Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 22, 2012

Muslim Brotherhood official resigns over Morsi letter to Peres

Muslim Brotherhood leader Ahmed al-Hamrawy resigned from the group and its Freedom and Justice Party to protest a letter introducing the new Egyptian ambassador to Israel.

The letter was addressed from President Mohamed Morsy to Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Hamrawy, former secretary general of the Lawyers Syndicate in Alexandria, described the letter as “national and religious treason,” and added it a waste of the blood of the Egyptian and Palestinian “martyrs” from 1948 until the present day.

The way the letter appointing the new Egyptian ambassador was written has sparked a wave of criticism by opponents of the president because of its intimate phrasing and what they see as an overly friendly tone.

Hamrawy told Al-Masry Al-Youm, “I handed in my resignation because of the letter that neither the [Brotherhood] nor the [FJP] rejected or disowned, which confirms the presence of secret ties and agreements between the Muslim Brotherhood and Israel that are conducted away from the people and Brotherhood youth, and I reject them, therefore I announced my withdrawal from the group.”

You need not worry that al-Hamrawy will decide to join the more extreme Nour party.

Essam Zahran, former MP for the Salafi-oriented Nour Party, described the writing style of Morsy’s letter to Peres as similar to the letters sent by Prophet Mohamed to Byzantine Emperor Heraclius.

Zahran told Aswat Masriya, a political website, that what Morsy did “has its origin in Islam.”

He described the letter as “following the example of Prophet Mohamed, when he addressed the Byzantine leader, saying ‘from Mohamed the Prophet of Islam to Heraclius the Byzantine greatest,’ and the relations between Muslims and Byzantines then were very similar to our relationship with the Israelis now.”

“The way of writing the letter,” Zahran continued, “does not mean at all satisfaction of the presidency or the Islamic current with the Israeli policies toward our brothers in Palestine. We still see it as a usurper entity that has established their state on the ruins of another state.”

I'm not sure exactly what that other state was.

Israel works with Gaza farmers to export spices

From COGAT:

The ICLA Gaza Assists Farmers with the First Ever Gaza Spice Export

In addition to the usual exported agricultural goods- peppers, a variety of tomatoes, strawberries and flowers, for the very first time, Gaza farmers are exporting spices.

This represents a significant accomplishment for Gaza farmers and merchants, as the average revenue per spice truck is roughly 40,000 NIS, compared with approximately 25,000 NIS per truck with other produce.

The entire project was initiated by the ICLA Gaza [Israeli Coordination and Liaison Adminstration for the Gaza Strip] and coordinated with the Khan Younis Association and the Arava Export Growers as part of the continuous support for agricultural development in the Gaza Strip.

Farmers in Gaza were given tutorials on how to grow spices and they were then provided the seedlings from Israel. This morning, Sunday, 21 October 2012, the inaugural export through Kerem Shalom proved a success. Special arrangements at the crossing were made to accommodate the needs of the exported spices, including capabilities to perform refrigerated quality and security inspections.

Even though this is only one truck, (carrying 9 packages, roughly one ton) it holds a significant amount of product. Furthermore, the spice export via Kerem Shalom will continue throughout the season. Last year agricultural exports from Gaza totaled some 460 tons of strawberry, 160 tons of tomatoes, 58 tons of peppers and 8.8 million units of flowers. The spices will be exported to the European market.

Not only is Israel steadily increasing the amounts of goods that can be exported from Gaza, but Israel even gave Gaza farmers the seeds and worked with them throughout the entire growing process.

Here is more proof that no one in Israel wants to "collectively punish" Gazans, just that they do not want to help the terrorists who run the sector. Given the chance, Israel will work directly with Gazan farmers, furniture and clothing manufacturers to help them export their goods.

Understandably, Israel doesn't want to import the goods themselves; "Made in Gaza" is not exactly a selling point to a nation that sees regular incitement and promises to destroy it. Somehow the world doesn't quite get that Israelis aren't keen to indirectly fund the next rocket that flies towards a Sderot kindergarten. But at the same time, Israelis are not anti-Arab as the haters like to pretend.

