking entry from Germany and Austria after the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich in March 1938.

"This was a way of the government controlling the sheer weight of numbers of applicants flooding over from the continent, particularly Austrian Jews for whom the situation had become desperate.

"Although they took them in great numbers, there was a very clear motive for the British having Jews over - not to save them, but to provide labour for middle and upper middle class households. A small number of Jewish men also came as butlers or gardeners."

There are a couple of interviews with now 90+ year old women whose lives were saved by this loophole.

(h/t John W.)

Shimon Peres' "Be My Friend for Peace" mash-up video

How does an 88 year old politician gain fans who are one-fifth his age?

Here's how:

Jewish veterans' headstones targeted in Florida cemetery

From Fox Tampa Bay:

Detectives in central Florida are investigating a hate crime in Bushnell – the vandalism of Jewish headstones in a veterans' cemetery.

Sumter County Sheriff's Office detectives started their investigation into what happened to the headstones on Monday. Several headstones in two sections of the Florida National Cemetery were found pushed over or dug out last weekend.

The headstones were identified as Jewish by the Stars of David on them.

It's probably because of "occupation."

(h/t Ian)

Latma's Purim special

Unless you know the Megillah, you won't get a lot of these jokes. But it is pretty good.

Muslims upset at Kotel museum exhibit - in Brooklyn!

The Al Aqsa Foundation has a new outrage to seethe about - a replica of the Kotel in Brooklyn!

As the Jerusalem Post reports:

The Jewish Children's Museum in Brooklyn showcased a new exhibition to dignitaries and press on Thursday featuring an elaborately detailed replica of the Western Wall standing 12 feet tall and 24 feet wide.

The museum, which is affiliated with Chabad, commissioned a team of artisans to recreate a model of the ancient wall in the heart of Brooklyn to teach children about Judaism.

When the exhibition officially opens on April 1, visitors will be invited to follow the tradition at the Western Wall and place notes with their prayers and wishes in the replica’s cracks and crevices. The notes – or kvitels, as they are called in Yiddish – will be collected once a week by an official at the museum and flown to Israel where a Chabad rabbi will place them in the Western Wall.

The inciters at the Al Aqsa Foundation are livid:

Not only is the Israeli occupation destroying the heritage of of Islamic Jerusalem, using political tools and fraud, but these lies have even reached the United States. A Jewish organization recently established a three-dimensional exhibit attaching great importance to the Wailing Wall, that they call "Jewish", in a private museum in Brooklyn in New York City. The official opening ceremony was attended by the Israeli cabinet minister, and the wall will accept notes of people's wishes, which will be flown on El Al from Brooklyn, to be placed between the stones of the "Western Wall" in Jerusalem.

The Aqsa Foundation says that the establishment of this model which enshrines the myth of "Western Wall" and the templein the United States reflects a frantic effort by the occupation to build a temple at the expense of the Al Aqsa Mosque, stressing that the Wailing Wall is an integral part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and linked to the Prophet Muhammad - peace be upon him - who tethered his animal Buraq in this wall, and that this wall and the square in front of it are purely Islamic; and that the claims of the occupation of a "Western Wall" are just lies and superstitions.

The article includes even more photos than the JPost story does!

And if you think that the Arabs know by now that the Al Aqsa Foundation is just a bunch of raving loons whose weekly predictions of impending Israeli destruction of the mosque have never panned out, you would be wrong.

This incitement is reproduced in dozens of other Arab media, as far away as Kuwait.

Hamas is limiting cooking gas to Gaza too

Not only has Hamas created an electricity crisis in Gaza by refusing diesel fuel from Israel, but they are also now starting to limit the amount of cooking gas in Gaza, a critical commodity.

Israel's COGAT has been supplying about 900 tons of cooking gas a week, but last week that amount went down to 331 tons.

As a result, there were huge lines of people to get cooking gas in recent days - and Hamas blamed Israel.

But it turns out that Hamas is the party restricting the fuel:

Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israeli military's civilian administration, said the Hamas government in Gaza was refusing to accept the full amount of fuel Israel is willing to send.

Inbar said he was aware that the shortages were causing problems in Gaza. "We spoke with senior (Palestinian Authority) people" about increasing the gas shipments. "It all depends on Hamas," he said.

The official said he was not familiar with any new plan to increase gas imports.

Why is Hamas doing this? A Reuters article goes a long way towards explaining it. Hamas has been increasing taxes to pay for its hold on power - and it doesn't get revenue from fuel crossing from Israel:

Traders who import goods from Israel and the West Bank say Hamas authorities have introduced additional fees beyond the usual tax they collect, putting their businesses at risk and threatening the livelihoods of thousands of workers.

