Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Administrivia

I upgraded the Disqus comment system to Disqus 2012. I figure it can' t be any worse, can it?

So far it looks better but I'm having problems viewing the admin screen from Chrome. Let me know if you like it.

In other news, people keep complaining about how slow this site is. I don' t have time to revamp it, but you can see different dynamic views of the blog by choosing a magazine-type view, a sidebar-based view or what Google calls "classic"

The downside is that there are no comments, there is no sidebar, none of the gadgets or widgets and no Spongebob. (And I won't get StatCounter statistics when you visit, although I think I would get Google Analytics.)

But if you visit a few times a day and don't need to comment, you can use these dynamic pages anytime. It might save you some time.

Egypt is closing down the Rafah border with Gaza from today through Sunday for the presidential runoff elections.

Human rights organizations are upset at this inhumane blockade where Egypt is imprisoning 1.5 million innocent Gazans and employing collective punishment against them, in violation of innumerable humanitarian laws.

Just kidding! They only use that language with a different country bordering Gaza.

Egyptian parliament to be dissolved, military taking over, after court decision

Wow:

Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) dealt a blow on Thursday to civilian forces by handing down rulings that effectively dissolved Parliament, returned legislative powers to the military and affirmed the legality of former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq’s bid for presidency.

In a much anticipated court session, the SCC deemed the Parliamentary Elections Law unconstitutional, under which an Islamist-dominated Parliament was elected earlier this year. The court based its ruling on the law’s failure to ensure independent and party candidates equal opportunities. While parties were allowed to run for all contested seats, the bid of independent parliamentary hopefuls was restricted to only one-third of the seats.

According to Hossam Issa, a law professor at Ain Shams University, the verdict means that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces shall assume legislative powers until Parliament is reelected.

For the generals, taking over parliamentary powers is not a new responsibility. Since Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February 2011 until the People’s Assembly first convened in January 2012, the military authorities held both executive and legislative powers. During that period, they issued several laws that regulated the establishment of political parties and the exercise of political rights, and criminalized protests that would obstruct the economy.

Issa dropped a bombshell by arguing that the presidential election set for this weekend should be postponed until Parliament is reelected.

“According to the Constitutional Declaration, the parliamentary elections must precede the presidential election,” he told Egypt Independent.

However, SCC head Farouk Sultan told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the ruling would not affect the upcoming presidential runoff slated for Saturday and Sunday.

The fate of the newly formed Constituent Assembly, elected by Parliament on Tuesday and tasked with writing the new constitution, is also up in the air.

According to Rafaat Fouda, a constitutional law professor at Cairo University, the ruling would lead to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, because “it includes members of Parliament that has now been dissolved.”

Several secular parties had withdrawn from the Constituent Assembly on grounds that it is dominated by Islamists. The State Council is currently looking into the legality of the assembly.

Reactions:

Rulings by Egypt’s constitutional court that dissolve the Islamist-dominated parliament and allow Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister to continue in the presidential race amount to “a complete coup,” a former presidential candidate said on Thursday.

In a statement on his Facebook page, Abdul Moniem Abul Fotouh said that a government decree issued on Wednesday granting military police and intelligence services the power to detain civilians was part of the same action.

...Meanwhile, former chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog Mohammed ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account that electing a president in the absence of a constitution and a parliament will bring a president with utmost dictatorship authorities.

Barry Rubin notes:

In short, everything is confused and everything is a mess. All calculations are thrown to the wind. What this appears to be is a new military coup.

Yes, it is under legal cover, but nobody is going to see it as a group of judges — appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak, remember — looking deep into the law books and coming up with a carefully reasoned decision based on precedent. This will be seen by every Islamist — whether Salafi or Muslim Brotherhood — and by most of the liberals — who feel closer to the Islamists than to the government — as if the 2011 revolution has just been reversed.

Prediction: massive violence.

PalArabs spreading propaganda in British schools

A typically excellent piece from Daphne Anson:

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has a paid secretariat and a network of some 40 branches in the UK plus affiliated groups. Sinisterly, it includes the entire land of Israel on its logo.

Among its current links is the London Palestine Place fest (Palestine Place, incidentally, was the purpose-built and deliberately-named nineteenth century headquarters of a notorious London missionary society that existed for the sole purpose of converting Jews to Christianity!)

