Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 23, 2012

Work accident!

Ahmed, in his happy place

Hamas' "Brigades of the Martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam" announced the death of the young Alqitarawi Ahmed Ali, 24, during a "jihad mission." He was killed Thursday night, and the statement said that his death "came after a great and honorable career in jihad, after hard work and sacrifice and Jihad."

His nom de guerre was "Abu Muslim."

Alas, the announcement didn't give the details of his death - an explosion? Another jihadist shooting him? Hamas killing him because he watched porn?

We can only speculate and hope that many more such shining lights of jihad meet a similar fate in the near future.

(There was an explosion in the al-Maghazi camp yesterday that Israel denied having anything to do with, so that might be related [h/t T34] )

Hamas claiming credit now for fuel it never wanted

Fuel is now being pumped from Israel to Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing, and it is coming from an Israeli company Dor Alon and being paid for by the PA. This is being done despite strenuous efforts by Hamas over the past six weeks to not accept any fuel that comes via Israel.

Egyptian sources, however, say that the 450,000 liters being pumped today is being provided by Egypt, through Kerem Shalom. COGAT confirms that it is from Dor Alon, though.

Either way, the Gaza fuel crisis was entirely because of Hamas' refusal to accept fuel from Israel.

But now that the fuel is being pumped in exact opposition to the way Hamas tried to get it (via Rafah from Egypt without PA involvement), Hamas is taking full credit.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said "The contacts and meetings between the SPLM and the government continued with Egyptian officials on a daily basis around the clock, On this basis, it has informed us that our brothers the Egyptians will be pumping fuel to run the power plant, already today. Hamas praised the role of government officials, led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk, who played a special role with our brothers the Egyptians in this matter, stressing the movement continued efforts to provide a radical solution to the fuel crisis."

Even more cynically, Hamas is arranging for rallies by Gazans this afternoon to protest the fuel crisis, presumably so they direct their anger at the PA, Egypt, Israel or anyone else besides Hamas.

It cannot be stressed enough: Hamas caused this crisis, deliberately, in order to get Egypt to pump fuel through Rafah and to provide cheaper fuel that Hamas could tax and enrich its terror operations. All the suffering that Hamas residents went through was for Hamas political reasons.

There is one other lesson here. As soon as Gazans started being vocal about their displeasure with Hamas, Hamas caved. Even though Hamas pretends to be on the side of the "Arab Spring," the terror organization is just as frightened of a "Gaza Spring" as any Arab country, and Gaza residents have the power to scare the hell out of the Islamist terror dictators that run the Strip.

Gazans blaming Hamas for fuel crisis; PA tries to come to the rescue

From Ma'an:

With shortages of electricity, water, fuel, cooking gas and medicine, a lack of economy and no infrastructure, patience with the Hamas-led government in Gaza is running low.

The chronic fuel shortages have added to the despair of Gaza's 1.6 million people, many of whom blame the government for its failure to resolve the endless crises.

The fuel shortages have had a catastrophic effect on daily life. Gazans are enduring daily power cuts of up to 18 hours, hundreds of factories have shut down and even elevators are not working.

Gas station owners say they cannot obtain even a liter of fuel and people are using cooking oil to drive. Others wait in the streets for transport they are lucky to find. Even three-wheel motorbikes are in demand.

The noisy sound of generators can be heard throughout Gaza, day and night, causing several casualties through fires and by their lethal fumes.

At a press conference Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Mohammad Awad said the crisis was politically motivated by external forces that sought to tighten the siege.

But many Gazans are not satisfied by the government's response, and Hamas' ongoing attempts to blame others for the crisis have only angered people further.

"They only blame the Israeli siege, but what has the government done to solve the problem?" a 32-year-old asked.

"It's the lack of management. It's corruption. If they cannot rule then they should leave office. Sometimes they blame the PA and sometimes the EU and now Egypt," another said.

Sameh, a 23-year-old student, said the government could not expect people's support when it failed to provide for its citizens.

"How do they expect the people's support when they are not providing us with means of steadfastness under Israeli occupation and siege in Gaza?"

"People are not asking for surrender under the siege that is a form of collective punishment but again people's fate is with the hands of the government," said Abu Nidal, an unemployed man.

A recent graduate, also unemployed, said: "Life is unbearable in Gaza. Patience has run out."

"For God's sake, they should know that the people are the source of power and authority. People are not happy under the bad circumstances we are going through, so they should do something or step aside and let someone else rule," said a taxi driver who could not find gas.

A 52-year-old restaurant owner who was forced to close his business said Hamas had disappointed voters who hoped the party would bring reform.

"A lot of Fatah supporters voted for Hamas for reform and change but after six years in power, what happens? Tunnel owners including some Hamas members have became very rich, prices of land and apartments and cars have skyrocketed and they even impose taxes and want to share everything we have."

