Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

A little context on "Israeli racism"

While racism must always be condemned, the next time you read an article about how Israelis are supposedly racist for mistreating illegal African immigrants flooding the country, keep in mind how Egyptians treat them.

From CNN, last November:

"I wanted to build a good future for my family, but I failed," a weak Issam Abdallah Mohammed said in a videotaped statement.

The refugee from the Darfur region of Sudan was trying to illegally cross the border from Egypt to Israel when he was discovered and shot by Egyptian border guards.

Less than an hour after taping the statement, Issam was dead, succumbing to the wounds inflicted by the gunshots.

Every year, thousands of refugees, mostly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, attempt the dangerous journey from their war-torn countries to Israel in search of economic prosperity and stability.

Very few make it, and the results of the failed migration can be seen in the morgue of the central hospital in the Egyptian port town of El Arish.

On any given day, the morgue will be packed with the bodies of African refugees who died trying to make it to Israel.

Hamdy Al-Azazy spent the past seven years helping the refugees. Many are enslaved and tortured and the women raped by the Bedouin tribes of the Sinai if they are unable to come up with large sums of money the Bedouin try to extort from them and their families, to smuggle the refugees across the border into Israel. As a result, many remain imprisoned in camps on the Sinai Peninsula.

"They are chained and kept in camps in the open with no bathrooms and little water and food and treated worse than animals," Al-Azazy said.

"Some of them are taken to Libya, but 80% of them are smuggled to Israel. Those who escape are shot by the Bedouins, and others who make it to the border are sometimes shot by the Egyptian authorities and transferred to hospitals before spending a year in different prisons in Sinai and deported back home."

The CNN crew found two victims in the hospital in El Arish, handcuffed to their beds and awaiting their transfer to an Egyptian detention center and eventual deportation.

One of them, Mahary Taklay Abraham of Eritrea, says he hit his head falling off a rock while trying to cross the border and was caught by Egyptian border guards. But before making it to the border, Mahary says, he spent about two months with the Bedouins.

"They beat and tortured me continuously and demanded money from my family," Mahary said.

Al-Azazy says this is a common scheme. The refugees will pay Bedouin tribes in the border area between Sudan and Egypt around $2,000 to be smuggled out. The smugglers then sell the refugees to the Sinai Bedouin, who blackmail the refugees and their families back home.

Ibrahim Yehia of Eritrea says he fell prey to the Bedouin.

"When we arrived to Sinai, the Bedouins tied me up with metal chains in the desert. They tortured us. Many of us died," he said, displaying his wounds, including scars that he says came from electroshock torture.

"They wanted me to pay $12,000 and forced us to call our families to transfer the money. My family sold all their lands and even their donkey to collect the money. They transferred $6,000 to the Bedouins."

After his family paid, Yehia says, the Bedouin finally let him go.

"I spent three months tied up in the camp close to the Israeli border. After I paid, the Bedouins drove me to the border crossing and set me free. I was then shot by plainclothes men close to the wired fence at the Israeli-Egyptian border. The military took me to the hospital."

Some of the refugees are forced into slave labor, often working marijuana fields that flourish all over Northern Sinai, Hamdy Al-Azazy says. Refugees who made it across the border into Israel have told harrowing accounts of rape, torture and slave labor.

Women are especially vulnerable. CNN spoke to one victim who made it to Israel and spoke on condition of anonymity. She said she was raped almost daily on a journey that took several months to get to Tel Aviv.

"Every night, they took me separately, and they did whatever they wanted to my body," the Eritrean said.

Al-Azazy hears stories like this all the time. "The women and men are kept in open areas. These Bedouins don't have any morals or conscience. One girl told me that three Bedouins had raped 14 girls in one night," he said.

How many articles have you read in 2012 about Egyptian murder, rape and enslavement of African migrants?

Ian's links including anti-Israel protest in Australia

A developing story in Australia, an effigy of Victorian State Premier Baillieu was burnt by anti-Israel protesters outside a gala dinner to celebrate the 64th anniversary of the creation of Israel, the Israeli Ambassador was also attending.

Later: Function Sizzles, Demo Fizzles

“Around forty demonstrators were part of a group which burned an effigy of Victorian premier Ted Baillieu outside Melbourne’s Hotel Windsor in which Victorians were celebrating Israel’s 64th birthday.
The demonstration was staged in an attempt to disrupt the Yom Ha’azmaut party inside at which more than 400 members of the community heard speeches from from the Victorian premier and Daniel Andrews the Leader of the Opposition”

Jewish News coverage (Video inc clips of speeches)- Flames of protest fail to mar spirits

Chanting ”from the river to the sea” (video)- Protest outside Zionist Council of Victoria dinner with Premier Ted Baillieu

They appear to amazed at this thing called fire (video)- Free Palestine demo Melbourne 5 June 2012
As always give them thumbs down in YT.

