Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Sunnis in Lebanon not happy with A'jad visit

A Sunni Islamist group in the northern city of Tripoli sent a blunt "not welcome" message to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday ahead of his visit to the country.
Several banners and pictures of the Shiite Iranian leader, who is due in Lebanon October 13-14, went up in the mainly Sunni port city expressing discontent at the visit.

"You are not welcome in Lebanon", read in Arabic one banner hung over a pedestrian bridge in the Abu Samra neighborhood and signed by the Islamic Labor Front-Emergency Committee.

"No to Wilayat al-Faqih" said another banner in a nearby neighborhood, referring to Iran's brand of Islamic rule.

A picture of the hardline leader in another part of the city bore an X over his face and a message that read "Wilayat al-Faqih is not welcome here".

The doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih, as it is called in Iran, grants absolute authority over all matters -- religious, social and political -- to a marjaa, or senior spiritual leader.

The Gaza tunnel export trade is heating up

Gaza tunnel operators have been forced to change their business plans from smuggling items into Gaza into smuggling them out, now that Gaza is awash with Israeli goods.

PalPress (Arabic) has the most detailed article yet about this phenomenon.

The number one export is copper, apparently scavenged from damaged buildings. Copper scrap is sold in the markets of the cities of El Arish and Rafah and Sheikh Zuwaid. Also in demand are scrap aluminum, steel and iron.

Comsumer goods are also being smuggled into Egypt, apparently those being sent from Israel. These include soap ("Hawaiian" brand) and hair gel, as well as Israeli dairy products.

They are also exporting home-grown nuts, animal skins, fruit and eggs, all of which are much cheaper in Gaza than Egypt. Gaza mangoes are half the price of mangoes available in Egypt.

The tunnel operators are not making nearly the profit they used to, however. A ton of nuts costs only $100 to smuggle to Egypt.

The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Hate

The Palestinian Authority has a "Ministry of Information." Its web page is most informative - but not in the way that it intends.

In English, it provides pretty straight news, both about what the PA is doing (another $40 million from the World Bank) and some things that it thinks the world should know Israelis are doing in the West Bank. For example, news about new buildings being built in a Jewish town in the Jordan Valley, or reporting that Jews went to the Temple Mount at the end of the Sukkot holiday. Quite partisan but not inflammatory; all in all very appropriate news for such a ministry.

In Arabic, however, the facade of acting like a "peace partner" is ripped right off.

Here we see that government officials are holding press conferences sponsored by this same ministry saying as a fact that Israel has a "a planned strategy to uproot the Palestinian people from their land."

Another story talks about a proposal, not even close to being approved, to add a new gate into the walls of the Old City to improve access to the Western Wall Plaza that Ha'aretz reported yesterday. It calls this proposal, which it accepts as already being planned, "an act mentally infected with hatred." (It will be recalled that during the nineteen years that the Old City was Judenrein, the Arabs treated it like a dump. Now they pretend to be concerned about its historic architecture!)

A third story talks about Netanyahu's plan to "blackmail" Washington, threatening to sabotage Democratic chances to win the congressional elections in November unless Israel gets what it is demanding.

Not surprising is the story that still claims that Mohammed al-Dura was killed by the IDF.

Yet another story extols the greatness of the second intifada. Wasn't it great that 6000 of their people were killed but that they managed to kill a thousand Jews? What a victory! This is not Hamas or Islamic Jihad celebrating the terror spree; it is the government of "Palestine" officially celebrating the single event that demolished the "peace process."

None of these stories make it to the English site, of course.

The site is filled with lies, bias, slanted opinions and bizarre conspiracy theories that it reports as straight news.

The Arabic site proves that the incitement to hate Israel is not an aberration that Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI take out of context from a semi-independent media. Incitement is sewn into the fabric of the very government that Israel is expected to negotiate peace with.

The sun came up, birds sang, and Abbas threatened to quit again

Mahmoud Abbas has, for the umpteenth time, threatened to quit if negotiations with Israel are not successful.

He made the statement in Amman today at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council.

It is difficult to imagine how life would be any different for Palestinian Arabs if he would finally make good on this constant threat.

