And a merry Christmas to all my readers who celebrate the holiday as well!
(h/t Yerushalimey)
One of the ways the Palestinian Authority attempts to create a Palestinian history is to deny the Judean/Jewish nationality of Jesus, and misrepresent him as a "Palestinian."
Palestinian Media Watch has documented this ongoing Palestinian Authority historical revision. Recently on PA TV, the author Samih Ghanadreh from Nazareth was interviewed about his book "Christianity and Its Connection to Islam."
The following is the transcript of the discussion describing Jesus as a Palestinian:
Religious program on PA TV: This is our religion
Author: "The Shahid (Martyr) President Yasser Arafat used to say: "Jesus was the first Palestinian Shahid (Martyr)." I heard him say that sentence many times."
PA TV Host: “He [Jesus] was a Palestinian; no one denies that.”
Author: "He [Jesus] was the first Palestinian Shahid (Martyr). He (Arafat) attributed this Martyrdom to Palestine, as well."
[PA TV (Fatah), Dec. 3, 2010]
Fatah proud of "Palestinian" Virgin Mary
Earlier this year the Fatah Communications and Education Authority issued as statement on the official Fatah website claiming the Virgin Mary was "of the nation of Palestine":
"If we are proud of the holiness of our land, then we are proud and pride ourselves that the first and most important holy woman among the nations and peoples is from the holy land: The Virgin Mary - the woman of love and peace - is of the nation of Palestine..." [palvoice.com/index.php?id=23043]
Jesus and Mary were Palestinians par excellence
The Palestinian Authority religious leader, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein:
"Jesus was born in this land; he took his first steps in this land and spread his teachings [of Islam] in this land. He and his mother [Mary], we may say, were Palestinians par excellence." [PA TV (Fatah), May 12, 2009]
The brother of Marah Ahmed al-Homsy, a scientist working for the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission, has been reported missing in Cairo.
According to al-Homsy, her brother had accompanied her to Cairo where she was scheduled to attend a conference organized by the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority on 17 December. The two had been staying at a well-known hotel in Cairo's Dokki neighborhood.
“My brother abruptly disappeared on Tuesday and his phone remains switched off,” al-Homsy said.
Before her brother's disappearance, al-Homsy said she thought "there had been a car following us from time to time.”
She went on to say that her brother, Mohamed, 27, did not know anyone in Egypt, nor was he known to have any enemies.
“We checked with all the police stations and hospitals but found no trace of him,” said al-Homsy's lawyer, Mazen Shikho.
A security source said that hotel personnel had seen Mohamed exit the hotel, leaving all his belongings in the room, on the day of his disappearance.
Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by The New York Times has found.The article does go on to say that the loophole is not quite as big as it initially claimed.
At the behest of a host of companies — from Kraft Food and Pepsi to some of the nation’s largest banks — a little-known office of the Treasury Department has granted nearly 10,000 licenses for deals involving countries that have been cast into economic purgatory, beyond the reach of American business.
Most of the licenses were approved under a decade-old law mandating that agricultural and medical humanitarian aid be exempted from sanctions. But the law, pushed by the farm lobby and other industry groups, was written so broadly that allowable humanitarian aid has included cigarettes, Wrigley’s gum, Louisiana hot sauce, weight-loss remedies, body-building supplements and sports rehabilitation equipment sold to the institute that trains Iran’s Olympic athletes.
Hundreds of other licenses were approved because they passed a litmus test: They were deemed to serve American foreign policy goals. And many clearly do, among them deals to provide famine relief in North Korea or to improve Internet connections — and nurture democracy — in Iran. But the examination also found cases in which the foreign-policy benefits were considerably less clear.
In one instance, an American company was permitted to bid on a pipeline job that would have helped Iran sell natural gas to Europe, even though the United States opposes such projects. Several other American businesses were permitted to deal with foreign companies believed to be involved in terrorism or weapons proliferation. In one such case, involving equipment bought by a medical waste disposal plant in Hawaii, the government was preparing to deny the license until an influential politician intervened.
