Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 16, 2013

Qaradawi: "Even the Jews never did a massacre like the Egyptians"

Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi, the antisemitic, terror supporting TV preacher who is allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, decided to use the J-bomb in his criticism of the Egyptian crackdown on Islamists.

In a phone interview on Al Jazeera, he said that he never saw such a "massacre" such as the army in Egypt performed with the help of the police, "even from the Jews."

He claimed that they killed and burned thousands of demonstrators.

Qaradawi demanded that Egyptians go out "to defend the gains of the January revolution and the defense of the innocent martyrs."

Even worse than the Jews? How can such a thing be?

8/16 Links Part 1: Hobson’s choice, Pollard Speaks, Palestinian Heroes, Would Norway Release Breivik?

From Ian:

Sarah Honig Hobson’s choice – the Obama variation

The buzz about Obama’s alleged variation on Hobson’s choice might be altogether unfounded. In that case all we’d supposedly gain from going to the gallows is the hope that we can at the last moment avoid execution but in the meanwhile diminish our excruciating delegitimization abroad.
Our delegitimization, though, is inextricably bound with Obama’s perception that there’s no conflict with Islam and that peace on earth and goodwill to all men would be at hand… if Israel weren’t in the way.
With that in mind, can anyone seriously count on Obama to fight Israel’s fight? He hasn’t exactly been eager to fight America’s own fight. Hence the panicky evacuation of US embassies. Hence the preposterous resort to the YouTube pretext and the workplace violence charade.

Jonathan Pollard: Restoring Israel to greatness

The Land of Israel is eternal and the State of Israel has temporal stewardship over the land. The corrosive moral ambiguity that has brought us to this dreadful day is relentlessly eating away at the legitimacy of the state’s continued role as legal guardian of the land. The prognosis is dire.
Only a reawakening of national resolve and a rebirth of ethical politics rooted in national selfrespect, moral rectitude and courage of conviction can guarantee the future. No political process devoid of these fundamental values will ever end the agony or the fear for the State of Israel.
It is clearly time for an historic restoration.

Irwin Cotler: Israel and the United Nations

While Ban cannot control the actions of member states, he does have the power to give moral leadership and direction. Words matter.
In his public speeches on Friday, he should condemn the systematic bias perpetrated against the Jewish state by numerous UN agencies, in gross violation of the UN Charter’s guarantee of equal treatment to all nations large and small.
Mr. Ban should acknowledge that the UN Human Rights Council, meant to embody the organization’s highest principles, is a case study of such bigotry. Examples abound.

Netanyahu protests anti-Israel incitement at UNRWA camps

At a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to present proof of anti-Israel incitement in summer camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian children in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
Videos show counselors at a UNRWA camp telling campers that the Israeli cities of Acre and Haifa will soon return to Arab hands and that all means of fighting Israel are legitimate, including jihad.

JPost Editorial: PA incitement

A documentary broadcast twice on official PA TV declared that the PA plans to destroy Western Wall Plaza, Judaism’s ultra-scared prayer site frequented by millions of Jews, and replace it with assorted edifices. The documentary stated that Jews worshiping at the Western Wall were “sin and filth.” No foreign statesmen or journalists were bothered in the least.
There is more here than an unspeakable double standard.
Ceaseless indoctrination of young, impressionable minds is an antithesis to peace. Its effects are lasting and pernicious. The PA has promised repeatedly to clean up its act but in reality has done the opposite with absolute impunity. Clearly in the eyes of the international community, Ramallah’s rulers are unassailable, which in itself constitutes a huge disincentive to compromise.

WSJ Editorial: Palestinian Heroes
Releasing murderers will not advance the peace process.

The Israeli decision to release the prisoners was shortly followed by the approval of additional construction permits for housing in East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements. The move elicited howls of condemnation from the usual suspects, as if building houses is more objectionable than murdering people in cold blood. Perhaps the larger question is why anyone should expect that a peace process that begins by setting murderers free is likely to result in peace.

Israeli envoy panned for comparing Palestinian and Norwegian terrorists

Israel’s ambassador to Sweden is drawing fire in Scandinavia after comparing Palestinian prisoners released earlier this week to a Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011.
Isaac Buchman told Swedish Radio on Tuesday that Israel’s freeing of 26 Palestinian prisoners as part of an agreement to launch peace talks was akin to Norway freeing Anders Breivik, a far-right activist who set off a bomb in Oslo and shot up a summer camp on a nearby island in one of the worst terror attacks in the Continent’s history.

Too Good to Last By David Pryce-Jones

Time to pay our respects to what was, and for European Jews to move elsewhere?
The European Union perceives nationalism itself as the cause of war, and seeks to deconstruct altogether the concept of the nation-state. Israel is the embodiment of the sense of proud nationhood that runs counter to EU ideology. With a logic all their own, EU policy makers oppose Israel while doing whatever they can to build a nation-state of Palestine. Jewish communities are unsettled to observe large-scale EU subsidies ending up in the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists, or measures like the boycott recently imposed on products, goods, and personnel coming from Jewish settlements beyond the pre-June 1967 borders.
If Jews do indeed abandon Europe, it will be to escape a situation in which their very identity is increasingly treated as a matter of suspicion and political contention. Should an emigration en masse come to be a reality, Gurfinkiel concludes, it would constitute “a profound blow to the collective psyche of the Jewish people” as well as a shattering judgment on the “so-called European idea.” In the absence of living Jews, Europeans will have nothing but Holocaust museums and memorials on which to base the moral reckoning of their past.

Add Brussels to the List of Where Jews Need to Hide. Again.

For years there have been reports of Jews being warned not to wear items that identify them as Jewish in places where there are large or numbers are particularly aggressive anti-Semites.
People are told it is best not to wear Magen David necklaces outside their clothing, or kippot on their heads when visiting certain neighborhoods in France, in England, certainly throughout much of the Arab Middle East or in parts of North Africa.
But now a Jewish school in Belgium has issued an edict to its schoolchildren: do not wear kippot near the school until you are safely inside the steel-paneled fortified building.