Irish Times flunks its own standards (updated)

The Irish Times writes on its website about its journalistic integrity. Among the items they say they are scrupulous about are:

The truth is presented having made every reasonable effort to establish it on the basis of verifiable fact and reliable sources. During the reporting and editing process, every story is measured against taste, preference and inclination in an effort to eliminate any trace of partisanship.

We never go to publication without seeking both sides of the story. And if, in spite of our best efforts, we cannot get one side's version, we make it clear in our report that we have made every reasonable effort to secure that information.

Above all else, we commit ourselves to accuracy.

OK, let's see an example of these sterling qualities, in an article by Michael Jansen:

THE ROUTE from Jerusalem to Bethlehem takes us through Israel’s Har Homa settlement, constructed during the 1990s on formerly forested hills incorporated into Greater Jerusalem.

More than 4,000 Israeli families dwell in stone-faced multistoried apartment blocks in this urban colony. Buildings stand wall-to-wall in solid fortress ranks. Buildings are rising at the heart of Har Homa and on its flanks, invading the Bethlehem district, populated by descendants of the world’s first Christians.

Har Homa was built on land that no one had ever lived on previously. Ever.

The majority of Palestinian Christians did not descend from early Christians. Bethlehem Christians, for example, mostly came from the Arabian peninsula. Wikipedia links to this paper that has more details.

Most people traveling to Bethlehem would use the Tunnel Road. It would be odd to go to Bethlehem through Har Homa (h/t YM)

George Rishmawi of the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement says: “Israel is interested in dealing carefully with Palestinian Christians although we don’t know what the Israelis have in mind for us.

“Christians are part of the Palestinian social fabric . . . and of Islamic culture. Palestinians do not differentiate between Muslims and Christians – who are less than 2 per cent of the population,” says Mr Rishmawi.

But Israel makes a key distinction designed to cause animosities.

“It grants West Bank Christians permits to travel to Jerusalem for Christian holidays . . . It is not the same for Muslims. For them it is difficult to get permits. This makes Muslims angry at Christians,” Mr Rishmawi adds.

The Irish Times is quoting a Palestinian Arab as to what the purposes of Israeli policy is - but doesn't ask any Israeli official. It then states that opinion as fact.

The policies are, of course, because of security - Christians never rioted against Jews from their holy places in Jerusalem.

“Israel makes no distinction between Christians and Muslims about land grabs. Most of Jebel Abu Ghneim [confiscated for the massive settlement of Har Homa] is Christian land."

Between 75% and 80% of Har Homa land was owned by Jews. The Arabs who owned land there were compensated for it. None of these relevant facts are mentioned in the article.

Israeli settlements and infrastructure are changing Palestinian demographics in formerly Christian towns. “Bethlehem is 50 per cent Christian, [neighbouring] Beit Sahour is 80 per cent Christian and Beit Jala is 60-70 per cent Christian,” says Mr Rishmawi.

The current Christian population of Bethlehem is much less than 50%. Yet, over the years, as Bethlehem's Christian population has decreased, its Muslim population has gone up, as has its total population. In other words, it is not Israel that is squeezing the Christians out of the territories - it is the Muslims, plus the intifada accelerated their flight.

Muslim oppression of Christians in Palestinian Arab territories is ignored in this article, even though it is far more relevant than anything written there. Gaza Christians are almost gone altogether.

Muslims have stolen land from Christians. Christians live in fear of their Muslim neighbors. Yasir Arafat directly threatened Christmas pilgrims in 1967. And the Christian population in Israel has increased while that in the territories has been decimated. (Just as the Lebanese Christians have also been pushed out by Muslims.)

This article is one-sided, inaccurate and untruthful. It directly violates the standards that the Irish Times proudly claims for itself.

(h/t Yisrael Medad. Also see a previous CAMERA report on the newspaper from which I found the Irish Times standards.)

Israel's latest weapon of mass destruction: Junk food!

Commenter T34zakat finds a gem at The Examiner (San Diego):

After three years of defending its decision to place restrictions on Gaza to ensure that Hamas does not divert construction materials to build weapons and bunkers, Israel has now decided to ease the restrictions and allow the flow of junk foods into Gaza. Palestinian liaison official, Raed Fattouh, reported that Israel now allows soda, juice, jams, potato chips, cookies, and candy to enter Gaza.

