Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Google takes down my tip jar

I just got an email from Google saying that "Fund Solicitation" is a violation of the Terms of Use for Google Checkout.

Which surprised me because I had seen other blogs using Google Checkout as a tip jar.

I don't know yet if any of the tips I received will be transferred into my bank account, since that part wasn't fully set up yet. If they won't be, I'll see what I can do to make sure that you guys aren't charged or get refunds.

Now, my problem is finding another way to set up a tip jar. PayPal and GPal both gave out my name in the receipt and I prefer to remain anonymous. Amazon's donation system is only for non-profits, and the only way I could use that is to provide some sort of digital content for sale (assuming I can be anonymous there.)

I'll keep looking for a system that is easy and works.

Meanwhile, I do appreciate the donations that were sent! Thanks so much!

The 1978 event that turned Egypt against Palestinian Arabs

Oroub al-Abed has spent her career documenting the endemic and systematic discrimination against Palestinian Arabs in Egypt, writing numerous articles and a book on that topic. Yet it is practically unknown.

A book review summarizes the main points of their history up until 1978:

El-Abed notes that prior to Israel’s independence in 1948 there were approximately 75,000 Palestinians living in Egypt. Most had settled in Cairo and Alexandria and lived close to other Palestinians, and were from the middle and upper classes, and some had acquired Egyptian citizenship. Their residency was considered temporary, and many believed, with the encouragement from Arab governments, that they would return to Israel. However, after the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948, Egypt became responsible for the welfare of two separate Palestinian communities; the Palestinians living in Egypt proper, which numbered approximately 87,000 and the 200,000 Palestinians living in the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, a small, densely populated territory seized by Egypt during the war. Palestinian living conditions in the Gaza Strip were harsh. They remained stateless, their travel was restricted, and an Egyptian governor ruled the territory with an iron fist.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to improve the quality of life for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by granting them free education in public schools and many worked as businessmen, merchants, mechanics, farmers, and fishermen. He also allocated subsidies for students to enter Egyptian universities and helped create the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, although the latter was more out of his desire to control Palestinian affairs than out of benevolence.

After the 1967 War, the Gaza Strip fell under Israeli control and approximately 13,000 additional Palestinians entered Egypt. Their stateless condition persisted after Nasser’s death in 1970, and new, harsh measures enacted by President Anwar Sadat sought to draw clearer distinctions between Palestinian and Egyptian identities. Sadat revoked some privileges Palestinians enjoyed under Nasser and in 1978, he enacted a law which banned Palestinian children from free public schools, forcing them to switch to costly private schools. He also imposed Law 48, which prohibited Palestinian workers from the public sector. Palestinians were also viewed with suspicion and persecuted, particularly after Egyptian Minister of Culture Yusuf al-Sibai’s assassination by the Palestinian terrorist group Abu Nidal in 1978.

That assassination is a hugely important event in Palestinian Arab history, as al-Abed writes in this fascinating section of her book. Essentially, in the course of only weeks after that assassination, Palestinian Arabs in Egypt turned into the Jews of the Arab world:

For the Palestinian population in Egypt, the turning point—repeatedly cited in our interviews—was the 18 February 1978 assassination in Nicosia, Cyprus, of Egyptian culture minister Yusif al-Siba‘i by the notorious Palestinian Abu Nidal faction. Though Abu Nidal had been expelled from Fatah and the PLO with much fanfare in the early 1970s and was widely known to be their sworn enemy, the Egyptian government and media did not hesitate to stigmatize the Palestinians in general for the assassination. At al-Siba‘i’s funeral, Egyptian prime minister Mustafa Riyad declared, “No more Palestine after today.” The fallout of the assassination was immediately felt within Egypt’s Palestinian community, with a flurry of arrests, surveillance, and detentions. Although the research for this book did not yield specific information on the number of Palestinians arrested after al-Siba‘i’s death, some interviewees reported that Palestinian houses were regularly searched for young men to bring in for questioning.

