Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Hamas' "majestic parade" missing an important component

Yesterday, on the first anniversary of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap, Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades staged a parade that they labeled "majestic" in the streets of Gaza City, as scores of SUVs filled with masked terrorists with machine guns and RPGs passed by:

What is missing?

No one is watching the parade!

No throngs of families crowded on the sidewalks cheering on their favorite celebrity terrorists. No stands of officials greeting the incoming brave jihadists. Nothing.

This becomes very obvious when you watch the video:

There is one other thing that other parades have that this one seemed to lack: the leaders of the group throwing the parade, in the open.

What happens when you stage a parade and nobody comes?

You issue press releases saying that the parade brought " joy and happiness the people of the Gaza Strip!"

(Now, if the IDF had decided to drop a few guided bombs on all these celebrating jihadists, that would be a compelling video!)

Palestine Press quotes Gaza Salafi officials saying that Hamas staged a series of raids against prominent Salafist sites in Gaza this morning, arresting a number of leaders.

Hamas has a history of animosity and attacks towards these groups, the only terror groups remaining in Gaza that do not cooperate with Hamas.

One of the Salafi groups, the Masada al Mujahideen organization, has blamed Hamas for the Israeli attacks against their leaders on Friday night, implying that Hamas tipped the IDF off. Israel's Terror Watch website makes the same claim that Hamas acted as an informer to Israel to rid themselves of their rivals. This seems unlikely, although it is possible that Hamas is "turnng" the "collaborators" that they have already caught to feed the IDF intelligence for those they want to eliminate.

(h/t Yoel, Challah Hu Akbar)

Arab groups rush to agree teaching the Holocaust is a crime!

What happens after Arab teachers in Jordan freak out over an unsubstantiated rumor that UNRWA schools will teach the Holocaust?

Their brethren in neighboring areas try to outdo their Jordanian cousins on being revolted at the very idea!

From JPost:

Hamas on Wednesday reiterated its strong opposition to teaching the Holocaust in UNRWA-run schools in the Gaza Strip.

The Refugees Affairs Department of Hamas said that teaching the Holocaust was a "crime against the issue of the refugees that is aimed at cancelling their right of return."

You get that? The Holocaust wasn't a crime, but teaching about it is!

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine also condemned the fictional claim, saying that teaching the Holocaust would be "a serious violation in the work of the education process."

A PLO spokesman said that the idea "constitutes a serious violation towards education and a clear deviation against all educational goals for the children of refugees...this is an indication that the presidency of UNRWA and local heads began to systematically adopt the Israeli narrative."

In Lebanon, things aren't much better. Al Akhbar reports that Palestinian Lebanese officials are assuming that UNRWA's donors, being Zionist, are the ones pushing this idea. They also said that it would be unconscionable to teach the Holocaust without teaching about alleged Israeli massacres of Arabs.

An op-ed in Al Watan Voice says this supposed UNRWA curriculum is "filled with poison" because of its emphasis on teaching students about "peace and tolerance."

By the way, since I exposed the UNRWA Gaza school websites that were filled with material glorifying jihad and martyrdom over the summer, every single one of those individual school websites mysteriously disappeared from the Internet, as did their curricula. And at least at the moment, there are no UNRWA job openings for teachers who specialize in Islamic studies as there were when I reported them.

Does this mean that UNRWA has reformed its curricula in Gaza? Or just that they don't want probing eyes into what they are doing?

Ha'aretz lies to paint Israel as "apartheid" (CAMERA)

Two days ago, I started seeing dozens of Arabic articles all gleefully quoting the same Ha'aretz article by Akiva Eldar:

Amid a dry economic report published yesterday in TheMarker lies an official announcement/acknowledgment of unparalleled importance: The government of Israel confirms that between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River there is no longer a Jewish majority. In other words, in the territory under Israel's jurisdiction a situation of apartheid exists. A Jewish minority rules over an Arab majority.

