Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 16, 2010

So what happened to the Mariam ship?

Two weeks ago, news outlets were anxious to tell us about the imminent departure of the much-heralded women's only ship, the Mariam, from Lebanon to Gaza. (At least one of them called a single ship a "flotilla." )

Last we heard, they were going to head to Cyprus.

Since then, I have not seen any news about them actually sailing from Lebanon. In fact, I have not seen anything.

The leader of the "Free Palestine Movement" that was behind this ship as well as one other ship, Yasser Kashlak, had a website for the movement - but its domain has just expired. (Anyone want it?)

Kashlek's personal homepage domain likewise recently expired.

A high-profile Lebanese singer who was supposed to be on the ship doesn't mention anything about it on her website.

Was the entire episode a scam meant to grab headlines? There has been very little real reporting about this ship.

Iranian soccer star sacked for not fasting in Ramadan

From Al Arabiya/AFP:

Popular Iranian footballer Ali Karimi, sometimes described as "the Maradona of Asia," has been fired by his club for not fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the club said on Sunday.

Steel Azin FC said on its website www.steelazin.com that it was "forced to sack one of its players, Ali Karimi, for being disobedient and not fasting during Ramadan," when devout Muslims fast from dawn until dusk.

Karimi, who was the Asian Player of 2004, had even "insulted officials of the (Iranian) football federation and the Tehran team's supervisor who confronted him on the issue," Steel Azin said.

AP notices Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon have few rights

It is always notable when reporters who cover a country ignore a huge story for years.

Arabs in Lebanon, who happen to have ancestors who lived in British Mandate Palestine in 1947, have lived under often-horrific conditions. For decades they have been discriminated against.

None of this was a secret.

Yet the media simply ignored them, even when fighting would flare up in "refugee" camps.

Now that the Lebanese parliament has debated the issue, the mainstream media is starting to tiptoe around the topic - an area that they should have been covering since the 1970s.

Here's AP discovering the obvious:

Mohammed al-Amin spends his days doing little more than playing billiards and smoking cigarettes in this sprawling Palestinian refugee camp, where gunmen roam narrow alleyways dotted with tin-roofed, cement-block homes.

The 25-year-old studied dental lab technology but works at a small, grubby coffee shop in the camp, making $100 a month. He dreams of working with a respected doctor in Lebanese society and being welcomed like any other foreigner, without being looked down on.

"Sometimes I feel like a pressurized bottle that's about to explode," said al-Amin, who was born in Ein el-Hilweh years after his family fled what is now Israel. "Why should three quarters of the Palestinian people here be selling coffee on the street?"

The approximately 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, many of them born here, are barred by law from any but the most menial professions and are denied many basic rights.

Now parliament is debating a new law that would allow Palestinians to work in any profession and own property, as well as give them social security benefits. The bill, due for a vote on Aug. 17, is the most serious effort yet by Lebanon to transform its policies toward the refugees.

Even so, practically no one is stepping up and saying that these increased human rights should include the right of nationality in the country of one's birth. That, apparently, is way over the line.

BBC looks at Mavi Marmara

The BBC will have a documentary on the Mavi Marmara incident tonight.

Two clips are on its website:

Turk Cevdet Kiliclar, one of nine activists killed on a Gaza-bound aid mission, was prepared to become a martyr for the Palestinian cause, his wife has said.

Mr Kiliclar's widow, Derya, said: "He was crying his eyes out over Gaza. He wanted to be a martyr there."

Israel's elite commando unit which raided a Turkish aid flotilla sailing to Gaza in May has given Panorama exclusive access to its top secret operatives.

Some of the Israeli special forces took off their balaclavas to talk to me and show me the wounds they received the night nine people were killed and 50 were wounded on board the Turkish ship the MV Mavi Marmara.

"I saw a knife in my abdomen and pulled it out," Captain R said.

"The beating was continuous - and the cries of Allah Akbar."