Which is why you won't see this story in the anti-Israel far left websites, unless they somehow find a way to twist it .

By the way, we're coming up to one full year since Juan Cole claimed that Israel allows "zero" exports from Gaza - and one full year since he has refused to correct his lie.

(h/t Omri)

Islamists trying to spread Syrian war into Jordan

There have been two very important stories from Jordan in the last day. In the first, Al Qaeda-inspired Jordanian nationals came from Syria to perform a major terror attack:

The Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID) announced on Sunday foiling a major terrorist attack that was in the planning stages by a group of 11 Jordanian nationals.

"Jordan is targeted by a number of fronts that want to spread chaos in the country," Minister of State for Media Affairs Samih Maaytah said.

Maaytah commended during a press conference held at the Prime Ministry the role of the intelligence department in protecting the country, adding that foiling this attempt reveals the strength of the nation and its agencies in defending itself and protecting its citizens.

The Minister said that the 11 individuals who were arrested as part of this operation are all Jordanian nationals who came from Syria and follow the ideology of Al Qaeda, adding that the group was identified and monitored since they entered Jordan from Syria.

And in the other, a Jordanian guard was killed at the border - again, by Islamists in Syria:

An official source at the Jordanian General Armed Forces announced Monday that Corporal Mohammed Abdullah Manaseer al-Abbadi was killed during Sunday night clashes between Jordanian armed forces and an armed group entering from Syria through the northern border, Petra News Agency reported on Monday.

The source said that a group of eight armed people tried to illegally cross the Syrian-Jordanian border and clashed with the Jordanian soldiers at 22:30 local time. The group was arrested with eight Kalashnikov rifles and a 3G rifle .

"Another armed Takfiri group using Kalashnikov rifles and guns tried to cross the border at 24:00 local time and clashed with the Jordanian forces but all of the group was arrested and one of them was critically injured", the source added.

While defeating Iranian-backed Assad should still be the priority, the longer that his fall is delayed makes it more likely that the Syrian revolution will be completely hijacked by Islamists - and not even Muslim Brotherhood-type Islamists, but Al Qaeda terrorists.

And their goal is not just to take over Syria, but the entire Middle East.

The West has bungled Syria, badly, and things are only getting worse because of the endless foot-dragging.

Nice shooting

From YNet:

Israeli aircraft attacked Palestinians who launched mortars toward IDF soldiers near Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip Monday morning.

The soldiers were operating near the security fence separating Israel from the Hamas-ruled enclave when mortar shells were fired in their direction. The soldiers set off smoke bombs, and an Israeli pilot fired a missile at the terrorists. The pilot identified a hit.

Palestinian sources said one person was killed and three others were wounded. Another aerial attack carried out a short while later killed an armed Palestinian who belonged to a terror cell that was operating in Beit Hanoun.

Palestine Today verifies that both of the dead were terrorists, one from Hamas and the other from the PRC. It adds that the injured were also "resistance fighters." The PRC adds that one of the injured terrorists is expected to die at any moment.

Great intel and nice shooting! Virtual candy all around!

How anti-Israel bias creeps into the mainstream media

The Harvard Crimson had an article on October 16 about how Palestinian Arabs who wanted to take the SATs were cruelly blocked by a heartless Israel:

As countless students around the world took the SAT a week ago, Palestinians from the West Bank could not join their ranks. The October SAT exam was cancelled for students in the West Bank: The Israeli authorities held the exams sent by the College Board for weeks, not releasing the tests to AMIDEAST’s office in Ramallah.