'Israeli scientific research does not depend on Europe'

Professor Yisrael Aumann, Nobel laureate in economics, sits down with Israel Hayom to discuss peace talks, European boycotts and the Arab Spring: "Israel should say that it needs no favors, and make up the science budget in place of the Europeans."
The conflict between Israel and Europe has new manifestations and episodes. Quite a few powers are stirring the political pot; some of them hope for a buildup of European pressure to the point of a general boycott that will force Israel to give up the country's heartland. As one of the world's foremost experts on game theory, Aumann has a position on the issue both in terms of his behavior during these conflicts and as a high-ranking member of the scientific community in Israel and worldwide. Not surprisingly, his stance is different from the voices we've been hearing this week.

Visit to Joseph's Tomb in Shechem Interrupted by Stone Throwing

A riot broke out early Thursday morning as Arab men burned tires and threw stones at Israeli worshippers gathered at Joseph’s tomb in Shechem, reported Ma’an, a news agency based in the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Israeli forces escorted buses loaded with Jewish worshippers to the site at midnight and continued to provide security for them until prayers concluded early this morning.

Israel is model for world dairy industries

The Volcani Center is a government-run research institute that investigates everything related to the agriculture industry, including dairy cattle. Miron showed ISRAEL21c his cowshed laboratory, a high-tech outdoor facility that waters, protects, feeds and milks 230 milking cows in the village of Beit Dagan, about 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv.
He shows us how 120,000 cows at Israel’s 1,000 dairies each produce about 11,500 liters of milk per year in an ecologically sound way mandated by law, says Miron.
Delegations from far and wide come to see the Israeli closed-loop cowshed ecosystem. In a typical month, you might see delegations of dairy farmers from Thailand, France, or Russia coming to the Israeli research center, which looks like a big farm.

Israel Tourism to Break Records in August; El Al Surges to Q2 Profit, Orders 6 New 737s

More than 70,000 passengers passed through Ben Gurion International Airport on Friday, August 9, 2013, an all-time high in passenger flow, Globes said. The passenger traffic record is expected to be broken again on Thursday, with Ben Gurion now on track to record the highest monthly passenger traffic numbers in its history for the current month of August.

Animation- Another Way to Tell the Story of the Holocaust

In the 70 years since the Holocaust happened, animation is now able to fill in pictures and videos of Holocaust related material and stand in place of words.
“It’s the first time that this subject, that used to be very heavy and sensitive, comes true in animation. Animators tried to reflect this trauma through the use of animation,” said artist and director Nissim Hezkiyahu.
He continued to stress that animation should not only serve as entertainment, but should also cater to serious topics like the Holocaust.

Gaza could get lots more goods through Israel, but they choose not to

This week I had an email conversation with the COGAT Gaza spokeswoman about the precise process of how goods get transferred into Gaza.

Here is how it works. (These are mostly COGAT's words, I edited them from multiple emails):

When a Gaza businessman wants to order goods from Israel privately, his first stop would be at the PA offices. There, there's a committee that is in charge of integrating all the requests and putting them in order, the Civil Committee of the PA, according to the format that is familiar to both sides. After that, it is that committee's job to pass a list of trucks that are to cross the next day. The head of the civil committee is in direct contact with the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) and they work with him closely every day, through phone calls and meetings, in order to make the work process efficient. The PA committee is the CLA's POC, but it is not the one ordering the goods.

When the lists are received at the Gaza CLA, they get to the approval process, and once they are approved they are passed to the CLA's representatives at Kerem Shalom, who are the first to receive the truck drivers the next morning.

As of today, the capacity of Kerem Shalom is 400 trucks per day. Due to the number of requests from the PA Civil Committee the number of trucks crossing per day never reaches 400. It can go up to 300 trucks on a good day.

Of course, if the Palestinian side would like to add more trucks to cross at Kerem Shalom, they're free to do so. The Israeli side will make its arrangements to meet the demands.

Unfortunately, many trucks are a no show at the crossing, for Palestinian personal matters. The trucks are coordinated, and are on the list, but every day the CLA sees a large number of blank forms for trucks that never crossed. That depends almost entirely on the Palestinians. Should they decide to cancel a truck for whatever reason, the CLA only knows about it at the end of the day, when they sum up the merchandise that went through. (It appears possible that the Israeli seller might renege sometimes as well, but that doesn't appear to be the normal case.)

The Palestinian businessmen do their coordination with Israeli private companies on their own. They only interact with COGAT (through the PA) when it comes to making sure the goods actually cross.

My comments:

While Kerem Shalom can handle 400 trucks a day, and perhaps 300 actually are hired typically, often dozens of the expected trucks never make it, for whatever logistical reasons that the Gazans canceled the delivery at the last minute. Last week about 10% of the expected trucks did not arrive.

The upshot is that Kerem Shalom is not being run at capacity - not even close. If Israel's "siege" was so painful, one would expect that the crossing would be over capacity and that there would be pressure to expand it. But even now that Egypt has cracked down on smuggling, Kerem Shalom is not close to its limit. It has increased transfers markedly, from 4700 in February to 6600 in July, but it can handle far more.

It seems apparent that Hamas prefers goods to be sent through Rafah than from Israel, for a number of reasons. One is that the PA is not involved in Rafah tunnels. Another is that Hamas can tax tunnel goods at will. Yet another is that fuel and some other smuggled goods are cheap because Egypt subsidizes them, so Hamas can buy things like construction material and diesel at a discount. And the fourth is that Israel happily ships goods to businessmen and to NGOs, but not to Hamas. (Also, dual-use materials are still restricted so Hamas has no choice but to smuggle those.)

People and businesses in Gaza don't need that many imports from Egypt - but Hamas does.

The simple fact is that if Gaza was suffering from a "crushing siege," Kerem Shalom would be operating at capacity. It isn't.

Hizballah revealing an alleged military drone today

Arab media are reporting that Hizballah will unveil today the "Mersad-1" aircraft, on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the 2006 Lebanon war. I'm not sure if they are saying that this is a new aircrapft or revealing that it was used in 2006, as Hassan Nasrallah said this week he will reveal secrets about that war.