Hamas says the increase in levies is meant to protect homegrown products. But local analysts believe the group has been forced to tighten the fiscal screws at home because of a drop in funding from foreign allies, notably Iran.

...
The latest levies follow additional fees slapped on four commodities much in demand that pass from Egypt through a warren of smuggling tunnels; those have been raised to 20 shekels for a ton of cement, 10 shekels for a tonne of gravel, 1.4 shekels for a liter of fuel and 50 shekels for each ton of steel.

"Tunnel owners protested for one day, but in the end they resumed work because the Hamas government rejected their demand to cancel the tax," tunnel owner Abu Islam told Reuters. But he added that some merchants simply canceled their shipments.

The fiscal demands suggests that Hamas, which is spurned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence, is struggling to make ends meet.

According to its opaque 2011 budget, Hamas' budget for Gaza was estimated at $769 million, with revenues raised locally expected to amount to $150 million.

Foreign donations from various allies make up much of the shortfall, with Iran believed to have been the major contributor. But diplomats say Tehran has closed the taps in retaliation at Hamas' refusal to back their embattled ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad. Hamas ditched Assad last month, publicly supporting the Syrian revolt.

Western officials say Hamas' need for tax revenues is also at the heart of the ongoing power crisis.

Hamas came to rely heavily on fuel smuggled into Gaza from neighboring Egypt, but Cairo halted the trade in February, apparently annoyed that subsidized diesel earmarked for Egyptians was being siphoned off into Gaza.

Critics say Hamas has refused to diversify its supplies because it was able to impose high levies on the illicit Egyptian oil. Fuel imported legally via Israel is handled by Abbas' Palestinian Authority, which imposes its own levies, preventing Hamas from adding any further surcharges.

"The reason for this crisis is ridiculous and has to do with Hamas insisting on not buying from (Abbas's) Palestinian Authority via Israel," the NGO official said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of her dealings with Hamas.

"When fuel is procured from the tunnels, Hamas implements its own tax system, therefore generating its own revenue."

There have been no street protests over the blackouts because Hamas cracks down on them, but the fury is apparent on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with a barrage of complaint over electricity cuts lasting 18 hours a day.

I have yet to see any international NGO, out of the scores that work in Gaza, publicly condemning Hamas for creating a completely artificial crisis. (One Palestinian Arab NGO's head mentioned it...and got an arrest warrant.) Which just goes to show how much they really prioritize the lives of Gazans when they might lose their own revenue.

Palestinian Arabs whine that they aren't the center of attention

If there is a difference between how Palestinian Arabs have historically acted and how a typical five year old acts, I'd love to know what it is.

“The biggest challenge we face — apart from occupation — is marginalization,” Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, said in an interview.

...The result is a serial splintering of the Palestinian movement, a loss of state sponsors and paralysis for those trying to build a state next to Israel. Just six months ago, there was a moment of optimism when the Palestinian Authority presented its case for recognition to the United Nations, and later when Hamas closed a deal to free hundreds of its prisoners in exchange for the release of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

But now, as momentum for a peaceful two-state solution fades, and the effort at the United Nations remains stymied, no viable alternatives have emerged and attention has focused on other conflicts.

Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security at Al Quds University in Jerusalem, said he recently joined dozens of other foreign scholars for a series of lectures on his specialty in the United States. Not a single one mentioned the Palestinian issue.

“I don’t see Palestine on the agenda of the United States or Israel,” he said. “It is on the shelf. The Palestinians don’t have the ability to impose themselves on the world and they can’t mobilize their people. The Arab world is busy. The Palestinians are becoming secondary.”

This fear of being irrelevant is deeply rooted in the Palestinian Arab psyche. When they shoot rockets, they revel in the fact that Israelis are forced to run to shelters - even if there are no casualties - because that shows that they aren't being completely ignored. Their newspapers always have articles that can be roughly translated as, "Look! Someone noticed us!"

It is this immaturity that gives rise to violence. They much prefer war to being ignored, no matter how many casualties they suffer. (It also leads to publicity-friendly stunts like the UN Security Council joke last year.)

And their supposed supporters are sick of their theatrics and unwillingness to grow up. They'll pay lip service but in the end, they don't care that much, and they don't want to be sucked into the Palestinian drama.

Because everyone knows that if the Palestinian Arabs want independence so badly, they could have it tomorrow. Their insistence on what they call "justice" rather than compromise and peace is proof-positive of their immaturity (and an indication of their true goals.) Jews have accepted compromise for peace, or even the chance of peace, since the absurdly one-sided Peel Commission partition plan of 1937. Palestinian Arabs have not.