Hila Raz's article reports that the Tax Authority is trying to pass an amendment to the law for the purpose of revising the ceiling for eligibility for tax benefits, whose aim, in turn, is to encourage exports. According to the Export Promotion Law approved in 2005, a factory is entitled to a tax break if at least 25 percent of its income stemmed from sales to a market with at least 12 million residents. A Ministry of Finance memorandum on the amendment to the law notes that in 2011 the population of Israel and the Palestinian Authority exceeded the 12 million mark, which enables manufacturers who market to these consumers to enjoy a tax break. The Tax Authority's diligent officials would like to raise the threshold for qualifying for the benefit by two million residents, so that they will not have to grant the benefit to exporters who sell their wares in Israel and the territories.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (which is subordinate to the Prime Minister's Office ), of the 12 million residents living under Israeli rule, the number of Jews is just under 5.9 million (as of April 25 ). Twelve million minus 5.9 million Jews equals 6.1 million non-Jews. In other words, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, there is a pretty Jewish state as far as its laws and customs, but the reality is not so democratic. Foreign sources report that Jews had already become a minority in the area of the greater Land of Israel several years ago. From now on, it is an official statistic.

CAMERA looks at the claims and finds, quite simply, that Eldar is lying, purposefully, to make his case:

Let's try to lay out Eldar's false claim, which is based on an item which appeared several days earlier in The Marker, a financial newspaper published by Ha'aretz, regarding the Export Promotion Law. According to this law, a factory is eligible for tax benefits intended to promote exports if at least 25 percent of its income stemmed from sales in markets of at least 12 million residents. Approximately one week ago, the Ministry of Finance sought to revise the law and increase the threshold to 14 milllion residents. Why? Because, wrote Eldar, the population of Israel together with the Palestinian Authority already reaches 12 million people, and therefore even those manufacturers who sell only to the local market are eligible for the aforementioned tax benefit even though it was not intended for them.

At this point, Eldar cites a figure from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), that there are 5.9 million Jews living under Israeli rule. Using basic math, Eldar calculates that the rest of the population totals 6.1 million. In conclusion, given that the CBS is subordinate to the Prime Minister's Office, the government acknowledges that Jews are the minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Falsehood

Apparently, Eldar did not at all read the Ministry of Finance's memorandum upon which he relied. He wrote:

A Ministry of Fiance memorandum on the amendment to the law notes that in 2011 the population of Israel and the Palestinian Authority exceeded the 12 million mark, which enables manufacturers who market to these consumers to enjoy a tax break.

This is an outright falsehood. The memorandum, which can be read (in Hebrew) here, does not at all refer to the population of Israel or the Palestinian Authority and does not mention its number of residents, Jews or Arabs. The relevant excerpt from the memorandum follows:

Since Amendment 60 went into affect, more than seven years ago, the law has not been revised despite the increase in the world's population and its markets.

It is recommended to amend clause 18a of the law and to determine what will constitute a manufacturer which contributes to the economic independence of the national economy and a competitor for the local product if 25 percent or more of its income from the manufacturer's sales in the tax year are to a certain market of at least 14 million residents.

It is also recommended to establish a mechanism to automatically update the number of residents that constitute a substantial market, of 2 percent per year, in accordance with the world's population growth rate. (Emphases added.)

In other words, the Ministry of Finance is concerned with the growth of the world's population, not with Israel's population. Moreover, the number 12 million does not even appear in the entire memorandum. It only appears in Hila Raz's item in The Marker:

Since 2011 the population in Israel and the Palestinian Authority has surpassed the threshold of 12 million residents, and so an Israeli industrialist who sells to these populations is entitled to enjoy the tax benefit.

That is not a figure from the Ministry of Finance. It is an unsubstantiated claim by The Marker reporter. And Eldar has turned it into an official, governmental statistic.