The police made intensive arrest campaigns against Palestinians after the death of al-Siba‘i. That day, the police came to the building where I live and asked about a Palestinian officer in the army, which was my rank then. My Egyptian neighbors spoke highly of me and I was lucky that they did not come again. (P1, Giza, Cairo, 10 May 2002)
---
After the killing of al-Siba‘i, Egyptians considered Palestinians as Jews [an allusion to Palestinian perceived economic power], although we are Arabs like them. One day the front window of my shop was broken. Of course, it was an Egyptian who did it. Why? What have I done to them? Is it only because I am Palestinian, like those who killed al-Siba‘i? (P9, Wailey, 24 June 2002)

The al-Siba‘i assassination triggered a spate of anti-Palestinian editorializing, which further inflamed popular opinion. “Disloyalty” became a trait frequently attributed to Palestinians. Another endlessly repeated charge—mentioned by a great number of our interviewees as a standard and deeply ingrained idea about Palestinians—is that they “sold their land to the Zionists” of their own accord and therefore got what they deserved. Not atypical is the following passage from the popular Egyptian daily al-Akhbar:

Each one of the thousands of people who participated in the funeral asked himself: Is this what we get for having waged four wars for those who killed him? For having deprived ourselves of bread in order to recover their lost land? . . . for having deprived our children of the places in the university that were their due so they [Palestinians] could have them? . . . for having tasted death so they could live? Are those the words we sacrificed ourselves for so that Gaza and the West Bank would be liberated before Sinai? Our people do not deserve such ingratitude. (Mustafa Amin, al-Akhbar, 20 February 1978)

It was also during the period following the assassination that reports of Palestinian wealth increased, which sharpened resentments among poor Egyptians and fueled the Palestinians’ reputation for having “taken over” the Egyptian economy. As an example of the kind of journalistic writing that encouraged such notions, a 13 May 1979 article headlined “All These Fortunes for Palestinians Living in Egypt!!!” appeared in Egyptian Weekly Magazine. Among the article’s claims were that 60 percent of the shops in Central Cairo and Port Said were Palestinian-owned and that 12,000 private import-export offices and 40 farms were run by Palestinians. Exaggerating Palestinian economic power in this way suggested to the local population that the Palestinians in their midst were vampires sucking the blood of the Egyptian people.

Of far more lasting practical consequence, however, were the legal changes that followed al-Siba‘i’s killing. On 28 February 1978, a mere ten days after the assassination, the authoritative al-Ahram reported the prime minister’s announcement that the government would “reconsider all procedures that treated Palestinians as nationals. The purpose [was] to rank Palestinians with other Arab nationals and to safeguard national rights for Egyptians.” Indeed, the threat was soon carried out, with President Sadat issuing administrative regulations 47 and 48 of 1978 decreeing that all regulations treating Palestinians as nationals were to be annulled. Ministries hastened to apply the regulations: “The Ministry of Labor warned against issuing foreigners, including Palestinians, permits for business or for creating offices for export/import. Exceptions [were] made for those who had been married to Egyptian women for the past five years” (al-Ahram, 7 August 1978). More specifically, Law 48 concerned work in the public sector. Section 1 of Article 16 of the law stipulated that employment of Arab nationals should be on a “reciprocal basis.” This meant that the government of Egypt would hire citizens only of countries that hired Egyptian nationals. Needless to say, the stateless Palestinians were excluded under this law.

The dismantling of Nasser’s legislation favoring the Palestinians continued for the remainder of Sadat’s regime, further tightening restrictions on employment and extending the restrictions to other spheres, especially education, where Palestinians saw themselves progressively deprived of their access to free education and to university study.

An often overlooked aspect of the cancellation of the regulations treating Palestinians as nationals is that it did not concern solely the Palestinians in Egypt. The measures had far-reaching consequences for Palestinians across the Arab world, at least with regard to education. For more than twenty years, Palestinians could be educated in Egyptian universities free of charge, and tens of thousands took advantage of the offer: From the mid-1960s until 1978, an average of 20,000 Palestinian students per year were enrolled in Egyptian universities.

In this sense, then, what ended with the legislation following the al-Siba‘i assassination was the lingering legacy of Nasser’s “sponsorship” of the Palestinian people. By enacting these measures, Sadat was signalling that Egypt was no longer the patron of the Palestinians nor the primary Arab defender of their cause.

Here we have explicit "anti-Palestinianism" that was enshrined as Egyptian policy - and most of it remains to this day, as can be seen in this shorter article on the same topic.

Palestinian Arabs in Egypt are discriminated against in terms of jobs, education, land ownership and (of course) citizenship. Yet this topic is essentially unknown.

Because, really, who cares about Palestinian Arabs when their troubles cannot be blamed on Israel?