Discrimination against non-Hamas supporters has reached an unprecedented level, as anyone outside the party finds when applying for a government job, and aid sent to the Palestinian people through convoys is not fairly distributed.

Supposedly, fuel was scheduled go to Gaza Friday through Kerem Shalom:

Nathmi Mhanna, a Palestinian Authority border official, said Thursday that 450,000 liters of Israeli diesel would be pumped through the Kerem Shalom crossing on Friday.

The fuel will be used to power the sole electricity plant, Mhanna told Ma'an.

The official said President Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, coordinated with Egypt before deciding to route the fuel through Kerem Shalom to ease the crisis.

But Nathmi Mhanna now says that Israeli fuel companies weren't ready to transfer the fuel so it will be delayed. YNet says it will happen Friday.

A list of Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Jewish schools

It is very nice that Salam Fayyad and the PLO issued condemnations of the Toulouse massacre.

But it would mean a lot more if they and other Arabs would show the least bit of regret for the many times Arab terrorists deliberately targeted Jewish schools themselves.

1970:

The Avivim school bus massacre was a terrorist attack on an Israeli school bus on May 8, 1970 in which 12 Israeli civilians were killed, nine of them children, and 25 were wounded. Two bazooka shells were fired at the bus. Early in the morning, the bus departed from Avivim heading with its passengers to two local schools. This route had been scouted by the militants, believed to have infiltrated from Lebanon, and an ambush was set up. As the bus passed by, ten minutes after leaving Avivim, it was attacked by heavy gunfire from both sides of the road. The driver was amongst those hit in the initial barrage,[3] as were the two other adults on board. The three were killed as the bus crashed into an embankment as the attackers continued firing into the vehicle.

1974:

The first target of the Kiryat Shmona massacre was a school, which was luckily closed for Passover. The terrorists went for plan B, killing 18 people at a nearby building.

The Ma'alot massacre was a terrorist attack which included a two-day hostage-taking of 115 people which ended in the deaths of over 25 hostages. It began when three armed Palestinian terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine[2] entered Israel from Lebanon. Soon afterwards they attacked a van, killing two Israeli Arab women and entered an apartment building in the town of Ma'alot, where they killed a couple and their four-year-old son.[3] From there, they headed for the Netiv Meir elementary school, where they took more than 115 people (including 105 children) hostage on 15 May 1974, in Ma'alot. The hostage-takers soon issued demands for the release of 23 Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons, or else they would kill the students. On the second day of the standoff, a unit of the Golani Brigade stormed the building. During the takeover, the hostage-takers killed the children with grenades and automatic weapons. Ultimately, 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured.

1997:

The Island of Peace massacre was a mass murder attack that occurred at the Island of Peace site in Naharayim on March 13, 1997 in which a Jordanian soldier opened fire at a large group of Israeli schoolgirls from the AMIT Fuerst School in Beit Shemesh who were on a class field trip, killing seven of them and injuring six others. (Jordan's King Hussein did apologize for this massacre, begging for forgiveness in person from the victims' families. This is in stark contrast with all the Palestinian Arab attacks listed here.)

2002:

The Yeshivat Beit Yisrael massacre was a suicide bombing which occurred on 2 March 2002 at the entrance of the ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva "Beit Yisrael" located in downtown Jerusalem. Eleven Israeli civilians were killed in the attack, including two infants and three children. Fatah claimed responsibility.

May 28: Three high school students were killed and two others wounded in a school in Itamar when a Palestinian gunman opened fire, before he was shot dead by a security guard. Fatah claimed responsibility.

5 students were killed and 23 people were injured, four seriously, when a Palestinian gunman penetrated a highschool that combines religious studies and military training in the Gush Katif settlement of Atzmona on March 7. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

2008:

The Mercaz HaRav massacre, also called the Mercaz HaRav shooting, was an attack that occurred on 6 March 2008, in which a lone Palestinian gunman shot multiple students at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, a religious school in Jerusalem, Israel, after which the gunman himself was shot dead. Eight students and the perpetrator were killed. Eleven more were wounded, five of them placed in serious to critical condition. The massacre was praised by Hamas and, according to a subsequent poll, was supported by 84 percent of the Palestinian population.

Two terrorists entered the Mekor Hayim High School Yeshiva in Kfar Etzion, south of Jerusalem, and stabbed two students. The terrorists were killed by two of the counselors in the room. The Izaddin al-Kassam's Martyrs Brigades, the Hamas military wing, claimed responsibility for the attack.

2011:

The Hamas school bus attack was a 7 April 2011 incident in which Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a Kornet laser-guided anti-tank missile over the border at an Israeli school bus. Hamas militants claimed responsibility. The missile hit the bus after all but one of the children had been dropped off at the kibbutz where they lived, and the bus had traveled just 50 metres beyond its that last stop there.[6] The only remaining passenger, a 16-year-old boy named Daniel Viflic, was critically injured with shrapnel wounds to the head and died from his injuries on 17 April.