... Israel’s decision to allow junk food into Gaza, whether knowingly or unknowingly, will be incredibly destructive on the health and well-being of the Palestinian people in Gaza. If Israel officials are purposely allowing junk food into Gaza for this reason, then the junk food should be viewed for what it really is-- a weapon of mass of destruction.

Luckily, Gazans can manage to offset the population losses that come from consuming potato chips and soda: Israel also distributes sex gum!

Mass wedding in Nablus today

Perhaps taking a page from Hamas, the government in Nablus is staging a mass wedding today. It is meant to save young couples the costs of their own weddings and to help them start out right.

Nothing really wrong about that, except for one thing:

Nablus officials said the local government would sponsor a mass wedding on Thursday at the Jamal Abdul Nasser Park in the center of the city.

Taysir Nasrallah, the general coordinator for the event, said officials were working hard to prepare for the day. He said the event's patron, President Mahmoud Abbas, had pledged cash to each of the grooms, as well as gifts like furniture and home wares donated by local companies.

Is Abbas' cash coming from his own personal funds - which would indicate that he is a rich man indeed - or is it coming from the massive amounts of aid that the PA gets from the West?

For all the talk about how the PA budget is supposedly so transparent, it is difficult to find out details like this. Of course, no Western reporter is even asking the questions.

Boston "spy" story will be fertile ground for lies

This story, about an American Jew who apparently offered to spy for Israel, is going to be a big hit in the Arab and leftist media.

An Akamai Technologies Inc employee was charged with trying to give confidential company information to an undercover FBI agent he thought worked for a foreign country, probably Israel, US prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Elliot Doxer, 42, worked in Akamai's finance department in Massachusetts and was charged with one count of wire fraud for providing customers lists, contract details and employee information. He sought $3,000 in return, prosecutors said.

In June 2006, Doxer e-mailed a foreign country's consulate in Boston with his offer to help. Court papers indicated the country was Israel because at one point he identified himself as a Jewish American who wanted "to help our homeland and our war against our enemies."

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to confirm or deny that it was Israel.

A year later, an undercover FBI agent posing as a representative of the foreign country contacted Doxer to see if he still wanted to help and after he agreed, the agent provided instructions on how to communicate with him and told Doxer where to deliver the information.

You have to read a few paragraphs down before you realize that his offer was ignored by "Country X", no information was transferred to "Country X" and that "Country X" cooperated with the FBI in busting him.

But it will only be a few hours before the first misrepresentations of the story hit the Israel-hater crowd. The obvious initial implication is that all American Jews are fifth columnists; then we will see other stories that will try to make it sound like Israel is recruiting American spies, and then the intellectual sounding ones will start saying that Israel is burrowing deep into the Internet as Akamai is a client of many major organizations and governments.

Not to mention the conspiracy theories that follow in coming weeks when the haters realize that Akamai was co-founded by Danny Lewin, a former member of the Sayeret Matkal special operations unit of the IDF who had his throat slashed by the 9/11 terrorists as he apparently tried to thwart the hijacking of the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11.

It's coming.

By the way, this strongly indicates that the US monitors all of the emails to Israeli diplomats in the US. Not that this is surprising, or the least bit unethical, but imagine the outcry that would follow if the roles were reversed. After all, doesn't this prove that the US is spying on Israel?

Egypt gives five conditions to the convoy

From DPA:

Egypt said Wednesday that it presented the organisers of a Gaza-bound aid convoy with five conditions for allowing their ship to dock in Egyptian waters and for delivering the aid to Gaza.

The Egyptian ambassador in Syria met with the organisers of Viva Palestina 5 capital of Damascus to lay out Egypt's conditions for the entry of the aid, said Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hossam Zaky.

The ambassador informed the activists of measures which should be taken in order to facilitate the ship's docking at the Egyptian port of el-Arish and the subsequent entry of the aid into Gaza over land, Zaky said.

He did not specify what the conditions were.

The Viva Palestina activists, led by British parliament George Galloway, are expected to depart from the Syrian port of Latakia in the coming few days.

I would guess that the conditions include:

* Galloway doesn't step foot in Egypt
* A limit on the number of activists allowed into Gaza
* No demonstrations
* Galloway must dress up like an idiot and start running around.