...To summarize, Akiva Eldar took an unsubstantiated figure which appeared in The Marker (12 million residents from the Jordan River to the sea) and attributed this figure to the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bureau of Statistics, two governmental bodies, despite the fact that neither of them mentioned the figure. And, based on these journalistic acrobatics, we have the false headline "The government's acknowledgement that Jews are a minority in this land. . . "

...Why did Eldar invest so much effort into manipulating this data? The answer appears in the online subheadline, which posits that even the Israeli government acknowledges that "apartheid is here." Appealing to the most rabid anti-Israel activists, Ha'aretz pulls the "apartheid" genie out of the bottle, all by relying on an incorrect, unsubstantiated figure falsely attributed to the government. Ha'aretz knows precisely for whom they are writing overseas, and Eldar knows how to deliver.

As Mark Twain famously wrote, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. And here this lie from Ha'aretz didn't just travel halfway.

It spread like wildfire from local Palestinian Arab press to Al Jazeera to Arabic UPI, all falsely claiming as fact that Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics say that there are 12 million people that Israel is ruling. (Not to mention Mondoweiss, whose journalistic standards fall somewhat beneath those of The National Enquirer.)

Palestinian Arab demographics are famously suspect anyway, but to claim that Israel officially inflates them to be hundreds of thousands beyond what even the Palestinian Authority claims itself is something that can only be believed by those for whom facts are merely an option in their quest to demonize the Jewish state.

Tin Foil Head Open Thread

New York subways are interesting places.

Many trains have an amusing piece of art by Sophie Blackall that shows some of the characters you might get to see when you ride the subway (click to enlarge):

But reality is often weirder than art.

Here's someone I saw this week, sleeping:

Yes, that is tin foil in his hair. I suppose it could be that he was in the middle of curling it, but that doesn't explain his tin-foil necklace.

I wonder who he will vote for...

That being said, here's an open thread!

Wednesday links. Yes, it's that time again.

From Ian:

UK funding for anti-Israel NGOs
When the British taxpayer-funded Hebron Rehabilitation Committee issued a statement in August describing a terror attack by Islamic Jihad as a “heroic operation”, it should have been met with a very swift and severe response from the British Government, and a review of the Foreign Office’s funding practices.

"[T]he government recklessly allocates taxpayer funds to groups which hope to build a Palestinian state not alongside Israel but in place of it, which ignore the relentless campaign of terror against Israeli civilians that demonises Israel through absurd accusations of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing”.
By doing so, the government is merely eroding its very own vision of a two-state solution and fostering an atmosphere of mutual distrust and animosity at a time when understanding and co-operation are most needed."

Arab Women in the Middle East by Khaled Abu Toameh

"In Israel, however, Muslim women are not only allowed to drive and run for elections, but can also reach high positions. Not all Arab Israelis are an "enemy from within;" Muslim women in the Jewish state enjoy more rights and opportunities than their colleagues in Arab and Islamic countries.
While female Muslims are being abducted, raped, shot, tortured and forced into unwanted marriages in a number of Arab and Islamic countries, 33-year-old Maria Gharra has just become Israel's first Muslim woman to serve as a police officer."

Wake up, Europe
As Europe approaches the iceberg, there is a need to change course, before it commits ideological suicide.

"Today the threat of Islamist violence is felt in the houses of parliament and government. Europe has changed, and in as little as five years it could look very different. Yet, most Europeans seem unable to recognize the severity of this phenomenon objectively."

Christian Initiative Echoes Anti-Semitism of the Middle Ages

"The recent initiative by a group of Protestant Christian leaders calling on Congress to reevaluate military aid to Israel is a nauseating example of applying double standards against Jews and Israel under the cloak of piety and hypocritical sanctimoniousness."

Incensed Jewish groups weigh response to Protestant letter on Israel
Major US organizations consider canceling meeting with Christian counterparts over letter to Congress calling for possible aid cut

What to do when an enemy drone comes calling
UAVs may be an easy way for a country to collect information, but they are also an easy way for targets to mislead their enemies

"Drones may be even more susceptible to hack attacks than computers. “Drones need to be light; equipment to protect the drone’s navigation, photography, detection and other systems add weight, slowing them down,” Rod added. It’s certainly possible, claimed Rod, who is a top administrator for Avnet, one of Israel’s largest security firms. “Designers of drones often make compromises in order to keep the weight down, choosing to install a protection system for some modules, but not others.”

