Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 12, 2010

AFP catches the fake Muslim grave story

I blogged last week about how the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation, an organization that is pretty much dedicated to lies, claimed that the Jerusalem authorities were destroying ancient Muslim graves - when they were, in fact, fake.

AFP has picked up on the story:

Around 300 Muslim gravestones destroyed by Israeli bulldozers in a Jerusalem cemetery earlier this week were "fake" and set up in a bid to snatch government land, the city charged on Thursday.

The allegation was flatly denied by the Islamic Movement which earlier this week accused the municipality of razing recently renovated Muslim graves in a centuries-old cemetery in a large park in mostly Jewish west Jerusalem.

In its first official response to the claims, the Jerusalem city council on Thursday acknowledged it had removed some 300 tombstones, but said they were not erected over any human remains.
"The municipality and the (Israel Lands) Authority destroyed around 300 dummy gravestones which were set up illegally in Independence Park on public land.

"The court approved the removal of all the dummy gravestones which were laid in the last seven months," the municipality said in a written statement sent to AFP.

"This is a fraudulent set up, one of the biggest in recent years, whose aim is to illegally take over state land."

Underneath the tombstones excavators found only "plastic bottles, cigarette packets and parts of a sprinkler system," the statement said. It accused "Islamic elements" of trying to pull off a huge scam.

It is remarkable, for AFP, to give coverage to the Israeli side first and then have the other side dispute it. Usually you have to wait for paragraph 8 to read the Israeli side of the story, by which time most readers have already moved on to the sports page.

By the way, this is the same cemetery that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had moved bodies from when building his hotel on top of it, the same cemetery that the same mufti had redirected sewage towards, and the same cemetery that the Supreme Muslim Council had explicitly allowed building an Arab business park on top of.

In other words, Arab lies about this cemetery have a long pedigree.

Arabs consider the western part of Jerusalem to be "occupied" as well

Many Arab media outlets reflexively put the word "Occupied" in front of "Jerusalem," even if the news story takes place entirely within the part of Jerusalem that was inside those supposedly "internationally recognized borders" before 1967.

Examples:

The Lebanon Daily Star changed the location of an Reuters story about a new exhibit at the Israel Museum. They also put the words "Holy Land" is scare quotes, which is not in the AFP original.

The Yemen News Agency, Middle East Monitor, and Gulf News follow the same standard.

Lebanon Daily Star ridicules Nasrallah's "evidence"

From the Daily Star:

Marvel at the contempt Hizbullah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, must feel for us all, that he would expect us to believe his presentation last Monday telling us that Israel was behind the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister. But that contempt may also in some ways be justified, because far too many Lebanese actually believed him, even as they observe the rapid erosion of their slender sovereignty with lethargy.

Do we Lebanese deserve independence? You have to wonder. Israel has killed many people in Lebanon, and will doubtless kill many more, but we would only be abasing ourselves by abruptly reinterpreting the Hariri assassination in the light that Nasrallah chose to shine on the crime. We would have to believe that Syria did not threaten Hariri in 2004, was untroubled by Resolution 1559, for which it held Hariri partly responsible, did not control Lebanese security in 2005, and did not appoint or approve all senior officials in the security and intelligence agencies. We would have to disregard that these agencies tried to cover up the scene of the assassination, that Hizbullah sought to stifle the emancipation movement by organizing an intimidating demonstration on March 8, 2005, to defend Syria’s presence in Lebanon, and that virtually all of those assassinated after Hariri (not to mention Marwan Hamadeh, who barely escaped assassination before) were critical of Syria.

And, of course, we would have to forget that Hizbullah and its Amal allies twice left the government because it was preparing measures to establish the tribunal – the second time kicking off an 18-month Downtown sit-in to bring down Fouad Siniora’s government.

Nasrallah now offers an explanation for this: the tribunal was politicized. Yet that was not the excuse Hizbullah and Amal used in 2006 when they withdrew their ministers. At the time, their beef was that Siniora and March 14 had undermined governmental procedure by not consulting properly with them. But we can conveniently forget that, too, as well as Syrian President Bashar Assad’s warning issued to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, at a meeting in Damascus on April 24, 2007. According to a detailed account leaked to the French daily Le Monde, Assad told Ban that approval of the tribunal under Chapter VII authority “might easily cause a conflict that would degenerate into civil war, provoking divisions between Sunnis and Shiites from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea.”