This SAT cancellation has been devastating for high school seniors across the West Bank who were planning to apply to college in the United States—including those from the Ramallah Friends School. As alumni of the school, we are proud of its emphasis on global citizenship. RFS has a rich history in Palestine. It was established in 1869 by American Quakers and has since been certified by the International Baccalaureate Organization in Switzerland. About half of RFS students are Palestinian Muslims and the other half are Palestinian Christians—the latter are descendants of the very first Christian community. We have been nurtured by values of peace, nonviolence, social justice, and equality—principles to which many Palestinian families are deeply committed.

The College Board has announced that it will attempt to schedule a make-up test for those students who were supposed to take the October SAT. AMIDEAST suggested in an email that the tests were held because of an “administrative delay.” According to Michael Madormo, English teacher and Director of the College Preparatory Academy at RFS, “the SAT cancellation has been disheartening since it seems that the Israelis had the exams for weeks and despite efforts by UPS, ETS [Educational Testing Service], and AMIDEAST, the tests were not passed through customs.”

Palestinians have suffered from such profound lack of sovereignty for decades now. This latest SAT episode is merely a symptom of systematic attacks on Palestinian education.

There's lots more hate there.

It would not be such a big deal, but Judi Rudoren of the New York Times linked to it on her Facebook account:

At least she decided to wait until after October 20th to write an anti-Israel article, because the truth is much different than how the Harvard Palestinian Arabs characterized it. From AP :

The US State Department said dozens of Palestinian students whose SAT exams were delayed because of Israeli customs will take the test this Saturday.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wednesday that about 100 students in the West Bank will sit the exam this weekend.

“I’m happy to say that we have learned that this issue has now been resolved,” Nuland said.

Mahmoud Amara, a Palestinian principal of the Friends School, said the rare two-week delay affected his students’ ability to apply for American universities. He said US officials told them the delay was because the exams arrived during a series of Jewish holidays, when Israeli customs offices were closed.

The SAT college admissions exams are administered in the West Bank by Amideast, an American non-profit.

A Harvard University publication had reported that the non-profit cancelled the exams in the West Bank.

While Rudoren - a reporter - was "waiting" to see what would happen, AP actually reported it - the tests really were delayed for only two weeks, not "cancelled" after Israel sat on it for "weeks" as the Crimson article accused.

Rudoren might have been impressed with the history of the Ramallah Friends School based on the Crimson article, but perhaps she didn't realize that the school apparently teaches that it is OK to lie about Israel. It must be part of those values that the RFS teaches, as a teacher is quoted in the Crimson as well.

Her willingness to believe the Crimson slander and the queue up an article in her head about it without first even making a phone call says a bit about how some journalists' minds work. In this case, another news agency did the work and Rudoren lost out on a sensational anti-Israel piece that was handed to her by Israel haters at Harvard.

(h/t Adam L., Anne)

While on the subject of China and the Jews...

After last night's weird video of the Chabad kid dancing in a Chinese music competition, this video of an interviewer asking Chinese people what they think about Jews seems quite normal:

Smart, good at business, unified? The big nose seems to be a reasonable trade-off!

Meryl Yourish has been around the JBlogosphere from the very start, years longer than even me. Recently she wrote a fantasy novel for young adults.

If you or your kids are into that, check out Darkness Rising: Book One of The Catmage Chronicles.

Knowing Meryl and from reading the blurb, I bet that there are a few Jewish themes to be found in the book.

And you'll especially like it if you are a cat person :)

Terrorist fans worried that Qatar construction might moderate Hamas

The Hamas mouthpiece Palestine Times has an op-ed of the type you are not likely to see in Western newspapers.

You see, Qatar is offering hundreds of millions of dollars worth of construction material for Gaza, and it has arranged for the entry of that material from Israel and Egypt.

There are a lot of unanswered questions from Palestinian people and observers of the affair, especially Hamas and its government in Gaza. The first question: What will Qatar get out of this? Will The Hamas Government be asked to pay a political price for this support?...We must recognize that Hamas welcomes any support provided to the Palestinian people as long as this support is not politicized.... There may be improbable thinking by America and Israel that there may be collusion of Qatar in this context [where construction is conditioned on a truce,] but there Second Party in the equation which is the Palestinian resistance, led by Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, and which do not see the resistance as a tactic but as a strategy and the only way to deal with the occupier, and that this reconstruction will not prevent the resistance to respond to any aggression...