A private school in Jordan stirred the anger of many in the Hashemite Kingdom after it was revealed that one of its English textbooks includes a chapter about the Holocaust and even quotes excerpts of Anne Frank's diary.Here's one of the al-Dustour articles that says that these are "misleading Zionist curricula which seeks to penetrate the minds of students and future generations."
The "sensational affair" was uncovered by local newspaper Al-Dustour and led the Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Dr. Khalid Karaki to order the establishment of a commission of inquiry that will "examine and write a report about the implications of the incident."
Following the initial report, the Education Ministry issued an official response in which it said it "prohibits the inclusion of additional study materials, unless they have received an official approval. The ministry will look into other schools that have used similar materials, and has instructed the school to stop using the textbook," it read.
This is the start of a regular weekly look at the Middle East, focusing on some of the issues and stories that you may have missed. If there's something you would like to see included, send an email to brian.whitaker@guardian.co.uk
News Release
Date: December 23, 2010
Citing potential for disruption to transit service, Executive implements interim Metro policy restricting new non-commercial advertising on buses
Escalation of global interest in ad critical of Israel raises risk of service disruption; Metro rejects ad and response ads
Citing the potential for disruption to transit service, King County Executive Dow Constantine today approved an interim policy from Metro Transit that calls for a halt to the acceptance of any new non-commercial advertising on King County buses. Under provisions of the previous policy, Metro officials today also rejected a proposed ad from the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign and the proposed response ads from two other groups."The escalation of this issue from one of 12 local bus placards to a widespread and often vitriolic international debate introduces new and significant security concerns that compel reassessment," said Executive Constantine."My job is to deliver essential services to the people of King County, including transit service," he added. "I have consulted with federal and local law enforcement authorities who have expressed concern, in the context of this international debate, that our public transportation system could be vulnerable to disruption."Metro sells advertising to raise revenues to provide transit service. Metro's existing policy restricts advertising that can be reasonably foreseen to result in harm to, disruption of, or interference with the transportation system. Given the dramatic escalation of debate in the past few days over these proposed ads, and the submission of inflammatory response ads, there is now an unacceptable risk of harm to or disruption of service to our customers should these ads run."In light of the recent escalation of events, Metro Transit General Manager Kevin Desmond today asked his advertising consultant to notify the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign that Metro is rejecting its proposed ad, and for the consultant to notify the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the American Freedom Defense Initiative that Metro will not accept their proposed ads, as posing an unacceptable risk of harm to, disruption of, or interference with bus service, as defined under current policies.In response to the Executive's directive on Monday to review current policies, Desmond today also recommended an interim transit advertising policy that adds non-commercial ads to the list of current restrictions, with an exception for governmental entities that advance specific government purposes. Non-commercial ads that met the previous policy and for which contracts have already been signed are not affected, and ads already in place will remain."We cannot and would not favor one point of view over another, so the entire category of non-commercial advertising will be eliminated until a permanent policy can be completed that I can propose to the King County Council for adoption," said the Executive. "Further work during the coming weeks will help determine what constitutionally-valid policy is best for the safety and well-being of the transit-riding public, our drivers and personnel, and the community at large."I thank everyone who has reached out to us to express their interests on this matter."Metro expects to complete work on a permanent transit advertising policy by the end of January, for the Executive to transmit to the County Council for adoption.
Nearly 20,000 camels from the UAE and other Gulf Arab countries have converged on Abu Dhabi’s western region for one of the world’s biggest camel beauty contests involving prizes worth nearly Dh35 million ($9.5 million).Do the camels always look this happy or are they coached how to smile for the judges?
The camels have been brought from various parts of the UAE as well as neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and other Gulf nations for the week-long beauty competition in the western town of Dhafra.
The contest, which started on Thursday, will stretch until next Friday and officials described it as one of the largest camel beauty pageant in the world in terms of the value of prizes and number of camels.