Perhaps Nasrallah had not yet shared his information about Israel with the Syrian president, who, with amazing prescience, found himself echoing revelations about a Shiite connection in the Hariri assassination more than two years before Der Spiegel made a similar reference – one that Nasrallah now sees as proof of an Israeli plot.

It would take an awful lot of forgetting to buy into Nasrallah’s theory, but that is precisely what the secretary general is demanding. He wants Lebanon, above all its prime minister, to forget the overwhelming evidence from the past and bury the Hariri tribunal for good. Let’s just blame Israel, Nasrallah is telling us, so that we can all live in amnesic harmony.

MEMRI also has a rundown on Lebanese reaction, which predictably follows party lines.

Iran again met with terrorist leaders yesterday

Not that this is newsworthy any more, but yesterday the Iranian Foreign Minister met with the Damascus-based leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as the leaders of eight other Palestinian Arab terrorist groups.

Even if you subscribe to the loony left characterization of Hamas as a legitimate political leader of Palestinian Arabs, there is no way that you can consider Islamic Jihad and the other groups as anything other than pure terrorist organizations.

The world really doesn't seem to have a major problem with a UN member state openly collaborating with and funding terror groups. Admittedly, next to Iran's nuclear ambitions this is small potatoes, but nevertheless every such meeting needs to be publicized and condemned, over and over again, at all levels of diplomatic channels - including the UN.

IDF Chief of Staff: IHH shot first

From the New York Times:

Israel’s top military chief said Wednesday that activists on a Turkish ship were the first to open fire as Israeli naval commandos raided the vessel, part of a six-boat flotilla bound for Gaza, fomenting a bloody confrontation on board that left nine activists dead.

Testifying before an Israeli commission of inquiry, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli Army chief of staff, gave the most detailed description yet of the military’s version of the events in late May.

General Ashkenazi said that mistakes had been made. The main one, he said, was that the soldiers, who rappelled onto the ship from a helicopter one by one, lacked the manpower to create a sterile area quickly enough. They were immediately set upon by the activists, some wielding axes, knives, iron bars and clubs, he said.

Though stun grenades were fired first, from the air, they failed to disperse the dozen or so activists on the roof of the boat. What was lacking, according to the army chief, was preparation for the use of “precise fire,” by which he appeared to mean snipers, “to neutralize those preventing the soldiers from boarding the boat.”

The army chief staunchly defended the actions of his soldiers. He said that they had displayed “cool-headedness, courage and morality,” opening fire only when necessary, and that the Israeli use of force was proportionate.

According to the general, the second soldier who fast-roped onto the roof of the boat, the Mavi Marmara, was shot in the abdomen and fired back. Activists who were on board have given very different accounts, saying the soldiers opened fire as soon as they came on board, or even before.

An Israeli military investigation of the episode concluded a month ago that Israeli soldiers most likely fired only after having been fired upon. A video in two separate parts, produced by the army and shown to the commission, stated that the shot fired at the second soldier was “probably” the first shot fired on the ship.

But General Ashkenazi said it was “clear and established” that flotilla participants opened fire first.

The weapon used may have been snatched from the first soldier who landed on the ship.

A gun belonging to one of the soldiers was later found on board, empty of bullets. In addition, the military said it found ammunition, cartridges and bullets that were not from the Israeli Army, suggesting that there might have been at least one other gun on the ship. According to the general, the boat’s captain told the Israelis that it might have been thrown overboard.

General Ashkenazi stated that the army had prepared for the possibility that the activists could open fire, though the military “did not assess correctly the strength of the resistance” the commandos would meet when they came down the rope. According to the video, soldiers trying to approach the Mavi Marmara on rubber lifeboats said they were fired on from both sides of the ship. As clashes broke out on the boat, commandos fired at the feet of their “attackers.”

When the commandos met resistance as they tried to rush the bridge, they responded with fire. And at one point, at least 15 minutes into the struggle for control of the ship, the force commander allowed the soldiers to use accurate and precise live fire against violent activists, to permit more soldiers to climb aboard from the lifeboats.

The stun grenades from the helicopter, which I hadn't heard of before, would explain why the passengers thought that the IDF was shooting at them from the air.

Of course, the "activists" have no problem telling their lies to the world. Here's their graphic of the events, from the Free Gaza page:

Somehow, they must have forgotten to draw their prepared axes, knives, clubs, chains and slingshots. Must have been an oversight.

