Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Hamas calls for more terror attacks and abductions

On the occasion of "Prisoners Day," Hamas together with Islamic Jihad and other terror groups publicly called for more terror attacks against Israel, purportedly in order to help gain the release of the prisoners.

The group of "resistance factions" unanimously declared that that the most effective way to free the prisoners is "resistance by the sword," a euphemism for terror attacks and Shalit-style soldier abductions.

Abu Obaida, a spokesman for Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades, released a statement today calling the prisoner issue an "absolute priority of the resistance. I do not say this as a mere slogan, but we have proved it with our pure blood."

He promised the prisoners and their families that "the walls of the prison will shatter ...with the permission of God, and may that say come soon."

Spokesman Abu Ahmed of Islamic Jihad's al-Quds Brigades also stated that that the issue of prisoners has become a top priority for the terror groups.

He said "The complete liberation of prisoners is what the Palestinian factions seek, and the best way to free our prisoners will be resistance and abducting soldiers."

The absurdity of giving credence to Iran's "fatwa" against nukes

From Emanuele Ottolenghi at Commentary:

Speaking to reporters about Iran’s nuclear program before the weekend talks in Istanbul, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We’re looking for concrete results,” and continued, “They assert that their program is purely peaceful. They point to a fatwa that the supreme leader has issued against the pursuit of nuclear weapons. We want them to demonstrate clearly in the actions they propose that they have truly abandoned any nuclear weapons ambition.”

Secretary Clinton must take this argument seriously, because she has been looking into the fatwa very closely. According to the Daily Telegraph,

Clinton revealed that she has been studying Khamenei’s fatwa, saying that she has discussed it with religious scholars, other experts and with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “If it is indeed a statement of principle, of values, then it is a starting point for being operationalized,” Clinton said.

EU diplomats also took notice of Iranian emphasis on the fatwa:

“One of the diplomats, who demanded anonymity because he was sharing information from a closed session, said the Iranians appeared to be moving toward that goal, engaging in discussion about the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He said the Iranian team had mentioned supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s fatwa, or prohibition, of nuclear weapons for Iran, in the course of the plenary discussions.”

As Jonathan Tobin discussed yesterday, a delegation of 12 Iranian nuclear scientists attended the North Korea’s failed missile test at the same time that the chief nuclear negotiator in Istanbul was proclaiming Iran’s religious commitment to non-proliferation. So what were they doing there? Verifying how compatible is their leader’s fatwa with a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead?

Secretary Clinton and all other parties involved should judge the Iranians by their actions. They speak for themselves. The fatwa is a ruse – one that clearly just won Tehran another five weeks of quiet.

Juan Cole, who famously managed to convince the wishful thinkers of the world that Iranian leaders never said they wanted to destroy Israel even when official Iranian translations of their speech said they did, has been particularly strident in pretending that Khamanei's fatwa somehow proves Iran's peaceful intentions, and not its willingness to lie.

The problem is, as I have noted before, that Khamanei was on the record as supporting nuclear weapons development before his more recent pretend conversion to the cause of pacifism. He said in 1984 that "A nuclear arsenal would serve Iran as a deterrent in the hands of God's soldiers."

Moreover, despite his beard, Khamanei is not considered a major Islamic scholar. He is a politician first and foremost. And he slavishly follows the words of his predecessor, Ayatollah Khamanei, who was also on the record as supporting the development of nuclear weapons.

Finally, even Arabic media are deriding the idea that Khamanei's fatwa is anything but a political ruse. As Asharq al-Awsat's Tariq Hamid notes,

The problem with the administration of U.S. President Obama that it wants to pursue policies that may be acceptable to the dreaming cultural elites, but that would not be effective with the systems that are filled with cunning and deception, such as the Iranian regime. That regime does not prioritize openness, human values, nor the well being of its citizens, or even tolerance. Instead, the Iranian regime and its ideology is based on expansion and penetration into other countries, and sectarian motives. International laws, conventions and norms, and self-interests atre what rules the world and it is absurd to talk about an Iranian fatwa when negotiating with Tehran. States, like individuals, have a reputation and history that can not be ignored. The reputation of a rogue state, like the reputation of an individual villain, cannot be judged by words, or fatwas, but with deeds. When Hillary talks about the Iranian fatwa surely they have not heard of a "pious" Iran! Instead Iran has a history of promises and agreements, which it did not comply with, and the simplest example here is the Iranian president's visit to the UAE island of Abu Musa that is occupied by Iran, despite all the agreements between the UAE and Iran for negotiations and dialogue. Tehran did not respect those promises. If the The head of state does not abide by a promise, how trustworthy is his advisory fatwa?

