Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Qatar cooperating with Israel on Gaza construction?

Somewhat contradictory messages. From Ammon News:

Qatar on Tuesday launched a $254 million plan to rebuild and modernize Gaza, the biggest injection of reconstruction aid for the Palestinian enclave since it was devastated in an Israeli military offensive nearly four years ago.

Projects announced at a news conference by Qatari ambassador Mohammed al-Amadi will require the cooperation of Israel and Egypt to admit building materials and heavy machinery to Gaza, which is under a partial blockade.

Amadi said this had been arranged. Work would begin on site within three months, starting with a highway that will run the length of the Mediterranean coastal strip.

But Ma'an says:

Material for reconstruction of the Gaza Strip is to be shipped via Egypt and not Israel, the Qatari ambassador in the coastal enclave said Tuesday.

Muhammad al-Imadi told a news conference that the goods, promised weeks earlier, would be shipped via the Gaza-Egypt Rafah crossing rather than through Israel.

It is possible that only heavy equipment would come via Israel while construction material goes through Rafah. But Rafah is still not equipped to handle any major commercial traffic, as far as I know.

Either way, it appears that Qatar is cooperating with Israel in setting up specific construction projects for Gaza, something Israel has always allowed as long as it was clear the materials couldn't be taken by Hamas to build tunnels or weapons bunkers instead.

Brotherhood accused of inciting attacks on women in Tahrir Square

From Bikya Masr:

Two top Muslim Brotherhood officials are being investigated by Egypt’s Attorney General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud over their role in allegedly inciting President Mohamed Morsi supporters to attack female protesters around Tahrir Square last Friday.

Mohamed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian are under investigation, Mahmoud said.

Mahmoud himself had only the day before defied an order to step down from his position after President Morsi attempted to push him out after a court acquitted former top Hosni Mubarak officials of their role in the infamous “Camel Battle” during the 18 days of protests that ousted his rule.

The move to fire the Attorney General was largely met with criticism by the country’s judiciary and was seen as an attempt by Morsi to take more control of the largely independent branch.

But Mahmoud remained defiant and stayed in his post.

The charges being brought against Beltagy and Erian were the result of at least one female activist who claimed Brotherhood supporters sought out and actively attacked women at the demonstration, which spun out of control into opposing factions attacking each other on Friday afternoon.

Unfortunately for Egypt, sexual violence toward women is nothing new. June this year saw some of the worst attacks against women, with both foreigners and Egyptians reporting that they had been sexually assaulted in the square take place following the disbanding of Parliament.

The battle between Morsi and the judiciary is worth watching as well, and because it is so bitter it is possible that these specific charges are more an effort by attorney general Mahmoud to embarrass Morsi and his party.

It is not easy to tease the truth out of Egyptian media.

Reuters reported this week:

Apple's new iPhone 5 is selling well in the Gaza Strip despite inflated prices, reaching the Palestinian enclave via smuggling tunnels even before high-tech hub Israel next door.

The cutting edge smart phone is being snapped up for almost double what it costs in the United States, its price jacked up by middlemen on its circuitous delivery route from Dubai via tunnels linking the blockaded territory with Egypt.

The iPhone 5 will not be available until December from mobile operators in tech-mad Israel, which along with Egypt maintains a partial blockade of Gaza to prevent the entry of anything that could be used for military purposes.

But the phones have been available for a couple of weeks in Gaza and they were on display on Monday in three independent mobile stores in a one-block radius in downtown Gaza City.

Prices ranged from 4,500 Israeli shekels ($1,170) for the 16 gigabyte model to 5,700 ($1,480) for 64 gb.

"I ordered 30 and I've sold 20 so far," said one dealer. "We can order as many as we want. But most people are waiting for the price to go down. They're pretty expensive."

Palestine Times provides photos:

The poverty in Gaza is so crushing, you almost have to force yourself to watch the poor Gazans struggle to survive.

By the way, I'm pretty sure that these iPhones have the ability to watch anti-Mohammed videos on YouTube. It would be a shame if the stores that sell them are firebombed as a result.