Abbas claims US contacts with Hamas

Mahmoud Abbas gave a wide-ranging interview to the Arab press yesterday.

Abbas said that Washington is putting him under "unprecedented" pressure to resume direct negotiations. He stated that he was still insisting on a precondition of acceptance of the 1949 armistice lines (usually referred to as the 1967 borders) as the basis of the borders of another Arab state, but he may be willing to accept a statement by the Quartet - rather than Israel - that this is the aim of the negotiations. He says that the March 19th Quartet statement affirmed that goal (I couldn't see an explicit reference to the borders in that statement, although it refers to UNSC 242.)

He again spoke about the PA's financial woes, warning that it will collapse if it doesn't get the usual amounts of money from the West. he also complained about how Arab nations are not fulfilling their pledges, without naming names.

He criticized the fatwa by Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi prohibiting Arabs from visiting Jerusalem. He said that he was politicizing religion, and that such visits are meant to show solidarity with the "prisoner," not the "warden."

Abbas said he had information from "reliable sources" about contacts between the U.S. administration and Hamas. He added: "I understand it, this is politics, and countries change their positions according to their interests." Smiling, he added: "If we refuse to go to the negotiating table tomorrow, perhaps [the US] is looking for others [to negotiate.]"

That sarcastic statement indicates that Abbas knows that he is considered the "moderate" no matter what, and that in that position he can call the shots because no one wants the alternative. And since the word "moderate" is used in relative rather than absolute terms, he knows his intransigence will never get criticized.

Freedom of the press, Hamas-style

Yesterday, when Hamas broke up a demonstration by the PFLP against power outages in Gaza, two reporters were beaten and their equipment confiscated.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate condemned the attack, which came on the heels of another attack by Hamas on an Al Jazeera reporter a few days earlier.

The syndicate is inviting a delegation from the International Federation of Journalists to Gaza to discuss the erosion of press freedoms in Gaza.

After the arrest of the Al Jazeera reporter, Reporters Without Borders finally wrote a report on the lack of press freedoms in both Gaza and the West Bank. (I had mentioned the absence of such a report in late July.)

Incidentally, IFJ has a condemnation of the death of the Lebanese journalist who was covering the ambush of the IDF last week. It mentions that three Lebanese soldiers were killed in the exchange of fire - but was silent on the Israeli officer killed by a sniper.

Poor Arabs forced to sell their children

The poverty is overwhelming.

Parents cannot afford to feed their children. Basic supplies are too expensive. Proper healthcare is not accessible.

So they are selling the children to Europeans, especially Italians, hoping that they would have a better life there. Hundreds of children have been sold this year alone.

Is this in Gaza?

No, of course not. Gazans have easy access to food and healthcare.

It is across the border, in poor Egyptian villages.

The government is concerned and views these sales of children as simply human trafficking and is working to stop it, after an expose of the phenomenon by Al Masry al Youm where they discovered that the court systems regularly approved the adoption of these children by Europeans.

This episode highlights what real poverty is like. And it also shows how the thousands of "human rights activists" who pretend to care so much about Gaza children are indifferent to real poverty, real suffering and real deprivation.

There are no flotillas for the poverty-stricken in Egypt or Yemen. There are no campaigns to raise money or awareness. Their troubles are ignored, lost in the glare of GAZA GAZA GAZA. And as millions of dollars are poured into a place that is better off than much of the planet, the Arabs who are really deprived would kill to be incarcerated in that "open air prison" of Gaza.

UNRWA upset at Israeli TV (updated x3)

From Ha'aretz:

The United Nations' relief agency for Palestinian refugees, lashed out Tuesday at the Israel Broadcasting Authority for airing what it called a a dishonest portrayal of the organization on Saturday in "Ro'im Olam" on Channel 1 television.

Right-wing journalist David Bedein's "For the Nakba", UNRWA said, contains numerous inaccuracies about its operations in Palestinian refugee camps and educational institutions. It depicts large graffiti that lionize Palestinian suicide bombers and includes an interview with Palestinian children who profess a desire to become "martyrs."

"Ro'im Olam" presenter Yaakov Ahimeir sought comment from UNRWA's Christopher Gunness, who watched the segment before it aired. Gunness said he warned of numerous inaccuracies, which were never corrected.