(h/t Islamo-Nazism blog)

US threatens to withhold weapons from Turkey

From Financial Times:

President Barack Obama has personally warned Turkey’s prime minister that unless Ankara shifts its position on Israel and Iran it stands little chance of obtaining the US weapons it wants to buy.

Mr Obama’s warning to Recep Tayyip Erdogan is particularly significant as Ankara wants to buy American drone aircraft – such as the missile-bearing Reaper – to attack the Kurdish separatist PKK after the US military pulls out of Iraq at the end of 2011.

The PKK has traditionally maintained bases in the remote mountains in the north of Iraq, near the Turkish border.

One senior administration official said: “The president has said to Erdogan that some of the actions that Turkey has taken have caused questions to be raised on the Hill [Congress] . . . about whether we can have confidence in Turkey as an ally. That means that some of the requests Turkey has made of us, for example in providing some of the weaponry that it would like to fight the PKK, will be harder for us to move through Congress.”

Washington was deeply frustrated when Turkey voted against United Nations sanctions on Iran in June.

When the leaders met later that month at the G20 summit in Toronto, Mr Obama told Mr Erdogan that the Turks had failed to act as an ally in the UN vote. He also called on Ankara to cool its rhetoric about an Israeli raid that killed nine Turks on a flotilla bearing aid for Gaza.

While the two men have subsequently sought to co-operate over Iraq’s efforts to patch together a coalition government, the US makes clear its warning still stands.

“They need to show that they take seriously American national security interests,” said the administration official, adding that Washington was looking at Turkish conduct and would then assess if there were “sufficient efforts that we can go forward with their request”.

We will see if these threats pan out.

One gets the impression that US foreign policy is to simply to spread carrots around the world, providing everyone with whatever the US can give them, and then hope that the recipients get so addicted to these carrots that the threat of withdrawing them will be an adequate substitute for a stick.

The problem is that the US also wants everyone to love her, which is incompatible with ever carrying out these threats. But, we'll see.

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog)

Iran pulls out of taekwondo final with Israel

The Daily Telegraph described this best:

Politics and sport don't mix, right? The Olympics are all about fair play, and of course young athletes are in Singapore to learn more about the Olympic ideals.

All of that was blown away by an ugly situation at the taekwondo competition on the opening night of the Youth Olympic Games. The Iranian competitor Mohammad Soleimani withdrew from the gold medal bout against his Israeli opponent Gili Haimovitz ostensibly because of an ankle injury.

Iranian team officials then announced he would not attend the presentation ceremony to collect his silver medal as he was enroute to hospital. Israeli officials, however, believe that Soleimani was forced to withdraw because Iran refuses to recognise the state of Israel.

The International Olympic Committee was suitably perturbed to order an immediate investigation, headed by its medical expert Dr Patrick Schamasch.

What is particularly angering the suited heavwyweights of sport that have gathered in Singapore - and everyone is here, all 204 National Olympic Committees, more than 100 IOC members and the heads of the international sporting federations - is that this competition was centred squarely around the promotion of the lofty, often estoteric values of Olympism to the youth of the world.

''If the injury is not genuine is horrifying enough, but to use a minor in this way is the real crime,'' noted one IOC member as he walked the lobby of the Ritz Carlton.

But of course Soleimani will go home a hero, his sore foot a mere distraction and the Iranian officials safe enough in their jobs for another year.

The forfeit was not covered by any Iranian press, as far as I can tell.

Amira Hass notices Hamas beatings of protesters

Ha'aretz' Amira Hass, Ha'aretz' Arab affairs specialist who usually spends all of her time bashing Israel, actually managed to find a reason to criticize Hamas. She reports about the Hamas attack on the PFLP protest on power cuts that I blogged about last week:

"I wish these pictures reached leftists abroad," my friend said to herself Tuesday as she watched Hamas police use rifle butts and clubs to beat her friends - activists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Although my friend has never been a fan of the Fatah government in the West Bank, she is outraged by the romanticization of Hamas rule by foreign activists.