Must read: What Obama doesn't get

Michael J. Totten has a must read interview with Jonathan Spyer, an Israeli who has sneaked into Syria twice and who gives a fantastic, must-read analysis of what is happening on the ground there.

It has more wisdom and real reporting in one article than you will find in the New York Times in weeks.

But at the end of the interview, Totten asks Spyer about US policies in the region, and his answers go to the crux of the problem of President Obama's Middle East policy - and, I would claim, his foreign policy altogether.

MJT: President Barack Obama repeatedly says he will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Do you believe him? How many Israelis believe him? He’s letting Assad get away with murder, but he did go after Qaddafi and bin Laden.

Jonathan Spyer: I don’t want to interfere in the internal American discussion, but your question is nicely phrased so I can comment without doing that. Confidence in President Obama is very low in Israel. That is because his performance so far seems to suggest that he has little understanding of the Hobbesian world of Middle Eastern politics and the aspects required in order to build firm alliances and proxies here. From his Cairo speech and the abandonment of Mubarak to the vacillating and paralysis on Syria, he just seems to be singing from a different and wholly unsuitable songbook.

So I think very few Israelis have confidence that he will act effectively to prevent a nuclear Iran. No coherent red lines, including an outlining of the consequences of crossing them, means the Iranians will keep on moving ahead.

Obama wants out of the Middle East, as he himself has made clear. He’ll do counter-terrorism from the air against small, extreme jihadi groups. In Libya, I think it was the Europeans and specifically the French who got that rolling, with the US following on, though of course inevitably doing most of the heavy lifting in the end.

And frankly I think many Israelis also have the feeling, which we haven’t had for quite a few years, that the man in the White House right now isn’t a deep friend of our country, that he doesn’t understand or isn’t really interested in the story of Israel and the Jewish People, and consequently lacks a grasp of the deeper moorings which I think should underlie, and have in recent years underlain, the alliance between the US and Israel.

MJT: What is it specifically that President Obama does not understand? Surely he knows the Middle East is a much rougher neighborhood than Europe and North America. What else does he still need to grasp besides the obvious? What would you explain to him if you had his ear for a couple of minutes?

Jonathan Spyer: I would try to explain to him the dynamic of patron-client relationships in our neighborhood. I would explain to him that your clients don’t need to love you, don’t want you to bow to them, and don’t even really need to know that you respect them and empathize with them (though they will need you to at least go through the motions in this regard.)

What they need to know is that if they get into trouble (and they will) you will back them and help them to your utmost. If they think you won’t or can’t do that, they won’t want to be your client. They will prefer to be the client of another patron (probably your enemy or rival) who will be willing to do this. As a result, the value of your strategic coin will rapidly decline.

Right now, the net result of Obama’s losing Egypt/Tunisia/Yemen, and Iran/Russia/China’s non-losing of Syria, is that US credibility as a patron is low. Obama seems mainly dangerous to his friends, less so to his enemies, the killing of Bin-Laden notwithstanding. This is making allies nervous and enemies happy. This is not good. In particular, the most vulnerable allies (the Gulf monarchies) are very nervous indeed, and are seeking to organize themselves independently because of their impression that the US right now is not there. The trouble is that these countries are too weak for the job. As we see now in Syria, for example, they can’t deliver against Assad.

So the end result of Obama’s conceptual error is that the Iran-led alliance, which remains by far the most potent and dangerous enemy in the region, is holding up well, while what used to look like a US-led regional alliance no longer really exists. This, in my view, derives directly from the American President’s failure to grasp the basic rules for behavior as a patron in the Hobbesian space of the Middle East. So if I had a few minutes that’s what I’d tell him. But I’d tell him this without a great deal of enthusiasm, because I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t get it.

Spyer has perfectly encapsulated the flaws behind the president's foreign policy, and he briefly describes how it will affect the Middle East. But the same short-sightedness is leaving our allies in Europe also without a reliable ally, as Obama is not interested in asserting American power - something that must be done, no matter how distasteful it is.

