Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Open thread question

I have a number of valued pro-Israel liberal readers and this question just popped in my mind for them:

Is there any substantive difference between Obama's viewpoints on the Middle East and Jimmy Carter's?

Reference material: Carter: U.S. must 'find a way' to include Hamas in peace process

Hamas attacks and confiscates Gaza charity

Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas attacked and took over a charity in Beit Hanoun.

Quoting the Mezan Center for Human Rights, it says that medical aid given by international organizations to the charity (possibly called the Society for the Rehabilitation of Disabled People) were meant to be distributed to some 2000 needy Gazans. Hamas gunmen took over the aid and its distribution.

Since Hamas took over Gaza, it has been methodically taking over institutions - medical, political, educational and charitable - and installing its own people to run them, with ideology being more important than competence.

A new type of "honor killing" - and an old one

Usually so-called "honor killings" are against women whose actions embarrass their families by spending too much time with unrelated men.

Now there's a new twist: families who kill their own flesh and blood because they allegedly spend too much time with Zionists:

Fifteen- year-old Ra’ed Sawalha was tortured and hung by his family members who accused him of collaborating with Israeli forces, the Palestinian police reported Thursday.

Brigadier General with the police forces Adnan Ad-Damiri said several arrests were made, all of them family members of the slain boy. The men and women apparently admitted their crimes under questioning, but justified their acts by explaining that Ra’ed was a “spy” for Israel.

And as with "honor killings," any prison time will no doubt be vastly reduced because their crime is quite justifiable by their community's standards.

Meanwhile, another women was found killed outside Hebron, very possibly another "honor killing." Together with the "honor killing" of a woman yesterday in Gaza, the 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 101, with 20 of them being women or children.

UPDATE: We also have another Gaza smuggler tunnel death, this one where a man accidentally strangled himself with the rope he was using to drag his booty - weapons? motorcycles? TNT? - into Rafah. I count tunnel deaths in my self-death count, so the 2009 tally is now at 102.

Another honor killing in Gaza

A young woman was killed in Gaza by her father in an apparent "honor killing."No details on the circumstances yet but it was reported both in Palestine Today and Firas Press.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 99.

Holocaust Museum shooter a real nutcase

Today, a crazed white supremacist, anti-semite and Holocaust denier shot and killed a security guard at the United States Holocaust Museum.

I just glanced at the first six downloadable chapters of a book he wrote, called "Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog - Kill the Best Gentiles" (a fictional quote that he ascribes to the Talmud) and this guy is really crazy, although not obviously crazier than many other people who have many other similar websites.

The book hits all the high points of Jew-hatred. Here's the table of contents:

1. The Conspiracy
2. Khazars Invent Judaism
3. The Illuminati
4. Money
5. Spirochetes of Jew Syphilis
6. The “Holocaust” Hoax
7. Mendelism
8. The Negro
9. The Aryan Force
10. Parasitism USA
11. Pathology and Synthesis
12. Summing Up

Within he thoughtfully includes a summary of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion just to make sure that he has all his bases covered. Not to mention covering the Illuminati and Trilateral Commission. He also consistently capitalizes all the letters of the word "Jew", for example:

President Bill Clinton, with an Ivy League-Rhodes Scholar-Marxist indoctrinated mind, and subject to both blackmail and extortion, appointed many JEWS/CFR/TRI
to sensitive positions in the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, including: SUPREME COURT JUSTICES Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Stephen Breyer, JEWS; SECRETARY
OF STATE, Madeleine K. Albright, JEW; UNDER-SECY STATE, Stuart Eizenstat, JEW; ASST. SECY. STATE, Stanley Roth, JEW; SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, William
Cohen, JEW; SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT, Rahm Emanuel, JEW; WHITE HOUSE ATTORNEY, Bernie Nussbaum, JEW; CEO CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA), John Deutch, JEW (now under investigation for treason); NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, Sandy Berger, JEW; SECRETARY OF
THE TREASURY, Robert Rubin, JEW; HEAD OF THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA), Daniel E. Golden, JEW; SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATOR, Kenneth Apfel, JEW;....