More than 800 camel owners from the UAE and other regional nations are participating in the event, which is sponsored by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince and deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces. It is organised by the Culture and Heritage Authority.
Following a bit of personal reminiscence about his own university days, the pope embarked on the lecture with the following passage:
"I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Munster) of part of the dialogue carried on -- perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara -- by the erudite Byuzantiine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both....
[T]he emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). the emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion. It is one of the suras of the early
period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also know the instructions, devloped later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without
descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", heturns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central
question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and
inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something
unreasonable.
...It taxes the imagination in today's world to suppose that a reference -- by the pope! -- to the Prophet Mohammed's innovations as "evil and inhuman" would pass unnoticed. Nor is it likely that the particular quotation is accidental. Benedict is known for his meticulous ways, and also for his distinctly cooler (compared to John Paul II) approach toward Islam and interreligious dialogue. The pope is preparing for an important visit to Istanbul in November. His invocation of Manuel, an emperor whose life was defined in combat with the Ottomans who destroyed his empire a few decades later, must have been deliberate. So, too, the decision to quote the precise words of Manuel -- rather than a milder paraphrase -- is significant in a pope known for his belief that one must neither compromise with the truth, nor back down from defending the faith.
...Our view is that Benedict very likely chose his words carefully and was not averse to having them interpreted as a sign of his skepticism about Islam; his earlier actions, such as the transfer of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald last spring, made this attitude clear enough. However, he surely did not intend for them to lead to violence or a worsening of tensions between Christians and Muslims.
A Palestinian caught trying to infiltrate a settlement Wednesday night claims he was sent by his family members, who had hoped he would be killed by soldiers during the infiltration.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers patrolling the central West Bank near the settlement of Beit El on Wednesday spotted a Palestinian walking toward the settlement and subsequently arrested him.
According to the investigation into the incident, the boy was behaving in a strange manner and the soldiers originally thought that he was drunk. Later on in the investigation, it was clarified that he was actually suffering from a mental illness.
The boy told investigators that his family wanted him dead. He said they threatened him at gunpoint, forcing him to walk towards the settlement with the hope that soldiers would think he was trying to infiltrate and would shoot him.
IDF scouts who searched the area confirmed the boy's version of events and found four family members who had tried to flee the area.
When everything is said and done, how important is the West Bank to Israel’s defense?
To answer the question, our best starting point is the situation before the 1967 war. At that time, the Arab armed forces surrounding Israel outnumbered the Jewish state’s army by a ratio of 3-to-1. Not only was the high ground in Judea and Samaria in Jordanian hands, but Israel’s capital in West Jerusalem was bordered on three sides by hostile territory. Arab armies even stood within 14 miles of Tel Aviv. Still, nobody back then engaged in the sort of fretting we hear today about “defensible borders,” let alone Abba Eban’s famous formulation, “Auschwitz borders.” When the time came, it took the Israel Defense Forces just six days to crush all its enemies combined.If Jordan had tanks on the ridge, and would have attacked Israel a few hours sooner, things very well may have turned out differently. The fact is that Jordan was not terribly interested in war and that is what made the Green Line "defensible" before 1967 - Jordan's King Hussein was not the aggressor Nasser was.
Since then, of course, much has happened. Though relations with Egypt and Jordan may not always be rosy, both countries have left “the circle of enmity,” as the Hebrew expression goes. Following two-and-a-half decades of astonishing growth, Israel’s GDP is now larger than those of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt combined. As to military power, suffice it to say that Israel is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of arms.True, but I believe irrelevant.
Syria, Israel’s main remaining hostile neighbor, has never on its own been strong enough to seriously threaten Israel. While Damascus is getting some weapons from Iran, the latter is no substitute for the genuine superpower patron that Syria had in the old Soviet Union.Also true, but this article is not about the Golan - and there are other issues there.
Overall, therefore, Israel’s position is much stronger than it was at any time in the past. So how does the West Bank fit into this picture?