In other words, don't even dream that Hamas might moderate for the better good for Gazan citizens. Let Qatar build all they want, but if Hamas feels it needs to attack Israel, and Israel invades and destroys the buildings in reaction - it isn't Hamas' fault.

Don't tell Karl Vick. He is certain that Hamas is moderating, and he's said so for years. And this op-ed proves that Hamas would rather choose terror than act the way he claims they are already acting, even if paid hundreds of millions.

Sunday links

From Ian:

Are Labour MEPs anti-Semitic?

Clearly, Labour MEPs care as little for the plight of Palestinian Arabs of the “West Bank” as they do for the Sahrawi Arabs of the Western Sahara; the former are just another stick with which to bash Israel. They are lying when they say otherwise."

The EU’s Hezbollah fixation
Israel. Europe permits a dormant terrorist potential to thrive in its midst, and it knows so, its denials notwithstanding.

"Yet back in EU headquarters, Hezbollah is confoundingly still regarded as a social movement, part of Lebanon’s legitimate civic and political structure, rather than the Iranian-backed terrorism-exporter that it is. Europe inexplicably remains impervious to Hezbollah’s exceptionally bloody record and ongoing war crimes."

Christian Zionist group: Israel’s case is not being made on the Left

David Brog, head of Christians United for Israel: ‘When Christians turn against Israel, that’s a job for us. When liberals abandon Israel, that’s a challenge for our liberal friends’
“There’s a very good track record of conservatives taking on anti-Israel opinion [among their political allies] that has resulted in what we see today, which is very strong support. It’s not uncritical, but it’s very strong, solid support for Israel in the Republican Party. And that’s got to be the example, because today the problem isn’t on the right. Today the problem is on the left.”

PM: We will build J'lem like they build London, Paris, DC

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday responded to international criticism of a plan to build 797 homes in Gilo, saying that Israel will continue construction in Jerusalem in the same way that the international community builds in their own individual capitals.
"We place no limits on construction in our capital city," Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting. "Just as they build in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow, we will continue to build in Jerusalem."

Low voter turnout hurts Fatah in first Palestinian elections in six years

"Turnout was just under 55 percent, reflecting voter apathy, and in several key towns, Fatah renegades won more council seats than candidates endorsed by Abbas’ party, election officials said."

Palestinian Terrorist Serving 11 Life Terms Selected as Mayor of Village Near Bethlehem

Hezbollah, Lebanon's Baath call for eradication of Israel
BEIRUT: Hezbollah and Lebanon’s Baath Party stressed Friday the need for unity to foil "the conspiracy" against the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis and called for the eradication of Israel.

Turkish schoolbooks denounce Darwin, Einstein as 'Jews'

"Turkish schoolchildren in Istanbul received a series of books denouncing scientific figures, including one denying the theory of evolution and describing Charles Darwin as a big-nosed Jew, the Financial Times reported Friday."

MEMRI: Egyptian Researcher: Hitler Was a "Righteous Believer" According to the Old Testament

(He's also claimed the Pope is Jewish)

UNWatch: PA summons Russia envoy over blocking of anti-Israel vote at UNESCO

"Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki has asked Moscow’s ambassador to the PA to clarify why Russia initiated a successful motion at UNESCO last week to postpone a series of Arab-sponsored resolutions condemning Israel."

Poppy Vendors of Bradford under Protection

According to The Sun, the 'youths' in question were 'Asian' hoodies about 12 years of age. Sadly, this was not an isolated incident, with other vendors being abused in the city centre, two of them being ‘set upon’ and one having her collection tin stolen.