And I am not even counting other attacks deliberately aimed at children (such as the Bat Mitzvah suicide bomb, the Misgav Am hostage crisis, or the attack on an ice cream shop in Petah Tikva) nor the many rockets that "happened" to hit schools (a 4 year old was killed in a 2004 Qassam attack that hit near a nursery.) Nor the attacks on colleges and yeshivas that hosted students over 18 like the 2002 Hebrew University massacre or the 1929 Hebron riots, both of which included many American student victims.

So, to Fayyad and other Palestinian Arab leaders who condemned a man targeting children at a Jewish school - let's hear you apologize for these incidents. Only then can anyone believe that your condemnations now are anything more than window dressing.

The UNHRC keeps its obsession with Israel going

From UN Watch:

The 47-nation UN Human Rights Council today adopted five resolutions condemning Israel, including one that creates a new “fact-finding mission” into alleged Israeli violations relating to settlements, a mandate the UN estimates will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. For full texts and voting results click here.

“On the same day that the UN Human Rights Council severely watered-down a text allowing Sri Lanka to determine what advice it receives from the UN—and after the council ignored our own proposed resolutions for victims of abuses in China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe—the session directed half of all its condemnatory resolutions against one single state, Israel,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

“Sadly, the council remains partisan, selective and politicized, and is failing its founding mission to defend the world’s victims of human rights violations.”

“The council’s new fact-finding mission on settlements–whose co-sponsors include Syria and Iran–is a fraud, with the guilty verdict determined in advance. The egregiously one-sided resolution omits any mention of officially-sanctioned Palestinian terrorism, rocket fire targeting civilians and incitement to hatred, anti-Semitism and genocide.”

“The PA and the Arab and Islamic states sponsoring the text know full well that Israel will not legitimize this latest kangaroo court, and are therefore acting with the intent to subvert, rather than advance, any prospect of a bilateral negotiated peace agreement and mutual reconciliation.”

Yes, fully half of the resolutions passed were condemning only Israel. But hey - they finally did decide to pass a resolution condemning Syria, which has killed more Arabs in a year than Israel has in two decades through two wars and an intifada.

Shooting rockets and planning attacks. Welcome to the "cease fire."

From YNet:

Three rockets were fired at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip Wednesday night.

A mortar shell was fired at an IDF force patrolling near the Kisufim checkpoint, not far from the Gaza border fence.

But the "cease fire" is still holding. Rockets might make it "shaky," but only Israeli actions can end it.

Meanwhile, even though it happened before the recent flare-up, this story is not getting enough publicity:

The Shin Bet has thwarted an attempt to kidnap a soldier and carry out a terror attack in the Eilat area. After an indictment was filed against Muhammad abu-Adara, a Hamas operative from Rafah, it was released for publication that the Shin Bet arrested abu-Adara at the end of last month when he tried to carry out his plans in Sinai.

The arrest is not connected to PRC plans to carry out a terror attack on the Egyptian border, plans which had Israel raising the alert level near the border.

The indictment, which was filed with the Beersheba District Court, accuses abu-Adara of a series of offenses including contact with a foreign agent, membership in an illegal organization, conspiracy to commit a crime, intent to harm State security and other offenses.

Abu-Adara, member of a well-known Hamas family from Rafah, was arrested when he tried to infiltrate Israel with a few others through the Gaza Strip border. He was turned over to the Shin Bet for questioning where he admitted that a year ago he escaped to Sinai via a tunnel over criminal activities in Israel.

A few months after his arrival in Sinai he was approached by Yunes Shaluf, a Hamas operative from Rafah who acts as an artillery commander and who is responsible for Hamas' observation layout in Sinai.

Shaluf asked Adara to work for Hamas in Sinai and observe and photograph Israeli military posts along the border in preparation of a terror attack. After agreeing, abu-Adara was smuggled to the Strip through a tunnel by Hamas operatives.

In Gaza he underwent an in-depth briefing and was told that his goal was to examine possible targets and locations to gather intelligence for Sinai attacks. Together the two gathered intelligence, examined security force deployment and observed the security guard posts at the crossing.

They also gathered intelligence on civilian targets, mostly in Eilat. After much planning, abu-Adara and Shaluf met in Gaza with Raed Atar, who participated in a number of terror attacks against Israeli targets and who was involved in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit in June 2006.

Abu-Adara agreed to fire anti-tank missiles at military and civilian targets on the Israel-Sinai border as well as fire rockets from Sinai on Israel. Atar told him that the purpose of the attack would be to kidnap an Israeli soldier as well as another attack which would enable them to insert a terror cell in Eilat.