Rabbi Arnold J. Wolf, the Socialist, anti-Israel Rabbi Who Taught Obama What He 'Knows' About Judaism

“For example, along with radical MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Wolf helped found the Committee on New Alternatives in the Middle East (CONAME) a philosophical grandparent to today’s faux pro-Israel group J Street.

.....An investigation by the Near East Report revealed that CONAME’s signature appeared on telegrams urging Congress to send no arms to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel was attacked by Syria and Egypt on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.”

MEMRI
Dr. Subhi Al-Yaziji, Dean of Koranic Studies at the Islamic University of Gaza: We Hope to Conquer Andalusia and the Vatican

Munich Olympics terror victims deserve a minute of our time

The Real Purpose of Boycotts
What goes unmentioned is that the boycott called for by the Palestinian Authority is a violation of the April 29, 1994 Paris Agreement between Israel and the PLO which expresses "respect for each other's economic interests," and recognizes "the need to create a better economic environment for their peoples and individuals."

Palestinians Blackmail Washington over True Refugee Numbers
Palestinians: Refugees forever?
UNRWA was created to punish Israel

Saudis block blog for hosting religious police mall video! How we got censored by the Saudis

Fox map of ME only shows Gaza? Fox News Omits Israel

Barbara Walters apologises over links to Syrian aide of Bashar al-Assad
The same aide was behind the Vogue’s whitewash.
Vogue Defends Syrian Glow Job
Walters and Wintour part of Assad’s PR spin machine and big Obama supporters.

IDF Video
Learn How To Defend Yourself: Krav Maga 101

Gaza power plant shuts down again, and no one can explain why

From AFP:

Gaza's sole power station shut down again on Wednesday after running out of fuel, a source at the plant told AFP, as the territory's energy crisis deepened.

"The electricity plant has stopped work because of a lack of fuel," the source said.

The plant has stopped working several times this year as the Gaza Strip lives through its worst-ever energy crisis which has been brought on by a drop in fuel supplies from neighbouring Egypt.

On Wednesday, a delivery of 30 million litres of Qatari fuel was to have entered the Hamas-run Gaza Strip from Egypt, after being transported through Egypt's Al-Awja crossing into southern Israel, then into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

But on Wednesday afternoon, Raed Futuh, an official at Kerem Shalom said the delivery had been delayed for the fourth time in three weeks, citing "technical issues."

Last month, Israel gave the green light for the fuel to be transferred through its territory after receiving a request from the Egyptians, an Israeli security official said.

This doesn't add up.

Israel continues to supply, every day, roughly the same amount of fuel it has supplied since April when the PA agreed to pay for Israel to send fuel through Kerem Shalom. Nothing has changed. Yesterday over 270,000 liters were sent through. If the PA would pay more, Israel would supply more. And Gaza's power plant, while not at close to full capacity, has been running fine since then with only a few unexplained glitches.

Since Hamas has a history of manipulating supplies of vital goods to Gaza in order to score political points, it seems plausible that Hamas is trying to pressure Egypt to allow the Qatari fuel to get to the sector sooner rather than later.

(I'm cynical enough to wonder if Egypt is siphoning off some of that fuel to stave off its own impending fuel crisis.)

"The neck of the bottle - the Straits of Tiran" Rose al Youssef, Egypt, May 29, 1967

"The Zionist to Hell," Syrian army newspaper, May 30, 1967

The mouths of the guns of eight Arab countries: Sudan, Algeria, United Arab Republic, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Al Jarida , Beirut, May 31, 1967

Armored forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Al Hayat, Beirut, May 31, 1967

The clubs fall on the head of Israel: Israel asks: Where can I run? Al Goumhourya , Baghdad, June 6, 1967

"Holy war" Al Goumhourya, Cairo, June 8, 1967

"Using the Star of David," Al Manar , Baghdad, June 8, 1967

"The Zionists into the sea," Al-Arabiya Al-Jamahir , Baghdad, June 8, 1967

"The barricades of Tel Aviv," Al-Jundi Al Arabi , Damascus, June 6, 1967

Nasser kicking the Jew (Israel) into the sea, with the armies of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq supporting him. Al-Farida, Lebanon

Most images from here, last one from here.