Double Standards: Russia troops kill 49 militants in North Caucasus sweep

Inspector Clouseau is back! Dubai police chief: ‘I hate you, Peres’

"Dhahi Khalfan, who has over 250,000 Twitter followers, made headlines following the assassination of Mahmoud Mabhouh, a senior Hamas official who imported arms into Gaza, in a Dubai hotel in January 2010."

Stryker acquires Surpass Medical for $135m
The Tel Aviv based company is developing and commercializing flow diversion stent technology to treat brain aneurysms.

New Photography Project Puts Jewish Jerusalem Back on the Map
A new Google Street style project documenting the streets of Jerusalem has been launched online, enabling anyone in the world to take a virtual tour of Jerusalem. The project, which took two years to complete, was launched a few days ago.

Settlers treat electrocuted Palestinian boy
Severely injured child's parents take him to Neve Tzuf, where medics stabilize him until ambulance evacuates him to Israeli hospital

Israel Advanced Technology Industries - Made In Israel VIDEO

Also:

A story I think I missed from September:

Hamas destroys cultural center (h/t L King)

The Al-Etehad Gallery in Gaza was unique: until last week it was the last cultural center on Hamas government land allowed to stay open. A symbol of the arts in Gaza, a place desperately in need of cultural distractions, it catered to families looking for some respite from the Occupation.

But that all changed last week when Hamas officials decided to bulldoze the building. According to government sources, the gallery owners were late on their rent payments but most Gazans raised more than an eyebrow at this ‘reason’ for the destruction of yet another cultural center.

The lemony secrets of an ancient garden (MFA)

An Arab maverick in Israel (Tablet)

“I sent three of my boys to military service with full conviction,” Juhja tells me over muddy coffee and cigarettes in his home. “For an Arab, sending one’s sons into the army is a brave decision. I’m a trailblazer.”

In 2004 one of those sons, 19-year-old Staff Sgt. Sa’id Juhja, paid the ultimate price for the Jewish state when he was killed in a bomb attack in Gaza. Shortly after, the bereaved father built a memorial to his son and seven other Arab soldiers killed in uniform over the years. The site—built on Juhja’s own initiative, property, and dime—is the only one of its kind in Israel.

(h/t Yoel)

French TV reporter sexually assaulted at Tahrir Square

From The Daily Mail:

Right before the attack

A correspondent for France 24 TV was 'savagely attacked' near Cairo's Tahrir Square after being seized by a crowd, the network said on Saturday.

The news channel said in a statement that Sonia Dridi was attacked around 10:30pm on Friday after a live broadcast on a protest at the square and was later rescued by a colleague and other witnesses.

It was the latest case of violence against women at the epicenter of Egypt's restive protests.

'More frightened than hurt,' wrote Dridi in French on her Twitter page on Saturday.
Referring in English to a colleague, she tweeted: 'Thanks to @ashrafkhalil for protecting me in #Tahrir last nite. Mob was pretty intense. thanks to him I escaped from the unleashed hands.'

Ashraf Khalil, who works with France 24's English language service, said the crowd was closing in on him and Dridi while they were doing live reports on a side street off Tahrir.

He said the attack and rescue took about half an hour, but it felt like a lot longer.
'The crowd surged in and then it went crazy. It was basically me keeping her in a bear hug, both arms around her and face-to-face,' he said, estimating that at least 30 men were involved.

Khalil said they retreated into a fast food restaurant with a metal door, to keep her out of the reach of the attackers.

He said they hustled into a car, and some men banged on it as it sped away. Some of their belongings had been stolen, he said.

"I was groped everywhere. I realised [later], when someone closed my shirt, that it was opened, but not torn off. I avoided the worst because I have a good belt," and a friend helped her out, she said.

Now that this has been repeated so many times, I think we can say that this is an Egyptian cultural thing, and as such it is as worthy of respect as calling for the death of infidels, firebombing media that makes fun of Islamic prophets, bombing Jews in pizza shops, shooting rockets at civilians and other cultural habits in Arab countries. How dare the Western media take sides! This is another sacred tradition that shows the importance of masculinity in Arab culture!