Page after page of similar insanity fills this tome, which no doubt now is getting far more readers than the author ever could have hoped to reach without murdering a man.

Moonbats going after Trader Joe's

A group of anti-Israel radicals are trying to organize a protest against Trader Joe's for selling Israeli products.

Trader Joe's has no interest in changing its policies:

We have received a few letters like this via our customer relations email as well. Our response is that we sell products, and do not use our products as political tools or to make any statements about any political causes. We have no intention of removing any products based on pressure from any group, no matter what they support or don’t support. As always, we believe our customers are smart, and they are capable of making decisions about what they purchase. Let me know if you have any more questions or need more information.

But the moonbats still want to "de-shelve" Trader Joe's on Saturday, June 20th, which sounds like it involves doing some illegal activities like vandalizing Israeli products at the stores.

So the obvious thing to do is to make sure you buy Israeli products from Trader Joe's on the 19th and 20th and let the store managers know that you appreciate the factthat they make such products available.

Bluetruth has been all over this issue, so check there for the latest.

An open letter to President Obama from Brigitte Gabriel

(received via email)

Dear Mr. President,

You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them.

I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are.

I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I’m sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a “student of history,” it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts, however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce.

A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion. With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam.

You began in your speech by asserting that “tensions” exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.

A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.

These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur’an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.

A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed’s death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and India eventually creating an empire larger than Rome’s was at its peak.

The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300 million. What’s more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the “jizya,” a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.

These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.

You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years.

Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.

The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence.

The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews?

What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?

What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only “crime” was allowing her students to name their teddy bears “Mohammed”?

What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund, or provide nurture to, terrorist organizations?

What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels?

What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a Christian church or synagogue?

To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other “root causes,” most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.

Lastly, I must address your statement that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.” Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule.

Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion.

For instance, Christians and Jews became “Dhimmis,” a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad’s Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later.

I witnessed first-hand the “tolerance” of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970’s, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the “proud tradition” of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced in the cause of Islamic jihad.

Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur’an and the Hadith. Who regard “infidels” as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting. Who support “cultural jihad” as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur’an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam by force if necessary and bring it under the rule of Allah.

Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail.

Sincerely,

Brigitte Gabriel

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Today's PalArab self-deaths

An employee of the PA was found shot dead in his house, with a machine gun next to him.

A man was killed in another smuggling tunnel collapse, and four more are missing.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 98.

10,000-year old city blames Israel for sewage problems

From Ma'an:

The West Bank city of Jericho, located near the Dead Sea at the lowest elevation on earth is believed to be one of the oldest cities in the world. The city is preparing to mark its ten-thousandth anniversary, and yet it still lacks a sewage network.

Over the past 15 years, mayors of Jericho have been asking donor states for the funds needed to install a modern sewage network which the town, reliant on tourism for much of its economy, badly needs.

“It is funny in 2009 that a historic city like Jericho lacks a sewage network. Israeli occupation played a major role in depriving Jericho along with several other Palestinian cities of many basic needs of modern life,” says the mayor of Jericho Ahmad Salih.

Do you notice the discrepancy between the second and third paragraphs?

An article from the NYT in 1995 sheds more light:

An international aid effort for the Palestinian Authority has been thrown into crisis because donors have not honored pledges to support a fund for the fledgling self-rule administration in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

The fund, administered by the World Bank to help cover the authority's operating expenses, has run out of money, aid officials said. The donors have failed to honor pledges worth about $36 million out of $60 million made at a meeting in Brussels in November.
Odin Knudsen, the World Bank representative in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said donors were less eager to give money for such day-to-day expenses than for development projects.

"This aid is invisible, because it shows up in salaries and not in new roads or sewage systems," he said. "But this kind of money is essential because it keeps the administration going. If it is not paid, it can lead to a political crisis."
While the United States honored its $12 million pledge for the Holst Fund, several European and Persian Gulf nations are among the donors that have not made their payments.