Ababil UAV, circa 2004

According to the reports, The aircraft - which Hizballah claims to have manufactured itself - has the "ability to execute multiple tasks, including reconnaissance, and hitting targets with high accuracy, and stealth capabilities, and the ability to fly higher than 5,000 meters above sea level, and it is also able carry warheads of up to 30 kg."

This Lebanese website mentions the Mersad-1 in 2010, saying it is an Iranian UAV known as Ababil. Wikipedia has an article about it, saying it is probably the Iranian Mohajer 4.

Israel shot down 3 of the Ababils during the 2006 war.

All of this seems well known, so it is unclear what is being announced today. In fact, as early as 2004, Nasrallah mentioned the UAV, claiming then that it could hold 40 or 50 kg.

Sounds like Nasrallah is trying to misdirect the Arab world from his own problems much closer to home.

From YNet:

During a tour of Sweden to celebrate 40 years of the reigning royals, King Carl Gustaf and his wife, Queen Sylvia, visited the neighboring area of the city of Sundsvall. There they were approached by a man who identified himself as an Iraqi refugee, and who gifted them with hand made keffiyehs, the traditional Arab scarf, as a thank you for allowing him to start a new life in Sweden. He then asked them to pose for the camera with the scarves.

Unbeknownst to the royal couple, however, the keffiyehs were adorned with an anti-Israeli inscription: "Al Aqsa is ours and is not their temple." This fact that came to light only after the photo was published, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

The pictures caused ripples of reaction throughout Sweden. Pro-Palestinian organizations expressed satisfaction with the support the royal couple showed with regards to the Palestinian right over Jerusalem, while others riled at the fact that the King and Queen—even unwittingly—served as a part of Palestinian propaganda.

"On their visits to various parts of the land, the royal couple meets many people," said Bertil Ternert, spokesperson of the Swedish royal house, to Yedioth Ahronoth. "In this case, the man placed the keffiyehs on the King and Queen so quickly, that there was no possibility to take the scarves off before the couple posed for the camera. Shortly after the photo opportunity the King and Queen took off the keffiyehs. We want to stress that the acceptance of this gift holds no political statement of any kind."

Here is an example of how clueless the EU intelligentsia are.

A Swedish newssite that reported this story can't figure out if the statement "Al Aqsa is ours and is not their temple." They even make it sound like the idea that of a Jewish temple is what is controversial:

Michael Schulz, Associate Professor of Peace and Development Studies at the University of Gothenburg says that there is often strife in the area.

- "Jewish religious nationalists are trying to establish a Jewish temple there, 1990, an offensive that resulted in gunfire and bloodshed," he says.

Even Michael Schulz believes that the text of the shawls is a political / religious slogan.

- It's hard to tell if the message is anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli. Most likely it is a mark against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Of course. Because the only problems any Muslims have with Jews is "occupation." That's the breadth of understanding of a professor of "peace and development studies."

Dozens of churches, Christian businesses torched in Egypt

From CNN:

For 67 years, the Virgin Mary Church has been a peaceful refuge for Shenouda El Sayeh, much like the Giza province village of Hafr Hakim where it rests and where he has lived all those years.

But, as he swept its floors on Thursday, it was painfully obvious things had changed.

The night before, a mob -- chanting against Coptic Christians such as El Sayeh and calling for Egypt to become an "Islamic state" -- had torched and looted the Virgin Mary Church.

"I didn't expect this to happen," El Sayeh said.

He's not alone. Christians all around Egypt are cleaning up in the aftermath of a spate of attacks, which not coincidentally came on the county's deadliest day since the 2011 revolution that overthrew longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

Bishop Angaelos, the Cairo-born head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said he was told by colleagues in Egypt that 52 churches were attacked in a 24-hour span that started Wednesday, as well as numerous Christians' homes and businesses.

Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told CNN he had confirmed attacks on at least 30 churches so far, in addition to the targeting of church-related facilities, including schools and cultural centers.

Those churches reportedly set ablaze Wednesday included St. George Church in Sohag, a city south of Cairo on the Nile River.

And the new day brought new attacks. Prince Tadros Church in Fayoum, which is southwest of Cairo, was stormed and burned Thursday night, according to the official Middle East News Agency.

CNN is trying to avoid blaming any group for the torchings, but Al Ahram explains who did it:

Incensed by the bloody crackdown that has claimed more than 500 lives, Morsi loyalists orchestrated nationwide assaults on Christian targets, wreaking havoc on churches, homes, and Christian-owned businesses throughout the country.

The Muslim expression "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people" is coming true in Egypt.
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8/15 Links Part 2: Treat Terrorists like Pirates, In Arabic, Jerusalem is Jewish, Jackie Mason on the Conflict

From Ian:

Treat Terrorists like Pirates

International law today paralyzes civilized nations in their war against terrorism. In fact, Israel’s former Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak once bragged that “we fight against the terrorists with one arm tied behind our back.” But in my view, phony liberals who warn that we shouldn’t “sink to the level of the enemy” are pretentious, racist, and hypocritical.
Few among us understand that the most ancient foundations of international law are supposed to bolster, not weaken the war against terrorism. The historic parallel to today’s terrorist organizations are the pirates, those gangs of outlaws who instilled fear in the hearts of passengers on land and sea, and were defined as early as the time of the Roman Empire as “enemies of humanity.”

In Arabic, Jerusalem is Jewish

Over the weekend, four terrorists preparing a rocket attack against Israel were killed by a drone – probably Israeli – as they were getting ready to launch their lethal weapons. The group that took “credit” for preparing the terrorist attack is an Al-Qaeda affiliate calling itself “Ansar Beit al Maqdes”. Writing in response to my recent post on the origin of the name “Palestine”, my friend Ilan Pomeranc pointed out that this Jihadi group’s name witnesses to the Jewish status of Jerusalem.
“Ansar Beit al Maqdes” literally means the “Army of the Holy Temple”. Media outlets mistranslate the name as “Army for Jerusalem”, but Jerusalem does not appear in the name at all. In Arabic, “Jerusalem” is often called, in shorthand vernacular, “al-Quds”. What this term literally means is “the Holy”. “Quds” is merely an Arabization of the Hebrew “Kadosh” i.e., “Holy”. So if you put the two Arabic names for Jerusalem together what you get is “al-Quds al-Maqdes” which literally means “the place of the Holy Temple”.