If this opinion is one of the merits of dialogue with Iran, I swear we are going to a real disaster in this region of the world.

One does not have to use the argument of "taqiyya" to prove that Iran's Supreme Leader is a liar. His own actions and words prove that quite well without resorting to Islamic law or history. He is a politician, and he has already proven that he is not above using religion to push his own political agenda. Believing in the righteousness of a proven liar, as Juan Cole and his acolytes clearly do, is in itself far worse than any real or alleged taqiyya being practiced here.

Why couldn't Flytilla idiots come via Jordan?

Here's a typical article critical of Israeli policy concerning the planned airport protests on Sunday, this one from the World Socialist website:

There is nothing democratic, let alone legal, in the Interior Ministry’s refusal of entry to people landing at Ben-Gurion airport to visit the West Bank via Israel. Since the territory is under Israeli military control, there is no option but to travel through Israel to enter Palestine, a stance upheld by an Israeli court only last year.

The article implies that there is no evidence that the protesters actually planned to protest at the airport or elsewhere.

This claim is just another lie.

The ISM website has a wonderful little guide for how anti-Israel activists can get into the territories. They say:

Arriving via Amman, Jordan

If you decide to come via Amman, Jordan, you will be questioned by Israeli authorities when you arrive at the border. They will ask you about why you are coming to Israel via Jordan. If you go from the Queen Alia airport in Amman to the border on the same day, they will ask you why you did not fly directly to Tel Aviv if you’re not spending time in Jordan.

If you are denied entry coming via Jordan or Egypt, the Israeli border authorities merely send you back to Jordan or Egypt. You are not forced onto an airplane, but are rather free in Jordan or Egypt to decide on your next steps. Which way you decide to come is your decision.

Meaning that it is pretty much just as easy to get into the territories from Jordan as it is from Ben Gurion Airport. At worst you spend a day or two sightseeing before you cross the Allenby bridge. And if they don't want you, you don't lose your airfare.

But there aren't hundreds of reporters waiting at the Allenby Bridge to see you arrive.

As far as I can tell, none of the protesters chose to come via Amman, even though their own "activist" leaders know very well how to use that option.

Which proves that they wanted to make a scene at Ben Gurion and had little intention to actually go and meet real Palestinian Arabs.

So why exactly should Israel allow people into the country when their only real goal is to disrupt airport operations?

Jordanian ministry calls to block Internet porn

From Jordan Times:

The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology on Monday voiced readiness to block pornographic websites in the Kingdom.

“We support campaigns to block these sites in Jordan,” a source at the ministry, who preferred anonymity, told The Jordan Times.

The source said the ministry will consult with Internet service providers (ISP) in Jordan on how to filter these sites and block them, but noted that implementing the nationwide project requires “millions of dinars” that are currently unavailable.

“At this stage, there are no financial allocations for a project to block these sites,” the source added.

“The ministry will soon launch a campaign to raise public awareness on the dangers of accessing such sites,” the source said, adding that a committee will be formed to look into the issue.

If the campaign is successful and the money is found to do nationwide blocking of adult sites, then the ministry would also have the means to block political sites that they deem dangerous as well.

This statistic was interesting:

Citing the Internet metrics company Alexa, [activists] said between 77 per cent and 80 per cent of Internet users in Jordan access pornographic sites.

A party in London to celebrate an anti-semite

From the Daily Mail last week:

A Palestinian activist, who was allowed to enter Britain despite being banned on the grounds he might incite racial hatred, has won an appeal to stay.

Sheikh Raed Salah, 53, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, arrived at Heathrow Airport on June 25. An investigation revealed Border officials had missed six chances to stop him entering the country.