Jericho has been trying to get a sewage system for the past fifteen years. There is no indication that Israel has impeded them at all. On the contrary, between 1967 and 1993 Israel built up the entire West Bank infrastructure - water, electricity, hospitals - that had been ignored by Jordanian occupation.

The mayor's Arab brethren have not paid for the system they specifically promised - a nasty habit they still seem to have. Yet the mayor reflexively blames Israel for "depriving" Jericho of a sewage system, even though Jericho has been under PA rule for 15 years.

It just goes to show that for Arabs, blaming all their problems on Israel is the easiest way to avoid tackling real problems, and publicly blaming the people truly responsible for their problems - their fellow Arabs - is literally unthinkable.

The latest Zionist assault on Arabs: "B'Seder"

Al-Arabiya (Arabic) has an article decrying the fact that many Israeli Arabs have started to integrate Hebrew into their language.

Some 1948 Palestinians [the PalArabic phrase for Israeli Arabs - EoZ] incorporate the Hebrew language, either through talking or ob normal posters visible in Arab towns, or through the messages in some institutions.

According to Dr. Mohamed Amara, lecturer, researcher and head of the governing body of the Center for Studies in the Palestinian territories, "The Israeli establishment is trying to detail the new Arab-Israeli, and it is within the specifications that he speaks the language of Arabic or Hebrew, three quarters of the so-called language Barip."

It is hard to understand this story, but it appears that Dr. Amara is suggesting that Israelis are deliberately trying to erase Arabic culture by imposing their foreign Hebrew tongue on Arabs. "Barip" seems to be the slang term for what we would call Hebrabic (or Arabrew.)

"Barip" means the confusion of Hebrew words with Arabic words in the same sentence. One may ask, for example: Kivk? [I believe that this is a shortnened for of "Kaif halak," meaning "How are you?" in Arabic - EoZ.] The other answers, "B'seder" that is, "OK" The word "B'seder" is used by many, even among many who are trying to avoid confusion between the Arabic and Hebrew.

The article goes on to detail many other examples of Israeli culture seeping into the lives of Israeli Arabs, and how horrible this situation is.

Open thread, Deutsch edition

According to Technorati, a surprisingly large number of my postings are linked to and/or translated into German on German-language blogs. I've seen occasional Spanish or Swedish translations, but the largest percentage of non-English links is definitely German.

At any rate, here's an afternoon open thread dedicated to my international readers!

PalArab news roundup 6-9-09

There are reports that three rockets were shot Gaza on Monday night - into Egypt. The rockets did not explode.

The PA confiscated some two tons of explosives from Hamas members in Qalqilya, in the West Bank. They found out about it from previous arrests of Hamas members. Some of the explosives were in a Jacuzzi.

The PA also found a Hamas member in Nablus with over one million euros. It was apparently meant to build up the Hamas movement in the West Bank to destabilize the PA.

Meanwhile, the PA also arrested three Hamas women planning suicide attacks - against the PA. When Hamas said a few weeks ago that they will treat the PA the way they treat Israel, they weren't kidding!

A leader of Islamic Jihad has again rejected the idea of a two-state solution.

A chain reaction of exploding cooking gas canisters injured 30 people in Khan Younis.

Late last week a Gaza farmer was killed when he apparently came across some unexploded Hamas explosives, putting the 2009 PalArab self-death count at 96.

Amnesty International likes some illegal settlements

From Arutz-7, June 3:

The fledgling neighborhood of Maoz Esther, outside Kochav HaShachar, has been destroyed by government forces for the second time in one week. This time, police rounded up residents as the demolition took place at 10:00 a.m., and cut off water and electricity to the area before leaving.

From Amnesty International:

The soldiers also confiscated a water tank, a tractor and a trailer, which the villagers used to bring water from several kilometres away. They are not allowed access to local wells. The villagers are now without shelter and a source of water during a season of high temperatures.

Many of these families have had their homes destroyed multiple times in recent years and all of them face the prospect of further displacement.