Because the alternative is a world without a leader, and nothing good will enter that vacuum. It will take literally decades to undo the damage already done to the American reputation in less than four years, and this is more important than the economy or any other domestic issue.

This is the point I was trying to make in a video I posted recently, but Spyer does it much better.

The very future of the free world depends on US leadership. By abdicating that leadership, America is failing the world - and its own long-term interests.

(h/t Israel Muse)

Hezbollah sent drones over Israel in 2004, 2005, 2006

From YNet:

A senior Iranian military official claimed Tuesday that Iranian-made surveillance drones have made dozens of apparently undetected flights into Israeli airspace from Lebanon in recent years to probe air defenses and collect reconnaissance data. An Israeli official rejected the account.

The Iranian official declined to give further details on the purported missions or the capabilities of the drones, including whether they were similar to the unmanned aircraft launched last week by Lebanon's Hezbollah and downed by Israeli warplanes. It also was impossible to independently verify the claims from the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

I don't know about "dozens" of UAV flights, but there definitely were some.

In November 2004, Hezbollah flew a drone over northern Israel for about 15 minutes.

In April 2005, another Iranian drone was launched by Hezbollah. Here's the NBC News report:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In August, 2006, the IDF shot down a Hezbollah drone that was en route to Haifa.

So Hezbollah has been using Iranian drones for years. (There were reports that a bomb-laden drone attacked an Israeli warship in July 2006, but that was apparently a rocket.)

It is surprising that the media didn't seem to remember any of them.

Recently, Tel Aviv artists gave the city's sewer drains a makeover:

The haters, meanwhile, go to Tel Aviv, see nothing wrong, and still decide that the smiling Jews seen in this video are incomparably evil.

And that, my friends, is the difference between love and hate.

(h/t Size Doesn't Matter and Yaacov Lozowick)

UPDATE: Brad in the comments came up with the perfect word for this: Drainwashing!

"Soon, we won't even be allowed to rape our wives!"

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from a TV show featuring Muhammad Saad Al-Azhari, a member of the Egyptian Constituent Assembly, which was broadcast on Al-Nas TV on September 24, 2012.

Muhammad Saad Al-Azhari: We were discussing a clause [proposed for the constitution] prohibiting forced labor and sex trafficking in women and children. I and some other members objected to this clause. We said that "trafficking in women" in the UN covenants refers to child marriage.
[...]
There were continuous efforts to make me specify an age at which girls may marry. They asked: When? At the age of 9, 10, 11? I said to them: Even in Egypt, girls begin to menstruate only at the age 11-13. In most cases, it doesn’t happen at the age of nine. There is however, a cultural and social heritage in this country. In the cities, it is very difficult to marry before the age of 18, but in the rural areas – in Siwa, in the Sinai, and among the Nubians – things are different. We should bear in mind the climate and the economic and social heritage. The important thing is that the girl is ready and can tolerate marriage.
[...]
Then they wanted to add an article protecting women from violence. With such a clause, you wouldn't be allowed to say anything to her, let alone touch her. And there were things worse still...

TV Host Sheikh Khaled Abdallah: The people of Egypt should know what those secularists are trying to do. The man is a member of the Constituent Assembly. It's not me saying this. "Child protection" means that if your child goes astray, you cannot discipline him, beat him, or even say a word to him, or else he might call 911 like they do in America. Your wife will act insolently, and you won't be able to say a word to her. Forget about your manhood. If you dare to say anything to her, she will call the police on you. They want to exclude the Islamists from formulating the constitution, and do things that contradict the shari'a and the teachings of our Prophet. Go ahead.

Muhammad Saad Al-Azhari: If your wife claims that you were intimate with her without her consent, it will be considered rape according to the law. This is part of women's protection from violence. If you have full sexual relations with your wife against her will, she will be able to file a complaint against you. That's where things are headed.

Judging from the way he looks, I think that Al-Azhari can already forget about his manhood.