Oh, sorry, he already met that condition:

When is a dance worse than a massacre?

Binyomin Netanyahu has condemned the video that surfaced this week that apparently shows an Israeli soldier bellydancing near a blindfolded Arab woman:

Netanyahu's office said in a statement Wednesday that such videos cause "unacceptable harm to human dignity" of the Palestinians, embarrass the Israeli military and "cause serious international damage."

"The humiliation of prisoners and detainees is not the way of the state of Israel nor that of the Jewish people," Netanyahu said.

Here, in contrast, is the condemnation of the PA prime minister for the cold-blooded murder of four civilians in late August:

"What happened tonight in Hebron was timed to coincide with the PLO's decision to engage in negotiations to end the occupation and achieve freedom and independence for our people," Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said.

"We condemn this operation, which runs counter to Palestinian interests and against efforts of Palestinian leadership to mobilize international support for the rights of our people as well as with previously signed agreements."

And this is not from Mahmoud Abbas, but from that Western-educated darling of the free world, Salam Fayyad.

In fact, never has a Palestinian Arab leader condemned the most heinous terror attacks and massacres with language approaching that of Netanyahu to describe a dance that happened two years ago. Not once has a Palestinian Arab leader said that any act where Jews were killed was wrong from a moral perspective.

In fact, it is simply impossible to even imagine an attack that would be so depraved that Abbas or Erekat or Fayyad would call it disgusting, or reprehensible, or immoral, or shameful, if the victims would be Israelis.

Just more evidence of the light years of difference between the morality of the Jewish state and the visceral response it gives for events like these, and the sheer, disgusting immorality of the Palestinian Authority leaders.

The only time I am aware of that an Arab leader showed the level of regret for an attack that Netanyahu just did for a stupid (and clearly wrong) stunt was when King Hussein apologized for the Peace island massacre of seven Jewish schoolgirls by a Jordanian soldier. The late king called the act "heinous," said that the soldier should have been shot on the spot, and went to pay personal condolence calls to the families of the victims asking for forgiveness.

The contrast between King Hussein and every single Palestinian Arab leader could not be starker. Every condemnation of terror attacks from Arafat through Abbas and Fayyad have been utterly devoid of meaning, a mere mouthing of words to appease the West with the clear implication that the acts would be considered heroic under other political circumstances. The "hawkish, intransigent extremist" Netanyahu has made an apology that shames those of the "moderate, peace-loving" Palestinian Arab leadership.

The funny thing is, if PalArab leaders were like King Hussein, there would have been a peace agreement years ago. Israelis would fall over themselves to make peace with someone they perceive as being sincere and empathetic, no matter the cost. One major reason there is no peace - and why real peace is impossible - is simply because Israelis know, based on experience and the actions of PalArab leaders today, that any agreement they sign is meaningless and worthless.

Just like their "condemnations" are.

Dubai police clown tries to get back in the headlines

Back in March, Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim basked in his newfound fame in the wake of the Mabhouh assassination, and he held daily press conferences to feed his growing ego, each time saying something more ridiculous than the time before.

Eventually, the media got sick of him and he lost his audience.

But last week he came up with new, completely unverifiable information!

Dubai’s police commander Lt General Dahi Khalfan Tamim received two death threats from Israel over the assassination of a Palestinian Hamas leader in the emirate earlier this year, Al Ittihad reported Thursday.

Tamim disclosed that a new suspect believed to be among those involved in the murder of Mahmoud Mabhouh has been arrested in a Western country in the past two days, adding that Dubai is in touch with that country.

Tamim accused Israel’s Mossad of sending him death threats twice, a few days after he revealed the details of Mabhouh’s assassination at Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai on January 20.

Tamim said the contents of the letter he had received said ‘protect your back if you want to keep your mouth open’. Tamim told the paper that 'Dubai authorities have traced the source of that letter.'

Tamim also disclosed that he received the second death threat indirectly when one of his relatives received a phone call from a retired Mossad agent.

“The call came from a retired Mossad agent with Western-Israeli nationality. He asked my relative to advise me to keep silent,” Tamim was quoted in the newspaper.

Tamim revealed a new suspect in the Mabhouh assassination case had been arrested in a Western country but declined to identify the suspect or the country, according to Al Ittihad.