One of the main threats that Israel faces today is from ballistic missiles. Yet everybody knows that holding on to the West Bank won’t help Israel defend itself against missiles coming from Syria or Iran. Even the most extreme hawk would concede this point.Van Creveld is ignoring shorter-range Qassam and Grad-type missiles. There would be nothing stopping a Palestine from allowing those to be smuggled in or built, and nothing Israel could do tostop them.
As far as the threat of a land invasion, it is of course true that the distance between the former Green Line and the Mediterranean is very small — at its narrowest point, what is sometimes affectionately known as “Old” Israel is just nine miles wide. As was noted before, it is also true that the West Bank comprises the high ground and overlooks Israel’s coastal plain.
On the other hand, since the West Bank itself is surrounded by Israel on three sides, anybody who tries to enter it from the east is sticking his head into a noose. To make things worse for a prospective invader, the ascent from the Jordan Valley into the heights of Judea and Samaria is topographically one of the most difficult on earth. Just four roads lead from east to west, all of which are easily blocked by air strikes or by means of precision-guided missiles. To put the icing on the cake, Israeli forces stationed in Jerusalem could quickly cut off the only road connecting the southern portion of the West Bank with its northern section in the event of an armed conflict.Van Creveld seems to be making a number of unspoken assumptions here. I'll make mine explicit: a demilitarized Palestine will not remain so for long,and Israel would be powerless to stop say, a Hamas government in the West Bank to outsource its army duties to Iran. Or a Muslim Brotherhood coup in Jordan changing the equation. If tanks are already positioned on the high ground, there is little that Israel can do to stop them from cutting the country in half without having a significant proportion of the reserves always mobilized.
The defense of the West Bank by Arab forces would be a truly suicidal enterprise. The late King Hussein understood these facts well. Until 1967 he was careful to keep most of his forces east of the Jordan River. When he momentarily forgot these realities in 1967, it took Israel just three days of fighting to remind him of them.Sorry, but I don't understand why. And even if it was "suicidal," if the enemy is motivated by promises of virgins in paradise, we cannot assume rationality in their decision-making.
Therefore, just as Israel does not need the West Bank to defend itself against ballistic missiles, it does not need that territory to defend itself against conventional warfare. If it could retain a security presence in the Jordan Valley, keep the eventual Palestinian state demilitarized and maintain control of the relevant airspace, that would all be well and good. However, none of these conditions existed before 1967; in view of geography and the balance of forces, none is really essential today either.Again, I reject the premise that a military edge is the only pre-requisite for Israel's security.
And how about terrorism? As experience in Gaza has shown, a fence (or preferably a wall) can stop suicide bombers from entering. As experience in Gaza has also shown, it cannot stop mortar rounds and rockets. Mortar and rocket fire from the West Bank could be very unpleasant. On the other hand, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran already have missiles capable of reaching every point in Israel, Tel Aviv included. Many of those missiles are large and powerful. Compared to the damage they can cause, anything the Palestinians are ever likely to do would amount to mere pinpricks.It certainly appears from this statement, and the earlier ones, that van Creveld looks at war like a videogame. Actual human casualties from Qassam-type rockets and terrorism are merely "unpleasant." But from Israel's perspective, they are entirely unacceptable, and his facile acceptance of the hell that Israelis would live under shows that he is not in touch with Israel's very raison d'etre.
Furthermore, in recent years Israel has shown it can deal with that kind of threat if it really wants to. Since 2006, when the Second Lebanon War killed perhaps 2,000 Lebanese, many of them civilians, and led to the destruction of an entire section of Beirut, the northern border has been absolutely quiet.Um, the LAF shot and killed an IDF officer earlier this year during the tree-cutting ambush. It does not help his argument when he makes statements that are demonstratively false. Besides, Hezbollah's motivation is not to secure Lebanon but to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible - a basic concept that seems to elude van Creveld.