Their public insistence on an extra 3% of land or whatever, and their willingness to refuse anything but their maximal demands, is not winning them any new friends. And it is causing them to lose their old friends. But like a couple going through a messy divorce, they insist that they get everything they demand, and who cares whether their kids will be hurt for another couple of generations? Their definition of "justice" is more important than mere human lives. And they define "justice" in their own peculiar way where they serve as prosecutor, judge and jury,

Instead of doing something positive, they whine. And complain. And threaten. And do anything they can to become the center of attention again.

Because that's what five year-olds do.

Evidence Iran is hiding nuclear activities at Parchin

From AP:

Satellite images of an Iranian military facility show trucks and earth-moving vehicles at the site, indicating that crews were trying to clean it of radioactive traces possibly left by tests of a nuclear-weapon trigger, diplomats told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The assertions from the diplomats, all nuclear experts accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency, could add to the growing international pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes.

While the US and the EU are backing a sanctions-heavy approach, Israel has warned that it may resort to a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent it from obtaining atomic weapons.

Two of the diplomats said the crews at the Parchin military site may be trying to erase evidence of tests of a small experimental neutron device used to set off a nuclear explosion. A third diplomat could not confirm that but said any attempt to trigger a so-called neutron initiator could only be in the context of trying to develop nuclear arms.

The diplomats said they suspect attempts at sanitization because some of the vehicles at the scene appeared to be haulage trucks and other equipment suited to carting off potentially contaminated soil from the site.

The images, provided by member countries to the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, are recent and constantly updated, one of the diplomats said. The diplomats all asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

The IAEA has already identified Parchin as the location of suspected nuclear weapons-related testing. In a November report, it said it appeared to be the site of experiments with conventional high explosives meant to initiate a nuclear chain reaction.

It did not mention a neutron initiator as part of those tests, but in a separate section cited an unnamed member nation as saying Iran may have experimented with a neutron initiator, without going into detail or naming a location for such work.

In contrast, the intelligence information shared with the AP by the two diplomats linked the high-explosives work directly to setting off a neutron initiator at Parchin.

In explaining such a device, the agency's November report said that "if placed in the center of a nuclear core of an implosion-type nuclear device and compressed, (it) could produce a burst of neutrons suitable for initiating a fission chain reaction."

If Iran did try to trigger a neutron initiator, it would harden international suspicions by adding a nuclear component to a suspected string of experiments linked to weapons development that generally have not included radioactive material.

Iran has previously attempted to clean up sites considered suspicious by world powers worried about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran razed the Lavizan Shian complex in northern Iran before allowing IAEA inspectors to visit the suspected repository of military procured equipment that could be used in a nuclear weapons program. Tehran said the site had been demolished to make way for a park, but inspectors who subsequently came to the site five years ago found traces of uranium enriched to or near the level used in making the core of nuclear warheads.

The Iranians also embarked on an extensive redo at the Kalay-e Electric Co., just west of Tehran, before agency inspectors were given access nine years ago. Although the site was re-painted and otherwise sanitized, samples taken from Kalay-e also showed traces of enriched uranium, though at levels substantially below warhead grade.

Attention most recently focused on Parchin several days ago, when senior IAEA officials first spoke of unexplained activities at the site without saying what they could be and said an inspection of buildings there was taking on added urgency.

One of six diplomats who spoke with the AP said his country continued to reserve judgment on what the movements at the site meant but two others who had seen recent spy satellite imagery said the trucks and other equipment at the site almost certainly showed attempts to clean it of radioactive contamination.

They declined to go into detail but said radioactive traces could also be left by material other than a neutron initiator, such as uranium metal which can be used as a substitute for testing purposes.

IAEA expert teams trying to probe the suspicions of secret weapons work by Iran tried — and failed — twice in recent weeks to get Iranian permission to visit Parchin. Tehran then said on Monday that such a visit would be granted.

But it said that a comprehensive agreement outlining conditions of such an inspection must first be agreed on — a move dismissed by a senior international official familiar with the issue as a delaying tactic. He, too, asked not to be named because the matter was sensitive.

You just know that the Juan Coles of the world are going to fall over themselves to say that there is no hard evidence here, that it is hearsay, that the story is unsourced, that it is not believable. They know Iran is righteous and no circumstantial evidence will change their minds (in public, at least.)

But what this story proves (again!) is that Iran has been actively engaging in hiding critical information from the IAEA, and they have been doing that for years. Which means that Iran has something to hide from a nuclear watchdog agency.

What could they plausibly be so intent on hiding that is innocuous?

Did they design a nuclear-powered bunny rabbit that they are trying to patent? An atomic film making breakthrough that would crush Hollywood?

Or maybe, just maybe, they are working on something a little deadlier?

See also this excellent related piece by Michael Ledeen.