UPDATE: I turned this into a video.

Amnesty's credibility problem (YNet) plus a new example of AI bias

An op-ed by Gidon Shaviv:

What do you get when you combine a radical activist who volunteers as a human shield for terrorists with a former Palestinian Authority spokesman? The Israel research department for Amnesty International.

“Impartiality” is a core value of Amnesty’s statute. Further, Amnesty’s editorial guidelines state, “Media content produced by Amnesty International should be fair and objective.”

These claims of “impartiality” and “objectivity” are the foundation of Amnesty’s reputation as one of the leading promoters of human rights. In Israel’s case, however, Amnesty ignores its own values and instead allows people with clearly biased agendas to produce its reports. This is apparent in Amnesty’s upcoming report on Israel’s use of administrative detention, to be released on June 6. Amnesty lists two workers with clear conflicts of interests - Deborah Hyams and Saleh Hijazi - as the report’s media contacts.

Hyams joined Amnesty in 2010, after a long record of pro-Palestinian activism. In 2001 she volunteered as a “human shield” in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, to deter Israeli military responses to recurrent gunfire and mortar attacks targeting Jewish civilians in Jerusalem. In a 2002 Washington Jewish Week article, “Hyams said that while she does not condone suicide bombings, she personally believes they ‘are in response to the occupation.’” In another instance she defended the use of violence, stating “occupation is violence… and the consequence of this action must result in violence.” This background precludes any reader of Amnesty’s report from accepting it at face value.

As with the case of Hyams, if Amnesty wants to maintain impartiality, it should disqualify Saleh Hijazi from working on Israeli issues. Hijazi, a Palestinian born in Jerusalem and raised in Ramallah, has a clear lack of objectivity in this regard. In 2005, he worked as a Public Relations officer for the Office of the Ministry of Planning in Ramallah and in 2007 he was listed as contact for the NGO “Another Voice” – under the group's signature “Resist! Boycott! We Are Intifada!”

Hijazi has a “special” conflict of interest with regards to administrative detention in particular. On March 9, 2011, while as a researcher for Human Rights Watch, he spoke at a UN conference where he described how his father was supposedly arrested by the Israeli authorities “when the Israeli military could not find an activist neighbor.” How can Hijazi be impartial when he is simultaneously claiming to be a victim of the very same country on which he is reporting?

...When human rights organizations are co-opted by people with a specific political agenda, they are incapable of fulfilling their mandates. Amnesty’s choice to staff its Israel section with clearly biased researchers has made it tragically irrelevant for the championing of human rights in the region as a whole. Those who value human rights should be the most outspoken against the political hijacking of one of the world’s most powerful NGOs.

I've documented Amnesty's anti-Israel bias many times. For starters:

Amnesty UK's duplicity, bias and false accusations against Israel
Sky News bias and Amnesty hypocrisy
Amnesty implies the ICC is a Zionist tool
Amnesty officially calls Turkel report a "whitewash" - with no proof (More details here.)
Amnesty blames Israel for PalArab abuse of women
Amnesty International: When even-handedness is stupid
Amnesty supports a confessed Hezbollah spy
Amnesty's hateful bedfellows

JCPA just published a paper showing how HRW and Amnesty treat targeted killings (TKs) differently when done by Israel and when done by every other Western state. And once again, the bias of human rights groups against Israel is clear (although HRW's is, as usual, much worse):

In total, the author has identified 14 AI documents denouncing the Israeli TK policy.

AI has released precisely the same number of reports regarding Western TKs. In other words, AI has released the same number of reports criticizing a single country’s policy, as the number it has released concerning the same policy employed by several countries – the U.S. and its allies – in numerous theaters since 9/11 (including Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan). Although the Israeli TK policy and the Western TK policy have been implemented for approximately the same period of time, the Western TK policy is used far more frequently, in at least five countries, with a far greater incidence of collateral damage. In contrast, the Israeli TK policy is used only in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with a very low rate of collateral damage. Therefore, the number of AI’s critical reports targeting Israel appears unbalanced, verging on biased – a clear violation of the principles to which AI is supposedly committed.

AI’s material is characterized, moreover, by inaccurate and disparate terminology. In every document released by AI which mentions Israeli TKs, Israeli TK policy was branded as categorically “unlawful” and Israeli TKs were consistently referred to as “assassinations” and/or “liquidations.” As discussed in detail in Part II, Section B, supra, killing militants during an armed conflict cannot, under the laws of war, be considered “assassination,” or “liquidation,” nor be “unlawful.” Moreover, at the time that AI made these statements there was no consensus that Israeli TKs – or Western TKs, for that matter – were unlawful. In fact quite the opposite is true....