During his interrogation, abu-Adara admitted that he had agreed to help transfer a terror cell into Eilat.

Hypocrisy (and some anti-semitism) on Toulouse in an Egyptian paper

Joseph Mayton, an American journalist who is editor-in-chief of Egypt's Bikya Masr newspaper, writes:

In India, it’s “Porngate.” In France, it’s the live and non-stop coverage of man who shot students at a local Jewish school – imagine if the shooter had shot up a Muslim school – and in the United State, it’s politicking chitter chatter. While in Syria, scores of civilians are being killed daily; in Sahel a humanitarian crisis is forming that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. But we care about the shooter in what is an incident that pales in comparison to what the Syrian government is doing to its people; what the military junta in Egypt does to protesters, and more importantly, the daily genocide carried out against an entire population in Palestine by the hands of the Israeli government.

But, by all means, lets stare at the television and wonder just when French police are either going to kill or arrest a man, who disgustingly shot up a school and killed three children. It was wrong. But it was not the worst carnage of the day.

Some 88 people were killed in Syria, and those are the ones we are able to report.

Taking that into account, it appears that for every one Israeli child – or ceremoniously Israeli due to being Jewish – more than 25 Arabs have to be slaughtered for it to equal the front pages of newspapers. It is wrong.

What is "Porngate?" From a different article in Bikya Masr:

In the latest scandal involving India lawmakers, officials in Gujarat have been accused of watching pornography during assembly. The report publicized by officials in the Western Indian state, is the second such porn scandal this year to hit the Hindu nationalist BJP.

And who wrote this article? Why, Joseph Mayton did, only the day before his self-righteous diatribe about how news organizations are ignoring big stories!

Yet the major example of a story that he feels was over-reported is not about celebrities, or sports, or politics. No, he feels that as "disgusting" as the Toulouse massacre was, it should be relegated to the back pages while Syria - or, "more importantly," Palestine - remains the top story.

Even though Syria is not the top story in his own newspaper!

Mayton claims that if a similar massacre occurred at a Muslim school the world would have yawned. Actually, if a Jewish terrorist had grabbed a Muslim girl's hair in school and shot her in the head twice to "confirm the kill" while videotaping it, it would have been the top story for weeks not only in Bikya Masr but in the Jerusalem Post as well.

Isn't it interesting that it is Toulouse that gets Mayton's ire for being over-reported?

Mayton's disgusting hypocrisy and pure anti-semitism - not anti-Zionism, but anti-semitism - can be seen where he claims that "the daily genocide carried out against an entire population in Palestine by the hands of the Israeli government" is more important than the scores being murdered in Syria every day!

Calling what Israel does "genocide" is simply Jew-hatred. In the entire year of 2011, fewer civilians were killed by Israel than in six hours yesterday by Syria. But to Mayton, Israel's actions are more important and more deserving of news. Mayton never called that "genocide."

In other words, Mayton is guilty of the hypocrisy he is accusing other journalists of - in the very same article!

Fatah accusing Hamas of collaborating with Israel

Palestine Press, as well as Arabic Kol Israel, quotes a Now Lebanon article as saying that Hamas has been holding "secret talks" with Israel.

The source said that this would explain why Israel did not hit any Hamas sites during the fighting earlier this month.

Of course, the IDF did target Hamas sites:

The article goes on to say that Fatah has been quietly accusing Hamas of giving Israel information about the PRC leader, Zuhair al Qaisi, so Israel could assassinate him before his planned terror attack, which would have been far more costly for Gaza. This explains, according to Fatah, why Hamas did not join in the fighting.

Whenever Fatah insults Hamas, it is never because Hamas embraces terror. It is always because Hamas is supposedly too pro-Israel.

Which tells you all you need to know about how "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas' party is.

The PA has spent $7 billion in Gaza since Hamas took over

Yesterday there was a protest in Gaza against the Palestinian Authority:

Protesters on Wednesday held a rally in Gaza City against Mahmoud Abbas, accusing the president of neglecting his responsibilities to the Gaza Strip.

They carried posters urging the president to resign if he could not fulfill his duties, and reminding Abbas that he presides over all Palestinian people and not just the West Bank.

The PA, thin-skinned as ever, responded with all it supposedly does in Gaza - and unintentionally damning itself.

The Palestinian Authority has spent over $7 billion in Gaza since 2007, Fatah spokesman Ahmad Assaf said Wednesday.

The Fatah-led government in Ramallah has continued to meet its obligations in Gaza even though Fatah was ousted from the coastal enclave by Hamas in 2007, Assaf said in a statement.

The PA spends around $120 million each month on the Gaza Strip, paying the salaries of around 80,000 civil servants, the Fatah official said.