Since Operation Cast Lead, which killed perhaps 1,200 Gazans, many of them civilians, and led to the destruction of much of the city of Gaza, not one Israeli has been killed by a mortar round or rocket coming from the Gaza Strip. Since mortar rounds and rockets continue to be fired from time to time, that is hardly accidental. Obviously Hamas, while reluctant to give up what it calls “resistance,” is taking care not to provoke Israel too much.His description of the destruction is exaggerated.
Keeping all these facts in mind — and provided that Israel maintains its military strength and builds a wall to stop suicide bombers — it is crystal-clear that Israel can easily afford to give up the West Bank.That statement is beyond absurd. Van Creveld did not even touch on many other arguments against ceding the West Bank to a sworn enemy.
Strategically speaking, the risk of doing so is negligible.Only if you consider it acceptable to have an entire nation held hostage by radical Islamists with crude rockets - that Israel cannot defend against without potentially starting a war with the Arab world. They might not run to defend Gaza but a sovereign nation, with defense pacts, is a different story - especially if they think they can win. Israel's perceived weakness in withdrawing from lands won in war will never make Arab nations less likely to attack!
What is not negligible is the demographic, social, cultural and political challenge that ruling over 2.5 million — nobody knows exactly how many — occupied Palestinians in the West Bank poses. Should Israeli rule over them continue, then the country will definitely turn into what it is already fast becoming: namely, an apartheid state that can only maintain its control by means of repressive secret police actions.Now we see that van Creveld might have more of an agenda than simply speaking from a purely military perspective. The issue is real, but it does not belong in an article like this; it indicates that his analysis might be colored by his bias.
To save itself from such a fate, Israel should rid itself of the West Bank, most of Arab Jerusalem specifically included. If possible, it should do so by agreement with the Palestinian Authority; if not, then it should proceed unilaterally, as the — in my view, very successful — withdrawal from Gaza suggests. Or else I would strongly advise my children and grandson to seek some other, less purblind and less stiff-necked, country to live in.Israel's withdrawal from Gaza resulted in thousands of rockets and a war that killed some 1200 people. What exactly are his criteria for success? Again, a statement like that calls into question van Creveld's entire perspective on what it means to be an Israeli, and what its citizens should be forced to endure, for his seemingly bizarre concept of living in security.
Martin van Creveld is an Israeli military historian and the author of “The Land of Blood and Honey: The Rise of Modern Israel” (St. Martin’s Press, 2010).
Iran is operating a worldwide recruitment network for nuclear scientists to lure them to the country to work on its nuclear weapons programme, officials have told the Daily Telegraph.
They claim that the country is particularly reliant on North Korean scientists but also recruits people with expertise from African countries to work on developing missiles and nuclear production activities.
North Korea relies on an lucrative financing agreement with Iran to fund its expanding nuclear activities. In return for Iranian money and testing facilities, North Korea sends technology and scientists.
Mohamed Reza Heydari, a former Iranian consul in Oslo, told The Daily Telegraph, that he had personally helped scores of North Koreans enter the country while working for the foreign ministry's office in Tehran's Imam Khomenei airport.
"Our mission was to coordinate with a team from the Ministry of Intelligence in checking the visas of the foreign diplomatic and trade delegates who visited Iran, with special attention to VIPs," he said.
"We had the instructions to forego any visa and passport inspections for Palestinians belonging to Hamas and North Korean military and engineering staff who visit Iran on regular basis.The sad part is that every thinking person has known this for years, and those who refuse to believe it won't believe it now either.
"The North Koreans were all technicians and military experts involved in two aspects of Iran's nuclear programme. One to enable Iran to achieve nuclear bomb capability, and the other to help increase the range of Iran's ballistic missiles."
He said: "In all our embassies abroad, especially in the African countries, the staff of foreign ministry were always looking for local scientists and technicians who were experts in nuclear technology and offered them lucrative contracts to lure them into Iran.
"The façade of the nuclear programme is that it is for peaceful purposes, but behind it they have a completely different agenda."
"We buy Israeli products. They are much better than the others." |
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!