Meanwhile, AI has never used this terminology, which in and of itself implies illegality and culpability, concerning Western TKs. AI has never clearly and irrevocably condemned Western TKs, choosing instead to neutrally refer to them as “air raids,”“air strikes,”220 and “missile strikes.”In fact, AI has rarely, if ever, expressed clear reservations regarding the Western TK policy – other than perhaps when referring to the TK in Yemen in 2002.

Morning snippets

Why has Queen Elizabeth II never visited Israel?

[A]midst all the accolades, state dinners, and thousands of “Jubilee beacons” being lit around the world, one aspect of the Queen’s resume stands out for its inexplicable absence: In six decades of reign she has made hundreds of royal visits to 129 different countries, though never once been to Israel.

No comparable nation has been even remotely ignored in this way. There are only two incidents of British royal family visiting Israel over the past 64 years – Prince Philip at a ceremony honoring his mother, and Prince Charles attending the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin. Yet both times the British were careful to emphasize that these were private, non-official visits.

...Surely Israel doesn’t need the Queen for recognition or legitimization. However, upon this occasion of her diamond jubilee, what a propitious time for Queen Elizabeth to make a strong statement of support by visiting the Jewish State! This would go a long way to dispel the lingering cloud of delegitimization. It would surely be another jewel in the Queen’s glorious crown.

Donald Rumsfeld thinks that the Obama administration very possibly would leak any Israeli plans to attack Iran. (Breitbart)

CAMERA notes how the NYT allowed a lie to be published in an anti-Israel op-ed:

In the racist state of California, there are over 50 laws on the books that discriminate against Latino citizens.

Actually, that's a lie. But it is a lie that the New York Times, according to editors, would have no problem publishing.

We know this because the newspaper recently published an Op-Ed containing the outlandish claim that Israel has "over 35 laws" that "discriminate against Palestinians who are Israeli citizens." This falsehood, the latest version of a shopworn anti-Israel canard, was cleared for publication by fact checkers despite journalism's ethical guidelines calling for opinion pieces to be held to the same standards of accuracy as news stories.

CAMERA has asked editors to provide substantiation for the allegation, which appeared in a May 23 Op-Ed by Yousef Munayyer entitled "Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal."

They have yet to provide a credible source. And it seems clear that this is because no such source exists.

Even the hyperlink from the passage about "35 laws" in the online version of the column leads to a web page that fails to substantiate, and in fact contradicts, Munayyer's claim. That reference discusses "bills" and "legislation submitted to the Knesset" as well as laws, which are said to discriminate against minorities including "refugees and migrant workers." In other words, it includesproposed laws that if passed would supposedly discriminate against non-citizens (as laws sometimes do — see the right to vote).

But even the website Munayyer and the Times link to fails to name the supposed 35 laws and bills. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately is the better word), we already know what such a list would look like. Cyberspace is littered with anti-Israel web pages that wildly twist and contort to present evenhanded and innocuous laws as discriminating against Arab citizens.

The BBC on how some Germans are thinking of re-evaluating their policy towards Israel.

Melanie Phillips on "A Jewish Pathology":

The part played by these Jews in the global bullying of Israel, and the tacit or explicit support they are thus lending to those whose aim is the extermination of the Jewish state, cannot be overstated. For those in the wider world who want Israel destroyed not only use the bogus arguments of these Jewish Israel-bashers but also use their Jewishness as a human shield, to insulate themselves against the charge of Jew-hatred.

How can there be anything bigoted about these arguments, they say, if Jews and Israelis are themselves using them? Very easily, actually; throughout the long centuries of Jewish persecution, the terrible fact is that Jews themselves have always been prominent in such murderous campaigns. The Judeophobic malice of today’s left, indeed, which can be traced back to the French Revolution, was supplied with rocket fuel by Karl Marx whose own Jewish ancestry managed to morph into virulent hatred of Judaism and the Jewish people.

(h/t John W., Yerushalimey)

Debunking the "Bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man" myth

In the introduction to his influential 2001 book "The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World," Avi Shlaim writes:

The book was not only a sensation, but the entire introduction with this prologue was published in the New York Times website.

This anecdote spread like wildfire in the anti-Zionist world. It was quoted widely in scholarly journals and books and in fact became the basis for the title of a book by Ghada Karmi called "Married to Another Man" where she argues that Israel must not exist as a Jewish state.