Arabs freak over - an elevator

From the Jerusalem Post:

Two thousand years ago, stone bridges connected the Jewish Quarter directly to the Temple Mount, saving the high priests the long trek down and back up. By this time next year, visitors with baby carriages and the disabled could be saving themselves the same schlep if an elevator is approved by the Jerusalem Planning and Building Committee.

The elevator, proposed by the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter, would start at Misgav Ledach Street and descend 21 meters to a new pedestrian tunnel. It would greatly improve access for visitors in wheelchairs or those with other disabilities, who now have to contend with several flights of stairs. The pedestrian tunnel would be 60-70 meters in length and pass underneath the stairs near the Aish HaTorah Yeshiva.

At present, the only way for visitors in wheelchairs to reach the Kotel is through the road leading to Dung Gate, which is very steep and has no sidewalks.

“The idea is to make a simple connection between the Jewish Quarter and the Kotel. We want to make the Kotel more accessible to people with disabilities, or even large families with baby carriages,” Daniel Shukuron, the project director from the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

As night follows day, so do outraged statements from the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation warning that every innocuous project in Jerusalem is a precursor to the destruction of the Al Aqsa Mosque.

From Ma'an:

The Al-Aqsa Foundation says the plans are a threat to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is adjacent to the Western Wall.

In a statement, the foundation said the project intended to divide the mosque and prevent worshipers from reaching it, citing the plan as an attempt by Israeli forces to increase the presence of Jews in the area.

The statement warned that the square in front of the wall could be used as a base to attack the compound.

Misgav Ledach Street is not very near the Kotel or the Temple Mount at all.

Lebanese pass law to allow Palestinians to have jobs

From Naharnet:

Palestinian Ambassador to Lebanon Abdullah Abdullah on Tuesday lauded as "a progressive step forward" Lebanese parliament's adoption of a law granting full employment rights to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, but said in a statement that the step "does not meet all of our demands."

He said Palestinians would continue to push for their rights, "primarily the right to own property."

The Lebanese constitution prohibits the naturalization of the refugees, but Palestinian officials have consistently said they refuse permanent resettlement in Lebanon.

Note that last paragraph: Palestinian "officials" say they refuse permanent settlement, but Lebanese Palestinians themselves would disagree strongly. As I have mentioned before, in the 1950s, Lebanon offered citizenship to many Christian Palestinians as well as Muslims who could prove Lebanese ancestry, and some 50,000 people jumped at the offer. A loophole that opened up in 1994 that offered citizenship was equally pounced upon and tens of thousands more became Lebanese citizens - many even falsifying papers - before that loophole was closed.

In other words, the Palestinian "officials" in Lebanon are totally at odds with what a great percentage of Lebanese Palestinians really want.

Note also that the idea of Palestinian Lebanese owning land was taken out of the proposed bill.

Shiny happy Israelis (Brian Henry)

From the National Post:

Canada and Israel have much in common. We’re both big believers in democracy and in fairness, we’re both highly diverse multicultural societies and both of us have dynamic economies.

But I was tickled to learn this summer that Canada and Israel have yet one more thing in common: We’re tied for eighth place among the happiest people on Earth.

Some people might be surprised to find Israelis at the top of the happiness charts. After all, Gallup conducted this poll from 2005 to 2009, and during that time, Israel fought two wars.

On top of that, Israel is often protrayed as a monstrous apartheid state. Surely Israeli Arabs must live in utter misery — and since they make up 20% of the population, their despair ought to pop the happiness bubble, right? Apparently not. It seems Israeli Arabs are pretty happy, too.

Arab-Israeli soccer star Beram Kayal has an easy explanation for misconceptions about Israel. “People watch too much television,” he recently told Scotland’s Sunday Herald.

“What the television shows about Israel is totally different [from] what happens. The life between the Jews and the Arabs is very good. I’m an Arab and my agent is Jewish but we’re like family … Maccabi Haifa has seven or eight Arab players and that’s normal. The only difference is their religion, but there’s no conflict.”

Read the whole thing.

The Other Side, part 6

A bit more religious/idealistic than most of the others. Then again, he has a sign outside his winery that points to a prophecy in Amos that sure looks like it applies to him very well!

Interesting coincidence in Iran's airplane crash

From Fox News:

An Iranian fighter jet crashed Tuesday in southern Iran near the country's nuclear power plant that is to start up over the weekend, a semi-official news agency reported. The two pilots ejected safely.

The Fars agency quoted local government official Gholam Reza Keshtkar as saying one of Iranian airforce's F-4 planes crashed about four miles (six kilometers) north of the city of Bushehr. The city is located 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) south of the capital, Tehran.