UN-touchable

Paralyzed by fear of the UN, the project has either been simply ignored or transferred over the years from one government agency to the other. Even the small initial step of identifying alternative sites suitable to the UNRWA facility’s relocation has not been taken. So that at this very late date, Jerusalem, in dire need of new residential developments, lies in waiting.
Forty-six years have passed since the Six Day War, during which time the entire area surrounding the UNRWA compound, stuck here like a bone in the throat, has been transformed and modernized.
Isn’t it time we had that bone removed and correct this anomaly by completing this important urban area appropriately? A modicum of political courage can make a modern Jewish neighborhood here a reality.

Britain's diplomacy of hypocrisy

For years now Britain has been at the forefront of the global effort to return Israel to its 1967 borders. It is a historically loyal ally of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, who efficiently and doggedly seek to realize their phased plan to eventually end Israel, i.e. pushing the Jews to the "Blue Line," the Mediterranean Sea.
The academic boycott against Israel, similar to the boycott on Israeli goods from Judea and Samaria, are an expression of Britain's diplomacy of hypocrisy. Britain preaches morality to us day and night because of our grip on our national homeland, while it refuses to ease its grip on territories it conquered out of clear imperialistic ambitions. Britain should look in the mirror at its own flaws, and not try to force us, in the name of its hypocrisy, to commit suicide.

Jackie Mason on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict

17 Yemeni Jews secretly airlifted to Israel

The operation — a coordinated effort among the Jewish Agency and the Israeli ministries for the interior, foreign affairs and immigration absorption — was prompted by growing concern for the safety of the Jews in Yemen, according to the Jewish Agency. Anti-Semitic violence has been a growing problem since the 2011 ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The airlift brings to 45 the number of Yemeni Jews who have been brought to Israel this year and 151 since 2009.
Fewer than 90 Jews remain in Yemen, with about half of them living in a guarded structure in the capital, Sa’ana, Haaretz reported.

'Hidden' Polish Jews Embrace Their Heritage in Israel

In order to save their children from the clutches of the Nazis and their Polish accomplices, many Jews in Poland handed over their young children to sympathetic Polish families during the Holocaust era. Many of those children survived physically, but not as Jews.
As they grew up, many of these children raised their own children as Poles, and nominally if not actively Catholic. Nevertheless, many of them remained aware of their Jewish heritage, and in recent years their descendants – now themselves adults, many of them in their 20s and 30s – have come to find out about their Jewish heritage, and are interested in hearing more.

Merkel to become first German leader to visit Dachau

Merkel will lay a wreath at the site’s memorial, make a short speech, and will tour the camp, AFP reported, citing Merkel’s spokesperson.
Merkel will be joined on her visit by Holocaust survivor Max Mannheimer, director of the site, and by Bavaria’s education minister.
In 1992, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl turned down a request to visit the concentration camp, angering Jewish and Israeli groups. Seven years earlier, US President Ronald Reagan also refused to visit, saying that he and Kohl both agreed that it was unnecessary.

Online Hate Prevention Institute Denounces Holocaust-Denying Facebook Account, Calls on Social Media Companies to be ‘Socially Responsible’

“The Untold History” Facebook account was created on March 20, 2013. It mainly features pictures and collages of Holocaust imagery with captions suggesting that the photos were staged, or have been misrepresented by Jewish interests.
Practitioners of Holocaust inversion, a theme which is prevalent on the page, attempt to falsely portray “Israel, Israelis, and Jews as Nazis,” according to Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Israel builds world’s first fire forecasting system

Research Director Besora Regev and geographic systems information manager Shai Amram demonstrated Matash to interested delegates from countries including Spain, Bulgaria, Italy, Croatia, South Korea and Kenya at a homeland security conference in Tel Aviv last fall. The system operates in English, so it could be used anywhere.
Strategizing how to fight forest fires is largely luck and guesswork because so many unpredictable or unknown factors affect how it spreads, from wind conditions to the moisture level of the vegetation.

2 Israeli researchers among Top 10 rising stars in Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Aviv Zohar and Dr. Ariel Procaccia — both PhD graduates of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – have been named among ‘AI’s 10 to Watch‘ by IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine. Published every two years, the list recognizes 10 researchers who are rising stars in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

Another billion-ish buyout: IBM buys Israeli security firm

Just months after a jumbo buyout of an Israeli start-up by a tech giant, IBM is acquiring Israel-based Trusteer, a maker of security software to protect data from phishing and other malware attacks, in a deal rumored to be worth between $800 million and a cool billion.
Now in the IBM orbit, Trusteer, with R&D in Israel and an office in Boston, will become the nucleus of a new IBM cyber-security research center that the multinational plans to establish here.
Trusteer was established in 2006 and has about 300 employees, and is one of the largest security firms working in the online banking space. Among its customers are institutions like Bank of America, Société Générale, INGDirect, HSBC, NatWest, The Royal Bank of Scotland, and more.

Israel Daily Picture: Another Photographic Treasure Found in a Far-Flung Antique Collection -- From a Jewish "Kiwi" Soldier's Album

Since crossing the arid Sinai Desert and its confrontation with a hostile Turkish enemy and, more often than not, a treacherous contact with Arab Bedu tribesmen - The Auckland Mounted Rifles agreed it was a joy to meet a people who had just been freed from Turkish tyranny. It was a land worked into agriculture and planted with fruit trees and vineyards. Not only were the men taken with the settlement conditions, the horses too were impressed and ate heartily of green feed, and enjoyed the soil firm under foot.
A few weeks later the Regiment remembered the village, the official history "Two Campaigns" reported: "On January 12, the brigade moved north to Rishon LeZion, the Jewish village near to Ayun Kara, and there tents were provided, and training and football again became the normal life."