Tuesday links

From Ian:

New Video Shows Palestinians, Left Wing Activists Cutting Down Olive Trees

"A new video entitled “Harvesting Incitement” released by the Shomron Regional Council today on YouTube purports to show Palestinians and left-wing activists cutting down olive trees in a tactic meant to frame West Bank settlers as the perpetrators according to an unnamed witness in the video. “They cut down these trees to start a fire in the media or in their ovens. It’s suspicious because it comes close to the Jewish settlements. They get close enough it becomes a security problem as well,” the witness says."

Jordan: King Abdullah Losing the Support of Tribes? by Khaled Abu Toameh
The Jordanian tribe is now planning a huge rally against Israel, with whom it has a peace treaty. Other tribes have been invited to join the rally, posing a major and unprecedented challenge to the monarchy.

EU Wins ‘Nobel Appeasement Prize’

"There is nothing that I can think of that would recommend giving this honor to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats sitting in Brussels. All too often, the EU’s foreign policy interventions have been marked by cowardice."

France as a Palestinian Camp - Old Fuhrer, New Furors

"More important is that French mainstream is also guilty for what is happening to the Jews. Palestinian terrorists are daily called “militants” and Flotilla jihadists are turned into “humanitarians” by the intellectuals, while the tribunals easily pardon the Jew-killers, who are always labelled as “youths”. To quote Pierre-Andre Taguieff, they "dissolve the anti-Jewish acts in a rising tide of delinquency".

French Jews denounce 'anti-Semitic' flood on Twitter
French anti-racist and Jewish organisations on Monday condemned what they called a wave of anti-Semitism sweeping over the micro-blogging site Twitter using the hashtag #unbonjuif (a good Jew).

European satellite axes Iran's anti-Semitic channels
Europe’s top satellite service Eutelsat barred on Monday 19 Iranian state-controlled television and radio channels from broadcasting in Europe.
According to a spokeswoman from Eutelsat, the measures “reinforced EU Council sanctions.”
See also Honest Reporting: EU Sanctions Knock Iran’s Press TV Off the Airwaves

Iran cracks down on underground 'illegal' churches
Iranian media reports blame "Zionist propaganda" for targeting vulnerable Muslims, converting them to Christianity.

Do you Support Arab Progress? Then, Listen to Genuine Arab Liberals & Reject Guardian’s Analysis

"If you want to know how best to advocate for hundreds of millions of Arabs – at least those genuinely supporting a real democratic “Spring” – you can begin by reviewing the Guardian’s coverage of the region and adopting a political persuasion based on the complete opposite of what you read."

Washington Should Play the Funding Card on PA’s UN bid

"UNESCO director Irina Bokova griped publicly last week about how much her organization is suffering from the U.S. funding cutoff sparked by its admission of “Palestine” last year. That provides Washington with real leverage to foil the Palestinian Authority’s planned bid for UN General Assembly recognition as a nonmember observer state later this fall. Incredibly, however, the administration doesn’t seem to be making use of it."

Israelis in south told to stay close to bomb shelters
Al-Qaida jihadists in Gaza and Sinai vow to avenge Israel's killing of their chief. Egyptian military on alert for booby-trapped cars approaching security installations. IDF raises alert level near Egypt border area and along major southern highway.

The Attacks on Israelis You Won’t Read About Anywhere Else, October 7-12

Swiss advertising offends Muslims
(Google translation) “The virulence of the Internet is not surprising Turkish journalist Cemil Baysal. So shortly after the excitement caused in the Muslim world by the film "Innocence of Muslims", "Muslims feel that many Christian slogan as a provocation and an attack against Islam."

Depeche Mode returning to TLV
Depeche Mode, the legendary British synth-pop band, will perform in Israel next year.

Also:

Henry Clifford's deceptive ads return to Metro North. CAMERA demolishes them. Years ago, CAMERA also showed how the Dayan quote had been taken out of context.

New iPhones snapped up in Gaza despite high prices, poverty

Prices ranged from 4,500 Israeli shekels ($1,170) for the 16 gigabyte model to 5,700 ($1,480) for 64 gb.