The Ramallah government pays for all health and education needs in Gaza, including teachers' salaries, books and school maintenance. It also pays Israel around 50 million shekels ($13.37 million) for 120 Megawatts of electricity for Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas charges residents for electricity and collects the payments for itself, he said.

Gaza's Hamas rulers now have billions of dollars because the administration has not had to spend any money, Assaf said, adding that there were now over 2,100 "Hamas millionaires."

Assaf also blamed the Hamas government for the ongoing fuel crisis in Gaza, saying Hamas was demanding a discount on fuel from Egypt.

The Egyptian government buys diesel for $1 a liter, but Hamas wants to pay 0.5 shekels a liter ($0.13) and to charge residents 4 or 5 shekels a liter, he said.

The Fatah official said Hamas has stolen privately-owned land in Gaza to build malls for trade, yet has failed to build schools or hospitals.

All this is true. I have noted for years that over 60% of the PA's budget goes towards Gaza - on a per-capita basis, Gazans get more than twice what West Bank residents get from the PA.

But what Fatah is not telling you is that those 80,000 workers (which used to be 77,000, by the way) are sitting at home doing nothing. They are literally being paid not to work.

And it is also not saying directly that the PA's paying for Gaza infrastructure has left Hamas able to purchase weapons and build terrorist tunnels with all that cash it doesn't have to spend on running Gaza. All that cash from Iran is going straight to terror, being indirectly subsidized by the PA - and Western donor funds. Every Grad rocket is being partially paid for, indirectly, by the West.

It is interesting that the PA could have used these billions of dollars as leverage to bring Hamas to its knees, and chose not to. Probably because they are more frightened of a backlash because of Hamas' influence in the mainstream Palestinian Arab population, something that gets downplayed in the West.

"Islam is not to blame"

From an op-ed in The Telegraph by Ed West:

Many people kill in the name of jihad but they do not represent Islam or Muslims, the vast majority of whom will be horrified by the Toulouse killings. It is not religion that turns some young Muslim men in the West violent, but the sense of alienation and frustration that inevitably comes from being a second-generation immigrant. Confused and angry young men easily attach themselves to something greater than themselves, especially a strong, confident inter-national identity historically opposed to the West from which they feel so rejected.

Many of the campaigners who earlier blamed these attacks on a xenophobic atmosphere across Europe are now very keen to point out that they are nothing to do with Islam. Not because they care about Islam, but because their faith is “diversity”, the catchy term for universalism, the idea that all limits to human altruism are immoral.

Universalism is the basis of the post-war European moral settlement, and it has motivated two of its great revolutions – European integration and the creation of multi-ethnic societies. This followed two appalling nationalist-fuelled wars, and Europe’s universalist leaders believe that nations “lead to war”, in the words of EU President Herman Van Rompuy. Any opposition to universalism, whether to trans-national governments or open borders, is therefore racism, xenophobia or “far-Right rhetoric”.

And yet, as GK Chesterton put it, to condemn patriotism because people go to war for patriotic reasons, is like condemning love because some love leads to murder.
Islam is not to blame for the Toulouse killings. But had it been the work of white extremists, neither would patriotism have been the problem.

...
You cannot buck human nature, and universalism is an unsustainable, unworkable idea based on a utopian vision of humanity. One of the sadder ironies is that it is motivated partly by our revulsion over the Holocaust, yet this idea has helped to introduce Middle Eastern anti-Semitism into Europe....

But at the same time this universalism has become the moral basis for a worldwide intellectual assault on the state of Israel, whose citizens are charged with the crime of wishing to form a separate, Jewish state, an idea called “apartheid” by Europeans who have the moral good luck to be able to voice such absurdities without facing any consequences.

People should reconsider this idea, but as for the tragedy in France, it does not say anything about Islam, only of human nature and its potential for evil. All that matters ultimately is that three innocent children, a father and three young soldiers are now dead.

West is trying to say the right things, and his point about 'universalism" being morphed into modern anti-semitism is on target, but he has a huge blind spot.

I agree that the religion of Islam is not to blame for the murders. The religion itself, in the narrow Western sense of religion, is no more likely to create murderers than Christianity (or Judaism.)

Yet there were the Crusades in the past, and there are jihadists today. For West's theory to be true, he must explain how those could exist; how people can kill "infidels" in the name of religion. His attempt to blame "the sense of alienation and frustration that inevitably comes from being a second-generation immigrant" is ridiculous and offensive, because practically everyone in the Western world is either such a second-generation immigrant or descended from one. And the idea that being a second-generation immigrant from a Muslim country in Europe is somehow more frustrating than the daily lives of a couple of billion people elsewhere who don't go around killing people is beyond absurd. West falls in the same trap of oversimplifying things that he is blaming others for.

But today's jihadists have something in common with the Crusaders. To them, religion is not a personal belief system meant to improve themselves. It is an aggressive political framework whose philosophy includes the idea of gaining power at the expense of everyone else.