Star of David Crop Circle Appears in British Wheat Field (VIDEO)

Here’s one for all the conspiracy theorists out there: a crop circle in what appears to be the shape of the Star of David was spotted this week in Hackpen Hill, near Broad Hinton, Wiltshire, United Kingdom.
Discovered on August 11th, photos were posted to the website crop circle connector, and speculation as to what the sign could mean was rampant on social media sites. On one Facebook page focusing on crop circles, one commented pointed to “The Sun, Star and 6 Spirals.”

Spoons in underwear to help stop forced marriage

From AFP:

As Britain puts airport staff on alert to spot potential victims of forced marriage, one campaigning group says the trick of putting a spoon in their underwear has saved some youngsters from a forced union in their South Asian ancestral homelands.

The concealed spoon sets off the metal detector at the airport in Britain and the teenagers can be taken away from their parents to be searched -- a last chance to escape a largely hidden practice wrecking the lives of unknown thousands of British youths.

The British school summer holidays, now well under way, mark a peak in reports of young people -- typically girls aged 15 and 16 -- being taken abroad on “holiday,” for a marriage without consent, the government says.

The bleep at airport security may be the last chance they get to escape a marriage to someone they have never met in a country they have never seen.

The spoon trick is the brainchild of the Karma Nirvana charity, which supports victims and survivors of forced marriage and honor-based abuse.

Based in Derby, central England, it fields 6,500 calls per year from around Britain but has almost reached that point so far in 2013 as awareness of the issue grows.

When petrified youngsters ring, “if they don’t know exactly when it may happen or if it’s going to happen, we advise them to put a spoon in their underwear,” said Natasha Rattu, Karma Nirvana’s operations manager.

“When they go though security, it will highlight this object in a private area and, if 16 or over, they will be taken to a safe space where they have that one last opportunity to disclose they're being forced to marry,” she told AFP.

“We’ve had people ring and that it’s helped them and got them out of a dangerous situation. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do with your family around you -- but they won't be aware you have done it. It’s a safe way.”

The charity is working with airports -- so far London Heathrow, Liverpool and Glasgow, with Birmingham to come -- to spot potential signs, such as one-way tickets, the time of year, age of the person and whether they look uncomfortable.

“These are quite general points, but there are things that if you look collectively lead you to believe something more sinister is going on,” said Rattu.

People who come forward can be escorted out of a secure airport exit to help outside.

Marriages without consent, or their refusal, have led to suicides and so-called honour killings, shocking a nation widely deemed to have successfully absorbed immigrant communities and customs.

Officials fear the number of victims coming forward is just the tip of the iceberg, with few community leaders prepared to speak out and risk losing their support base.

One woman, whose identity was protected by Essex Police in southeast England, was forced to get married in India.

She said she was threatened by her father “because he said if I thought about running away he would find me and kill me.”

“I was shipped off with a total stranger.

“That night I was raped by my husband and this abuse continued for about eight and half years of my life.”

She eventually fled.

Last year, the Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit dealt with some 1,500 cases -- 18 percent of them men.

A third of cases involved children aged under 17. The oldest victim was aged 71; the youngest just two.

Two?!?!

Egyptian TV analyst: "Muslim Brotherhood acts just like Jews", plus a classic essay by John Derbyshire

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from a statement by Ahmad Taha Al-Naqr, spokesman of the Egyptian Association for Change, which aired on ON TV on August 14, 2013.

Ahmad Taha Al-Naqr: I'd like to focus on the connection between the Jews and the Muslim Brotherhood. The MB have adopted the policy of the Jews, and they are implementing it to the letter, with respect to the invasion of the media, presenting an image of eternal victims…

They use violence and view others as Gentiles. The Jews always say that non-Jews are Gentiles and that it is permitted to kill them – Gentiles can be killed or banished, like they do to the Palestinians.

The [August 14] Rabaa massacre was orchestrated in the same style as the historical Masada massacre of the Jews, so that the MB would be able to continue to harp on about it, thus justifying foreign intervention in the affairs of Egypt. They actually demanded such foreign intervention. Anyone demanding intervention in his country's affairs is committing high treason. They simply clone and implement the image of the Jews.

The Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, said that General Abdel al-Sisi's mother was Jewish.

So do we support the rabidly Jew-hating Islamists, or the rabidly Jew-hating secularists?

It reminds me of a great essay, written 11 years ago but that could have been written today, by John Derbyshire in National Review.

I recently got a long, carefully composed e-mail from a reader, who begged me to circulate it among "other opinion-formers." It laid out a plan for peace in the Middle East. The writer, obviously an intelligent and well-informed person, had composed the e-mail with great care. With some passion, too — he really wants to find a solution to the Israel-Arab problem. Here was a public-spirited person doing his citizenly best to promote an idea that, he fervently believed, would put an end to the horrors.

And what was that idea? In a nutshell: The U.S. should lean hard on Israel to abandon the Jewish settlements in Arab land — i.e. beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders. These settlements (my reader argued) were the root cause of all the strife. Closing them down would remove the main casus belli; and the good faith shown by this act would open the eyes of the Arabs to the fact that peace with Israel is possible. The logjam would be broken.

I don't know what to say to people like this. Obviously they are decent, good citizens. Obviously they are trying their best — trying to be constructive, to give some hope to the world. How do I tell them what I feel? Which is, that they are floating in orbit between Uranus and Neptune — inhabiting some place that does not touch the real world at any point.

Look: Possibly there would be some abstract justice in closing down the settlements, I don't know. I don't see it myself, I must admit. Why should Jews not live among Arabs? Lots of Arabs live in Israel, and do very well there. There are rich Israeli Arabs; there are Israeli-Arab pop stars and comedians; there are Israeli-Arab intellectuals, teachers, writers, businessmen, athletes. Why, when the whole thing gets sorted out, should there not be Jews living in Arab territory — as there were for centuries past? What, exactly, is wrong with the settlements? I don't see it.