And no wonder. Avi Shlaim is an acclaimed revisionist historian and this myth that Jews muscled into Israel and stole the land away from the Arabs is all the more compelling when it appears that they did it knowingly, in stark terms of stealing a bride away from a loving husband.

However, Shai Afsai in the latest Shofar journal proves that this story is a myth. He tracks down the truth starting with Karmi:

Where did Karmi get this story from? For some time, she did not respond to e-mails requesting information on her source, but in 2010 she furnished this reply: “The story’s origins has caused me problems. I got the citation from Avi Shlaim at Oxford, who gave me a reference for it, which turned out not to be correct. I then searched hard for the source and have come up with a blank. I fear it might be apocryphal, much as I had not wanted that. Sorry!” She later added that Shlaim told her “the story had appeared in a book by Muhammad Hassanein Heikal. But it was not there.” By then, she had already been repeating various versions of it for several years, in essays, lectures, interviews, and an entire book titled after the story. Her scholarly paradigm assumed the immorality of Zionism, and she found support for her essential position in a fabrication.

Shlaim, as Afsai notes, has lots of footnotes in his book - but none for this story:

As with Karmi and Pagden, Shlaim provides no source for the “married to another man” story he tells, despite there being twenty-one pages of notes at the back of The Iron Wall. Responding to a question about his source, Shlaim wrote in a 2009 e-mail that it was Mohamed Heikal’s Secret Channels (1996). This book is listed in Shlaim’s bibliography, along with two other works by Heikal, a prominent Egyptian journalist, author, and commentator, who was the editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram for many years, as well as an adviser to (and mouthpiece of) Egypt’s President Nasser. In Secret Channels, Heikal writes:

Herzl convened the first World Zionist Congress, which brought together Jewish representatives from many countries. It was held in Basel, Switzerland on 23 August 1897 and is regarded by Jews as a landmark in the creation of the state of Israel. The World Zionist Congress was created with the aim of establishing “a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.” After the Basel conference the rabbis of Vienna decided to see for themselves what Herzl was talking about, and sent two representatives to Palestine. A cable sent by the two rabbis during their visit became famous: “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” It was a message Zionists did not wish to hear, and the inconvenient husband was never acknowledged.

As with Karmi, Pagden, and Shlaim’s accounts, no source for the Viennese expedition and its “famous” cable is provided in Heikal’s Secret Channels. In fact, the book has no endnotes at all, nor does it contain a bibliography, which raises the question of how Shlaim could consider Secret Channels an adequate source for the veracity of the “married to another man” story. In his preface to The Iron Wall, he writes of his method:

Like the British historian E. H. Carr, I believe that the main task of the historian is not to record but to evaluate.

Carr also described the writing of history as a perpetual dialogue between the historian and his sources. A word about the sources used in the writing of this book might therefore be of some interest . . . wherever possible I have preferred to rely on primary sources, whether in English, French, Hebrew, or Arabic.”62

Somehow, the “married to another man” story Shlaim found in Heikal’s book warranted no evaluation, needed no dialogue between the historian and his source, and did not require seeking out a primary source for it in any language.

The story is, in other words, a lie.

Yet that lie persists. For example, in a recent interview with David Wilder, Egyptian/Belgian journalist Khaled Diab quotes it twice to make the point that Jews knew that the land belonged to Arabs.

This is one of those stories that the anti-Zionist world finds "too good to check." The "rabbis" aren't named, no sources are cited, and it is just regarded as truth because it is what the anti-Israel crowd desperately wants to believe, so they have elevated the story to mythic status.

Will we be seeing any corrections from the many "Middle East scholars" like Anthony Pagden, Ghada Karmi and Avi Shlaim who quote a lie without checking?

(h/t Diana Muir Applebaum and Challah Hu Akbar for research)

Lebanon and Syria refuse to accept Palestinian passports

Here's a reminder as to who has been treating Palestinian Arabs like garbage over time.

From Timatic Web, a comprehensive travel information site:

National Palestinian Territory (PS)
Destination Lebanon (LB)
Lebanon (LB)

Admission and Transit Restrictions:

- Admission and transit is refused to holders of Palestinian passports.

And:

National Palestinian Territory (PS)
Destination Syria (SY)
Syria (SY)

Admission and Transit Restrictions:

- Holders of Palestinian documents are not allowed to enter, even if holding a valid visa. These passengers can only enter if:
- they obtain approval from Syrian Immigration Headquarters upon arrival, which has to be arranged prior to arrival; or
- they are holding a residence permit of any country, except Egypt, Iraq, Jordan or Libya.