Netanyahu may seek to legalize West Bank outposts

"The report also concludes that the establishment of settlements in the West Bank does not breach international law, and that Jews can legally make their homes there, because “Israel does not meet the criteria of ‘military occupation’ as defined under international law.”
“A belligerent occupation is between two sovereigns,” panel member Alan Baker, a former Israeli Ambassador to Canada and a legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, told The Times of Israel in a phone interview. “We could not accept the definition that this is a classic occupation. That is the novelty of this report.”

In East Jerusalem Neighborhood Residents Under Attack Feel Abandoned

"In general, residents report an uptick in terrorist activity in the Jerusalem vicinity, and the residents of Nof Tzion have noted it as well. In their case most of the attacks emanate from a new high school in Jabel Mukaber, which is situated right above Nof Tzion. Students throw stones and objects at Jewish homes and cars. A smashed car is found every few days."

PA confiscates archive of Hamas’s armed wing
Intelligence agency storms West Bank apartment, taking documents and hardware

September Sees Record Number of Tourists in Israel

"The bureau recorded 70,000 one-day visits, a 28-percent increase from last year, of which 33,000 were cruise-ship vacationers visiting for the day. Ben-Gurion International Airport noted a 6 percent increase in travelers in September as well, with 1,225,837 travelers passing through the airport last month. The Israeli Airports Authority said there had been a 1.7 percent increase in departures and arrivals compared with September 2011."

Israeli tablets to purify water for Syrians
Israeli government blesses a deal for Israel Chemicals to sell AquaTabs to UNICEF for Syria despite a law nixing trade with an enemy state.

Also:

Telling it like it is - in Arabic
A stupendous interview with an Israeli Arab woman

Boshra’s appearances on campus made waves, and, among her many radio appearances, she was interviewed by an Islamic, Arabic-language radio station in Johannesburg. The interviewer, a religious Saudi man, asked her questions which revealed a disheartening level of ignorance about Israel...

“He asked why Israel doesn’t let Muslims pray or go to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem; why only Jews are allowed to pray [in the State of Israel]. I told them that in my own small village in the Galilee there are not only one but two mosques and two imams who both get a monthly salary from the state. The interviewer was in shock. I added that I could go pray at Al Aqsa mosque at will, freely. ...

“I said to him: ‘In Saudi Arabia, can a woman drive a car?’ He said no. I said: ‘I can.’ And he was silent. I asked: ‘Can a woman in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia meet a man and get to know him before getting married or is she just forced into marriage at a young age?’ He said no, she can’t. I said: ‘I can.’ And I would answer his questions with my own questions…and each time he would be stunned silent.”

Amazing video, allegedly of a Syrian helicopter shot down that explodes in mid-air.

Obama and the "T" word

Russia Resets Obama's "Reset"

[Yeah, I know I'm doing more presidential election stuff. The elections are only a month away, the polls are close and I am scared of a second Obama term. I have an outlet and, within reason, I will use it. I wish I knew that Romney would be better, but I cannot imagine how he can be worse on foreign policy, and the world literally depends on it. -EoZ]

A Jewish lawyer was a target for an Islamist terror cell in Paris (French)

Yesterday, Akiva Eldar in Ha'aretz claimed that an Israeli government report officially said that Jews were a minority in British Mandate Palestine, and therefore Israel was an "apartheid" state. Arabic media went wild. CAMERA's Hebrew Presspectiva demolishes Eldar and proves what a pathetic hack he is.

A new book called "Friends of Israel in Egypt" was recently released in Egypt.

The book goes through every person who seemed to encourage or accept Israel as a friend of Egypt's since the Camp David peace treaty. It lists ministers who encouraged normal relations and diplomats who had warm words for their Israeli counterparts.

Egyptians who cooperated with Israel and the EU in monitoring those entering and exiting Gaza are also listed, as are some Egyptians who married Israeli Arabs.