He was arrested at his hotel three days later at which point Home Secretary Theresa May served a deportation notice saying his presence in the UK was 'not conducive to the public good'.

However after being released on curfew, Mr Salah, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, launched a legal battle against moves to expel him and a tribunal has now found in his favour.

During a two-day hearing - in which he sought damages for unlawful detention - the High Court was told how Mr Salah had intended to stay in the country for 10 days to attend meetings and public engagements.

His legal team claimed he had not been aware of the ban, had entered the country with a passport issued in his name and had made 'no attempt' to conceal his identity.

His arrest had followed an appeal by the Mike Freer, Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green, who asked the Home Secretary in Parliament that Salah be banned because of his 'history of virulent anti-semitism'.

He said: 'I have been questioning the propriety of providing a platform to a speaker who reportedly peddles the conspiracy theories of Jewish involvement in the 9/11 plots.'

Campaigners insisted he was the leader of a legitimate political organisation and rejected all forms of racism.

As I have noted over the years, Salah is a lying anti-semite who is constantly inciting violence. He has even pushed the classic blood libel that Jews use children's blood to make matzoh.

So of course London's Muslims and apologists for terror celebrated his court victory:

Following a fraught 10 month legal battle against the British Home Secretary, Sheikh Raed Salah's friends, supporters and campaigners bid him a fond farewell during a congratulatory function in London yesterday. He was greeted by a packed hall of over 350 people, and entered to the congratulatory cheers of the attendees celebrating his victory against the Home Office's deportation order issued in June last year.

Chaired by Anas al-Tikriti of the Cordoba Foundation, a number of speakers were welcomed on stage to congratulate Sheikh Raed on his significant victory. Sheikh Raed himself was unable to address the crowd due to existing bail conditions which had not been removed by the Home Office. Among the speakers was Baroness Jenny Tonge, who chaired Sheikh Raed's first meeting in parliament last June. She thanked him for his continued struggle and expressed her sorrow at the actions of the British Government.

Ismail Patel, Chair of Friends of al-Aqsa, spoke of the strength and conviction that Sheikh Raed had held throughout his ordeal and described the inspiration that he had provided, by encouraging all to continue the battle even when the battle seemed to be defeating them. Yet, it was this perseverance by Sheikh Raed and his supporters which ensured that he was ultimately victorious. Perhaps the most poignant words of the event came from Dr Mohammed Badie, Supreme Guide of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, direct from Cairo by phone, when he congratulated Sheikh Raed on his victory.

It is very telling to see who unabashedly celebrates a Jew-hating terror supporter in England. (There are well over 100 photos of the event, I'm sure that the British observers can identify many of these people.)

Saudi Arabia bans "gays and tomboys" from their schools

From Emirates 24/7:

Saudi Arabia has decided to bar gays and tom boys from its government schools and universities within a crackdown against the spread of this phenomenon in the conservative Moslem Gulf Kingdom, a newspaper said on Monday.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most feared law enforcement authority in the oil-rich country, has been asked to enforce the new orders, Sharq Arabic language daily said.

“Instructions have been issued to all public schools and universities to ban the entry of gays and tom boys and to intensify their efforts to fight this phenomenon, which has been promoted by some websites,” it said.

The paper did not make clear who issued those instructions but said gay and tom boy students can go back to schools and universities if they prove they have been corrected and have stopped such practices.

It said high-level orders have been issued to the Commission to immediately enforce the new rules and to step up efforts to combat this phenomenon and other “unacceptable behavior” in public places.

(h/t jzaik)

Hypocritical outrage against IDF and Israel police

By now everyone has seen this video of IDF officer Shalom Eisner hitting a Danish protester with his rifle (at 0:15):

Even though Eisner's fingers were broken a short time earlier by these "peaceful" activists, the video is shocking because there was no apparent provocation that happens immediately before his assault, and Israeli security forces must be careful to uphold their own standards. Indeed, Israeli society and leadership is shocked by the video and Eisner has been suspended.

When something like this happens, it is important that all the facts are thoroughly investigated and the truth revealed. Videos can be edited and things are not always what they seem. In this case, though, it is hard to imagine that there is any justification for how Eisner acted, since there were no edits immediately before the incident as is so often the case with other videos we've seen of IDF clashes with protesters that are carefully edited to make it appear that the IDF fires tear gas before "peace" protesters pummel them with rocks.