In its own words, which I take from its leaflet entitled "Palestine-Israel: The Basic Facts", the PSC
"produces publications for its members and the general public and disseminates information through its website; lobbies the media, institutions, the British government and local MPS; organises public meetings, film shows, conferences, debates, boycott events. pickets and demonstrations at local, national and international levels; promotes relations between British and Palestinian oranisations and communities"
It's promoted BDS with gusto since 2001, not least by picketing supermarkets selling Israeli goods, button-holing passers-by, and thrusting anti-Israel propaganda at them. "This is an excellent way to start up a discussion with the general public," one member is quoted as saying. "You start with imported avocados and end up with the Fourth Geneva Convention!"

In my experience, there's always a wad of Israel-demonising leaflets on hand at such demos. But what is not as generally known as it might be (for it's not usually among the material distributed at pickets and rallies) is that in 2009 the PSC produced a particularly pernicious piece of propaganda aimed at poisoning impressionable teenage minds against Israel.

This pernicious piece of propaganda is called "Teachers Pack on Palestine" and a leaflet describing it was given to me hot off the press when, at a PSC-sponsored Israel-demonising exhibition of children's drawings from Gaza, I was mistaken for a schoolteacher.

Read the whole thing.

I remember many years ago in the US there was a controversy that schools, cash-strapped as always, were accepting free materials from Gulf countries to describe the history of the Middle East. Zionist organizations could only respond with pro-Israel materials, but schools would prefer histories of the entire region rather than just one country, and no Zionist organization was up to producing a comprehensive and balanced history of the entire Middle East to counter the Arab narrative.

As Daphne Anson notes, there is no way to know how much of this pernicious anti-Israel propaganda made it into British schools, but given the environment there it seems more than possible that brainwashed teachers and administrators would eagerly accept this political tract as a teaching tool.

Lotsa Links by Ian

More Pyalara funded incitement.
EU-funded NGO for youth honors terrorist murderers on PA TV (Video)
PMW Suicide terrorists are "greatest role models," says EU-funded NGO for youth on PA TV
More PMW "Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail" - in poem recited by girl on PA TV (Video)

PMW reports lead to closure of website and investigation of NGO
Burj Luq-Luq's website closed and PYALARA being investigated by its donor following PMW reports this week on Palestinian NGOs' hate speech, promotion of violence and glorification of terrorists
Covered here: EOZ - EU-funded NGO teaches anti-semitism

Vanity Fair profiles Bibi!
The Netanyahu Paradox
[With a mug shot. Really. -EoZ]

Israeli wins World Food Prize for 1st time in history

“Hillel’s concept of bringing efficient water irrigation to arid lands helped some of the most barren environments in the world flourish, according to (Hillary) Clinton. Using his method, farmers now produce crops on more than 6 million hectares of land, she added.”

Paris: Jewish youth attacked
Police arrest three suspects in anti-Semitic assault on 18-year-old in Sarcelles suburb of French capital

New pan-Arab satellite channel hopes to counter Al-Jazeera's Arab Spring coverage

"The new station led its Syria coverage with statements from both the opposition and Syria's state-run media. In a later program, the channel hosted Anis Nakash, a Lebanese pro-Iranian figure with a controversial past.
Bin Jiddo said earlier that the new channel will champion Arab nationalism, primarily the Palestinian cause."We will fight sectarianism and stand against colonialism and foreign intervention," he said. "The station's compass will always be turned to Palestine and the resistance."
The channel has attracted journalists from across the Arab world and even beyond. George Galloway, an outspoken former British lawmaker, will host a weekly program called "A Free Word.""

Iran West has failed to halt our nuclear program
Chief Iranian negotiator says ‘peaceful’ nukes are a symbol of progress

Hamas denies involvement in killing of Egyptian protesters

“The Egyptian lawyers alleged they had video proof that snipers from Hamas’ military wing Izz A-Din Al-Qassam infiltrated Egypt during the final days of the Mubarak regime, helping the Muslim Brotherhood kill demonstrators.”