Most sensationally, the book lists many celebrities who visited Israel or who said nice things about Israel since the peace agreement, and what they said.

Arabic media in Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere are writing about this book.

The aim is apparently threefold: To embarrass and shame any Egyptians who dared accept the peace agreement with Israel, to blacklist them in the future, and to ensure that no Egyptian even thinks about being friendly to the Jewish state for fear of a second edition of the book.

"Fighting the Jews is a religious duty incumbent upon all"

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from a TV show featuring Egyptian Salafist Muhammad Al-Zawahiri, brother of Al-Qaeda leader, which aired on CBC TV on October 4, 2012.

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: I do not belong to Al-Qaeda or any other organization, but ideologically speaking, I am in agreement with all these organizations. Our common denominator is the Islamic shari'a.

TV host: Are you in agreement with the ideology of Al-Qaeda?

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: With its ideology, but I'm not involved in its activity. The people in Al-Qaeda follow Sunni ideology.

TV host: But this ideology is manifest in the activity which you say you disagree...

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: I didn't say that I disagree with it. I don't agree or disagree. I am saying that I am not a member of any organization so don't ask me about things I did not do.
[...]
Just as Allah commands us to pray, to go on the Hajj pilgrimage, and to adhere to monotheism, he commands us to wage Jihad and to implement the shari'a. We want to fully implement the shari'a, within legitimate constraints. We will not implement something if the time is not right, if it is bound to lead to undesirable or harmful results. We want to implement our religion as revealed in the shari'a.
[...]
Fighting Israel, fighting the Jews is a religious duty incumbent upon all. The Egyptian government should have been fighting the Jewish enemy. Perhaps due to circumstances – its weakness, its interests – the Egyptian government ignored a religious duty incumbent upon it. Not just the Egyptian government – the Jordanian one as well. This is a religious duty incumbent upon all Muslims.
[...]
TV host: I still don't understand how you view the concept of state: You reject democracy, you reject the judiciary because of man-made law...

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: You don't have to go into all those details – I reject anything that runs counter to Islam. Do you agree with that? Likewise, I agree to anything acceptable by Islamic law.

TV host: Do you believe that the elections...

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: Elections are illegitimate.

TV host: Elections run counter to the shari'a?

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: There is evidence for that in the shari'a.

TV host: So you believe that the elections that were held...

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: Allah and the Prophet Muhammad said so. I am willing to sit down and discuss this with anyone who can prove otherwise.

TV host: So you believe that the elections violated the shari'a, and that our man-made law violates the shari'a...

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: Absolutely, and I think that all Muslims should believe this.

TV host: Democracy also violates the shari'a?

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: Anyone who says otherwise is welcome to provide evidence. If such evidence exists, I will take it back.

TV host: So you do not recognize the results of the elections?

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: Absolutely not.

TV host: You do not recognize the president...

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri: I did not recognize the previous president, and I do not recognize this one. I recognize the rule of Islamic religious law.

On a related note, MEMRI also has a TV interview with Arab women who are concerned over the Islamicization of the Arab popular revolutions, and Muhammad Zawahiri's name came up. Excerpt:

TV host: Slogans like "Jihad, oh Obama, Tahrir Square belongs to Osama" have been heard recently in Cairo. Are you worried about this?

Egyptian teacher of Medicine Dr. Nadia Madani: Of course. The Egyptian revolution, whose goals were freedom, social justice, and a better life for the people, should not be turned into a religious or sectarian conflict for whatever reason. Merely hearing such slogans makes you worry that we are heading towards an Afghanistan-like scenario, common in places suffering from religious conflicts, extremism, and restrictions on the lifestyle of the people.

[...]

TV host: When you heard that Muhammad Al-Zawahiri, brother of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, went down to Tahrir Square, what was the first thought that came to your mind?

Dr. Nadia Madani: I immediately imagined a Taliban scenario, and an attempt to undermine the stability of the younger generation, dragging them to violence.

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.