Photographs of Tuesday's protest will be hard to come by, as the Hamas police prevented photojournalists from doing their job. At some point, shots were fired into the air to disperse the PFLP protesters in Gaza City, a demonstration Hamas called an illegal gathering. Many protesters were injured and needed medical attention; others were detained for some time.

"We women weren't physically attacked by the police," my friend told me later on the phone. "They only swore at us." The profanity, mostly variations on "whore," was accompanied by words like "Marxist," which the police see as an insult. They don't need to know exactly what it means - it's among dreadful words like atheism, communism and dialectic materialism. In other words, all the terms that don't explain the world as Allah's creation.

Hamas and the PFLP have a lot in common: opposition to the Oslo Accords, glorification of the armed struggle and opposition to direct negotiations with Israel. Many of the PFLP's supporters, especially the younger ones, are also religiously observant. But in terms of social vision and ideological temperament, the gaps seem as wide as they were in the 1980s, when the Muslim Brotherhood aimed most of its attacks at "heretics," especially the Palestinian left, then many times stronger than today.

The article goes on to talk about the power shortages and Hamas' attacks on other protests and gatherings.

From reading the article, it seems that Amira Hass was moved to criticize Hamas not so much because of their brutal rule but because they attacked a Marxist organization that she greatly admires. And the PFLP happens to also be a terror group (their terror wing is the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades.)

So don't call Amira Hass a Hamas supporter. She only supports secular terrorism, and would be very insulted if you imply otherwise.

(h/t EBoZ and T34zakat)

Johnny Rotten on playing in Israel

From the Independent (UK), on legendary punk-rock pioneer Johnny Rotten:

What I do know, having hung out with him for an afternoon, is that he's still always spoiling for a fight. As we're about to say our goodbyes, he pulls a sheaf of faxes out of his pocket. They are complaints, e-mailed to his manager, John "Rambo" Stevens, who lives in Arkansas, complaining that PiL [his band - EoZ] will shortly be performing in Israel. One, from a fan called Lawrence Casin, declares: "I will destroy all my albums and paraphernalia that I have collected over the years if you bastards play that hell hole."

Most musicians, particularly those who have been around for 30 years, wouldn't let hate mail upset them. They probably wouldn't even read it. But John's anger is genuine. He wants me to record it, for posterity. "I really resent the presumption that I'm going there to play to right-wing Nazi jews," he tells me. "If Elvis-f***ing-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he's suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him. But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated."

And how does the newspaper follow up on that comment?

That's our Johnny Rotten. Always lively. Always entertaining. Often wrong. But, whatever you may think of him, never afraid to stick that bog-brush haircut exuberantly over the parapet.

(h/t Ben)

Observations on food insecurity in Arab countries

From Ya Libnan:

[T]he most severe case of food insecurity in the world happens to be the Arab world.

A United Nations study speaks in very unambiguous terms about the absolute need for Arab governments to take major steps in order to contain the expected effects of a major food crisis in the Arab countries. Studies by FAO; Food and Agriculture Organization;show that the Arab world imports over 50% of its caloric import every year and furthermore, this gap is expected to increase substantially at least until 2030.

The Arab countries , as a group, are the largest net importers of cereal in the world; larger than Asia. Arab countries imported around 60 million metric tons of cereals during 2008. One reason, not the only reason, for that huge dependence on cereal is the Arab diet. On the average the typical Arab gets 35% of his/her daily calories from wheat. This problem could be partially addressed through a different and more varied diet but above all the major reason for the continued growth in the gap between production and consumption is the above average growth in population. That is one reason why family planning , if encouraged by government policy would be expected to make meaningful contributions in this area. Lower population growth rate should make it easier to manage poverty, hunger and malnutrition. It is currently estimated that over 31 million Arabs are classified as hungry, that is almost 10% of the population.