So Lebanon and Syria, who always say how much they support the Palestinian Arab people, refuse to allow them to use their own travel documents to enter their respective countries.

But the US does accept the PA passport:

The U.S. Department of State has determined that the Palestinian Authority Passport/Travel Document meets the requirements of a passport as defined in Section 101(a)(30) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and therefore is acceptable for visa issuing purposes and travel to the United States.

However, according to an official at the U.S. Department of State, the United States does not recognize Palestine as a country, and therefore the Palestinian Authority Passport/Travel Document does not confer citizenship.

Egypt's censor shuts down film that promotes peace with Israelis

Isn't primal, irrational hate a wonderful thing?

From Ahram Online:

Egypt's censor has halted production of a film for allegedly promoting the normalisation of relations with Israel, Al-Ahram Arabic has reported.

Mohamed Kenawy who wrote the film, Regheef Aish (Loaf of Bread), denied the accusation and said the film promotes peace and cooperation among all people regardless of sex, race and religion.

The story revolves around an Egyptian, a Palestinian and an Israeli, and examines life in the Arab region and the world.

The film had been under production for two months before filming was halted.

Westerners assume that everyone in the world actually wants peace. They cannot imagine that such a concept would be considered controversial, let alone anathema.

Welcome to moderate Egypt.

Naksa Day Special: 1967 IDF Photos of the Pyramids and Sphinx

From the IDF Blog:

Forty-five years after the Six Day War – one of the most significant chapters in the history of the IDF – new images taken by Israel Air Force pilots during battle have emerged. The photographs taken from above provide a rare perspective on the war.

More at the site.

Egypt again delays fuel delivery to Gaza

For the third time, Egypt has delayed a planned delivery of fuel from a Qatari ship to Gaza that has been promised for several months.

The fuel was expected to be transferred today to Israel to ship to Gaza via the pipeline at Kerem Shalom.

No specific reason was given for this further delay, just that it was for "technical reasons."

No new date for delivery was promised but there were vague mentions of Thursday or next Sunday.

For some reason, the world is not up in arms when Egypt drags its feet in helping Gaza.

Muslims suppressing freedom of expression worldwide

AFP reports:

A Bangladeshi court has issued an arrest warrant for the writer of a 2003 novel that allegedly contains insulting remarks against the Prophet Mohammed, a lawyer said Tuesday.

The court in Dhaka issued the order in response to a petition from a Muslim activist accusing author Salam Azad of hurting religious sentiment in his banned book “Bhanga Math” (“Broken Temple”).

“We told the court that the book contained slanderous remarks against the Prophet Mohammed and Islam. The judge accepted the petition and issued a warrant of arrest,” the petitioner's lawyer Ekhlas Uddin told AFP.

Reuters writes:

A Kuwaiti man was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.

And in the Maldives:

An outspoken Maldivian blogger known for his liberal views on religion was in intensive care on Tuesday after being stabbed by an attacker outside his home in the capital Male, police said.

Ismail Rasheed, who is better known as “Hilath”, had his blog blocked late last year by the Maldivian telecommunications authorities who claimed it contained anti-Islamic material.

The 37-year-old, who has received death threats in the past, was later arrested following a rally he organized in December in support of religious tolerance and spent nearly a month behind bars.

“We don’t know who attacked him. His condition is said to be stable now,” police spokesman Hassan Haneef told AFP by telephone, adding that they were trying to track down the assailant behind Monday evening’s attack.

The Maldivian government condemned the stabbing, but said Hilath should have sought protection.

“We condemn this attack. Hilath must have known that he had become a target of a few extremists,” Human Resources and Youth Minister Mohamed Shareef told AFP.

In Pakistan a couple of weeks ago:

Pakistan on Sunday blocked access to Twitter in response to "blasphemous" material posted by users on the microblogging and social networking website, a senior government official said.

"They (the ministry) have been discussing with them (Twitter) for some time now, requesting them to remove some particular content," he said.

Pakistan blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and about 1,000 other websites for nearly two weeks in May 2010 over blasphemous content.

And last month:

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today expressed grave concern over the Kuwaiti Parliament’s approval last week of severe new penalties for blasphemy. The Emir of Kuwait has 30 days to approve these penalties before they would become law. The new provisions would impose the death penalty on Muslims who refuse to repent after being found to have insulted God, the Prophet Mohammad, his wives, or the Qur’an. For non-Muslims, the punishment would be up to 10 years in prison; for Muslims who repent, the punishment would be up to five years or a fine.