Israeli soldiers and security personnel are human, but they are expected to act in a superhuman manner - and indeed that is what they must do. Outrage over this incident is justified, but the context is important as well.

What this incident reveals though is that the outrage over the incident on the part of the anti-Israel crowd is hypocritical. They pretend that they care about human rights and that this only reveals Israel's anti-democratic and authoritarian nature. In fact, they are only using it as an excuse to bash Israel under the fig leaf of human rights.

Because they have never, ever, said a word about these other scenes of apparent Israeli brutality against innocent people in the territories.

On the same day that the Danish activist was beaten, another incident occurred in the territories - an incident that is in many ways far worse, but that did not get any attention in the world media:

Israel Border Police detained and beat a nine-year-old Jewish resident of Hebron on Saturday, after he entered a closed military zone near the house that was recently occupied by settlers.

The event occurred around 7 A.M., after a group of Jewish children began playing in the lot between the house and a nearby closed military zone. According to eyewitnesses, at a certain point, the boy entered the closed military zone.

A Border Police officer choked the boy, and held him in the air for approximately 10 minutes. Residents who were praying at the nearby Tomb of the Patriarchs were able to release the child from the officer’s hands. Two were arrested on suspicion of attacking the officer. The child’s parents lodged a complaint with the Justice Ministry's department for the investigation of police officers on Sunday.

In the wake of the event, the child had difficulty breathing and suffered from pain in his back and chest. A children’s doctor confirmed the claims.

The doctor wrote that the child suffered wounds in the frontal area of his throat, as well as injuries and pressure wounds. He also found bruises in the back and chest.

Where are the anguished op-eds saying that this proves that Israeli society has become an immoral cesspool? You won't find them. Because many people seem to agree that such brutality is justified, when the victims aren't of their own political stripes.

Here's a video of many such incidents against Jews in Judea and Samaria.

This video also shows what appears to be unconscionable brutality against civilians. But in this case, the civilians are Jews. In this case, there are no outraged statements from human rights organizations or "peace activists."

The rules of how to handle incidents like these must be consistent no matter who the victims are. In all cases the incidents need to be investigated, the truth needs to be revealed and lessons need to be learned.

And the outrage should be consistent as well. That is where everyone seems to fall short.

It is easy to be self-righteous when the victims are on your side. But too often that is simply hypocrisy.

Israeli security forces must uphold their own standards and policies, no matter what. Those standards happen to be as well-thought out and moral as those of any other country. And they require an almost superhuman effort on the part of those on the front lines. When actions fall short of those standards, outrage is justified - no matter who the victims are.

(h/t Yoel)

Democracy, Palestinian Arab style

From Ma'an:

Fatah has decided revitalize its committee in Gaza with young leaders, senior party official Nabil Shaath said Monday.

Fatah will hold a meeting when the president returns from an overseas trip to discuss appointing younger members to party leadership roles in Gaza, the central committee member said.

The central committee has decided that young members will constitute around half of the 15-member leadership committee in Gaza, Shaath told Ma'an.

The new committee will include young figures in important leadership positions for the first time, Shaath said. He declined to name any candidates.

No elections, no conventions, nobody being named publicly, just an announcement that the next generation of Fatah leaders in Gaza will be handpicked by some secret process in a wholly opaque manner.

It must be noted that the PA - whose leadership is supposed to be democratically elected, even though the current president is serving years past his official term and the prime minister was never elected - reports to the PLO, which has no elections. The PLO is dominated by Fatah. So self-appointed Fatah leaders are the real leaders of the PA, and the facade of democracy is nothing but a joke even when there were elections.

The more populist and anti-corruption Hamas wouldn't do anything so anti-democratic like that, would they?

The results of Hamas' internal leadership re-shuffle are still confidential, party officials said Monday.

The Shura Council, a 55-member advisory body, nominates candidates to form the politburo, and those selected must accept their positions or provide acceptable reasons to refuse.