Abbas son says to sue US magazine over wealth claims

Ethnic Cleansing in Post-Qaddafi Libya

The Finkler Question by Associate Professor Philip Mendes

None of this means that a degree of opportunism or expediency is not involved. Some as noted in the Finkler Question only claim a Jewish identity as a convenient means of bashing Israel, and deflecting allegations of anti-Semitism. The most offensive use of a pseudo Jewish identity arguably occurs when Jewish anti-Zionists (including some of the most extreme BDS advocates) highlight and exploit the Holocaust survivor background of their parents or family in order to justify their attacks on Israel (see, for example, the flier promoting Avigail Abarbanel’s book). Yet any serious survey of Holocaust survivors and their families would almost certainly find that the vast majority furiously reject these statements, and offer strong support for the State of Israel.

from Daphne Anson

South African Jews angry at politician’s ‘scapegoating’ Israel
Deputy minister of foreign affairs Marius Fransman said Palestinians are fighting the ‘brutal iron fist of imperialism’

Israel is less peaceful than Syria and Iran, study finds

‘Perhaps in some parallel universe,’ scoffs Foreign Ministry spokesman

Bahrain and Mexico more peaceful than Israel ?
Global Peace Index - wikipedia

Amazing - UNESCO to reject PA attempt to slam Israel

From UN Watch on June 10:

Under intense pressure by the PLO and its allies, the upcoming meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, from June 24 to July 6, is liable to find that the “Birthplace of Jesus: the Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage route, Bethlehem” is under urgent danger and worthy of special UN protection, a declaration that could only further inflame the region.

What news reports fail to mention, however, is that the PLO’s submission — its first nomination to the World Heritage List since UNESCO voted to admit “Palestine” as a member in October 2011 — has been completely rejected by the professional body charged with evaluating country applications.

In its submission, the PLO claims that “the Israeli occupation,” which is “hampering the supply of appropriate materials,” creates an “emergency situation” that needs to be addressed by “an emergency measure.”

Yet a comprehensive investigation and report by The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) – a Paris-based entity that advises the World Heritage Committee on which nominated properties to list — said the very opposite:

“[T]he Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage route in Bethlehem, Palestine should not be inscribed on the World Heritage List on an emergency basis. . . ICOMOS does not consider that the conditions required by paragraph 161 of the Operational Guidelines are fully met, concerning damage or serious and specific dangers to the Church of the Nativity that make its condition an emergency that needs to be addressed by the World Heritage Committee with immediate action necessary for the survival of the property.”

ICOMOS also found that, contrary to the Palestinian submission now before the UNESCO committee, the Church of the Nativity was neither “severely damaged,” nor “under imminent threat”.

There was no “immediate action… necessary for the survival of the property”. Despite the Palestinian claims, Israel was not found to be a major obstacle to the preservation of the Church of the Nativity. In fact, the report pointed out that the church’s roof – said to be at greatest risk – was repaired “most recently in 1990, when works were implemented by the Israeli military authorities.”

Accordingly, ICOMOS suggested that the PA “resubmit the nomination in accordance with normal procedures for nomination.”

Amazingly, though, UNESCO's draft resolution rejects this obvious use of UNESCO for political ends:

The United Nations circulated a draft resolution rejecting a Palestinian bid to list the birthplace of Jesus as an endangered World Heritage site, citing a report by international experts who investigated and dismissed claims that the Church of Nativity was under any specific danger. CLICK HERE FOR UNESCO TEXT.

The draft resolution will be considered by UNESCO’s 21-nation World Heritage Committee at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, later this month. The panel has the power to overturn the expert-drafted text but insiders say that Arab states may not win the required two-thirds majority, noting that Russia, as the host country, may be hesitant to upset an objective evaluation submitted by UN professionals.

“This is the first time in recent memory that a draft resolution circulated by the United Nations — let alone by UNESCO, which recently elected Assad’s Syria to its human rights committee — openly rejected a Palestinian claim or position,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch monitoring group.

“At the UN, whose General Assembly each year adopts more resolutions criticizing Israel than on the rest of the world combined, this is a spectacle as rare as Halley’s Comet.”

Notice, though, that after all the drama of whether UNESCO should accept "Palestine" as a member, it is clear from the PLO's very first official nomination to the World Heritage List is based on naked political ambition to slam Israel and not at all based on facts.

Proving that the Palestinian Arab view of "culture" is a bit at odds with what the word normally means.

"Why did you steal hummus from the Arabs?"

A funny interview video that ends up being educational.