"I ordered 30 and I've sold 20 so far," said one dealer. "We can order as many as we want."

HuffPo has a terribly titled but very good article that sums up the huge amount of archaeological and historic evidence that Jews lived in ancient Israel, unlike how Arabs like to pretend they didn't.

(h/t Tamar)

Iran's PressTV hires another Western Jew-hater

I noticed this article in Iran's PressTV, by Mark Glenn. While PressTV has interviewed Glenn numerous times before, this seems to be his first foray as a columnist for the fact-challenged media outlet.

Back in the early days of this blog when I actually had the time to follow the crazy anti-semitic Left, I noticed that this same Mark Glenn had no problems espousing pure Jew-hatred. For example, he wrote:

While the other two Middle Eastern faiths that are Judaism’s organic enemies–meaning Christianity and Islam–elevate the virtues of humility, charity and righteousness, Judaism not only elevates, but institutionalizes and legislates the vices of haughtiness, supremacism and callous disregard for other human beings. It is the codified mindset of mankind’s first murderer, Cain, who slew his brother Abel over reasons of envy and economics. Gentiles exist to serve the Jews. Rape of gentile children, murder, lying, theft, usury, all these things that have been condemned in every other religion around the world are given full sanction in Judaism when it benefits the tribe....

Judaism is nobody’s friend, and the sooner that the rest of us–Jew and non-Jew alike–come to realize this, the better off we will be. Get rid of it. It is a cancer. Cut is out and throw it away, as Jesus instructed that we do. It has never and will never be of any benefit to mankind. We cannot live in any kind of ‘peaceful co-existence’ with it. It is a declaration of war, and as long as it exists out there, mankind will never have peace.

Another time Glenn told a horrible story of a child murdered by the evil Jews in Gaza - a story that he completely made up.

And in a particularly hilarious article, he looked at the rabidly anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect and decided that hey were waaaaaay too Jewish for his tastes.

I could see it in their faces and in particular in their eyes…centuries of it. Hundreds of years of being taught–generation after generation after generation–700,000 days worth of it–that there was one group of people better than everyone else…That all the objective rules of right and wrong did not apply when dealing with Gentiles…That–just as the Jewish Holy Books of the Talmud and Kabbalah declare–a state of war exists between the divine sphere of the Jews and the satanic sphere of the non-Jews and that, just as that old saying went with regards to war, ‘all is fair…’

I could see by their features that the gene pool from which they had been ladled was very small, very exclusive and violently against any new dogs joining the pack. They were part of an artificially-created/genetically modified species made up of kissing cousins who were all related to each other in a manner that was way too close and which was probably–biologically speaking–not safe. I could see in their own features the characteristics that have been made famous by their well-known brothers and sisters throughout the history of the bloodiest 100 years of mankind’s existence, the ‘Jewish Century’ as it was put by the writer Yuri Slezkine–the Trotskys, Dershowitzes, Sharons, Feinsteins, Greenspans, and Sandlers. Each of the ‘good Rabbis’ had that well-known effeminate whine in each of their voices that is always one half-step short of a whimper of complaint.

Now Mark Glenn has joined the roster of Western Jew-haters who write for PressTV.

He'll feel right at home.

(By the way, here's the list of all of the PressTV editorialists.)

Arabs upset at latest alleged UNRWA plan to teach the Holocaust

In 2009, Arab media exploded with the rumor that UNRWA schools planned to teach about the Holocaust to Palestinian Arab kids in Gaza.

The UN had to issue a strenuous denial that they would even consider such a thing. One Arab newspaper even quoted the UNRWA head as saying he was totally against it, a quote that UNRWA later denied.

Soon afterwards, UNRWA announced that it would indeed incorporate the Holocaust into its curriculum on universal human rights, but there is no evidence that it ever did so.

Now, the same rumor is hitting Jordan.

Al-Ghad reports

UNRWA will return to teaching the so-called Holocaust in the context of material enrichment, after freezing it for a while, despite its denials of it.