Political analyst Mustafa al-Sawwaf told Ma'an current politburo chief Khalid Mashaal was likely to retain his post.

Hamas' practice of appointing the politburo in a closed-door process, rather than allowing candidates to stand, means there will not be clashes between candidates, al-Sawwaf added.

An official told Ma'an in January that Mashaal could not stand again as he has served the party's limit of two terms in office, but with the procedures shrouded in secrecy, it was not possible to verify if such a bar restricted Mashaal's candidacy.

If the Shura Council selects Mashaal to head the politburo, he will have to obey the decision if the council rejects his reasons to refuse the post, al-Sawwaf said.

Oops.

100th anniversary of a pogrom in Fez, Morocco

Today is the 100th anniversary of a particularly gruesome pogrom in Fez, Morocco, as a protest against the French turned into a violent rampage against the Jews who lived in a ghetto there.

From the Boston Evening Transcript:

From the Grey River Argus:

Here is what the Jewish quarter looked like afterwards:

In the end, some 60 Jews were murdered.

And this was not particularly unusual for Fez. There were pogroms in 1033, and 1276, in 1465 the mellah (ghetto) was almost completely destroyed, and there were pogroms throughout Morocco in 1790 where the Fez Jews were forced out of the city for two years.

This is just a small part of how well Jews were treated in Muslim countries. For the most part better than Europe, but they were always considered to be inferior and apart from the majority population, and when bad things happened the Jews were the first to be attacked.

UPDATE: See also here.

The lonely life of a Japanese expert in Yiddish

From NPR:

A smattering of Yiddish words has crept into the American vernacular: Non-Jews go for a nosh or schmooze over cocktails. Yet the language itself, once spoken by millions of Jews, is now in retreat.

But you don't have to be Jewish to love Yiddish. In Japan, a linguist has toiled quietly for decades to compile the world's first Yiddish-Japanese dictionary — the first time the Jewish language has been translated into a non-European language other than Hebrew.

It was in the hills of Kyushu Island in southern Japan where Kazuo Ueda carried out his impressive and quixotic quest, devoting his life to a language few Jews understand, and even fewer Japanese have even heard of.

Now Japan's leading scholar of Yiddish, Ueda was originally a specialist in German. He stumbled upon the Jewish language while reading Franz Kafka, himself a fan of Yiddish theater.

Ueda was immediately smitten with the language that is written in Hebrew letters, but is a hybrid of German, Hebrew, Russian and other languages.

"Yiddish was full of puzzles for me," Ueda says. "That's what I love about it. Reading sentences in those strange letters — it's like deciphering a code."

Ueda made several trips to Israel, but most of his research was a lonely, solo affair. Isolated from actual speakers of the language, he taught himself, with the help of Yiddish newspapers and literature.

Ueda would later publish a series of books on the Jewish language and people, but he considers that a prelude to his magnum opus — the 1,300-page, 28,000-entry Idishugo Jiten, or Yiddish-Japanese dictionary, published several years ago. His publisher wouldn't release details but conceded sales are most likely tiny for the dictionary, which costs more than $700.

"I actually think $700 is pretty cheap, considering," Ueda says.

Cheap, considering it took 20 years to finish the volume — and that Ueda's doctors say the project may have shortened his life. As his dictionary neared completion, Ueda began to show signs of Parkinson's disease. Now 69, he was forced to retire from the faculty of Fukuoka University in March and struggles to walk and speak.

Ueda's wife, Kazuko, blames years of desk-bound devotion to the dictionary for aggravating his disease.

"Every day, he would sit down to work on his dictionary right after breakfast. He never took any time off," she says. "But for him, this wasn't work but sheer joy. So I thought, this is the way things had to be."

"I wrote it purely for the pursuit of learning," he says. "I don't expect a wave of people to start learning Yiddish."

The Forward, which was originally a Yiddish paper, wrote about Ueda earlier this year.

Ueda’s target readership is small but dedicated, and while Ueda may be Japan’s leading Yiddishist, he is not alone. Yoshiji Hirose, an expert on Yiddish literature at Japan’s Notre Dame Seishin University, honed his Yiddish in Brooklyn’s Boro Park; Chitoshi Hinoue is an art historian specializing in the work of Marc Chagall and is also a klezmer clarinetist; Sadan, who immigrated to Israel for a full-time position in Hebrew linguistics at Bar-Ilan University, is equally at home in Yiddish, Hebrew, Japanese, English and Esperanto.