And the fact that police were nowhere to be found is all the proof you need that this is not considered a problem in Egypt today, despite the occasional group that complains about it.

Egyptian police: Attempt to smuggle Jewish property papers out of Egypt

Ever since last month's conference on Jewish refugees from Arab lands conference at the UN, Egypt has been nervously reporting about demands by Jews to gain restitution for property that they lost when they were forced to flee Egypt.

Now, on Friday:

Cairo police seized 13 parcels in large suitcases in Nasr City containing private books and papers of Jews in Egypt. These parcels were intended to be sent out of the country, where investigations revealed that they were en route to Jordan.

The newspaper Al-Ahram said it is likely that these files and papers were from the government, and intense efforts to catch the owner of these shipments are underway, after it was discovered the existence of the name of an unknown foreign woman on the parcels.

...These papers and books are very old, and contain information about the Jews in Egypt.

Investigations have revealed that these packages would go out of the country on behalf of a foreign woman to Jordan and from there to Israel, and then used in the prosecution of Egypt...

I asked a friend who is an expert in such matters whether this makes sense, and the respose was "It seems that the Egyptians are running scared about this whole Israeli campaign to recover Jewish assets. They are quite capable of framing a woman in order to try and scare off any Jews who might want to take the law into their own hands. And it’s a warning to any Egyptian who might be thinking of helping Israel gather information!"

The story seems fishy to me as well. It seems that if you wanted to smuggle papers from Egypt to Israel, Jordan would not be the preferred route - a European country would make a lot more sense. Chances are they found a lot of documents, a minority of which had something to do with Jews, and their imaginations took over from there.

Morsi prays along as preacher calls for ethnic cleansing of Jews

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from a sermon delivered by Egyptian cleric Futouh Abd Al-Nabi Mansour, Head of Religious Endowment, Matrouh governorate, in the presence of Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi. The sermon aired on Egyptian Channel 1 on October 19, 2012.

Futouh Abd Al-Nabi Mansour: [...] Oh Allah, absolve us of our sins, strengthen us, and grant us victory over the infidels. Oh Allah, deal with the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, disperse them, rend them asunder. Oh Allah, demonstrate Your might and greatness upon them. Show us Your omnipotence, oh Lord.

(Originally MEMRI translated "deal with" as "destroy." But other Arabic speakers say that "destroy" was accurate.)

Egypt partially eases its 11-week fuel blockade of Gaza

From Ma'an:

Fuel donated by Qatar will be pumped in limited quantities into the Gaza Strip on Sunday, an official confirmed.

Liaison official Raed Fattouh said Israel partially opened their Kerem Shalom crossing on Sunday to allow the entry of the fuel.

The resumption of deliveries was announced earlier this week by Palestinian officials.

Delivery of Qatari fuel began in July, but was cut off after a border attack on Egyptian officers on Aug. 5.

So Egypt has been withholding fuel from Gaza for over two months - and no one has reported it.

Ma'an elliptically mentioned it in September, saying that Hamas was demanding that the Qatar fuel shipments be resumed, but it didn't note that the shipments ended because of the Sinai attack.

In other words, to put this into terms that "human rights" groups would put it if Israel had done the same thing (mostly using language by PCHR, which has been utterly silent on Egypt's blockade of Gaza):

Egypt made a unilateral decision to collectively punish Gazans in August by withholding fuel for the Gaza power plant. By reacting to a single attack in such a disproportionate manner, Egypt endangered the lives of over 1.7 million people, especially those who need hospital services and other round-the-clock medical care. Egypt moreover repeatedly denied pleas by the Gaza authorities to resume the life-giving shipments of humanitarian fuel, showing a callous disregard to the lives of innocent human beings.