It would be very difficult to foresee a scenario that would eliminate food insecurity in the Arab countries for the very simple reason that the Arab world has already overshot its carrying capacity. It is true that the Arab countries do not exploit enough of the available arable land; Arab countries use only about 12% of the estimated 550 million hectares available; but water shortage poses a huge problem. Renewable water resources form almost an unsurmountable problem. Water places a real constraint that is very difficult to overcome. But improved agricultural techniques would help contain the resulting food insecurity gap since the average yield in the Arab world is much below the world average. This is where investments in machines, water management and research could pay dividends.

31 million Arabs are going hungry - yet no one hears about anyone but Gazans.

Arabs could reduce the problem by a combination of family planning and changing diet - yet no one ever suggests that for Gazans.

One final observation. There is an even simpler move that Arab countries could take to help increase their food production enormously, and that is to make peace and normalize relations with Israel. The simple fact is that Israeli policies do not affect Arab lives one iota in any of the Gulf states and very little even in her Arab neighbors. The Palestinian Arab issue, which is made to appear to be the linchpin for all other issues, is not near the top of real Arab priorities and the Arab leaders do precious little for Palestinian Arabs. With the stroke of a pen, hundreds of Israelis with deep experience in maximizing food production on dry land would happily swarm the Arab world and help start innovative projects that could put a big dent in this significant problem.

Yet this is not even considered a possibility. No researcher or scientist would dare suggest such a solution to their national leaders.

So either the leaders aren't really that concerned over the prospects of their people running out of food in the next couple of decades, or they hate Israel so much that they would never consider the benefits that peace would bring.

Either way, it is a telling omission.

Pawns of the Middle East - the music video

Last week for the sheer hell of it I wrote a folk song about the true history of Palestinian Arabs, rather than the romanticized version that too many on the Left hold. It was mostly a reaction to a sickening, slanderous video I saw of another folk singer praising the IHH attackers on the Mavi Marmara, after going through a bunch of historical lies.

Well, after asking for volunteers, someone who wants to remain forever anonymous sent me some audio of my lyrics. (As bad as his or her version is, anything I could have sung would have been worse.)

I made a music video out of it, incorporating video of that same air-head singer who ticked me off, plus some historical photos and headlines. And, I must say, it is much better than the video that inspired me.

So, here is the world premiere of Pawns of the Middle East, with the lyrics as well:

The pawns of the Middle East

In 1948 their leaders abandoned them

The rich Arabs packed up and went to Lebanon
Their confident leaders told them to get out of the way
So the Jews could be slaughtered and then they'll be back to stay

But that's not what happened. Their fighters didn't fight.
Wild rumors scared them, and most then joined the flight
They ended up in Egypt, Syria, Jordan
The Palestinian Arabs thought they'd start over again

They thought that they'd be welcomed by the Arabs who said that they loved them
But they were placed in giant camps, and had to stay in tents
They thought that they were all Arabs, but they were only that in name
The other Arabs didn't want them to remind them of their shame

Chorus:
Decade after decade, the Arabs let them down
They treated them like animals, and just used them as pawns
They thought that their problem was that they didn't have a state
But the real problem was that they were taught only to hate.

They wanted jobs, they wanted land, they wanted to fit in
Their hosts only wanted the millions given by the UN
They kept them stuck in camps, in disgusting misery
They did everything possible to ensure they'd never be free.

The Arab states passed laws to let them know where they stand
They couldn't work in certain jobs, couldn't own any land
They had no choice, no rights, no control over their fate
And they raised a generation who was taught nothing but hate.

Chorus

Jordan never gave them an inch of "historic Palestine"
The entire world had no problem. They thought that this was fine.
The only land that Arabs would allow them to receive
Was the land that would be left over when they forced the Jews to leave.