What the media is not reporting, as far as I can tell, is that this is the second plane crash near Bushehr this month. The first was a drone that crashed nearby, causing much panic among people who live near there, already antsy about an Israeli or US strike.

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would be wondering if there is any software on board these planes that can be remotely controlled by, say, someone over the border. Although if there was, this would not be the time to show your hand.

UNRWA's long term problem

UNRWA has again warned that it is running with a large deficit and will be forced to close schools or other programs if it does not get some cash quickly.

Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, said that a deficit of $84 million needs to be covered this month or else services will be affected.

Given that the real or imagined population of "refugees" that UNRWA takes responsibility for is increasing at a high rate, UNRWA has done surprisingly little planning on how to reduce the problem. In 2005, UNRWA came out with a five year plan that pretended "to create conditions for the human development and sustainable self reliance for Palestine refugees." Yet the only concrete tactics were a microfinance plan and vocational training - important but largely symbolic initiatives that are not designed to make a real dent in reducing Palestinian Arab dependence a UN welfare agency.

I have yet to see a real, long-term strategy by UNRWA to continue its operations for the next decade. It is obvious that they cannot continue to receive more and more money from the West (Arab nations pay only a small part of the UNRWA budget, and often renege on their pledges.)

Even if there was a peace plan tomorrow and a Palestinian Arab state the day after that, there would still be nearly five million officially registered "refugees", a continuously growing population. The PA cannot afford to keep its own economy going; they sure couldn't absorb millions of Arabs kept stateless by their host countries, many of them radicalized by being stuck in miserable conditions for so many years.

And nobody is thinking about how to solve this issue.

Arab states are more than happy to keep the status quo - it costs them nothing to give these squalid camps to UNRWA and they have no responsibility. The millions of pseudo-refugees are being kept in limbo for Phase 2 of the plan to destroy Israel, namely, the non-existent "right of return." No matter what agreement Israel signs that says that it will never happen, that issue will come up as a legitimate issue within a few years.

There is only one solution: The Arab states need to assume responsibility for their role in keeping the Palestinian Arabs stateless, discriminated against and in misery. They need to start implementing plans to integrate their "guests" into their own societies, the way every other refugee population in history has been integrated in their host countries.

The only way this can happen is by shaming them.

Publicize the endemic discrimination that the Palestinian Arabs have been subject to since 1948. Tell the world how desperate these people are to become a normal part of society. Show how Palestinian Arabs, alone among all Arabs, cannot become citizens of other Arab countries - at the urging of the Arab League itself.

UNRWA could actually do something positive for once. They can tell the world a simple fact: Even if the events in 1948 were a catastrophe for Palestinian Arabs, the problems that they have 62 years later are squarely the responsibility of the Arab states that have treated them like subhuman pawns. If UNRWA would publish a single, simple press release laying out these facts that everybody knows, they could do more to help the population of "refugees" than they have accomplished in six decades.

Human rights organizations that pretend to care about Palestinian Arabs should also be in the forefront of this initiative. The time to use Palestinian Arabs as pawns needs to end, and they should be given the choice of becoming citizens in any Arab country they want, under the same naturalization laws that any other Arab citizen would go through.

Everyone has their heads in the sand pretending that a "peace plan" can solve the problem. But this fact is clear: The status quo is unsustainable and something needs to be done to reduce and eliminate the scourge of stateless people being cynically used solely as a weapon to hurt Israel.

The Facebook controversy

The story of photos of IDF soldiers posing with Palestinian Arab prisoners is exploding.

It started yesterday when images of a former soldier surfaced. She had placed the pictures on her Facebook page with her smiling in front of prisoners. These photos were nowhere near what we saw at Abu Ghraib, yet the anti-Israel crowd came out in force.

The IDF released what can only be considered an extraordinary video denunciation of the incident:

An argument can be made that this was overblown even by the IDF. The girl in the pictures was not doing anything to demean the prisoners; the fact is that nowadays, 19-year olds will put up everything on Facebook - here I am at the beach, here I am in my kitchen, here I am at work. Her job might have been extraordinary but it is normal human psychology to get used to the circumstances you are in and regard it as routine.

But now, Breaking the Silence has released other photos that are much worse. There is simply no justification and no excuse for these photos and for treating Arab prisoners this way, no matter what they had done. This is not how a professional army should act, ever, and it must be condemned in the strongest terms and the people involved should be punished.