Palestinians are only granted permission by Egypt to leave Gaza in extremely limited circumstances. Exports from Gaza to Egypt are almost nil, and imports from Egypt when they arrive at all are in dramatically insufficient quantities. In contrast, before 2005, Egypt regularly exported up to 8,600 truckloads of goods per month to Gaza. The illegal closure of the Gaza Strip is enacted as a form of collective punishment by the Egyptian authorities. The current closure regime violates numerous principles of international humanitarian law and international human rights law including, inter alia, Article 43 of the Hague Regulations, and Articles 33, 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the right to life, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to freedom of movement and the right to self-determination, which is indispensable for the development of a society in which people can live with human dignity.

We call on Egypt to immediately lift its illegal blockade on Gaza and to allow unlimited transfer of fuel, humanitarian aid, construction materials and consumer goods, as well as to facilitate the unlimited travel of people across the border. Moreover, we call on Egypt to allow imports of goods from Gaza.

But human rights groups have not been issuing any press releases that say this, or anything close to this. Nothing about collective punishment; no pretense that Egypt is violating international law - nothing. In the past two and a half months of the Egyptian fuel blockade, no NGO even mentioned it, except for a passing reference by the UN's OCHA-OPT in early October and one in late August, as far as I can tell.

Naturally, not one Western "pro-Gaza" group has raised this issue.

The hypocrisy of the media and the "human rights" organizations in ignoring Egypt's conscious decision to withhold fuel from Gaza - fuel that Egypt doesn't even pay for - could not be plainer.

MB:"Allah tells us Jews are liars"

Times of Israel last Wednesday reported:

Incoming ambassadors from Egypt and Jordan presented their credentials to President Shimon Peres on Wednesday, both of them affirming their governments’ desires to maintain their respective peace treaties with Israel and to further peace in the Middle East.

“I came with the message of peace and I came to confirm that we are really working for mutual trust and transparency,” Ambassador Atef Salem of Egypt told Peres at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. “We are committed to all the agreements we signed with Israel and we’re also committed to the peace treaty with Israel.”

During a solemn ceremony, Salem, the new Egyptian ambassador in Tel Aviv, handed Peres his letter of credence — a diplomatic missive in which one head of state asks his or her counterpart to accept the bearer as new ambassador.

“Great and good friend,” Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, wrote in the letter to his Israeli counterpart, “being desirous of maintaining and strengthening the cordial relations which so happily exist between our two countries, I have selected Mr. Atef Mohamed Salem Sayed El Ahl to be our ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary.” Morsi closed his letter, which largely followed standard diplomatic language for the exchange of ambassadors, by expressing “highest esteem and consideration.”

The Arab world reacted to the news of this flowery letter with utter disbelief.

Egyptian media quoted leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood as denying the authenticity of the letter:

Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood launched a strong attack against the Israeli press, and accused them of lying in reporting on a message by President Morsi to Israeli President Shimon Peres, published by a number of Israeli newspapers, in the framework of the ceremony of sending an Egyptian ambassador to Israel. Dr. Abdul Khaliq al-Sharif, Muslim Brotherhood official, said that God describes Jews as lying and fading. Sharif added, in a special statement for Youm7, "since when were Jews honest? How can we believe them when they are described by God, who created them, as lying."

He said that the Israeli Prime Minister complained frequently that the Egyptian President does not mention the name of Israel in his speeches. and added, "It may be what happened was a trick of Israelis.

However, a spokesman for Morsi's office verified the letter's authenticity to Egyptian media:

A spokesman for Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi confirmed on Thursday that the president had sent a letter to Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres calling him a good friend.

The letter, presented to Peres by incoming ambassador Atef Salem on Wednesday, sparked an outcry in Egypt for marking a new level of normalization, with one Muslim Brotherhood official calling it a “fabrication.”

But Morsi spokesman Yassir Ali told Egyptian state-run newspaper Ahram that the letter was “100 percent correct.”

(h/t Ian, Lachian)

Chabad teen in Chinese dance competition (video)

One of the weirder things you will see today.

Supposedly, he won, but I can't confirm that. The video was originally uploaded in 2009.

Nothing on this at the Chabad of Shenzhen webpage.