Their new leaders taught terror, for them not to be so meek
Jordan slaughtered thousands of them in a matter of just weeks
And so it went, year after year, kept in dire straits
400,000 of them got kicked out of Kuwait

Decade after decade, the Arabs let them down
They treated them like animals, and just used them as pawns
They thought that their problem was that they didn't have a state
But the real problem was that they were taught only to hate.

UPDATE: The author of the song I was originally spoofing, David Rovics, also has a song extolling "Resistance," a song about the Israeli separation barrier whose video and lyrics compares it to the Holocaust, and a song that praises Somali pirates.

Sorry, I didn't realize when I called him an airhead that I was being complimentary. He is evil and he actively supports evil. And there are thousand of people who love his songs.

UN gives Hamas more legitimacy

From the Hamas al-Qassam website:

The UN commission of independent experts appointed to monitor Israeli and Palestinian probes into allegations of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead arrived in Gaza on Saturday.

Gaza's Foreign Affairs Ministry under-secretary Ahmad Yousef said the delegation arrived through the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt to follow up on recommendations made in justice Richard Goldstone's report.

"The commission will come to monitor and evaluate the legal procedures on both the Israeli and Palestinian side on the Goldstone report, to ensure credibility and transparency during these investigations," he told Ma'an.

The committee, which includes jurists Christian Tomuschat, Mary McGowan and Davis Param Cumaraswamy, will meet with civil society representatives and UN organizations and groups as well as victims and witnesses who testified before the UN's independent fact-finding committee shortly after the winter 2008-09 war.

Members will also meet with the Hamas-run government's commission established to follow up with the recommendations of the report, Yousef added.

The committee was created in June 2010, specifically tasked with monitoring Israeli and Palestinian investigations into the deadly conflict in Gaza that left more than 1,400 people dead and injured 5,000 others.

As far as I can tell, the UN had received preliminary reports from both Hamas and the PA on Cast Lead - and they had ignored Hamas' report completely.

Now, this new committee is apparently giving Hamas' report - and Hamas' "investigation" - legitimacy that the UN itself had denied the terror group. (That is, if we believe the Hamas website. Time will tell.)

The lead committee member is also problematic.

Micro blogcation

I am away from a computer until Sunday afternoon.

Arab News likes its anti-semitism to have an American flavor

The Arab News doesn't like Jews.

That this Saudi newspaper is not thrilled with the Jewish people is hardly news, of course. But, as with most English-language Arab newspapers, they are loath to have their Arab writers mention it, because they do not want to be called anti-semitic.

Instead, what the Arab News does is it scours far-left sites and blogs for articles that fit its agenda, and then it publishes that nonsense as an op-ed.

Here's today's example:

“Israel and the US realize that the next war will burn much of the Middle East and may well spell the end of Israel.”

Now, Israel certainly believes that about the Middle East, and in fact hopes it happens, because that just makes its position stronger. But neither Israel nor the US — at least at a governmental level — accept the second part of the proposition, just the opposite, that in fact it will be the saving of Israel — because (as I’ve noted elsewhere) if the regional chaos is great enough, Israel will take the opportunity to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians (and probably Israeli Arabs as well) from “Greater Israel” by shoving them over its borders, into Jordan and the Sinai (and some into the Lebanon as well).

That will leave it intact and Jewish, its neighbors overwhelmed by a few million destitute Palestinians — a 2nd and even worse Nakba — and everyone else in ruins or teetering on the edge. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Affair Minister Avigdor Lieberman and their merry thugs won’t shed a tear or lose a second’s sleep over any of it, much less over the many Americans who will die in yet another of America’s Jewish wars.

...Putting lots of discrete pieces together, including published information on Israeli penetration of the telecommunications security and cybernetic systems in the US since the 1970s and 1980s, the movement of Israelis (with or without dual nationality) or American Jews serving Israel across the US and Israeli governments and lobbies like AIPAC, and the presence of Israelis (again with or without dual nationality) and American Jews serving Israel throughout the US national security apparatus for decades (remember the far-from-unique stories of Lani Kass or David Wurmser, much less the likes of “Scooter” Libby or Rahm Emanuel?), one thing seems painfully clear to me.