So we have learned that the Mossad sent him a letter that has been traced back to its source, but no details. Also that he was threatened by a retired Mossad agent, with no details. And that both of these events happened while he was still doing his daily ego boost press conferences, but he didn't say a word about it then. And that there has been a new arrest in some unnamed country of some unnamed suspect.

But it all must be true, because it has that aura of believability about it, since it accuses Israel of crimes, and as everyone knows, an accusation against Israel is as good as a conviction, and facts are not to be bothered with.

Well, I'm convinced!

I'm still wonderng why the Dubai police didn't release any tapes of Mabhouh's travels throughout the Emirate, nor why they didn't release any video from the hallway of Mabhouh's room - where there was a beautiful color camera.

Hamas and other groups threaten the PA

Yesterday:

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority has sentenced a Hamas fighter to 20 years in prison over a deadly 2009 shootout with Palestinian police, a court official said Tuesday.

The sentence infuriated Hamas and cast a shadow over plans to hold a second round of reconciliation talks in Syria with its Fatah rivals later this month.

Alaa Hisham Diab was sentenced by a military court on Sunday after having been arrested following a May 2009 battle in the West Bank town of Qalqilya that left three Palestinian security forces and two Hamas fighters dead.

Ahmad Mubaid, the head of the military court, said the conviction was a "criminal matter and not a political one," and that Diab received a military trial "because the crime was against the military establishment."

Then, today,

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups on Wednesday threatened the leaders of the Western-backed Fatah movement over the arrest of fighters in the West Bank.

Masked representatives of the groups gave a press conference in which they slammed the detention of militants by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which Hamas drove out of Gaza in June 2007.

"What is happening in the West Bank is a vicious attack on the sons of the resistance... it has taken a dangerous turn that requires a severe response," they said in a joint statement.

"This response will target the leaders of the Fatah movement in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

That might throw a monkey-wrench into the latest round of Hamas/Fatah unification talks.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the names of the "other Palestinian militant groups" that participated in the press conference.

But here's a picture of the event from the Hamas Al Qassam website, maybe you can recognize some of the representatives.

New T-Shirt available

Just for commenter Silke, a new EoZ T-shirt:

Available at the Elder of Ziyon CafePress store, in women's cap-sleeve or V-neck (shown) or women's V-neck.

Different international law standards for Israel and everyone else

Evelyn Gordon at Commentary notices an interesting NYT article from earlier this week about American soldiers killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan:

The majority of civilian-killing cases that have arisen until now have been connected to combat in some way: soldiers accused of using excessive force or firing indiscriminately when responding to an attack, or who killed prisoners shortly after a bombing or a firefight, when emotions were still raging.

The Haditha killings, for example, followed a bombing that killed one Marine and severely injured two others. Several defendants later claimed that they were shot at after the blast. (Though most of the case collapsed, one defendant still faces a trial on manslaughter charges.)

Similarly, in 2008, the military decided not to bring charges against two Marines who commanded a unit accused of indiscriminately firing on vehicles and pedestrians along a 10-mile stretch of road in Afghanistan. The shootings began after a suicide bomber attacked the unit’s convoy.

An Army investigation later concluded that 19 people were killed and 50 were injured. But the Marines said they had taken hostile gunfire after the explosion and had fired to defend themselves from perceived threats. The case was closed without any prosecution.

It can be difficult to win a conviction, specialists in military law said, when defendants can make a plausible claim that they believed, in the confusion of the “fog of war,” that their lives were in danger and they needed to defend themselves.

“You often see cases of kids who just make dumb decisions,” said Gary Solis, who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University. “But killings in the heat of the moment, they don’t usually try those guys. The guys you try are the ones who have an opportunity to consider what they are doing.”

...“The large majority of civilian harm in both Iraq and Afghanistan takes place during legitimate military operations,” said Sarah Holewinksi, executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. “But because of very poor record keeping on the part of all the warring parties, we really don’t know who has been harmed, how many have been harmed and how they have been harmed.”

So while there have been some convictions for killing civilians, they have tended to be cases where the evidence is overwhelming and not in the heat of battle. And the human rights activist quoted even acknowledges this, without complaint.