(h/t Missing Peace)

Last week I reported that Gaza's power plant was shut down despite the fact that Israel was providing roughly the same amount of fuel it had been since the "fuel crisis" earlier this year. I guessed that this might be because Hamas was manipulating the fuel supply to pressure Egypt to send through some promised (and free) Qatari fuel instead of being forced to pay for fuel from Israel.

There is more evidence that I am right.

The fuel from Qatar started being transferred on Thursday, and there have been no reported power plant shutdowns since then. But the daily amounts of fuel transferred have been roughly the same amount that Israel had been pumping!

COGAT reports that between last Thursday and Tuesday, some 871,000 liters of fuel had been pumped into Gaza (none on Saturday, as far as I can tell, as usual.) But Israel was regularly pumping between 200,000 and 300,000 liters a day itself.

So either Qatar's fuel is magically twice as effective as fuel purchased from Israel, or this entire farce of a "fuel crisis" entirely about Hamas being unwilling to pay market prices for fuel and showing its willingness to put its own people at risk to avoid paying.

Which is exactly what I determined in February.

Look for another "fuel crisis" to erupt when the 30 million liters from Qatar are used up.

Israeli baby arrives at bris in a remote controlled car (video)

Proving once again that there are no limits to bad taste.

Video (no sound, thankfully):

As the 6 Degrees No Bacon website writes:

The macho-baby arrived to his own circumcision riding a convertible remote-control car, together with drumming and fireworks.

Whoever is controlling the car is doing pretty bad job too, which could explain where Israelis get their bad driving habits from, although he was able to avoid running the car into the fireworks so I’ll give him that.

I hope the baby wasn’t driving back home, since the mohel probably gave him alcohol.

I never imagined KITT as a kvatter.

(h/t Zach N.)

Islamic Jihad whines about coverage of kindergarten "jihadists"

On Monday, I showed photos of a kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza City at an Islamic Jihad school.

Challah Hu Akbar found it originally and it was picked up by YNet, among others.

Even though all these photos and quotes from the story came straight from Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades website, the Brigades aren't happy about it.

In a typical mixed message, they issued a statement saying that, yes, they are not going to apologize for teaching their children that "the enemy is the Zionist usurper of the land of Palestine."

But then they said that Israelis are far worse, teaching that Palestinian Arab women and children are snakes and cockroaches and instilling hate.

Then they veered into how they are victims of the criminal enemy media machine.

The upshot seems to be that they have the right to post whatever child abuse they want on their Arabic websites, but the evil Jews don't have the right to publicize it. And the Jews are worse anyway, because they hate Arabs so much. And they own the media. So there!

Speaking of, a new Israeli camp for children with serious diseases has opened up and it accepts Jews, Muslims and Christian children equally. Here's how the evil Zionists teach children to use weapons at this camp:

Israeli authors dispute claim that US started cyberwar with Iran

From IsraelSpy.com, by Yossi Melman, a co-author along with Dan Raviv of a forthcoming book on Israeli intelligence:

Well-informed Israeli security and intelligence officials responded with a smile and a pinch of verbal salt, when asked about Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power the book coming out (this coming week) by David Sanger, The New York Times reporter.

In his book Sanger argues that it was an American idea to attack Iranian nuclear installations with sophisticated and clandestine cyberspace warfare – planting viruses and worms in Iran’s computers. According to the writer, the operation — code-named ”Olympic Games” — was initiated in 2007 by the Bush administration and sped up under President Obama. In an excerpt adapted from his book by the Times, Sanger wrote that only at a later stage were Israeli intelligence experts and computer wizards were brought in and joined forces.

The Israeli officials actually told me a different version. They said that it was Israeli intelligence that began, a few years earlier, a cyberspace campaign to damage and slow down Iran’s nuclear intentions. And only later they managed to convince the USA to consider a joint operation — which, at the time, was unheard of. Even friendly nations are hesitant to share their technological and intelligence resources against a common enemy. In our book,Spies Against Armageddon, we will reveal much more about the special strategic relations and cooperation between the CIA and the Mossad and the importance given by the Aman (military intelligence) to cyberspace warfare.

Yet my Israeli sources understand the sensitivity and the timing of the issue and are not going to be dragged into a battle over taking credit. “We know that it is the presidential election season,” one Israeli added, ”and don’t want to spoil the party for President Obama and his officials, who shared in a twisted and manipulated way some of the behind-the-scenes secrets of the success of cyberwar.”