Informed sources in the UNRWA/Jordan teachers committee said that a decision with the agency to teach enrichment material about the Holocaust, after previously being forced to freeze work on the topic, as a result of the overwhelming uproar against it.

Sources added to al-Ghad that "UNRWA is seeking to exploit the preoccupation with current internal situation, in addition to the uncertain atmosphere in the region, in order to teach suspicious topics that harm the Palestinian cause."

Introduced in this framework would be materials that discuss resolving conflicts and crises, and resolving conflict peacefully, and to cite the so-called plight of Jews and victims of Nazism and their right to live in peace.

A statement issued yesterday by the Executive Committee of Teachers of UNRWA in Jordan expressed "outrage and condemnation of this decision, which conflates the executioner and victim, and urged "the teaching of private Palestinian cause, especially the right of return of refugees to their homes and lands that have been displaced them due to the Zionist aggression in 1948."

For its part, UNRWA's management denied any plans to "to teach about the Holocaust in its enrichment activities, saying its commitment is to the educational curriculum of the host countries, and it has no intention to change it.

Jordanian teachers know that the topic of teaching Arabs something that could make Jews appear as anything less than bloodthirsty monsters is an easy way to create a huge backlash in their "moderate" country. It isn't only that the teachers are anti-semitic, but they know that everyone in Jordan would agree that Holocaust education is a terrible topic to inflict on their children.

If that isn't anti-semitism, I don't know what is.

Meanwhile, UNRWA never answered my questions about their curriculum and school material that teach about jihad and martyrdom, in Gaza. These materials directly contradict UNRWA's official educational vision in that they glorify violence.

Apparently teaching Jihad is OK while teaching that millions of Jews were killed 70 years ago is strictly out of bounds for this progressive, Western-funded UN agency.

Arab workers see sex with Jewish women as a form of "jihad" (updated)

According to a 2010 study done by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and supported by the UN, some Arab laborers in Israel regard having sex with Jewish women to be a form of jihad, or holy war.

Yesterday, I reported that Gulf News published an absurd story claiming that a Palestinian labourers working in Israel are at a high risk of sexual harassment by Israeli women, based on a supposed report by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Since then, the Gulf News report has been picked up by other media, none of which bothered to find the original "report" to see if there was any truth to it.

So I looked again - and actually found the study.

Not surprisingly, it says something quite different than what is being reported.

Called "Risky Behavior by Migrant Laborers" and found on the UNFPA page, it was published in 2010. It is only available in Arabic.

The study was meant to find out how much Palestinian Arab laborers knew about safe sex and how to stop sexually transmitted diseases among them.

While indeed 77% in one focus group of workers, and 52% in another, claimed that they were "harassed or sexually harassed," those terms are not defined. From the context it appears that if they even see an Israeli woman with shorts on the bus they consider that harassment.

Moreover, many of them admit that they work in Israel in order to have sex. They hang around clubs, go to massage parlors and try to take advantage of Jewish women, especially Russians who are judged to be "easy." Some workers are married; most are single, but both categories will try to get laid. Many of them use their time in Israel to act out their fantasies.

In addition, the study says, there is a great fear among single Arabs that they won't know how to perform on their wedding nights, so they really want to gain experience and look at Israeli Jewish women as the ones they can practice on. The study specifically notes the sexual deprivation that they experience as they grow up as one of the factors behind their risky behavior in Israel.

But there is one other factor that some use as justification to have sex with Jewish girls: Jihad.

According to the study, some of the Arabs regard sex with Jewish girls as a form of "jihad" - as a way to punish the Jews! As one puts it, this is a form of "revenge" on Israelis.

The overwhelming sense from reading the report is that Arab workers are the ones who are stalking Jewish women in Israel, and when they say they are being harassed it is really a projection of their own fantasies, as they travel from their villages where women are completely covered and find themselves surrounded by women they believe are shameful but also enticing.

As far as I can tell, this study was never publicized, nor translated into English.