In a letter written prior to the airing, Gunness said UNRWA schools do not contain murals of suicide bombers, and that the textbooks shown are for use by 12th graders, while UNRWA schools do not go beyond ninth grade.

Gunness said students making derogatory statements about Israel are not enrolled at UNRWA schools, whose pupils are identifiable by their school uniforms. The spokesperson added that UNRWA does not sanction events that officially mark the Nakba, as the segment suggested. Gunness denied the film's assertion that a student in an agency-run school was an 18-year-old suicide bomber.

Gunness accused Channel 1 of airing "a stack of lies," and said editing the errors was "a matter of integrity."

In response, Ahimeir said: "Chris Gunness viewed the film before the broadcast, and his response was broadcast in full." After he sent me additional material, Ahimeir said, "This was also read on the air by me as UNRWA's response."

Bedein denied Gunness' claims. Palestinian kids, he said, study the materials from the textbooks at a young age, and the mural of the suicide bomber was seen at the entrance of the UNRWA school at the Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem.

I am not in a position to determine who is telling the truth for most of these issues, but I did find out one fact.

Gunness claims that UNRWA "does not sanction events that officially mark the Nakba," according to the article. I was surprised to see no evidence of UNRWA activities on Nakba day in the territories. However, UNRWA in Lebanon definitely commemorated "Nakba Day". This is from a UNRWA newsletter:

In remembrance of the 1948 Nakba and what the community describes as the “Second Nakba” caused by the conflict in Nahr el Bared in 2007, the Factions and Popular Committee will be running a series of activities including marches, sit-ins and distribution of black flags to commemorate the plight of the Palestinians.

Nazareth School in cooperation with Palestinian Arab Cultural Club held on May 13 an exhibit day to commemorate AL-Nakba anniversary.

To Set a New Guinness World Record in Commemoration of Al Nakba

On May 15, a group of Palestinian youth will draw the UN resolution 194 that endorses the Palestinian right to return with 6000 scarves. By that they will attempt to beat the current Guinness world record for the longest chain of scarves. The attempt is designed to commemorate the anniversary of Nakba day. A Guinness World Records Adjudicator will be present to officially verify the record attempt, which will involve a drawing of six thousand scarves connected in the shape of the UN Resolution 194, in an effort to break the current record of 2,932 m 5 cm (9,619 ft 6.81 in) made of 5,000 scarves and set in Spain on 29 August 2009. Art bands presenting folkloric dances, songs, and heritage sketches will entertain participants at the festivities, while organizers connect the scarves to achieve a total length of 6,000 m. All are invited to go commemorate Al Nakba in Beirut.

When: Saturday May 15
What Time: 3:00pm
Where: Sportive city of Beirut- Bir Hassan

The Nazareth school in Beddawi is a UNRWA school.

UPDATE: Here is the video (h/t Jed)

UPDATE 2: Adam at CiFWatch just happened to have a snapshot of a heroic Palestinian Arab throwing an incendiary device at the entrance to a UNRWA community center in Deheisheh:

UPDATE 3: The Arabic phrase has these peaceful words: (h/t Ali)

"My enemy, enemy of the sun, I will not compromise and I will resist till the last pulse in my veins"

Apparently, UNRWA has some 'splaining to do.

Arab League asks its members to pay their pledges to the PA

Al Masry al-Youm reports that Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa is urging League members to pay up on their pledges to help out the Palestinian Authority.

For years now, Arab nations have been quick to promise financial aid to the PA, but very slow to deliver. Similarly, they make great promises to fund UNRWA, but by and large fail to pay up.

The PA claims to be suffering from a financial crisis, as they always are. However, they continue to fund infrastructure and pay salaries in Gaza - which sucks up 60% of the PA's budget. This frees up Hamas to buy more weapons and not to worry about an uprising that would dislodge them from power, and there is of course zero oversight on the sources or outlays of the Hamas budget.

Meanwhile, in Ramallah....

There is money here, plenty of it, and those who have it are not hesitant to flaunt it.

New cars, beautiful residences, fancy stores and restaurants will startle any outsider arriving here with his head filled by the mainstream media in the West about the misery of the West Bank occupation by Israelis.

There is also poverty, Israeli checkpoints, the fence or wall separating Palestinian territories from Israel and the Israeli settlements.

And there’s the politics of resentment that spill over any conversation with ordinary Palestinians fed on a diet of half-truths and endless lies by their leaders.