Westerners like West are so protective of the idea of "religion" that they cannot see the basic fact that to hundreds of millions of people, Islam is not merely a religion but a political philosophy. And as a political movement, it is no less toxic than Communism or Nazism.

Islam itself does not distinguish between its personal and political aspects. It is up to the Muslims themselves to modernize the religion to make such a separation. Modern Westerners do it instinctively, as no doubt most Muslims who grow up in the West do. But that distinction is a Western invention over the past couple hundred years, not something inherent in Islam.

To the vast majority of Muslims living in the Middle East, such fine-honed distinctions do not exist.

Not that most of them are jihadists - but a lot of them are potential jihadists, because there is no overriding moral code that discourages it. Islam is political; it wants to divide up the entire world into Dar al Islam (the Muslim house) and Dar al Harb (the "house of war.")

And, sad to say, there are a large number of Muslims who glorify violence. A Gallup poll that was disgustingly whitewashed by the pollsters found that about one third of Muslims worldwide found the 9/11 attacks partially or completely justified.

That is half a billion Muslims who support violent jihad against innocent civilians.

It is true that most of them will not become violent, but it is equally true that the Muslim world has not done nearly enough to discourage and vilify such thinking. It is mainstream.

That brings up another issue about Islam. It is not only a religion and a political movement, but it is also a culture. And too often, that culture is toxic.

To give some examples, the "moderate" Palestinian Authority has officially honored the worst terrorists and child murderers like Dalal Mughrabi and Samir Kuntar. While Salam Fayyad condemned the fact that Jewish kids were murdered in a school in France, 84% of Palestinian Arabs approved of the murder of other Jewish kids in a school in Jerusalem in 2008. And the 9/11 attacks were celebrated in many Muslim communities worldwide, not just by Palestinian Arabs.

It is not a problem that can be swept under the rug as merely disenchanted youths who need an excuse to murder people - it is a culture where large swaths of people openly celebrate murders.

That is the problem that must be attacked, and it must be attacked from within the Muslim community. Unfortunately, the reactions we've seen from the French Muslim community has been more defensive than introspective. They are far more interested in distancing themselves from the murderer than in looking to see what in their culture might have created him.

Islam, in a narrow sense, might not be to blame for Toulouse. But mainstream Islamic culture and Islamism as a political movement, today, supports the thinking that can lead to such outrages. Until that problem is dealt with, nothing will change.

Merah is dead

From The Telegraph live-blog:

11.03 French Interior Minister Claude Gueant has just given a remarkable description of the gun battle which ended in Mohammed Merah's death less than half an hour ago. He said the police decided to storm the building after the gunman had threatened to kill police and refused to surrender late last night. Describing the raid itself, he said:

We sent in special cameras to be able to see where he was but we could not locate him. It was when we were able to locate him in the bathroom that he came out shooting madly at everybody.

The police had never seen anything like this kind of violence and the RAID police had to protect themselves.

Merah jumped out of the window and continued to shoot. He was found dead on the ground.

According to an interesting interview noted in Ha'aretz about a French woman who complained to police about Merah years ago, his brother is even worse than he was.

The woman also stated that the “true mind” behind the suspect was his brother Abdelkader, who is currently in police custody. “It is he who brainwashed [Merah] and often flew out of France,” she said.

Finally! A good article on the Gaza fuel crisis (updated)

AP has an article that accurately describes the reasons for the Gaza fuel crisis.

A dispute between Egypt and Gaza's Hamas government has produced the worst energy crisis here in years: Gazans are enduring 18-hour-a-day blackouts, fuel is running low for hospital backup generators, raw sewage pours into the Mediterranean Sea for lack of treatment pumps and gas stations have shut down.

The fuel and electricity shortages, which have escalated over the past two months, are infuriating long-suffering Gazans who say their basic needs, perhaps more than ever, are being sacrificed for politics.

"Life here is getting worse every day," said Rawda Sami, 22, part of a group of students waiting in vain for public taxis outside the Islamic University. "There is no power, no transportation, and none of the leaders are thinking of us."

Ostensibly the spat revolves around fuel supplies from Egypt — but on a broader level, it is linked to Egypt's troubled relationship with Hamas and its long-standing deep ambivalence toward Gaza itself.

Hamas wants not just fuel: It hopes to leverage the crisis into getting Egypt to open a direct trade route with Gaza. Such an outcome might stabilize the Islamic militants' rule over the territory they seized in 2007 from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, headquartered in the West Bank.

Egypt refuses, wishing to keep Gaza at arms' length, and to avoid absolving Israel from continuing responsibility for the crowded, impoverished slice of Mediterranean coast. Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, after a 38-year military occupation, but still controls access by air and sea — and, except for the several mile (kilometer) long border with Egypt, by land.