I notice that Melman didn't explicitly say that Israel was behind Stuxnet or Flame, only that they started their cyberweapons program against Iran before the US. Does this mean that Stuxnet really was American?

And does it imply that there are some Israeli software in Iranian systems that have not yet been detected?

The book sounds fascinating. From its blurb:

Among the burning questions addressed and answered in SPIES AGAINST ARMAGEDDON are these: Who planted a powerful computer worm in Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges? Who has been motorcycling boldly through the streets of Tehran, assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists? Are Israeli spies regularly inside Iran and other enemy countries? Did the Mossad make a huge mistake when two dozen of its operatives were seen by hotel security cameras in Dubai, or was it a successful murder mission? Do the assassins, as portrayed in the movie “Munich,” really feel pangs of conscience? Have Israel’s enemies ever managed to plant agents in the Israeli government? Does the United States really trust Israeli intelligence, or is the relationship limited by mutual mistrust? Why do U.S. security agencies believe their close ally is spying on America? Is Israel trying to maneuver the U.S. into attacking Iran?

Looks like I might have to buy this....

(h/t Yoel)

Picnic jihad!

When you're entire existence is defined by being a loser, pride compels you to declare victory any way you can.

A few days ago Hezbollah's Al Manar reported:

Zionist army intensified its movements pace Wednesday dawn and morning along the border of the eastern sector of Lebanon, National News Agency reported.

Intensive movements of infantry and armored patrols have been recorded close to the barbed wire of the Lebanese border, NNA added.

At 7:00 a.m. (local time) a Merkava tank has stationed behind the earthworks at the Abbasiya axis, while 3 Hammer vehicles entered the Lebanese part of the village of Ghajar at about 07:15 a.m. to monitor the liberated zone of confrontation, in particular the sector of Wazzani river.

Not s single soldier or bullet crossed the Blue Line. No complaints to UNIFIL recorded. All that apparently happened was an IDF exercise of some sort.

But now Iran's ABNA is crowing:

Hundreds of Lebanese citizens thwarted the Zionist enemy’s scheme which aimed at keeping hikers away from the area of the Wazzani River through practicing daily provocations and building new military posts, Al-Manar correspondent to South Lebanon reported Monday.

After 10 days of the hype, alert, throwing flares, igniting fires and building positions adjacent to the bordering Wazzani resorts in southern Lebanon, all those inciting actions did not prevent the Lebanese people from frequenting areas along the Blue Line and the barbed wire to entertain and picnic on the banks of the Wazzani River, without being affected by the Zionist provocations.

“We are used to their (Zionists) attitude and movements, the more acts they provoke, the more hikers visit the area to entertain,” one hiker told Al-Manar correspondent, Ali Sheib.

More than 6 parks are open on the banks of the Wazzani River, where all are filled with citizens from different regions of Lebanon, who come to spend time of rest and relaxation in spite of the tension proved by the enemy.

“We have been waiting for summer to come and make them (Zionists) feel oppressed watching us entertaining. They do nothing but looking at us from above. That's all they manage to do,” another hiker told Al-Manar.

The significance of frequenting the Wazzani River region, alongside its aesthetic geographical location, constitute a state of challenge to which the people of the resistance are accustomed since the liberation in 2000 at each site facing the Zionist enemy.

Yes, Hezbollah has successfully launched Picnic Jihad.

I can't wait for the videos, with stirring martial music, of masked jihadists eating grilled hamburgers with potato salad and playing Frisbee.

Beach photos from what Charles Barron calls a "death camp"

Democrat Charles Barron is running for Congress against Democrat Hakeem Jeffries in NY’s 8th district and has a very good chance of winning.

Barron is, to put is politely, insane.

Besides the other bizarre quotes he has made, such as saying that Muammar Qaddafi was a "freedom fighter" and "The biggest terrorist in the world is the government of Israel" and "My pastor taught me about the Semitic people, the Semites are black", he also called Gaza a "death camp" run by Israel.

He repeated himself in another interview, saying "Gaza is a virtual death camp, the same kind of conditions the Nazis imposed on the Jews."

Here are the latest photos of the beach portion of that "death camp," taken yesterday, from Palestine Times:

For a second there I thought I was looking at photos of Treblinka.