But visiting with Palestinians is also an invitation to hear their bitterness about Arab leaders, and of their experience with discrimination and violence in places such as Lebanon and Kuwait.

They speak of how the Palestinian leadership resembles Ali Baba and his 40 thieves robbing the people of the money that has poured in as aid from the West.

The term limit of the president and the legislative assembly has expired, and no new elections are scheduled to provide Palestinians with any say on how they are being governed.

In effect those in authority have no mandate, and their fear that Hamas will likely win an election whenever held underscores the contempt of ordinary Palestinians for Mahmoud Abbas — the president of the Palestinian Authority – and the men around him.

This explains why the Arabs don't want to fund the PA - because it is money that will go right down the drain, whether into the pockets of the politicians or indirectly to Hamas.

Plus, the ever-hopeful Westerners are more than happy to take up the slack.

Administrivia/open thread

Happy Ramadan!

I just wanted to thank the people who have been emailing and messaging tips to me. I've been really busy and every time I can save research time by getting a tip, I really appreciate it!

Similarly, I would like to apologize if I do not acknowledge (or use) every tip.

I just put a toolbar on the bottom from an Israeli company called Wibiya. I had tried it once before and took it off, but they seem to have made some improvements so I'll test it again. Let me know if it is a problem. It looks like it has some nifty features.

Meanwhile, this is as good a time as any for an open thread....

Giant Saudi clock set to herald "Mecca Time."

As I reported two weeks ago, the new giant clock atop the Saudi Abraj al-Bait Tower is meant to symbolize Islamic attempts to make Mecca the source for the world's time, supplanting Greenwich.

From the Arab News:

Quiz: What's wrong with this picture?

The giant clock of Makkah is all set to tick home a new time standard, as some scholars believe that it will be an ideal alternative to the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Many scholars are of the opinion that Makkah Time can provide the world an alternative to the GMT. These people have scientific arguments to back their contention, as Makkah is situated in the center of the world.

At a conference in Doha in 2008, Muslim clerics and scholars presented “scientific” arguments that Makkah time is the true global meridian. They said that Makkah is the center of the world.

“Putting Makkah time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time, this is the goal,” said Mohammed Al-Arkubi, general manager of Royal Makkah Tower Hotel.

The Royal Clock is sitting atop the central tower in the Abraj Al-Bait Project, 50 meters opposite the Grand Mosque in Makkah. The clock will be visible from 17 km away at night and 11 to 12 km away during the day. A German-owned company, Premiere Composite Technologies, has designed the clock.

Sources said that the world’s largest clock — six times larger than London’s Big Ben — will be launched in the first week of Ramadan but no date has yet been fixed. The trial run would be conducted on the clock facing Jeddah that is to be inaugurated first.

The tower featuring the world’s largest clock also includes a Lunar Observation Center and an Islamic Museum. While the Royal Clock will announce daily prayers, the Lunar Observation Center and Islamic Museum will serve to protect the heritage for future generations. The observatory will also be used to sight the moon during the holy months. On special occasions, 16 bands of vertical lights will shoot some 10 km up into the sky.

AP mentions that the giant clock was designed by Swiss and German engineers.

The chances of the world adopting Mecca Time is roughly the same as the chances of it adopting Jerusalem Solar Time and the (pretty complicated) Jewish lunar/solar calendar.

PA versus Hamas at An Najah University

From PCHR:

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the continued arbitrary arrests and illegal detentions of members of Hamas by Palestinian security services in the West Bank, as these arrests and detentions are in violation of law. The latest arrest campaign was carried out by the Preventive Security Service (PSS) in Nablus against six academics working at an-Najah National University, one member of a municipal council of Nablus, two engineers and one university student. In addition, the PSS summonsed and questioned nine women in Nablus, confiscating their IDs.

According to the testimony given to PCHR by Mona Mansour a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from the Change and Reform Bloc, late on the night of Monday, 02 August 2010, the PSS carried out an arrest campaign against six academics working at an-Najah National University, one member of a municipal council, two engineers, one university student and another two persons. Additionally, the PSS confiscated three cars and summonsed and confiscated the IDs of nine women, requiring them to appear to the PSS headquarters in order to force them to resign from Al-Tadamon Charitable Society.

These were Hamas members.

Today, the lecturers were released, and a hundred other political prisoners (again from Hamas) will be released for Ramadan by the PA.