But, okay, let's suppose there is some valid moral objection to the existence of the settlements; and let's suppose my reader's plan were to be carried out, and all the settlements were removed, their populations transferred back to metropolitan Israel, their buildings razed, their fields ploughed with salt. Does anybody think it would make a damn bit of difference? There was no such thing as settlements, no such thing as "occupied territories," before the 1967 war. There were no such things in 1960, for example, when Adolf Eichmann was abducted from his hiding-hole in Buenos Aires by Israeli secret agents, an event recorded by Saudi Arabia's principal government-controlled newspaper as: "ARREST OF EICHMANN, WHO HAD THE HONOR OF KILLING 6 MILLION JEWS".

The problem of the Middle East is not the settlements. It is not this piece of land or that piece. It is not the Golan Heights or East Jerusalem or Temple Mount. It is not oil, or land, or water, or history, or geography, or metaphysics. The problem is in plain sight. You know what the problem is, and so do I. The problem is that the Middle East hates the Jews.

I say "the Middle East" because I don't know any more precise way to say it. You can't say "the Arabs" (though of course the Arabs hate the Jews more than anyone), because the Iranians and the Pakistanis and the Berbers of North Africa hate the Jews too, and they are not Arabs. You can't say "the Muslims". That is a lot closer, I think, and there surely cannot be much doubt that institutional Islam is riddled with Jew-hatred. Still, Malaysia is a Muslim country, and they don't hate the Jews, except in a go-along, pro forma sort of way, to keep on good terms with the Saudis and Gulf Emirs.

And I am sure, before you write to tell me, that lots of people in the Middle East don't hate the Jews. Lots of Arabs, millions probably, don't hate the Jews. Probably lots of non-Arab Muslims don't hate the Jews, either. Yet it's hard to avoid the impression, from reading the MEMRI translations, from looking at the kinds of things taught in schools all over the Middle East (and in Islamic schools here in the U.S.A. — see below), from listening to the pronouncements of Middle East politicians (remember the Syrian foreign minister explaining to the Pope — to the Pope! — that: "When I see a Jew in front of me, I kill him"?) and from random conversations with New York cab drivers, that visceral, murderous Jew-hatred is awfully widespread among Arabs, Pakistanis, Iranians, and North Africans. Awfully widespread.

[...]
It is not too difficult to envisage a plan by which the spoken grievances of the Arabs against Israel could be addressed, and some compromise struck. The chancelleries of the world — including Israel's — are in fact full of such plans, drawn up with loving care by legions of diplomats, experts, politicians, ambassadors, scholars and private do-gooders like my reader, across decades of time. In an atmosphere of goodwill, and genuine desire for a solution, the Palestine circle could be squared. You'd just have to pull one of those plans down from the shelf, blow the dust off it, and say: "Let's take this for a starting point, shall we?" The circle is not going to be squared though — not by George W. Bush, not by my e-mail pal with his elaborate scheme to shut down the settlements, not by another round of "shuttle diplomacy," not by any amount of work on a "peace process". It isn't going to be, because there is no goodwill, and no real desire on the part of Israel's enemies for a solution. Or rather, there is a widespread desire for only one solution — the extinction of Israel and the driving out, or mass killing, of the Jews. That's what they want, the Middle East; that's all they want.

I don't think we should be sending diplomats to the Middle East. I think we should be sending teams of psychiatrists. This is a diseased culture, a sick culture. Go back to that disgraceful recycling of the Blood Libel in the Saudi press. Do you think anyone in that newspaper's readership thought there was anything odd about it, anything deplorable about it, anything untrue about it? I don't think so. To the newspaper readers of Saudi Arabia, it was routine stuff, a statement of the obvious. If MEMRI hadn't brought it to the attention of the civilized world, do you think the Saudi authorities would have bothered about it? Do you think, even now, they really have a clue what all the fuss is about? Of course the Jews use gentile blood to make their cookies. Doesn't everyone know that? We'd best pretend to be shocked, though. Those Americans are so-o-o sensitive!

We are dealing here with people who are, not to put too fine a point on it, nuts. The Arabs, the Iranians, the Pakis, the Libyans: they are nuts, the great majority of them. Nuts. Not playing with a full deck. Not too tightly wrapped. One brick short of a load, one coupon short of a toaster. The smoke not going all the way up the chimney. Not quite 16 annas to the rupee. Nuts.

Is there anything we can do about it? Only what Peggy Noonan told us to do in her brilliant Wall Street Journal piece last week: Do what you do when you find yourself in a roomful of glittering-eyed lunatics down at the local funny farm. Keep smiling, talk softly, don't make any sudden moves, keep nodding and smiling, and keep a tight hand on the stun gun in your pocket. The Middle East contains three hundred million people, and most of them are crazy as coots. Glad I don't live there.

UPDATE: A tweeter sent out a series of messages excoriating me for republishing the essay of a person who apparently wrote a bigoted article that got him fired a while back. I don't follow pundits like they were rock stars and I had no idea about this, to be honest. This essay still holds up, but for people who are concerned about the source, you can discount it as you wish. You can read my FAQ to see my feelings about stereotyping Arabs and Muslims.

Lebanese politicians rush to blame Israel for Islamist suicide car bombing

From Now Lebanon, in its live coverage of today's massive car bomb in Beirut:

[19:28] A video posted on YouTube shows masked men dubbing themselves the "Aisha the Mother of Believers Brigades for Foreign Missions" claiming responsibility for Thursday's bombing.

“And we address our second message to you and the people like you, and yet you do not understand, therefore we address a message to our brothers and families in Lebanon: We ask you to stay away from all of Iran’s colonies inside and outside Beirut because your blood is dear to us but Hassan Nasrallah is an agent for Iran and Israel and we promise more for him.”

Even after this group accepted responsibility (and called Nasrallah a Zionist!]...

[19:55] LBC: Jumblatt accuses Israel of Dahiyeh blast.

[20:22] Suleiman: Dahiyeh explosion is cowardly, its criminal method has Israel’s prints all over it

[20:37] Amal MP Abdel Majid Saleh: The Israeli enemy and its agents had something to do with the al-Roueiss explosion.