Kuwait arrests suspected gay teens for "satanic rituals"

From Bikya Masr:

Kuwait’s morality police have reportedly arrested at least 10 LGBT teenagers in the country for “satanic rituals” under a crackdown in the name of “morality.”

Security sources in the country have said that the LGBT youth were targeted under “vice” claims.

PinkNews.co.uk reported that the 10 teenagers between the ages of 16- and 18-years-old were arrested on June 8 after police alleged the rituals and “indecent acts” taking place.

The Kuwaiti daily al-Rai in addition claimed that they are also “suspected of homosexuality.”

Kuwaiti police “received complaints” the group held nightly meetings in a disused building in Al-Sharq district of Kuwait city, the report said.

During questioning the adolescents claimed they were working on a film, a claim the police dismissed as the building has no electricity and no photographic equipment was found.

Al-Rai has also reported that 20 men and one woman were arrested in the areas of Salamiya and Hawalli of Kuwait city for “suspicious parties.”

The al-Anba daily claimed the number of people arrested was 27 in several suspect apartments where they usually meet to commit “immoral activities.”

Kuwaiti Times alleged that some of the people were found to be “intoxicated.”

Al-Rai claimed that some of the suspects were arrested in previous raids and were released after signing a document that they will not repeat their “activities.”

Is my copying an article from an Egyptian newspaper about Kuwaiti intolerance towards gays another insidious form of "pinkwashing" since it implies a distinction between how Israel acts and how Arab nations act?

I believe it must be! If pointing out Israel's gay rights record is wrong, then pointing out Arab abuses of gays must be equally wrong - if you are Jewish. (Arabs can and must fight for gay rights in Arab countries, but when Jews mention the topic it is clearly pinkwashing!

Understanding the logic of the hate-Israel crowd is always a challenge, but I think I've got it.

Israeli state comptroller slams PR response to Mavi Marmara

From YNet:

After the IDF raided the Marmara ship and the rest of the Turkish flotilla vessels in May 2010, Israel went into effective radio silence mode. While the flotilla's organizers flooded the media with reports placing Israel in an extremely bad light, nothing was said in Israel until noon.

The State Comptroller's report on the flotilla raid pointed to severe impairments in the execution of Israel's public diplomacy policy.

State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss noted the significant delay in Israel's public response to the IDF raid and the public diplomacy bureau's last ditch effort to contain the media disaster and minimize the event's negative effect on Israel's global image.

The report stated that the public diplomacy bureau in the Prime Minister's Office did not distinguish between Israel's domestic messages and those directed to the international community. This, the report stated, was manifested in negative coverage overseas, largely due to the severe delay in response.

The comptroller also found that the public diplomacy bureau is not equipped to operate on a 24/7 capacity.

The report points to impairments in the division of responsibility between the Foreign Ministry and the IDF. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit, the report said, acted as Israel's public diplomacy bureau by default and operated in areas which exceed its responsibility, due to the weakness of other state advocacy bodies.

The comptroller explained that the delay in the transfer of photographic material critical for Israel's public response to the raid was largely due to the IDF's sensitivities in domestic hasbara.

Addressing the handling of foreign press in Israel, the report stated that no element was tasked with overseeing overall communication with foreign press.

Impairments were also found in Israel's hasbara vis-à-vis Arab states. The report states that there was hardly any Arabic-language hasbara in the period preceding and following the Marmara raid.

He noted that this falls under the full jurisdiction of the Foreign Ministry.

He also criticized the fact that the head of Israel's public diplomacy bureau acted as the prime minister's spokesman.

Lindenstrauss concluded this part of his report by recommending a comprehensive plan to improve Israel's public diplomacy under the prime minister's guidance.

While the IDF did do an admirable job at the time, this report points out systemic problems with Israel's Foreign Ministry in getting the facts out to the right people in a timely manner.

It is notable that when I grabbed some Israeli TV coverage of the incident the morning after the raid, showing an IDF soldier being stabbed from the live flotilla feed (something the Free Gaza people cut out in their edited videos on the raid), my video received over 180,000 views on YouTube. There was a hunger to find out the truth as quickly as possible. The IDF videos on YouTube did well, but the MFA dropped the ball.

Let's hope that this will spur Israel, under the most media-savvy prime minister it has ever had, to do something about the terrible state of its efforts to disseminate the truth. I would suggest completely revamping the unusable MFA website. (Try to do a simple search, for example. Just try.)