Even though this is a despicable story, and one that might very well get worse, I am still struck at the hypocrisy from the supposedly outraged Arabs and their supporters.

The initial set of relatively innocuous photos were described as "despicable," "shameful" and "repulsive" by the IDF.

Can you imagine any act that any Arab could do against any Israeli that would be so reprehensible that a Palestinian Arab leader would use those words to describe it?

If a tiny Islamist terror group would pop up and systematically rape Israeli infants before ripping them limb from limb on video, would we ever hear a condemnation from any Arab leader that would approach the IDF's reaction to pictures of a girl smiling in front of prisoners? On the contrary - they would close ranks, and the worst possible condemnation would be (as it always has been after the most horrific terror attacks) that such actions "hurt the Palestinian cause."

As far as I know, no Palestinian Arab leader has ever condemned any terror attack because it was immoral. Kids blown up in ice cream parlors, pizza shops or at school were perfunctorily and emotionlessly "condemned" in order to appease the Americans. But never did Arafat or Abbas or Fayyad or Erekat or anyone else say that a terror attack was wrong for any other reason than that it made their side look bad. Quite the opposite - the terrorists are lionized, their schemes considered heroic, and schools and camps and streets are named after them.

The photos we are seeing seem to show something severely lacking in how the IDF teaches its code of conduct. They cannot be excused. The incidents need to be taken seriously and the people behind them need to be punished.

However, these incidents show us once again the enormity of the gap between the morality of the IDF and of her enemies, as well as the light-years between how the world expects Israelis to act and how Arabs are expected to act.

Epidemic of mosque shoe thieves in Ramallah

Firas Press reports that there has been a rash of thefts of shoes from mosques in Ramallah.

Muslims remove their shoes in an outer room and then pray inside. While they are in prayer, others have been going in and taking their shoes.

Some worshippers have resorted to splitting up their shoes, placing each one in a different corner of the room, so that the thieves would more likely be caught as they try to find the matching shoe.

When the worshippers return and find their shoes missing, they are forced to walk barefoot to a nearby store to buy some more shoes.

Which makes one wonder if perhaps the shoe store owners are involved....

Justice served for Islamic Jihad terrorist

Yesterday, the IDF killed a man who was planting explosive devices near the fence in Gaza.

It turns out that he was involved in the fatal ambush last March, where Maj. Eliraz Peretz and St.-Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky were killed as they also went to confront Gazans planting explosives near the fence.

Islamic Jihad was very proud of that operation, which they had called "Operation Luring Idiots." PIJ is claiming that the Gazan killed was the architect of that March attack while the IDF says that he took part.

Ma'an in Arabic, usually upheld as the most moderate of Palestinian Arab news outlets, calls the terrorist a "martyr."

Update on the "Mariam"

Yesterday I wondered whatever happened to the "Mariam" or "Virgin Mary" or "St. Mary" ship that supposedly had left Lebanon two weekends ago.

Today, Palestine Press Agency quotes the leader of the ship, Samar Haj, as saying that they hope to obtain permission within the next few hours to sail, and then be able to leave in the next few days.

BBC Panorama special on the Mavi Marmara - plus

Here's the BBC program on the Mavi Marmara.

And here is a MEMRI report on the MM, where interviewees use the word "captive" to describe how they were holding the IDF soldiers and also describing the IHH "peace activists" as the "resistance."

(Also, how unfortunate that they weren't tortured in Israel!)

(h/t Middle East News Watch)

PA minister brags of building 90 mosques in a year

Hamas said some disparaging things about the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Endowments (the Waqf) which is in charge of all Muslim institutions in the territories.

Mahmoud Habbash, minister of the Waqf, said that his organization has built over 90 mosques and has had over 250 people memorize the Quran in just one year.

Furthermore, in response to Hamas insults, he said, "They accuse us that we are fighting Islam?! We are... training imams in the arts of rhetoric and reading of the Koran, and we have not bombed mosques and we did not kill the elderly and children in mosques because they have different views," implicitly accusing Hamas of doing exactly that.

Hamas had also accused the Waqf of acceding to a request by the Jews of the territories to turn down the volume on mosque loudspeakers during Ramadan. Habbash was incensed at the very thought that his organization would be accused of being considerate to non-Muslims' feelings. "How can anyone accuse us of working to reduce the call to prayer to not disturb the settlers?!" Habbash went on to say that anyone who makes such an accusation is obviously in bed with the Zionist settler terrorist state.