What a contrast to how the world judges Israeli soldiers' actions during war! Even though (and perhaps because) the Israeli system has so many checks and balances to protect civilians in the midst of battles against terrorists who are masquerading as civilians, even though there are lawyers embedded at all levels of the IDF and procedures are in place to absolutely minimize damage, even though essentially every civilian death at the hands of the IDF happens during military operations - the world judges Israel by a far different standard than US, or NATO, or any other Western army. Let alone how Arab armies act!

As Gordon notes,

When it comes to Israel, these factors are somehow dismissed as unimportant. That same day, the Times reported on an Israeli court’s conviction of two soldiers for crimes committed during last year’s Gaza war. Altogether, it noted, 48 cases have been opened. A third are “still in progress,” a few produced convictions, and the rest were closed, for the reasons cited above.

“But human rights groups say that the military’s criminal proceedings are insufficient” and that Israeli troops committed “atrocities that require outside investigation.”

The principle that the law applies equally to all is a cornerstone of modern Western civilization. Yet too many Westerners seem to reserve the protections granted by the laws of war for their own soldiers while denying them to Israel.

By so doing, they don’t just undermine Israel. They undermine their own civilization.

EoZ on Kindle

A reader asked if I could make my blog available as a subscription for the Amazon Kindle.

It turns out that it is pretty easy to do. Kindle fans can subscribe for $1.99 a month, some small percentage of which would go to me, maybe, eventually. I'm not sure why people want to pay Amazon to read a free blog, but apparently many do.

You get a free 14-day preview when you order.

By the way, if you want to receive the blog (or any other) as a daily email, I find that Feed My Inbox does a pretty nice job. It's free for the first 5 blogs subscribed and the only downside is that my hit count will decrease :)

Arabs freak over Egyptian food company selling products to Israel

The asymmetry between how much Israel wants peace and how much her neighbors desire peace can be seen by how each side regards trade with Israel.

Whenever Israel is found to have exported products to Arab countries, whether directly or indirectly, there are angry Arab protests at this Zionist economic invasion. We've seen it happen with Israeli dates, paper cups, and even a rumor about graduation gowns.

No one from Israel seems to have a problem with exporting goods to those evil, subhuman Arabs. In fact, they welcome it - because, more than anything else, Israelis want peace.

How about imports? Perhaps Arab anger at trade with Israel is simply the perception that Israeli products will take jobs away from local Arab workers?

No, not quite.

An Egyptian company that specializes in frozen vegetables is being pilloried in the Arab press for selling goods to Israel - which are openly being displayed in Israeli supermarkets,Arabic labels and all. Even worse, the articles say that the IDF bought goods from this company "during the Gaza war," although it is unclear how they know this.

Interestingly, the company's website offers to "white label" any of their brands that importers might desire. Those bigoted Israeli haters aren't even trying to hide that they are buying goods from the enemy!

Peace means normalization - two way trade and tourism, full political ties. Apparently, only one side really desires peace.

And all the anti-Israel propaganda in the world cannot erase that simple fact.

Haaretz vs. JPost on Nobel winner vs. Israel

Commenter Womble picks up on a very interesting contrast between Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post's coverage of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Here's how Ha'aretz describes him:

Nobel-winning IVF pioneer has little love for his No. 1 consumer - Israel

Despite his unpleasant memories and unfavorable view of the Zionist homeland, few countries have benefited more than Israel from the revolutionary method of reproduction introduced by British scientist Robert Edwards.

Yesterday, the Nobel Foundation recognized Edwards for his efforts, granting him the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Edwards has been long regarded as the man who pioneered in vitro fertilization. In 1978, Edwards, along with colleague Patrick Steptoe, engineered the birth of the first-ever test-tube baby, Louise Brown. Prior to Edwards' invention, 10 percent of all couples worldwide suffered from infertility.

...Edwards' connection to Israel dates back to just after World War II, when he served with the British army in pre-state Mandatory Palestine.

"In 1946, he began his service at the Tzrifin army base [near present-day Rishon Letzion], where he belonged to a special unit," said Professor Joseph Shenkar, an associate of Edwards and formerly the director of obstetrics and gynecology at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem.