This is that Israel has had ongoing access for decades to US nuclear codes and systems, and may well be able to override safeguards here to obtain command and control (and therefore targeting and launch capabilities) over at least US land-based strategic nuclear systems.

Think about it. With those technical means, oversight of security and especially in-place human assets, Israel would have had to make a deliberate decision not to acquire that access and obtain those capabilities in order not to have them now, and that flies in the face of everything else Israel has done in its national security and espionage fields.

That may be the club Israel holds over US presidents, and it would certainly explain a host of otherwise inexplicable actions by them. Understanding the actual dynamics of this phenomenon and how to counter them must have the highest priority.

What the hell did we need Jonathan Pollard for - we can launch and remotely control US nuclear weapons whenever we want! And the stupid American goyim haven't changed the codes since the 1970s! You Americans are PWNED! Bwahahaha!

The Arab News knows that if an Arab would spew this idiocy in English, he would be laughed out of the room. But, luckily, there is no shortage of Americans who can identify and expose the most subtle Jewish conspiracies - and spray them all over the Internet! (This article had been reproduced at least 62 times in the past couple of days, according to Google.)

Time for a truthful Palestinian Arab folksong

Last week, I saw a video (sent out to the Free Gaza mailing list) of an earnest, self-righteous folksinger, singing his heart out about how those evil Zionists have been oppressing innocent Palestinian Arabs, up to and including the Mavi Marmara. If you want to barf, you can see the video here.

The lyrics are filled with what can only be called outright lies, but lies that are accepted as truth by a huge percentage of the world. Here is how it starts:

In 1948 they were driven out at the point of a machine gun
Families fled in fear to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon
They fled around the globe, firmly held in terror's grip
And about a million refugees ended up in the tiny Gaza Strip
In 1967 the IDF moved in
And the refugees in Gaza became refugees again
Settlers took their farmland, soldiers took the ports
And the people were surrounded by military forts

In 2007 they cut it off completely
No access to the borders, no access to the sea
The world began to see this unavoidable stamp
The most crowded place on Earth was now a concentration camp
Israeli jet fighters bombed Gaza from the air
And they kept out the supplies needed to rebuild and repair
They kept out the convoys of humanitarian aid
Anemic children going hungry, crushed and burned in bombing raids

Now, people listening to this in a concert have next to zero ability to think critically about these sincere-sounding libels. They get caught up in the moment - a purely emotional moment that has no bearing on logic or reality - and the hate that underlies these lyrics become, subconsciously, a part of them.

So yesterday I decided that it is time to write a folk song that actually tells the truth about Palestinian Arabs. Unfortunately, I cannot play guitar nor can I sing very well, so I cannot upload it to YouTube and cause countless clueless leftist heads to explode at the confluence of folk singing about an oppressed people and the truth about who is oppressing them.

But maybe one of my readers can.

So, without further ado, here is my song:

The pawns of the Middle East

In 1948 their leaders abandoned them

The rich Arabs packed up and went to Lebanon
Their confident leaders told them to get out of the way
So the Jews could be slaughtered and then they'll be back to stay

But that's not what happened. Their fighters didn't fight.
Wild rumors scared them, and most then joined the flight
They ended up in Egypt, Syria, Jordan
The Palestinian Arabs thought they'd start over again

They thought that they'd be welcomed by the Arabs who said that they loved them
But they were placed in giant camps, and had to stay in tents
They thought that they were all Arabs, but they were only that in name
The other Arabs didn't want them to remind them of their shame

Chorus:
Decade after decade, the Arabs let them down
They treated them like animals, and just used them as pawns
They thought that their problem was that they didn't have a state
But the real problem was that they were taught only to hate.