Both Hamas and the PA regularly arrest and intimidate members of the other group.

Did Barak tell Kouchner he wanted to invade Lebanon?

From YNet:

France dissuaded Israel from opening a large-scale military operation against Lebanon in response to the border incident which killed Ltc. Dov Harari, the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Wednesday.

French sources told the paper that Defense Minister Ehud Barak had informed French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner that "Israel intends on opening a large-scale military operation to educate the Lebanese Army and avenge the death of the senior Israeli officer."

This allegedly led to high-rank contacts involving French President Nicolas Sarkozy, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as Egyptian, Jordanian and other Arab state officials.

According to the report, the pressure managed to defuse tensions and prevent another northern campaign.

The Al Asharq article is here.

I don't think that Israel was going to invade - but I think it is entirely possible that Barak threatened to do so, in order to get France and the US to take a second look at exactly who they are supporting when they send weapons to the LAF and to encourage them to curtail such arms transfers in a deal to avoid having the trigger-happy, reckless IDF overreact.

Hey, if the world is convinced that the IDF starts wars at the drop of a hat, then why not use that to diplomatic advantage? The Arabs use the same tactic to pressure the West all the time (saying that if they don't get their way, the unpredictable and dangerous "Arab street" will rise up and cause big problems.) The threat of acting irrationally is a very effective tool when applied correctly.

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog)

Lebanon not impressed with Nasrallah's speech

From Ya Libnan:

Last night and during a televised press conference Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah tried to present evidence to prove that Israel was behind the assassination of Lebanon’s former PM Rafik Hariri .

Lebanese Media has reported that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) will indict Hezbollah members for the 2005 assassination of Hariri.

As was expected , only those who support Hezbollah bought the evidence. Many were disappointed because they were expecting convincing solid evidence and specific details on the the van that contained the 2000 kg bomb that killed Hariri. Nasrallah never mentioned the van. According to der Spiegel the van belonged to a Hezbollah official and was loaded with the bombs in the Dhahiyeh, a southern Beirut suburb and a Hezbollah strongold . The footage on Israeli monitoring activities was dismissed as nothing new and “routine.”

YNet has more on Lebanon's lukewarm reaction to this highly-touted speech.

What real co-existence looks like (UPDATED)

The "Other Side" video that I posted earlier included an incredible description of real, honest-to-goodness Jewish-Arab co-existence - a narrative of how, before the first intifada, Jews who lived nearby would go to Ramallah to get various errands and shopping done, with Arab shops sticking items like challah for their Jewish customers. How these "extremist, right-wing, intolerant Jews" would forge real relationships and friendships with their Arab neighbors. In other words, how the stereotype that the mainstream media uses to portray the "settlers" is utterly false.

Similarly, in an earlier video, another resident of Yesha describes how, every Friday, IDF soldiers and Jewish residents and Arabs all go shopping and drink coffee together in an Arab-owned shop (5:40 in the video.) As she says, "a marvelous picture."

Here is a new example:

The Rami Levy supermarket is located a few hundred yards from the Gush Etzyon junction in the West Bank, 10 miles south of Jerusalem on the road to Hebron.

The store opened in June and has been packed with Arabs and Israelis every day except on the Jewish Sabbath or holidays.

Rami Levy is a savvy businessman who over the years expanded his stall in the Jerusalem shuk into a very successful national Israeli chain. He would not have opened his new store in the middle of Judea — the southern half of the West Bank — if he wasn’t certain it was financially, politically, and militarily secure. Says my wife Shellie (the real shopper in our family):

My Rami Levy shopping is still a wonder to me: if I need a few items, I don’t have to shlep into Jerusalem, but can just hop in my car and in five minutes be at the supermarket. Today, as I was whizzing down an aisle in my jeans skirt, Lands End shirt, and crocs, I noticed five or six very well-dressed Arab ladies in their caftans and hijabs, probably in their late 20s to early 30s, checking out the store. They were speaking among themselves as they gazed and pointed at items. At one point a worker in his Rami Levy uniform came over to speak to them in Arabic. Later, I saw that they had finally settled in the shampoo aisle, comparing different brands. Women will be women.