House demolition, like the denial of access to land and water, has long been used by the Israeli army and authorities to force the local population off the land. After each demolition, the families rebuild their homes either in the same place or nearby, but they are now finding it increasingly difficult to survive in the area.

Wow...is Amnesty International concerned about people who lose their houses that they keep rebuilding illegally?

Not quite. The Amnesty article is not about Maoz Esther, but about houses built illegally by Arabs in Ras al-Ahmar in the West Bank.

Any way you look at it, the houses are illegal and the government in charge of the area has the right to destroy buildings built illegally. Israel is not demolishing any of the 98% of Palestinian Arab homes that are under PA rule - and no doubt a functioning PA would be doing the exact same thing to houses built without proper permits.

Somehow, I don't think we will be seeing any Amnesty articles about Jewish families being evicted from the homes they keep rebuilding against the wishes of the current Israeli government. On the contrary, Amnesty purposefully ignores them in saying "Successive Israeli governments from across the political spectrum have all backed construction and expansion of unlawful settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)" without even a footnote to mention the many Israeli communities destroyed by Israel in recent years.

Moreover, Amnesty writes

Though they are very isolated, the villagers are determined to remain in the area where they have lived since long before the Israeli army occupied the OPT in 1967.

Would Amnesty make the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria who lived there before 1948 sound so heroic for being determined to return to their homes?

More on Islamic "tolerance"

From the NYT:

With all his references to the history of Islam and to its (questionable) “proud tradition of tolerance” of other faiths, Mr. Obama never said anything about those Jews whose ancestors had been living in Arab lands long before the advent of Islam but were its first victims once rampant nationalism swept over the Arab world.
Nor did he bother to mention that with this flight and expulsion, Jewish assets were — let’s call it by its proper name — looted. Mr. Obama never mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never recover. My mother’s house, my father’s factory, our life in Egypt, our friends, our books, our cars, my bicycle. We are, each one of us, not just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the things we call our own. Take away our things and something in us dies. Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He didn’t die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off.
Mr. Obama had harsh things to say to the Arab world about its treatment of women. And he said much about America’s debt to Islam. But he failed to remind the Egyptians in his audience that until 50 years ago a strong and vibrant Jewish community thrived in their midst. Or that many of Egypt’s finest hospitals and other institutions were founded and financed by Jews. It is a shame that he did not remind the Egyptians in the audience of this, because, in most cases — and especially among those younger than 50 — their memory banks have been conveniently expunged of deadweight and guilt. They have no recollections of Jews.
In Alexandria, my birthplace and my home, all streets bearing Jewish names have been renamed. A few years ago, the Library of Alexandria put on display an Arabic translation of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” perhaps the most anti-Semitic piece of prose ever written. Today, for the record, there are perhaps four Jews left in Alexandria.
When the last Jew dies, the temples and religious artifacts and books that were the property of what was once probably the wealthiest Jewish community on the Mediterranean will go to the Egyptian government — not to me, or to my children, or to any of the numberless descendants of Egyptian Jews.
It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn’t know, or just thought it wasn’t expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo of a shared effort “to find common ground ... and to respect the dignity of all human beings” without mentioning people in my position would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II.

The UN. What a joke.

This press release from the UN tells you pretty much everything you need to know about that bloated, ineffective organization:

JAKARTA, Indonesia, 8 June -- The United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting on the Question of Palestine this afternoon heard presentations of four experts, including Israeli and Palestinian, on the theme "International efforts aimed at achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the question of Palestine".
A journalist from Israel pointed out that the two-State solution was generous to Israel, as it acknowledged that history could not be undone. The reason why Israel did not accept that solution was, according to her, because it would threaten Jewish contemporary thinking in Israel as it would leave the future out of control of the hegemonic Jewish authorities.

And who was this Israeli journalist who happily represented her country in this meeting?