There is one thing that everyone in the study has in common, as well as the labor official quoted in the Gulf News - a view of Jewish women that is completely demeaning. If Israeli Jewish men would have made these sorts of statements, the media would be shouting about their "racism" and intolerance. But here, in a study that the UN supports, there is not a word about Arab male misogyny and anti-semitism. The sickening bigotry is accepted as a fact, and the Jewish women who are victims of Arab predators are utterly ignored.

And it will be ignored. We won't hear anything about how Arab men actively demean Jewish women from "progressive" sites like 972mag or Mondoweiss. We won't hear any word of protest from Judith Butler. The Huffington Post will be silent. Because to them, Israeli Jewish women cannot be considered victims when the victimizer has been canonized as the ultimate victim.

This is yet another example of how the world allows Arabs to behave in ways that are totally unacceptable when done by others.

UPDATE: I found an executive summary in English of the report on the UNFPA site, but it does not go into the detail of the actual Arabic report.

At Bar Ilan, 100 Yiddish students are - Arab!

From Al Monitor, translating from Yediot Aharonot:

“Yiddish intrigues me with its majesty and its enigmatic, refined musical tone. I have no explanation for the fact that I have always felt a connection to this language.”

Contrary to what you might expect, the speaker of these lines is not a Polish poet or German philosopher. He is Yusuf Alakili, 50, from Kfar Kassem, currently investing much effort in his studies for a Master’s degree in literature at Bar Ilan University’s Hebrew. Alakili studies Yiddish on the side for his own enjoyment.

How did this affair start? “In the 1980s, I worked with a Jew of Polish origin who lived in Bnei Brak, and Yiddish was the main language there. I was captivated by its musical tone and decided to study it in earnest. My dream is to read Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman [the inspiration for Fiddler on the Roof] in its original language.”

And what bothers him? “I don’t know who is to blame, but I don’t understand why this magnificent language is neglected, when such an extensive body of literature exists in Yiddish. Did you know that [Nobel Prize laureate] Agnon started writing in Yiddish, and only later transferred to Hebrew?” he asks.

Alakili is not alone. About a quarter of the 400 students studying Yiddish at Bar Ilan are Arabs, says Ber Kotlerman, academic director of Bar Ilan’s Center for Yiddish Studies. According to Kotlerman, some of the Israeli Arabs are searching for a way to connect to the Jewish culture with which they must cope, and it is not easy for them.

“Even Jews in the Diaspora search for this — a way to connect to the local culture — and it is wonderful that Yiddish can be a sort of ambassador, a bridge between nations and cultures,” he says. “Take, for example, the case of Tevye the Dairyman, whose daughter marries a Christian and he sits shiva [the traditional Jewish mourning ceremony] for her. Two years ago, a female Arab student approached me to say that her father would do the same thing if she fell in love with a Jew,” says Kotlerman.

Salam Bashara, 22, of Tira, is currently finishing her undergraduate degree in Arab literature. She explains how the Yiddish language and culture move her greatly.

”I fell in love with Hebrew literature back in high school. When I studied Yiddish, I became acquainted with Sholom Aleicham and the early works of Agnon," and also watched various films, such as the wonderful movie "The Cantor from Vilna."

"The cantor’s loss of his son [to the surrounding secular culture] is a universal experience, something that everyone can identify with,” says Bashara, who hopes one day to write her masters thesis on the parallels between Arab and Yiddish literature.

Az der barg geyt nit tsu Makhmedn, geyt Makhmed tsum barg.

Israeli media is reporting that Gaza fighters fired shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles last week at Israeli aircraft, according to Yediot Aharonot. The missiles missed and no injuries or damage were reported.

Sources said the missiles were probably the Strela-2/SA7, a Soviet-era shoulder mounted missile.

This is the first time these missiles were used by Gaza terrorists, althoughthere have been reports that Gaza groups had them for years. As early as 2001, Israel intercepted a weapons ship headed towards Gaza that included Strela missiles.

When Libya fell there were numerous reports about sophisticated weapons flooding the region.Last January, weapons smugglers in the Sinai claimed that they sold thousands of surface-to-air missiles from Libya to Gaza - but kept some for themselves for eventual use against Egyptian forces.