Every customer — Jew, Christian, Muslim — gets “wanded” with a metal detector by a security guard on the way into the store. Once through the door, though, I’ve experienced an occasional “traffic jam” of grocery carts. Some Arab families — often a whole family on a sightseeing trip in their holiday finery — just freeze while they take in the sight. And, of course, one of Levy’s marketing specialists chose the entrance to stack a kind of cookies that the Bethlehem, Hebron, or village residents are attracted to. I predict that as Ramadan approaches, the store will packed to capacity with Palestinian delicacies and customers.

Press accounts, political pundits, and pontificating politicians portray the situation in the West Bank as bleak and insoluble. Perhaps that’s why I was in awe on my first visit, when I saw Palestinian families and Israeli “settlers” mingling in the aisles, thumping the watermelons and squeezing the plums. My checkout cashier was a Jewish woman from Kiryat Arba of Moroccan descent, on the cash register next to her was a blue-eyed Muslim woman from Halul, and working the register behind me was a member of the Bnei Menashe tribe from India who had formalized her conversion to Judaism.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised, however, since out here in the Etzyon bloc region we “settlers” had good relations with many Palestinian craftsmen and workers who live in the area. The intifada in 2000 quashed almost all relations and ties, but in recent months they’ve been reestablished. I’m back in touch with Khalil, who taught me how to prune my grapevines, and Mahmoud, who was the subcontractor on a construction project in my home 14 years ago.

Knives and boxcutters are tools of the trade in supermarkets, just as knives were once the weapon of terrorists during the early stages of the intifada. One sign of newfound trust can be seen behind the butcher counter where almost all the men are Arabs, working in the Etzyon store as well as Levy’s Jerusalem stores with the largest and sharpest knives.

Incredibly, none of the major Western newspapers have visited and reported on the Rami Levy phenomenon in Gush Etzyon.... Can it be that the coexistence in aisle 2 and cooperation behind the meat counter run against the media narrative that Israeli “settlers” and Palestinians can never live together?

Maybe we’ll finally meet up with the press when Rami Levy opens his pizza shop and the catering hall on the second floor.

This is the ultimate irony: The leftists who shout about "co-existence" are the ones who want separation and who encourage by their actions the minority of Arabs who want to sabotage peaceful relations with Jews.

The people who have the best relationships with Arabs are the supposedly right-wing, militant, extremist, intolerant, religious, nationalist, racist, bigoted, land-grabbing, and illegal settlers.

UPDATE: This article was from May: (h/t Emet M'Tziyon)

Palestinian Authority Economy Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh warned Palestinians on Thursday against shopping at Rami Levy supermarkets in the West Bank.

Thousands of Palestinians converge every day on the Rami Levy supermarkets at Sha’ar Binyamin and Mishor Adumim, the only two branches in the West Bank. The two stores also employ dozens of Palestinians.

This was the first threat of its kind issued by the PA against Palestinians who visited the Israeli supermarkets, which are named after their founder.

Abu Libdeh said in an interview with the local Al-Watan TV station that the PA knew the names of individuals and families who shop in the Rami Levy stores.

He condemned the phenomenon of Palestinians buying goods at the Israeli supermarkets in the West Bank as a “big disgrace.”

So which side is intransigent and against co-existence again?

Now, go and send these two articles to self-proclaimed activists for Palestinian Arab rights and see whose side they are on.

New Mavi Marmara video, and the fifth column in Israel's Knesset (UPDATED)

A new video of the Mavi Marmara has surfaced, centering around Arab Knesset member Hanin Zouabi. She was on the ship, and this video proves that she lied in her interviews after the incident.

As Arutz-7 reports:

The clip, released on Army Radio’s website Wednesday morning – although currently not viewable, apparently because of the heavy demand – shows Zouabi standing next to a group of Turks who are armed with clubs and metal bars.

It is likely that they were among the mob that attacked the sparsely-armed IDF soldiers who rappelled down onto the ship after it refused to adhere to IDF orders to change course. Though the mob proceeded to beat and injure several soldiers, including one very seriously, the small IDF force was able to recover and kill nine attackers.

MK Zouabi said repeatedly after the incident, and again today, that though she was on the ship, she had no knowledge of any preparations for a violent attack on IDF soldiers. Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin said he plans to submit the tapes to the Attorney General and to the Knesset Ethics Committee.

Filmed in the stairwell of one of the ship's below-board floors, the clip first shows Zouabi with an orange life-jacket, standing and talking with mob members. One Israel Navy soldier testified that it was at this point that three of his comrades were being dragged below in an attempt to kidnap them; according to his testimony, it is unlikely that Zouabi did not see this.