Sadan pegs the number of Japanese proficient in Yiddish at fewer than 20, though more have partial knowledge of the language. All, he says, are driven by “healthy intellectual curiosity and interest in traditional Ashkenazic culture, which, unlike modern Israeli culture, seems to have much in common with traditional Japanese culture.” Zachary Sholem Berger, an American Yiddishist who has spent time in Japan, notes that many Japanese Yiddishists are also believing Christians. Several Japanese universities (Tokyo, Fukuoka and Sapporo, among others) offer Yiddish classes, and four Yiddish study groups now exist (in Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe and Okayama). Regularly there are a handful of Japanese participants at Yiddish language immersion programs, klezfests and Yiddish conferences around the world.

If you want to buy this dictionary, it is available at Amazon Japan for 68,000 yen.

Evening open thread

It was a busy day so I gotta unwind. Go ahead, call me a slacker.

Interesting article on the international laws of war

At the Washington Post blog, Jennifer Rubin interviews Peter Berkowitz on his new book “Israel and the Struggle Over the International Laws of War.”

An excerpt:

You write that international laws are “a vital component of a freer, more peaceful and more prosperous world order.” But does Israel’s experience with Goldstone and the flotilla suggest otherwise?

Israel’s bitter experience with the Goldstone Report and, in the end, better experience with the Gaza flotilla controversy — both of which concerned Israel’s operations against Hamas, which is the ruling authority in Gaza and which is sworn to Israel’s destruction — involved the attempt by influential actors on the international stage to criminalize Israel’s inherent right of self-defense. All liberal democracies must combat this abuse and corruption of the international laws of war.

At their origins and properly conceived today, the international laws of war seek to balance the legitimate claims of military necessity and humanitarian responsibility. Liberal democracies such as Israel and the United States, which are engaged in a long struggle against transnational terrorism and depend on their armed forces on a daily basis to defend their ways of life, have a special interest in the struggle over the international laws of war. That’s in no small measure because soldiers and officers imbued with the principles of freedom and equality justly take pride in honoring laws of war rightly understood. The laws of war rightly understood take seriously both combatants’ obligation to defend their nation and their obligation to minimize harm to noncombatants.

Is the proper application of international law possible without a majority of liberal democracies in the international community?

Yes and no. It is certainly possible for the liberal democracies such as the United States and Israel to operate in accordance with the international laws of war, in part because the international laws of war accord states with competent judicial systems considerable responsibility for investigating and punishing war crimes. However, to the extent that the international laws of war are coopted by authoritarian states and transnational elites with their own political agendas, liberal democracies will be compelled to assume even greater responsibility for interpreting, upholding, and defending the international laws of war. The recognition of laws of war that are binding on all nations should not be confused with the obligation to vest in some mythical international community the authority for defining and punishing violations of the laws of war.

Nearly half the book can be read here.

(h/t Noah)

Follow-up on CJR's absurd article saying Israel jails more journalists "per capita"

Columbia Journalism Review has an article by Sohrab Ahmari that discusses the disgraceful manipulation and misuse of statistics that Justin Martin used at CJR two weeks ago to make it look like Israel treats journalists worse than almost every country on Earth. (I was the first to point out the falsehood of Martin's statistics.)

In recent years, the Columbia Journalism Review has devoted special attention to the use and misuse of statistics in American journalism, taking reporters to task when they have fallen for unreliable statistics or failed to seek the human stories behind data. The cover essay in the March/April 2011 issue, for example, harshly criticized the Los Angeles Times for publishing the names of thousands of public school teachers next to their “value-added” performance data without giving readers sufficient context to interpret these numbers. In its next issue, CJR lauded an alternative weekly reporter for exposing the faulty methodology behind wildly alarming sex trafficking statistics that were uncritically picked up by a number of regional broadsheets. Such instances of statistical credulity and probity on the part of journalists regularly earn “darts” and “laurels” in the pages of CJR.