[20:50] Aoun to Al-Manar: The explosion’s timing aims at attacking the victory of the 2006 war and to incite the Lebanese people against each other.

There ya go.

Mondoweiss agrees that released murderers are "freedom fighters"

The last time we spoke about Annie Robbins, Mondoweiss' Editor at Large, she was claiming that there was no evidence that Jewish Temples ever existed on the Temple Mount.

So perhaps it isn't surprising that she agrees that murderers are "freedom fighters."

The PLO sent out a letter to its diplomatic posts ahead of the prisoner release, saying that each one isn't a terrorist but a "Palestinian freedom fighter, who struggles against the occupation and fights in accordance to international law."

Yes, the PLO says that people who axe senior citizens to death are "freedom fighters."

And Mondoweiss agrees.

Here is Robbins' comment to this sickening characterization: "Touche for Palestine doubling down with an injection of truth today."

Annie Robbins believes that according to international law, any Palestinian Arab can stalk and kill any Jew in Israel - man, woman or child.

The woman is beneath contempt.

A Facebook page has been set up to condemn Mondoweiss for this disgusting stand.

(h/t Max S.)

8/15 Links Part 1: Justice for None, PA Honored the Murderers of 238 Israelis during Ramadan

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Justice for none

In effect, we are giving power to a foreign ruler – PA President Mahmoud Abbas – to determine how long the murderers of Israelis would serve. In these circumstances, we might as well close our courts and leave everything up to Abbas.
If the murderers of entire families are arbitrarily set free by his say-so, it is not inconceivable that he would eventually demand the liberation of Amjad Mahmad Awad and Hakim Mazen Awad of Awarta, who in 2011 butchered five members of the Fogel family in Itamar – mother, father and their three children.
The Awads, who decapitated a three-month-old girl, are already celebrated as heroes and role models in the PA-controlled media, schools and mosques.
Those whom Abbas now demands released, to buy his entry into the talks, were guilty of no less bloodcurdling slaughters, even if these took place years earlier.

American Support for Convict Release Betrays Ulterior Motive

Abbas has no public mandate for peace talks because he has consistently told the population that lives under his rule that violence is the path to victory. The popular Arab icons and leaders that are immortalized on murals and billboards across Ramallah and Jenin are not men of peace, they are men of war. They are not idols of reconciliation but of death and destruction.
By insisting on the release of 104 popular symbols of Palestinian terror the United States has strengthened the segments of Arab society that see war with Israel as the only option.

PA honored the killers of 238 Israelis during Ramadan

As a major focus of its Ramadan activities, the Palestinian Authority chose to honor and glorify terrorist murderers.
In all, 22 terrorist murderers who killed 238 Israelis were glorified, along with numerous other terrorists who caused injuries. Those honored included suicide bombers, bomb makers, hijackers, snipers, stabbers, and planners of terror attacks. Palestinian Media Watch has reported that many of them have been honored numerous times in the past for their terror attacks.

Cantor: Only Palestinian ‘mind-shift’ will bring peace

Peace will only emerge when the Palestinians and the Arab world go through a “cultural mind-shift” and accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, US House Majority leader Eric Cantor said on Wednesday.
“Until that point comes, I don’t think that there will be much progress,” the Virginia Republican added during a Jerusalem press conference.

Jewish Home Knesset Chair to Kerry: You Are a Hypocrite

You have forced us into peace talks during a period of time that the entire Middle-East is in chaos, without realizing that by doing so, you have foolishly put us in an impossible situation, in which we cannot and will not make any concessions. By your own hand you have raised expectations to a dangerous level – one that might cause the whole region to spin out of control once those expectations are proven unrealistic, like so many times before.
The past four years in Israel have been as quiet and peaceful as ever. Therefore, I suggest to you that you perform your job in a much more effective and relevant fashion by focusing your attention on Syria and Egypt, where people are actually getting slaughtered.

Royal slams US, EU for excluding Jordan from talks

Prince Hassan, uncle to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, said the Americans and Europeans were treating the issue as a two-sided problem, according to a Channel 10 report. Jordan should be a full partner in negotiations between the sides, said the prince, since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a regional problem, partly because the majority of Palestinians live in Jordan.

Iran: We Are 'Hostile' to Israel-PA Talks

Iran once again blasted the latest round of talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, saying it was "hostile" to the negotiations brokered by the United States, AFP reported.
"Iran is hostile to these negotiations and several Palestinian groups are hostile to them," foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi was quoted as having told the ISNA news agency.

BBC’s Knell reports on prisoner release without mentioning their crimes

Quite what Knell and her colleagues ‘consider’ people who have engaged in the premeditated murder of women and pensioners (and who most definitely do have blood on their hands, as proven in a court of law) to be besides terrorists is not a moot question. But critically Knell’s use of language – which is clearly intended to promote the idea of moral equivalence between the perception of these prisoners as “heroes of the Palestinian cause” and the all too obvious fact that they engaged in violent acts of terrorism – is particularly disingenuous – and downright ridiculous – when her words are broadcast against a background of images of masked gunmen and flags of terrorist organisations such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the DFLP.

The Guardian faces stiff competition for most sympathetic depiction of murderers

Question: Can you quickly tell us what all of these photos and captions share in common?
Answer: None of these photos – featuring the perpetrators, their families and supporters – included even a word about the often barbaric crimes committed, nor anything about the victims or their surviving family members.

Nasrallah: Hezbollah deliberately ambushed IDF soldiers on border

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Wednesday that militants from his group were behind last week's bombing, which wounded four Israeli soldiers, threatening to "cut off the legs" of any Israeli forces that cross the border into Lebanon.
In a live interview with Lebanese television station Al-Mayadeen this week, Nasrallah said that two remote-control bombs detonated inside Lebanon when the Israeli force crossed the border. He said Hezbollah members knew in advance the Israelis were coming and planted the bombs in a deliberate plan to target them.