Here's the video: (updated, with captions by IsraelMuse)

While is may be possible that she wasn't present when the soldiers were dragged down the stairs, we see clearly that she was aware of the pre-cut clubs and the "activists" waiting to ambush IDF soldiers at the entrance to the stairwell.

The second half of the video is no less important. As pointed out in the Balfour Street blog, Zouabi is actually arguing with the IDF soldiers who want to evacuate the wounded to Israeli hospitals! Both she and another terror-supporting "activist" say that the injured do not want to be treated in Israeli hospitals. Apparently, they were hoping for more deaths. (She continues to deny knowing that the MM passengers had weapons.)

This is a member of Knesset actively seeking to destroy Israel, and willing to support those who want to attack her country's soldiers. It is beyond belief that even the most open-minded, democratic country could tolerate this kind of behavior from their own representatives in government.

(h/t Joel B., Jed, and the two blog-links above.)

The Other Side, part 4

I thought that this installment was very powerful, but I imagine that different people have different tastes.

This video project now has a website.

Internal unrest in Gaza

For a while it looked like Hamas had a pretty strong grip on security in Gaza, but recent reports indicate that things might be fraying at the edges.

PCHR (Arabic only as of this writing) reports on three separate bomb attacks since Friday. On Tuesday, a lawyer's car was damaged by a bomb after he received a threat on his phone; a bomb targeted a pickup truck outside someone's home on early Monday morning, and on Friday a bomb damaged the house of a 63 year old woman who happens to be the sister of a senior Fatah official in the West Bank.

Palestine Press Agency reports that a peaceful PFLP protest against the power shortages in Gaza were violently broken up by Hamas police with batons. Many were arrested and beaten.

Last week an Al Jazeera reporter was attacked and insulted by Hamas police, in front of his children.

There was also a major clan clash earlier this week in Gaza City, where one was killed and seven injured.

A couple of years ago, this would have been a typical week in Gaza, but things had certainly seemed to be calming down internally. More troubling is that some of these attacks were not mentioned in the daily Palestinian Arab press I monitor, so it is possible that the Arabic media is missing some of them.

A solution to the "Made in Israel" problem

Things are really bad in England.

In just the past few weeks, we saw:

A judge instruct a jury to acquit vandals who damaged a factory because they said it was manufacturing weapons to be used by Israel;

An appeal to the British Advertising Standards Authority to overturn a ban on Israeli tourist posters showing the Western Wall was defeated;

and, today,

Four anti-Israel activists were today cleared of all charges after they locked themselves onto concrete-filled oil drums inside the Israeli-owned Ahava shop on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden forcing it to close down for one day in September 2009 and another day in December 2009.

Taherali Gulamhussein, Bruce Levy, Tom Ellis and Ms Crouch were found not guilty of failing to comply with a police officer’s orders to leave the shop.

The activists insisted that they were legally justified in their actions as they claim the shop’s activities are illegal because the products on sale in the shop originate from Mitzpe Shalem, an Israeli settlement on the West Bank and are deliberately mislabeled as “made in Israel”.

At this moment, the word "Israel" is essentially purged from the Ahava (US) website. They are clearly worried and the effects of the BDS movement is affecting them. This is a problem.

However, I think there is an easy solution.

Stop using the phrase "Made in Israel."

Instead, replace it with "Made in the Land of Israel."

The phrase "Land of Israel" is not political at all. It comprises most of the State of Israel, all of Judea and Samaria and even parts of Jordan and Lebanon. (OK, so Eilat would have to continue advertising itself as being part of "Israel." ) It refers to historic boundaries, not current political boundaries.

No one can dispute that the Dead Sea or all of Jerusalem are within the boundaries of the Land of Israel.

Even better, the phrase is evocative of the entire reason why Jews want to live on that land to begin with - because of their strong historical and emotional connection to the Land.

Imagine how well Ahava would do if they proudly advertised that all of their products were made in the Land of Israel!

Similarly, Israel's Tourism Board should advertise "Come to the Land of Israel." The statement is completely accurate and it is more effective than "Come to Israel" would be. The Advertising Standards Authority should have no problem with the accuracy of that statement.

If the corrupt British court system has a problem with that phrase as well, then they might have no choice but to dust off the old Jewish Agency tourism posters.