Such efforts are admirable. But they also require CJR to be doubly cautious in its own use of statistics. On April 2, columnist Justin Martin posted an article on the CJR website purporting to spotlight the twelve countries with the most number of journalists jailed “per capita.” Save for the conspicuous absence of China, the resulting list of authoritarian and quasi-authoritarian states was mostly predictable. But one country stood out from the rest: Israel. The Jewish state, according to Mr. Martin, jails more journalists per capita than the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Ba’athist regime in Syria, and the Burmese junta, among others. Only Eritrea, Mr. Martin claimed, jails more reporters per capita.

....Mr. Martin’s findings soon sparked a firestorm of controversy, with supporters of Israel crying foul at the latest instance of Israel-bashing in the prestige press. ...The outrage was justified. Mr. Martin’s conclusion would not have passed professional muster under the standards CJR imposes on other outlets. Indeed, his methodology was a classic example of the sort of statistical recklessness that CJR scolds other journalists for.

To reach his per capita number, Mr. Martin merely divided the number of journalists detained—a number that, in the case of Israel, was debatable to begin with—by each country’s population in millions. As Commentary’s Omri Ceren pointed out, however, “If you want a ‘per capita’ number describing which countries disproportionately target journalists, you divide the jailed journalists in each country by the total number of journalists in each country, not by the total number of people.” Otherwise, tiny Israel—home to a huge press corps and where commentators in the Arab and leftist presses regularly question the state’s very right to exist—ends up appearing more repressive than, say, North Korea, where a totalitarian regime does not permit journalism as such to exist.

Allowing Mr. Martin to skewer the Jewish state using faulty statistics undermines CJR’s role as professional watchdog. But the harm done extends beyond journalistic standards. The ultimate impact of pieces like Mr. Martin’s is a softening of the reading public’s moral intuitions and sensitivities. By placing Israel on the same plane as the likes of Iran and Syria, Mr. Martin minimized the threats faced by journalists working under genuine authoritarianisms—not to mention the broader human rights catastrophes underway in these societies.

In Iran, where I was born and spent the first half of my life, journalists and writers are persecuted on a nearly industrial scale; dozens of outlets are shuttered every year. Just last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported, Nazanin Khosravani, a reformist writer, began serving a six-year sentence in Tehran’s nightmarish Evin prison for the crime of “propagating against the system”—a charge unheard of in Israel. But why should Western audiences care about these very real injustices when seemingly authoritative “statistics” show the West—including Israel and the U.S.—to be equally authoritarian? Mr. Martin thus challenged the common moral sense of his readers, distorting conclusions they would otherwise draw from straightforward reporting on the realities of practicing journalism in free and unfree societies. Will he earn a dart from CJR anytime soon?

Martin's response is more than lame:

I fully agree with this criticism. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have reliable data on national tallies for working reporters in many of the countries—Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia—that jail journalists. And even if such data were available, we would want counts of how many newsmakers in each country were working for regime-owned news sources versus private organizations. For now, although the data are a bit large and cumbersome, ratios of imprisoned reporters to countries’ population still deliver some meaning.

No, they don't. They obscure meaning. It is as worthwhile as comparing the number of jailed journalists to the number of registered dogs in the same country.

Martin then gets even more ridiculous, trying to take credit for spending 30 seconds to subtract the journalists jailed by Hamas in the original survey, and helping Israel look better. Wow - we should praise him for doing something that any high-school reporter would be expected to do?

Martin proved himself to be anything but a serious journalist with this episode. He has now proven that he has no credibility in criticizing other journalists, at all.

(h/t David G)

Hamas terrorists tweet about morality

All you need to know about Hamas - and, in many ways, mainstream Palestinian Arab thought - can be seen in this tweet from the Al Qassam Brigades, their terrorist wing:

They are claiming that the IDF is inhumane, presumably because of the incident yesterday where an IDF soldier whose fingers were broken during a "peaceful protest" hit a protester with his rifle. Obviously, to the Qassam Brigades, use of force by an army against protesters is a terrible thing.

Then, in the very next sentence, we are informed that "resistance" - which to the Qassam Brigades means suicide bombings at pizza shops, shooting rockets at civilians, and stealing bulldozers to run over people - is the "only way" for them.