AMIRA HASS, journalist for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, said people were often lost in formulas. It was necessary to take the reality out of standard and confusing language. The two-State solution was not just a mantra, she said, but posed a deep historiography of the conflict, different from the one used by the Israelis or the Palestinians. That solution said that Israel was part of the colonialist period. Zionism was both a product of European colonialism and also of the prosecution of the Jews with its culmination in the Nazi industry of murder.

Ah, it's one of Ha'aretz' most pro-Arab and anti-Zionist reporters!

Besides the fact that the UN creates a "balanced" symposium by including three Muslims and a far-left anti-Zionist Israeli, think about the name of the conference:

The United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting on the Question of Palestine

The UN cannot find enough calendar days in the year to overemphasize the plight of a single group of people who get a hugely disproportionate amount of attention, money and sympathy. It has to convene meetings about the issue all over the world in order to keep people's attention riveted towards this unique group of people, at the expense of the dozens of groups who deserve far more.

Can you imagine a more worthless organization than one that can come up with this idea for a meeting?

If life were discovered on Mars tomorrow, you can be sure that the UN-sponsored Martian symposium on Palestine would not be far behind.

"Islam can conquer Europe peacefully!!"

I just read an absurd article in Iran's PressTV, named "The Palestinian story: Judaization of our lands," that does an interesting job distorting the history of Zionism (one classic quote: "Although they had agreed to put the rest of Palestine under an undefined international administration, Britain decided to conquer the area and in late 1917 their soldiers laid foot on the lands of our beloved al-Quds -- which they now call Jerusalem." As if the name Jerusalem didn't exist before 1917!)

But even more interesting than the article was one of the comments afterwards:

Islam can conquer Europe peacefully!!
Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:17:39 GMT
JUST BE SMART!! It is easy. No Suicide Bomber. No Terrorism attacks. Just marry Healthy Westerners and convert them to Islam, have as MANY CHILDREN AS POSSIBLE from them! Zionist jews are already doing this in Palestine! Jewish Rabbis are already encouraging Jewish women to have 12 children each in order to form MAJORITY and populate all Palestine with jews. Europe and America will be Muslim in 30 years if you do this. Good luck to all Muslims!

Jordanians insisting on examining brides' hymens

Islam Online (Arabic) has a story saying that in the past year in Jordan, potential in-laws have forced some 1200 prospective brides to undergo a "virginity exam" - and have the doctor report the results back to them.

A number of doctors and clerics are sharply critical of this system, saying that it is an unacceptable breach of women's dignity.

In some Arab countries, women undergo surgery to restore the appearance of virginity - and not doing so could cause them to be victims of "honor killings."

French company succumbs to Israel boycott

From Ma'an:

Under pressure from pro-Palestine campaigners, a French company is poised to withdraw from the controversial Jerusalem Light Rail project that links the city center to illegal West Bank settlements.

The company Veolia, which was supposed to operate the transport system after its construction, is now abandoning the project and also seeking to sell its 5% stake in Citypass light rail consortium, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Campaigners in Europe targeted Veolia and another company, Alstom, over their involvement in the project, ultimately causing Veolia to lose 7 billion US dollars in contracts in Bordeaux, Stockholm, and West Midlands, England. Dutch activists also convinced a Dutch bank to divest from Veolia.

The US government penalizes companies that adhere to the Arab boycott against Israel.

Veolia has many transportation projects in the US.

Perhaps someone should inform the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce?

Boycott Alert

U.S. companies continue to report receiving requests to engage in activities that further or support the boycott of Israel. U.S. companies may receive similar requests in the future. If you have questions, please call (202) 482-2381 and ask for the Duty Officer or you may contact us by email.

Open thread, plus "collaboration"

I keep forgetting about the Power of the Open Thread.

Feel free to post links, have civil discussions and order pizza for everyone.

Oh, and check this out: Hamas is accusing some Gazans of "collaborating" - with the Palestinian Authority.

Nice link

I have no time to blog but I liked this story at The Muqata.

The word "extremist" has radically different definitions when talking about the Jewish variety and the Arab one. One does everything he can to kill civilians on the other side; the other does everything he can to save them.