After the Hamas takeover, Israel and Egypt imposed a border blockade on Gaza to try to dislodge the new rulers. Since the fall of Egypt's pro-Western President Hosni Mubarak last year, Cairo has eased restrictions on passenger traffic but has refused to open a cargo route. Instead, it largely has turned a blind eye to smuggling fuel and other supplies through hundreds of border tunnels.

The fuel crisis has its origins in the decision by Hamas, more than a year ago, to use smuggled fuel to run the territory's only power plant instead of paying for more expensive fuel coming through an Israeli cargo crossing. The plant normally provides 60 percent of Gaza's electricity.

Several weeks ago, the flow of smuggled Egyptian fuel began to slow: Egypt was itself suffering shortages, and it grew annoyed that Hamas was profiting by imposing tariffs on subsidized fuel meant for Egyptians.

The Gaza power plant shut down on Feb. 10 and has been mostly offline since. Depots of fuel for transportation gradually ran low, and major gas stations in Gaza City closed several days ago.

In recent days, no smuggled fuel has reached Gaza, traders say.

As a result, hospitals say fuel supplies for generators have run dangerously low, endangering hundreds dependent on steady electricity, including premature babies in incubators, kidney patients on dialysis and those in intensive care. Half the ambulances serving Gaza's biggest hospital have been grounded.

Most cars are now off the streets, and large crowds fight over the few public taxis. The Gaza Cabinet ordered some 1,800 civil servants with government-issue cars to start picking up hitchhikers.

Those with diesel cars have begun pouring used cooking oil into their tanks. Water supplies have dropped sharply because there's not enough fuel to pump it up from wells. Sewage is discharged into the Mediterranean because waste-treatment pumps can't operate.

"The storage in Gaza is zero and within 48 hours, we will see a real disaster in terms of health, water and transportation," said Amjad Shawa, who heads a network of Gaza civic groups.

Gaza has had fuel problems since the start of the Israeli-Egyptian border blockade. Initially, the EU bought the fuel needed for the Gaza power plant from Israel, which then delivered it through one of its crossings. Eventually, the EU asked the Abbas government to pay for the fuel and get the money back from Hamas. After a standoff, Hamas did make contributions for buying the Israeli fuel — before gambling on the cheaper option of smuggled Egyptian fuel.

Hamas now wants Egypt to openly deliver its fuel to Gaza through the Rafah crossing on their shared border — setting a precedent for establishing a proper trade route.

Egypt would agree to ship fuel, but insists on delivering it through Israel and via Israel's Kerem Shalom cargo crossing to Gaza, said an Egyptian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.

The circuitous arrangement makes the point that Israel bears responsibility for Gaza and not Egypt.

"We propose Kerem Shalom, because with this, we stress that Gaza is still under Israeli responsibility," the diplomat said. "If we accept what Hamas wants, we would absolve Israel of this responsibility."

Hamas argues that the Kerem Shalom option would give Israel control over Gaza's fuel supply.

The West Bank and Gaza, both captured by Israel in the 1967 war, lie on either side of the Jewish state. Over the past decade, Israel has enforced strict travel restrictions between the two, raising Arab concerns that it wants to "unload" Gaza onto Egypt and limit any future Palestinian state to a part of the West Bank.

Egypt also wants market rates for its fuel, which Hamas says it cannot afford. In recent days, Hamas officials have visited Qatar, Turkey, Bahrain and Iran in search of fuel subsidies. Gaza's prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, said Qatar has promised to help.

Yousef Rizka, an adviser to Haniyeh, accused Egypt of "political blackmail" and called on Egypt's newly elected parliament, dominated by Islamists, "to solve this problem."

Hamas officials also suspect Egypt is using the fuel issue to indirectly pressure the movement into accepting a Palestinian unity deal that would help Abbas regain some control in Gaza. Hamas leaders in Gaza have blocked the deal signed last month by their top leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal.

In recent days, Hamas has sent dozens of supporters to demonstrate near the Egyptian border to demand that Cairo start sending fuel.

But Hamas faces growing discontent.

"The government is responsible to find a solution for us," said Amjad Daban, a 44-year-old teacher who spent an hour Wednesday looking for transport. "I don't care where the fuel will come from. What I need is to find electricity and transportation."

It only took six weeks for a major news service to tackle the issue. Given the huge number of reporters in the area, this shows how little journalists care about the lives of Palestinian Arabs if their problems cannot be blamed on Israel.

The only major point that AP mentions that I haven't is the idea that Egypt doesn't want to be responsible for Gaza and wants it to still be Israel's responsibility. The funny part is that Israel has never expressed any problem with sending fuel through Kerem Shalom and has been ready and willing to do so for months.