Furthermore, Habbash said that accusations that the Waqf had fired members of Hamas were untrue; that they employed Hamas members as long as they adhere to ministry requirements and don't politicize mosques.

So from this article we can learn that 90 mosques were built by the cash-strapped PA this year, almost certainly using money from the EU and the US. In these mosques, as MEMRI has shown numerous times, come the worst kinds of incitement against Israel and, often, Jews.

It appears that the West is funding PA anti-semitism, not only by funding the TV station but also by funding the mosques.

PA kids say Jews killed Jesus and poisoned Arafat

Palestinian Media Watch unearths a little garden-variety anti-semitism from official Palestinian Authority TV:

Earlier this summer, in a dramatic performance at a PLO cultural festival, two young Palestinian boys lamented Arafat's death, and compared his death at the hands of the Jews to the death of Jesus:

Boy 1 [addressing Arafat]: "Father, father the Elder [Arafat]. Why did it happen this way? Why did it happen this way? Death chose you, and you did not complete the path."

Boy 2: "Do not ask why it happened this way. Yesterday they crucified Jesus; today they poisoned the father, the Elder [Arafat]."

[PA TV (Fatah), June 4, 2010]

The PA Minister of Culture was present at this performance.

They are calling Arafat "Elder"?

Now, it's personal.

Tip jar is live

OK, I'm placing a tip jar on the right hand sidebar (it is slightly wider than the column, making it a little ugly, but this was the easiest and smallest widget I could find, sorry.)

It uses Google Checkout, which allowed me to be somewhat more anonymous than PayPal or GPal. For existing users of Google Checkout, it is very easy to choose an amount to donate, click and it is done. Otherwise, you would have to sign up for that service (I think.)

I have not tested it thoroughly, but if anyone wants to throw me a buck or two, it would be very much appreciated.

Meanwhile, I got rid of the sidebar ads.

I'll try to keep the begging to a minimum!

Thanks so much for all the compliments in the previous post's comments. I do appreciate it.

UPDATE: I fixed the "out of stock" problem.

Blogoversary/open thread

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of Elder of Ziyon.

Looking back at the first posts in August 2004, they were pretty much just links to articles I found interesting. I don't think that the blog really started getting started until January 2005, when I started posting original pieces like this and this (almost seminal) article.

I now have over 1.7 million page hits, of which some 800,000 came since my last blogoversary.

I am posting at a much faster pace than I was a year ago. Last year I was averaging four posts a day, now I am doing closer to ten; I have published an unreal 2200 posts in the past year. This is sort of crazy, and chances are I will have to cut back to a more manageable pace.

Another astonishing thing (to me at least) is that this blog is really up in the top tier of most-read Zionist blogs. My current Alexa ranking is at around 172,500, which is higher than practically every other blog that is in this space. I don't know how accurate Alexa is, but it is very interesting to see.

Yet, so far today, I have earned exactly six cents from my foray into ads. Sigh.

Also in the past year I added Suzanne as a guest poster, and Zvi as an unofficial guest poster. They are both great and have added a lot to the blog. I would love to have more people posting here; there is a lot of talent out there.

As far as my choices of topics, my main criterion is to be original. If a topic is being covered by other blogs, I have less interest in talking about it as well unless I think I have a different perspective (or I have writers' block.)

I wish I had time to do other projects. Part of me still wants to write a book or two; also I like doing videos because they generally get more attention. (My Gaza Mall video was the biggest hit that I have made - 69,000 views so far. Not Justin Bieber, but not bad.) But it is not easy since I still have a day job, a part-time home business and a family.If any organization wants to hire me to do this sort of thing full time, I would be happy to consider it!

Finally, I have to thank you guys for coming here. The community in the comments section continues to grow (often a hundred comments a day, and about 3000 comment views a day.) The tips that you send make my life much easier, and I remain amazed that people like to come here as much as they do.

Egyptian scientist spends three months in Israel. And he likes it!

From SPME (h/t Israel Matzav):

In 2008, I was invited to spend a summer conducting neuroscience research at both the Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and Al Quds Palestinian University (East Jerusalem /West Bank).

As an Egyptian, I had grown up very cautious about interacting with Israelis; it had never occurred to me to visit Israel. Many other Egyptians and probably many people in other Arab states feel the same way.