"During a retaliatory operation carried out by the Etzel underground, five officers from his unit were kidnapped and executed near Netanya. Since then, he has not expressed a fondness for the Zionist homeland, and his attitude toward Israel became chilly."

That is the end of the article - with this quote from Shenkar.

The Jerusalem Post also interviewed Shenkar, and its account is roughly parallel to Ha'aretz' - until the end. Let's continue:

When the IVF conference was scheduled at the then-Hilton Hotel in Jerusalem (now the Crowne Plaza) in 1989, Schenker invited Edwards, who initially refused to come, claiming Israelis “persecuted” Arabs. But when international pressure built up, he “arrived on the second day.” Edwards refused to address the conference and kept to himself at the hotel.

But then Schenker’s wife, Kitty, volunteered to take Edwards on a tour in her car. She took him to the Old City, Abu Ghosh and elsewhere, where he saw how the Arabs lived well and were prospering.

“From then on, he had changed views of Israel,” Schenker recalled.

Edwards even invited Schenker to serve on the board of a medical journal he edited.

Ha'aretz seems to have missed the part of the story where Edwards' attitude towards Israel changed. Or, as seems likely given the interviewee, it decided to ignore that aspect of the story.

Also, Ha'aretz claims that the Irgun executed 5 British officers in the "Sergeant's Affair," while the JPost correctly says there were two killed. The British policemen reacted by killing 5 innocent Jews from the streets of Tel Aviv.

This complete disregard for facts and willful desire to cast Israel in a bad light in this one article should be enough to cement Ha'aretz' reputation as the Arab world's Hebrew-language newspaper.

Free Gaza ignores Viva Palestina

I find it interesting that the Free Gaza webpage is silent on George Galloway's Viva Palestina convoy that is now in Syria.

The group plans to sail to El Arish; Galloway is begging Egypt to allow the aid through, after Egypt banned the group's usual land convoys - and Galloway himself.

Yet Free Gaza, a group supposedly dedicated to helping Gazans, is silent!

The reason? Because Free Gaza is against humanitarian aid to Gaza. Their one and only goal is to allow Hamas to import whatever it feels like without restriction. The very thought that aid would be delivered through Egypt is anathema to the group.

Interestingly, however, Galloway is one of the people Free Gaza lists as an endorser of their organization.

If you want to know that latest on J-Street....

I generally stay away from the J-Street topic because so many other bloggers are far more familiar with the issues than I am.

However, a lot has happened in the past week with this purportedly "pro-Israel" organization whose policies are in perfect congruence with people who describe themselves as Israel's enemies. If you want to catch up on the latest, you can do no better than to read Omri's latest tour de force along with his many supporting links.

Including the fact that J-Street's co-founder Daniel Levy declared that Israel's creation was "an act that was wrong" in front of an audience of like-minded people.

Freedom of the Press, Egyptian-style

From Al Masry al-Youm:

In a move some suspect aims to both muzzle Mohamed ElBaradei’s campaign voice and restrict broader opposition dialogue in Egypt’s media landscape, the independent newspaper Al-Dostour on Tuesday said its mogul publisher has fired the daily's chief editor, an outspoken government critic.

Ibrahim Eissa's dismissal comes amid growing uncertainty over Egypt's political future, with parliamentary elections less than two months away and constant speculation over 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak's health.

Al-Dostour reported on its website early Tuesday that its publisher al-Sayed al-Badawy, who also heads the liberal opposition Wafd party, fired Eissa effective Monday. Eissa, however, claimed he is still in charge of the daily' online edition.

Abdel Monim Mahmoud, a senior editor at Al-Dostour, said the board of directors has been interfering in the editorial policy of the paper to downplay its criticism of the Egyptian regime.

“Reda Edward, who is one of the paper’s chief stockholders, met with the paper's editors and informed them of the decision which he said was prompted by Eissa’s editorial policy that has turned off advertisers who fear that posting their ads in al-Dostour may anger the government,” Mahmoud told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

He added that the daily’s owners were particularly resistant to an article written by ElBaradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, which was scheduled to run on Wednesday as Egypt marks the 37th anniversary of the 1973 October war with Israel.

Later, Eissa told the AFP news agency that his dismissal came shortly after he rejected a request from the owners to postpone publishing ElBaradei’s article.