The rules are simple. Anything Israel does, no matter how justified, is inherently immoral - and anything Hamas does, no matter how heinous, is justified.

If it was only Hamas that felt this way, it wouldn't be so bad. But there are tens of millions of Arabs, hundreds of millions of Muslims and tens of thousands of Westerners who believe the exact same thing. In this case, Hamas is not anomalous - it is mainstream.

Iranian arms ship to Syria intercepted

From Der Spiegel on Saturday:

A German-owned freighter loaded with weapons from Iran was stopped on Friday near the Syrian port of Tartus in the Mediterranean Sea, SPIEGEL has learned.

A few days prior, the Atlantic Cruiser, owned by the Emden carrier Bockstiegel, had allegedly picked up heavy military equipment and munitions meant for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's regime from an Iranian freighter at the Djibouti port. The cargo, desperately needed reinforcements for Assad's crackdown on dissidents, was supposed to be unloaded on Friday.
But defectors from inside the Syrian government had learned of the delivery and warned the shipping company. On Friday the Atlantic Cruiser suddenly changed course, heading for the Turkish harbor of Iskenderun instead. Then the ship stopped some 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Tartus, sailing in circles for the next few hours.

"We stopped the ship after getting information on the weapons cargo," shipping agent Torsten Lüddeke of Hamburg-based C.E.G. Bulk Chartering told SPIEGEL.

According to Lüddeke, the ship had been chartered by an Odessa, Ukraine-based company called White Whale Shipping. "They declared to us as cargo mainly pumps and similar things," he said. "We never would have allowed weapons on board." For now, the 6,200-ton ship will "stay where it is," he added.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian shipping company has insisted that the Atlantic Cruiser is not carrying weapons and that it be allowed to dock in Tartus.

However, SPIEGEL has learned that the ship's crew had attempted to refuel in the Cypriot port of Limassol, but was turned away after reporting its cargo as "weapons and munitions."

The German Economics Ministry told the Associated Press on Saturday that it was looking into the matter, but provided no further details.

The route between Djibouti and Tartus is known as a path for transporting weapons, according to intelligence experts. In January another ship out of Russia was halted with munitions in Cyprus, but later continued its journey with the cargo to Syria after the captain declared he would head to a different port than initially planned.

And today:

Officials in Germany are still seeking information about a German-owned ship believed to be carrying a load of weapons and military equipment that had been destined for the despotic regime of Syrian leader Bashar Assad. Since the revelation on Friday, it appears that transponder used to broadcast the ship's whereabouts has been turned off repeatedly. On Monday, though, it appeared to be on again, with the 6,200 ton freighter ship apparently on a course towards Turkey.

...But many questions still persist about the ship -- and the shipping company's version of events has been filled with contradictions for some days now. On Sunday, officials with Bockstiegel would not comment to SPIEGEL ONLINE on the events. Initially, the German freighter was supposed to call at the Syrian port of Tartus at the end of last week. Earlier, the ship had reportedly loaded heavy military equipment and munitions from an Iranian cargo ship in Djibouti that had been intended for Assad's henchmen.

...The behavior of those in charge raises a number of questions. It remains a mystery why the shipping company didn't immediately order the ship to head to a port so that the cargo could be swiftly investigated. The shipping company also could have ordered the ship's captain to make a closer inspection of the freight it is carrying. A quick check of the freight could have quickly answered some of the most pressing questions and also might have exonerated all parties involved. But it appears they didn't want to do that.

Instead, it appears the captain was instead prompted to turn off the ship's transponder so that the Atlantic Cruiser's location could no longer be traced. For 24 hours, the ship could no longer be tracked as it traveled on the high seas. It will also be difficult to determine what happened on the ship during that time. The same applies to Sunday night, when the transponder was yet again turned off. What has been happening on the ship since then?

The shipping company has said off the record that it is normal for the transponder to shut down as soon as the freighter ship stops moving. But ship brokers claim the move is extremely unusual. Experts said that even when a freight ship is at port or in open seas, the transponder is usually in operation, making it possible to track the vessel's whereabouts.

(h/t Yoel)