The only major point that AP misses is the fact that one main reason Hamas wants fuel through Egypt is to be able to charge higher taxes on it (and deprive the PA from getting taxes from fuel that goes through Kerem Shalom.)

(h/t billposer)

UPDATE: Now that AP felt it was worth reporting, Reuters rushed to pen a similar story. Funny, that.

Disgusting: Turkish cosmetics company uses Hitler in commercial

Biomen is a Turkish cosmetics company trying to make a splash in the local market. They hired M.A.R.K.A., an advertising agency known for its "edgy" ads.

The resulting ad shows footage of Adolf Hitler, dubbed and subtitled as if he is speaking about men's shampoo.

This spot is being shown in commercials during soccer games, and getting a huge audience.

(h/t Gurhan)

UPDATE here.

The first day of spring has arrived, and with it comes my quarterly request for donations.

EoZ has continued to grow this year, now with 2150 Twitter followers and 2250 subscribers (including over 700 that get my daily email digest.) I have received over 400,000 hits this year already, and 42,000 just last week.

I now have over 13,500 posts. As a result, Google loves me and I get lots of search engine traffic. (Inexplicably, I'm still getting over a thousand hits a month just for people looking for Victoria Beckham's Hebrew tattoo.)

I experimented with posting on Times of Israel and the Algemeiner, and might try it again. I'm also working on other projects that will be revealed in good time.

I get thousands of comments, most of which I at least skim, as well as lots of emails asking questions or offering tips.

Twitter is an increasingly important component of the blog. While I am hardly an avid tweeter, I do tweet lots of interesting links that I come across in the course of the day that I don't have time to blog. It is sort of like a real-time linkdump. Also, people tweet ideas and links to me, so you can often see interesting scoops early.

I just added two Twitter widgets on the right side of my blog webpage so you can keep up with the latest links and information coming from and going to EoZ.

Also, if you have a tablet or smartphone, you can read my blog on the Google Currents app which makes EoZ look almost like a native magazine app.

Anyway, all of this takes a lot of time (and some money.) I spend countless hours reading, researching and writing. My day usually starts at 5 AM so I can get most of the posts done early and still have time to do the Real World stuff that keeps coming up (and, lately, increasing.) The donations I've received, for which I am most thankful, help out tremendously.

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Christian family evicted from Egyptian town

From AP:

Nabil Gergis, a Coptic Christian, lived for nearly two decades in the Egyptian town of Amriya, raising his children and managing a modest business. Those ties couldn’t protect him after a sex video purportedly showing his brother with a Muslim woman began to circulate.

Angry residents in the conservative, Muslim-majority town held protests and set fire to the Gergis family businesses. None of the attackers was prosecuted. Instead, a committee of tribal elders, local lawmakers and security officials ordered the 11 members of the Gergis family -- the brother, Nabil and others -- to leave town.

The story of Amriya demonstrates one of the reasons Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority and even some in the Muslim majority feel the situation is precarious, particularly since the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak a year ago. The rule of law, they and human rights groups say, is being eclipsed by such “reconciliation councils,” trying to fill the security vacuum left by Mubarak’s fall.

“There is no law that would have found me responsible for anything, and under the law I would have never been kicked out of my home,” said Nabil Gergis. He said he, his wife and their two children do not know who to turn to protect their rights and that he feels the government has turned its back on them.

The Amriya case was unique because the punishment was so extensive. The town is comprised of scattered villages with some 500,000 residents, about 15 percent of them are Christian.

The incident erupted in late January, when the explicit video allegedly showing Nabil Gergis’ brother with a Muslim woman circulated on residents’ cell phones. The brother, who is married, has denied any affair.

Any sex outside of marriage is a lightning rod for controversy in the Muslim world, where a woman’s chastity is vociferously protected by her family. That a Christian man might have an affair with a Muslim woman only further fanned the flames.

The rumors sparked widespread protests by Amriya residents, who are mostly tribal and deeply traditional. Angry residents set fire to three stores owned by the Gergis’ family, which were under their homes. Some Muslim residents tried to help, but were outnumbered by the ultraconservative rioters.

Police showed up hours later and instead of investigating the attack called in the brother for questioning, Gergis said.

With tempers still high, local officials and tribal leaders held a series of meetings and decided to order the expulsion of the entire Gergis family. A Muslim family who had fired shots in the air during the protest to protect their property were initially told they must leave too, but were later allowed to return.

Amriya police argued that they could not guarantee the Gergis family’s safety in the face of angry protesters, according to security officials and the Gergis family. Last week, with the family gone, their homes were robbed of cash and other belongings they had to leave behind, Gergis said.

This is exactly what "equal rights" means in the Muslim world. While the governments will officially say they embrace human rights, in reality little is done to safeguard religious minorities. And it will only get worse with an Islamist government in Egypt.