They wanted jobs, they wanted land, they wanted to fit in
Their hosts only wanted the millions given by the UN
They kept them stuck in camps, in disgusting misery
They did everything possible to ensure they'd never be free.

The Arab states passed laws to let them know where they stand
They couldn't work in certain jobs, couldn't own any land
They had no choice, no rights, no control over their fate
And they raised a generation who was taught nothing but hate.

Chorus

Jordan never gave them an inch of "historic Palestine"
The entire world had no problem. They thought that this was fine.
The only land that Arabs would allow them to receive
Was the land that would be left over when they forced the Jews to leave.

Their new leaders taught terror, for them not to be so meek
Jordan slaughtered thousands of them in a matter of just weeks
And so it went, year after year, kept in dire straits
400,000 of them got kicked out of Kuwait

Decade after decade, the Arabs let them down
They treated them like animals, and just used them as pawns
They thought that their problem was that they didn't have a state
But the real problem was that they were taught only to hate.

It didn't take long to write - maybe 45 minutes. I could write an entire album in a couple of days. Political folk-singers are overrated.

Libya proud of violating international humanitarian law

From Ya Libnan:

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libya’s leader said Thursday that part of a deal to free a jailed Israeli photographer involved the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Gadhafi told reporters that the Israeli-Tunisian Rafael Rafram Chaddad was not a spy and accepted his story that he was in the country to photograph heritage sites connected with Libya’s vanished Jewish community.

“This person was naive … he is not a spy and I made use of this issue in favor of our Palestinian brothers in Gaza,” he said. “Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for releasing the Israeli photographer.”

Gadhafi would not say how many Palestinians were released in exchange for Chaddad, who was freed Sunday after five months in jail.

Once again we quote from the 1979 Hostages Convention:

Any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (hereinafter referred to as the "hostage") in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offence of taking of hostages ("hostage-taking") within the meaning of this Convention.

Any person who attempts to commit an act of hostage-taking, or participates as an accomplice of anyone who commits or attempts to commit an act of hostage-taking likewise commits an offence for the purposes of this Convention.

Libya has accepted this Convention.

Furthermore, hostage taking is considered a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions (Convention IV, Article 147) in international conflicts. Libya is still in an official state of war with Israel.

Libya has admitted - and is proud of - this grave breach of international law.

Don't expect the UN Human Rights Council to take up this issue. After all, Libya is a member in good standing of that august body.

(h/t Jed)

The Other Side, part 5

A resident of Shiloh describes how he and his 3 year old son survived a terror attack - and, perhaps more importantly, how he reacted.

The entire series of interviews of so-called "settlers" can be viewed on the project's webpage.

Will Southern Sudan establish relations with Israel?

In January, Sudan plans to hold a referendum on the secession of Southern Sudan from the country.

A representative of the Southern Sudanese stated in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat that he saw no reason that the new country should not to establish relations with Israel, saying that other Arab states have done so and that Southern Sudan does not want to antagonize any other country.

It is not clear whether Southern Sudan would be considered an Arab country. Arab states seem to be ambivalent about supporting the secession.

Media ignores Turkey's use of chemical weapons (updated)

Yesterday, Der Spiegel published a report indicating that Turkey used chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels.

German experts have confirmed the authenticity of photographs that purport to show PKK fighters killed by chemical weapons. The evidence puts increasing pressure on the Turkish government, which has long been suspected of using such weapons against Kurdish rebels. German politicians are demanding an investigation.

It would be difficult to exceed the horror shown in the photos, which feature burned, maimed and scorched body parts. The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings. Turkish-Kurdish human rights activists believe the people in the photos are eight members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) underground movement, who are thought to have been killed in September 2009.

In March, the activists gave the photos to a German human rights delegation comprised of Turkey experts, journalists and politicians from the far-left Left Party, as SPIEGEL reported at the end of July. Now Hans Baumann, a German expert on photo forgeries has confirmed the authenticity of the photos, and a forensics report released by the Hamburg University Hospital has backed the initial suspicion, saying that it is highly probable that the eight Kurds died "due to the use of chemical substances."