For twelve years, Muslim states have been trying to get the UN to pass "anti-blasphemy" resolutions, an initiative that they have only recently said they would downplay. There is no doubt, however, that the desire is still there.

More Flame info - not as impressive as the hype

From YNet:

Researchers at the Kaspersky Lab said Tuesday that one of the Flame virus' main objectives was to copy confidential technical drawings pertaining to Iran's secret military and nuclear facilities.

"Flame" hit Iran in late may and has since been hailed as "the most sophisticated cyber-bomb to date."

Tehran said it was able to contain the malware, but had admitted that significant amounts of data have been corrupted.

According to the BBC report, the hackers controlling Flame "used a number of complex fake identities in order to carry out their plans."

Kaspersky's researches said that the fake identities – complete with fake addresses and billing information – were "used to register more than 80 domain names used to distribute the malware."

Researchers were also able to put together statistics on the extent of the Flame strike. The information was gathered via "sinkholing."

Vitaly Kamluk, a senior researcher at Kaspersky, explained that, "Sinkholing is a procedure when we discover a malicious server - whether it is an IP address or domain name - which we can take over with the help of the authorities or the (domain) registrar.

"We can redirect all the requests from the victims from infected machines to our lab server to register all these infections and log them," the BBC quoted him further.

Kamluk added that the attackers had a "high interest in AutoCad drawings, in addition to PDF and text files"; further cementing reports suggesting the Flame was on a complex reconnaissance mission.

"They were looking for the designs of mechanical and electrical equipment," Prof. Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey, told the BBC.

The thing is, Kaspersky seems to be overstating Flame's sophistication.

The Register, a well-regarded British security publication, says:

Flame may be big in size but it's nothing like the supposedly devastating cyberwarfare mega-weapon early reports of the malware suggested. This new nasty is quite complex by design, yet researchers are still hunting for any truly evil and innovative attack techniques, or similar threats, within the code.

Rather than redefining cyberwar and cyberespionage, as Kasperky researchers initially claimed amid Iranian warnings that the malware was "a close relation to the Stuxnet and Duqu targeted attacks", Flame is bloated and overhyped, according to rival security vendors.

Flame is a precise attack toolkit rather than a general-purpose cyber-weapon, the argument goes. It hasn't spread very far and might well be restricted to systems administrators of Middle East governments.

"While it really doesn't do anything we haven't seen before in other malware attacks — what’s really interesting is that it weaves multiple techniques together and dynamically applies them based on the capabilities of the infected system," Patrik Runald of Websense explains.

"Also, Flame has been operating under the radar for at least two years, which counter-intuitively may partially be attributed to its large size."

...A lot was made of the modular design of Flame but this isn't new either. Chris Wysopal (AKA Weld Pond), a former member of Boston-area hacking collective L0pht and who later founded the application security firm VeraCode, noted with some disdain that the Back Orifice 2000 hacker tool included modular functionality when it came out 12 years ago.

Hungarian security researchers at CrySyS reckon that Flame was "developed by a government or nation state with significant budget and effort", the one point on which there's general agreement.

The experts reckon a military sub-contractor was likely to have carried out the work rather than an intelligence agency. To support this theory, it cites job adverts by Northrop Grumman for a software engineer to work on offensive cyberspace missions. Lots of other defence contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, have positions for this type of project, F-Secure adds.

As far as registering Internet domains with fake credentials - that is ridiculously easy to do, hardly an indication of a super spy network. Many domain registrars don't require proof of identity.

No doubt Flame was created by a government, and no doubt it is powerful, but the original description was filled with hype. Its looking for AutoCAD drawings, not to mention its Bluetooth sniffing, indicates it is an espionage tool.

It is not unusual for directed malware, meant only for a small geographic area and only infecting a comparatively tiny number of machines, to not be noticed for years.

Which means that it is entirely possible that there are lots of Flames out there.

Anti-semitism on the rise in Sweden, France, Ukraine, Norway

From IBA:

The CFCA notes a report from France that shows that there were over 400 anti-semitic attacks there in 2011 - a number that has increased this year.

It also gives examples of extreme anti-semitism in an online newspaper in Volyn, Ukraine.

A new report shows one in eight Norwegians hold clear prejudices against Jews.

(h/t O)

Abbas lies and threatens in WEF speech

Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the World Economic Forum Middle East yesterday in Istanbul.

As usual, his speech was filled with lies, threats and demands - par for the course for a despot.