Some of my friends in Egypt advised me not to embark on such an “unethical” trip. For many in Egypt, setting foot in Israel is unthinkable, regardless of the purpose of the visit. But the Palestinian professors whom I consulted did not voice such criticism; they encouraged me to visit Israel. My friends in the United States did not make such criticisms either, and I realized that many Americans and Europeans who visit Israel hold different views on Israeli politics, yet they discuss their opinions openly with Israelis.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that regardless of the views my friends and I might have about Israeli politics, the opportunity to gain scientific experience at a good research institution was a separate issue, and nearly at the deadline for making the decision, I decided to accept the invitation to visit Israel.

...My social life in Israel and the West Bank was ...rewarding and educational. I visited many parts of Israel with my Arab neighbors in Jerusalem, many of whom were students at the Hebrew University. I was also repeatedly invited to professors’ homes for shabbat dinner and social gatherings, and I was always warmly welcomed. At many of these occasions, I felt more welcomed than people visiting from European countries, perhaps because of my Egyptian background.

Israeli universities produce scientific research comparable to that seen in Western countries. Israeli science institutions are constantly expanding. For example, the Hebrew University is currently building a new multi-million-dollar brain science research center, and plan to recruit top-notch scientists from around the globe. World-class scientists from Italy, the United States, Germany, Canada, Japan, and many other countries are constantly visiting and lecturing at Israeli universities. Israel holds many annual science meetings that researchers from various countries attend. Students from many European countries conduct their graduate work in Israel. Many Israeli universities have shown advancement in fields ranging from biomedical research to agriculture to engineering.

It is sad that neighboring countries do not participate in these activities. There is no doubt that Israeli science institutions and Israeli researchers would welcome having Arab researchers visit and collaborate with them. It is an overall a win-win game for both sides, if not more beneficial for Arab researchers. Arab countries need more scientific interaction with the outside world, including Israel.

After gaining science and research experience at world-class Israeli universities, Arab researchers could definitely be great assets to their home countries.

It is also beneficial to invite Israeli scientists and researchers to attend conferences and to lecture in Arab countries. Israeli scientists are frequently invited to lecture at large universitıes ın Europe and the United States; and even, in recognition of their scientific achievements, to give keynote lectures at annual conferences. Israeli scientists do, however, face difficulties attending conferences in Arab states. Should not we benefit from these minds as well? The Israeli experiment in science advancement is a good example for neighboring nations to follow, given the geographical and environmental similarities.

For many in the Arab world, the word Israel elicits political thoughts only. However, it is important to appreciate Israel’s advanced science infrastructure and to recognize that, whatever one’s political views, scientific collaboration with Israel is not only possible but also potentially beneficial for Egypt and other Arab countries.

It is funny that this is the first time I have seen an Arab actually use the term "win-win." Usually, the mentality is that if Israel thinks it is good, then by definition it is bad.

The sad part about this article is that it is so anomalous.

White House denies threatening Turkey

So much for this story....

From Politico:

The White House denied a report Monday that the U.S. has threatened Turkey with potentially withholding future arms sales because of its tougher stance towards Israel and vote against U.N. Iran sanctions.

Obama “emphatically denied” a Financial Times story saying the president had told Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that future arms sales would be contingent on softening his anti-Israel talk, White House pool reporter Jonathan Weisman of The Wall Street Journal writes.

Earlier today, the Financial Times cited an Obama administration official who said that the U.S. had warned Turkey that its harder posture on Israel and vote against U.N. Iran sanctions would make it harder to get arms sales to Ankara through Congress. The Pentagon notified Congress earlier this month of its intended arms sales.

“The president and Erdogan did speak about 10 days ago, and they talked about Iran and the flotilla and other issues related to that,” White House spokesman Bill Burton told the press aboard Air Force One Monday. “We obviously have an ongoing dialogue with them. But no such [arms] ultimatum was issued.”

“There’s no ultimatum,” Burton added.

No Arab university ranked in top 400

From AFP:

Harvard topped a ranking of world universities published Friday by a Shanghai college for the eighth year running -- a list dominated by US institutions and sharply criticised in Europe.

The University of California at Berkeley was second, followed by Stanford, according to the list of 500 institutions compiled by Jiaotong University's Centre for World-Class Universities, available at www.arwu.org.

The ARWU website is down as of this writing, but Ma'an (Arabic) notes that the top two Arab universities, both in Saudi Arabia, were ranked between 400 and 500, while four Israeli universities are ranked in the top 150.