German politicians and human rights experts are now demanding an investigation into the incident. "The latest findings are so spectacular that the Turkish side urgently needs to explain things," said Claudia Roth, the co-chair of Germany's Green Party. "It is impossible to understand why an autopsy of the PKK fighters was ordered but the results kept under seal."

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has rejected the accusations, according to the Berlin daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung, which reported on the case Thursday. Turkey is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and its armed forces do not possess any biological or chemical weapons, the ministry reportedly said.

The newspaper also reports that it has obtained additional, shocking pictures in the meantime, supposedly autopsy photographs of six other killed Kurds. These images, too, have now been submitted to the Hamburg-based experts.

So far, outside of Armenian, Kurdish and Israeli websites, the rest of the English-language media has ignored the story. It has been a full day since the initial report was published in English and German.

But I guess that if the mainstream media doesn't report it, it cannot be very important. Sorry for wasting your time.

(h/t jarh)

UPDATE: Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today mentions the story, saying it is a "smear campaign" by Israel similar to what they did to Saddam Hussein, in order to pressure the world to invade Turkey and to deflect Israel from criticism for the Mavi Marmara.

Those wily Jews, submitting the photos months before the flotilla!

Gazans forced to stay in their "open air prison" - by their leaders

The idea that Gaza is an "open air prison," which was ridiculous all along, has become farcical ever since Egypt opened the Rafah border in July.

Gazans can freely visit Egypt, as long as they follow Egyptian rules. And those rules include having a valid passport from the PA.

There is only one problem: Hamas refuses to create passports for Fatah members, and the PA is refusing to give out blank passports to Hamas.

Ma'an tells us more about the PA's forcing Gazans to stay in Gaza:

The Palestinian Authority is depriving citizens in Gaza from obtaining passports, a rights group said Thursday.

The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights wrote to Ramallah-based Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in June urging him to comply with Palestinian Basic Law and issue passports to all citizens without discrimination.

Since June, the center has issued further complaints on behalf of citizens denied passports, none of which have received responses from the PA, a statement said.

The complainants included cancer patient Ahmed Abu Fou'ad, Mohammed Subeh who needs an eye-transplant, and paramedic, Alaa' Sarhan, who needs surgery to remove shrapnel from his body as well as urinary surgery, Al Mezan said.

The Palestinian Human Rights NGOs Council has also written to Fayyad requesting he address these cases, but has not received any response, the report added.

Al Mezan called on the PA, and particularly the Interior Ministry, to respect citizens’ rights, noting that discriminating between citizens on the basis of their political affiliation or opinion constituted “flagrant violations to human rights and to the principle of the rule of law.”

I can't wait for all those "human rights" activists to start rallying in European capitals against this inhumane policy of the PA that forces Gazans to be stuck in Gaza.

Odds and ends

Some links people have sent me, via email or the comments:

Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) has quoted this blog as a straight news source, and linked back to me. (Even so, they slightly mis-characterize a clan clash as if it was a Hamas activity.) Hey; it's better than being ripped off!

Juan Cole wrote on his blog the interesting "fact" that "despite being Shiite fundamentalists, Hizbullah has consistently supported a strong, united Lebanon and is among the foremost purely Lebanese nationalist forces in the country." Sure - as long as they are in charge. (h/t Dan)

The German Foreign Minister traveled to Saudi Arabia without his boyfriend. Since Saudi Arabia has a death penalty for homosexuality, this might have been a good move. (h/t Silke)

Sky News reports that researchers in Israel have invented an "electronic nose" that can sniff the existence of cancer from people's breath. In fact, the lead researcher is an Israeli Arab. (h/t Jacob)

There is evidence that Turkey used chemical weapons against the PKK Kurdish group. No word on whether there will be a UN inquiry on this war crime, or whether the story will even last a week. (h/t Jacob)