Here is part of his speech:

I am pleased today to speak before this conference, which includes prominent international figures in the fields of economics and politics, to discuss many issues, especially the democratic transition, and its impact on the economy and sustainable development, peace and stability in the region and the world.

This from a person who is in office years past the date he was supposed to leave.

[The WEF] discussed the many economic development initiatives and investment in the region, in order to provide prosperity and stability, helping to create a suitable environment for the negotiations and the political process between us and the Israelis; However, despite all efforts the peace process remains stalled without reaching a just solution to end the Israeli occupation of our land, and put an end to the suffering of our people and the agonies extended for more than sixty-four years since the Nakba; However, our people will not lose hope for a better tomorrow for us and our neighbors, and we will continue our quest for peace and stability.

As long as it doesn't involve negotiations or compromise.

I am pleased to take this opportunity to express the State of the brother Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey, our sincere thanks and appreciation, for inviting us and hosting this important conference throughout this beautiful country, which reflects the extent to which you attach, your Excellency, to achieve security, peace and stability in the region, and to ensure a just and comprehensive solution to the Arab - Israeli conflict...

Yeah, Erdogan is a real peach.

On June 5 it has been 45 years since the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and the peace process is on the horizon of a dead end, where there is still a draft two-state solution and great obstacles, because of illegal Israeli settlements, which devours the Palestinian Territories, and cut apart, and isolates East Jerusalem from its Palestinian Arab neighbors, and changes the historical and cultural features, as well as settler attacks daily in East Jerusalem, and throughout all the West Bank, and their attacks on unarmed Palestinians and their property and houses of worship, and lack of commitment by the Israeli government reference, international, two-state solution based on 1967 borders, according to the Roadmap, the Arab Peace Initiative, and the resolutions of international legitimacy.

But the daily attacks on Jews, daily incitement in Palestinian Arab media, official government denial of Israel's existence in all PA maps, are fully justified and completely compatible with peace, right? Which residents of the territories live behind fences because of fear of attacks - Jews or Arabs?

Notice also that Abbas denies any Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, so his accusations on that point are more than hypocritical.

On the Palestinian level, we fulfilled all our obligations in agreements, and initiatives of the international Quartet, and made our position and intentions, and we have all that is required of us in this regard, and to meet the aspirations of our people's national living in an independent sovereign state is committed to international law, and in the 1967 borders, living in security, peace and stability with the state of Israel, and believes the Charter of the United Nations.

See above. They show no desire to live in peace with Israel, especially by praising terrorists as recently as this week.

In the context of constructive cooperation with the international community finished building the institutions of the state, recognized by more than 132 countries and has diplomatic representation in most countries of the world. However, the embodiment of its independence and its sovereignty over the land is still subject to end the occupation and the Israeli settlements on our land, including East Jerusalem, the capital of our Palestinian state, which requires the demarcation of the border between the two countries based on the 1967 lines, and ensure the security of third parties; and resolving final status issues all, including the creation of a just and agreed according to the Arab peace initiative for Palestinian refugees, who have been displaced from their homes, robbed of their rights, and still waiting for justice to the international community for them, also includes the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Arab states have no responsibility for keeping Palestinian Arabs stateless and miserable for 64 years, of course. Abbas wants them to remain that way, and has said so, taking away their own freedom to choose citizenship elsewhere. He is a lying, opportunistic, dictatorial, sickening hypocrite who is more than willing to throw his own people under the bus in order to fulfill his own fantasies of destroying Israel, one step at a time.

Our region needs to build bridges of cooperation and peace and dialogue, and not to create walls and the expansion of settlements, but to initiate serious negotiations leading to the desired peace.

Yet Abbas is the one who has refused to negotiate for four years now.

[Our people have made] a great sacrifice, desiring a state on less than a quarter of historic Palestine, do not turn away for this opportunity available today, which may not remain available for a long time, the region experiencing rapid and successive developments, and if we want the victory of democracy and human rights, then we have to make a just and comprehensive peace, which guarantees a better future for our region and our future generations, and avoid the consequences of our children and your children return to the squares of violence and the cycle of conflict.

The opportunity ha sbeen available since Oslo, and Abbas and his gang have refused to accept a state. That's the bottom line. Instead they threaten, support terror, teach their kids to hate and continue their demand to destroy Israel demographically.

And, of course, Abbas must trot out his lie about "historic Palestine."

If they really wanted peace and if they really wanted a state, they would have had it years ago. But their demands are not for a state or peace, but for a bizarre definition of "justice" where they are the judges, and of a world without a Jewish state.