Report: Iran, Hamas Trying to Smuggle Syrian Arms into West Bank

While there’s obvious concern about radical Islamists smuggling weapons into Syria as part of the fight against dictator Bashar al-Assad, an intelligence analysis agency says Iran may be funneling dangerous arms in the opposite direction.
A recent analysis from Stratfor cites the arrest of five Syrian arms and drug smugglers in Jordan last Tuesday. They carried anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles and assault rifles. Jordan has been used as a supply route for arms meant for Syrian rebels. But Stratfor notes that the suspects were picked up heading south, away from Syria.

Report: Western Security Officials Confirm Israel, Egypt Armies Battling Terrorists Together in Sinai

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed Western security officials, confirmed media speculation that this weekend’s onslaught against terrorists in the Sinai came through coordination between Egyptian and Israeli security forces, although neither side would confirm that they work with the other.
“Israel’s intervention in the Sinai Peninsula—which Egyptian officials denied, and which Israeli officials neither confirmed nor denied—would be the clearest manifestation of the high-level interaction between Israeli and Egyptian military and intelligence chiefs, according to the Western officials. Such cooperation between the U.S. allies has increased since last month’s ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, these officials say,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

US weighs canceling military exercise with Egypt

The yearly exercise, called Bright Star, was suspended after the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, but US officials were hopeful that it would resume this year. But a violent crackdown on protesters Wednesday left the US reconsidering its relationship with the interim Egyptian government, though not announcing any policy shift.

Brotherhood vows to continue protests as death toll breaks 500

Egypt faced a new phase of uncertainty on Thursday after the bloodiest day since its Arab Spring began, with 525 people reported killed and thousands injured as police smashed two protest camps of supporters of the deposed Islamist president.
Wednesday’s raids touched off day-long street violence that prompted the military-backed interim leaders to impose a state of emergency and curfew, and drew widespread condemnation from the Muslim world and the West, including the United States.

Bloodied Egypt at a dead end

The Muslim Brotherhood is hoping that the public will raise its voice and pressure the army to compromise, perhaps even to fire el-Sissi. But given the widespread disappointment with the movement over the last year, and Egyptians’ weariness from revolution and upheaval, it is possible that the Islamists may have to prepare patiently to better exploit another opportune moment down the road, and, at least temporarily, lower the profile of their protest.

'We Won't Stop Until Morsi Reinstated'

In one video, seen by Arutz Sheva, the body of a man - apparently a member of the security forces - is dragged through through a baying mob as supporters of Morsi hurl insults and physically attacks the body. At the end of the clip, someone off camera points a rifle at the body and opens fire to "confirm the kill."
Islamist supporters of the ousted president are also accused of upping their campaign of violence against the country's indigenous Coptic Christian population.
Since yesterday at least 17 churches and a number of Christian-owned homes and businesses were torched by Muslim mobs. Coptic Christians have been a target for violence - sometimes deadly - since Morsi's ouster, amid fears that they are being scapegoated by frustrated Islamists.

Egyptian Law Professor: U.S. Trying to Instigate Civil War, Chaos in Egypt

Egyptian Association for Change Spokesman: Muslim Brotherhood Implements the Methods of the Jews

The Jews who sneaked into the Cave of the Patriarchs from 1450-1929

In its article on the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Wikipedia notes:

The Mamluks forbade Jews from entering the site, only allowing them as close as the fifth step on a staircase at the southeast, but after some time this was increased to the seventh step....

After the Israeli victory in 1967 in which Israel gained control of Hebron, the first Jew who entered the Cave of Machpelah for about 700 years, was the Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Major-General Rabbi Shlomo Goren. "About 700 years ago, the Muslim Mamelukes conquered Hebron, declared the structure a mosque and forbade entry to Jews, who were not allowed past the seventh step on a staircase outside the building."

However, it appears that Rabbi Goren was not the first Jew to enter the Cave in 700 years - not by a longshot. Many dedicated, heroic Jews over the centuries were willing to risk their lives to visit the second-holiest spot in Judaism.

The women.

From A Separate People: Jewish Women in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt in the Sixteenth Centur by Rût Lamdān:

This was corroborated centuries later by Israel's future second president, Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, who wrote as he described his banning from entering the Cave in the early 20th century:

The entrance to the Patriarchs’ Cave was prohibited to non-Muslims. Jews were allowed to climb no higher than the seventh step in the courtyard. Only brave-hearted Jewish women dared enter, masquerading in Arab garb and their faces veiled according to Arab custom.

His wife Rachel wrote separately:

Hebron’s Jewish women would sometimes infiltrate the cave veiled and costumed like Arabs. Only by stealth could they pray at our forefathers’ tombs. When Hebron’s Arab fanaticism escalated, Jews were forbidden even to glance into the cave. Hate spewed from the Arab guards’ eyes and from Arab worshipers who brushed against us on their way in. We arrived at the steps and stood silent. I refused to climb the seven permitted stairs. The insult was too searing.

The bravery of these women, risking their very lives to be able to pray at the venerated spot, is awe-inspiring.

This is undoubtedly the best use of a burqa in recorded history.

Fatah/Hamas unity deadline comes and goes

On May 14, Hamas and Fatah agreed that they would have a unity government within three months.

In July, Hamas announced that the deadline was meaningless.

Yesterday, the deadline passed.

Meanwhile, Israel is negotiating with half of a government, with the other half dead-set against the existence of Israel altogether.

And Western governments seem to take no notice of this little problem.

Because when you worship the religion of "peace process," reality is something that must be consciously ignored.

BDS movement lied about TIAA-CREF selling Sodastream

Earlier this month I reported how the BDS movement said that pension fund giant TIAA-CREF had sold their holdings in Israeli company Sodastream, and how the Israel-haters claimed this was a victory for their cause - even if they didn't know the reasons for the sale of the stock.

I noted that it was clear from TIAA-CREF's own statements that any Israeli stock they sell was not because of the BDS movement.

My mistake was that I assumed that the BDSers weren't lying about the sale to begin with!

I just received two PDF documents, showing TIAA-CREF's holdings in their CREF Stock Account and in the TIAA-CREF Growth and Income Fund as of June 30, 2013. They detail their holdings in these funds in full detail, and the documents were generated on July 23.