Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Tunisian interior minister condemns anti-Jewish protest

On Monday I posted a video of a demonstration by Islamists in front of the Great Synagogue in Tunis.

Al Ahram reports today that Tunisia's interior minister strongly condemned the rally:

We strongly condemned strongly the militants and the advocates of extremism who deliberately demonstrated in front of some religious monuments and chanted slogans against the religions; it was incitement to violence, racism and discrimination.

It is unacceptable for them to undermine the very values of our republican system based on respect for freedoms and beliefs, tolerance and peaceful coexistence between all factions and ensure the exercise of civil rights.

We will spare no effort to preserve these values and respond to anyone trying to incite violence or sedition among the people of Tunisia...

This is a good sign.

A tale of two kleptocrats - Mubarak and Arafat

From NYT:

Funds belonging to the family of Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, or his senior ministers have been discovered in Switzerland, a Swiss government official said Wednesday. But the official declined to specify how much money had been identified or who controlled the account.

“The first traces have been identified,” said the Swiss official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “At the end of the week, we might have a better picture.”

The disclosure came as the new military-led Egyptian government confirmed that it had asked countries across the Western and Arab worlds to freeze the assets of senior former government officials. But the statement from the government did not say whether the list included Mr. Mubarak and his family members. Egyptian opposition members said they feared that the military would shield Mr. Mubarak, a former air force chief, and his relatives from an investigation.

SoccerDad via email points out that Yasir Arafat, who embezzled as much as $3 billion himself, was never subject to such scrutiny.

From Asharq al-Awsat in 2006:

Yasser Arafat shared his secrets and thoughts mainly with the small notebooks that he filled and kept in places unknown to members of the Palestinian leadership, even those who were close to the late Palestinian leader. Even after his death, the causes of which are still unknown, nobody dared to open these notebooks, or even open the boxes in which they were kept. There is no indication as to who is in charge of safekeeping them or the nature of the information noted by Arafat. However, all sources agree to the importance and seriousness of these notes, especially as the late leader, since the launch of the Palestinian revolution, would make note of every detail in a small notebook that he would keep in the pockets of his military uniforms that he wore for over fifty years during his leadership of the Palestinian revolution. Yasser Arafat, also known as Abu Ammar never parted with his notebooks. When they were full, he kept them in special envelopes and boxes in his office, allowing no one access to them.

Those notebooks of course are the key to where Arafat squirreled all his money. While the PA begs for Western money, they don't seem to be spending too much time trying to find the money that was embezzled by their great leader.

Now, why might that be?

For my non-US readers, there is a US TV quiz show called Jeopardy! where the clues are answers and the contestants ask the questions. It has been very popular for decades now.

This week, an IBM supercomputer named Watson competed with two of the best champions the show ever had - and defeated them handily.

More details here.

I has written about Watson, which was partially designed in Israel, here.

UK Parliament on PA cash to Hamas: "You can't prove it"

I received this excerpt from a recent discussion in Parliament:

Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con): What development support his Department provides to the Palestinian Authority and to Israeli non-governmental organisations working in the west bank. [40974]
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan): We provide financial and technical assistance to the Palestinian Authority. In this financial year, our support will total £31.1 million. DFID also co-funds the UK conflict pool, which supports five Israeli human rights NGOs operating in the west bank.
....
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con): Is the Minister aware that an increasing amount of aid to the Palestinian territories ends up in the hands of extremists and is used for extremist purposes? Will he take steps to stop that and ensure that aid gets to the Palestinians who need it most?
Mr Duncan: I do not share my hon. Friend’s conclusion. We are very careful how we spend our money in the occupied Palestinian territories and have done our utmost to support the legitimate government of Salam Fayyad with, I think, great success. We would abhor any money falling into the hands of extremists, and we do everything possible to ensure that such an accusation can never be verified or proved valid.

Interesting choice of words....

5 dead in Bahrain, tanks in the streets

From NYT:

Without warning, hundreds of heavily armed riot police officers rushed into Pearl Square here early Thursday, firing shotguns, tear gas and concussion grenades at the thousands of demonstrators who were sleeping there as part of a widening protest against the nation’s absolute monarchy.

At least five people died, some of them reportedly killed in their sleep with scores of shotgun pellets to the face and chest, according to a witness and three doctors who received the dead and at least 200 wounded at a hospital here. The witness and the physicians spoke in return for anonymity for fear of official reprisals.

The military said later it had taken control of most of the capital and banned protests, The Associated Press reported. The announcement on state television said the military had “key parts” of Manama “under control,” hours after the killings.

Television broadcasts showed tanks rolling through the capital.

Video from the scene:

One video of the tanks (h/t Missing Peace)

ABC's Jake Tapper looks at some of the Wikileaks cables showing a "cozy" US-Bahrain relationship.

Another video here.

Another potential domino - Morocco

(h/t Missing Peace)

Where's the BDS movement against the UAE?

Rock band Maroon 5 is returning to Dubai, and they are very excited!

After their first successful 2008 appearance in Dubai, the five piece band Maroon 5 are returning back to Dubai on April to perform at the Dubai World Trade Center, and no one is more excited than frontman Adam Levine.

"Dubai's a wild place; we had a lot of fun the last time round," he told Gulf News exclusively. "It's this multicultural melting pot — there's no other place like it. It's great to be back and we're very excited about the gig."

For some reason there is no boycott movement against the UAE.

The UAE is a country where only Muslims can pray in public or proselytize, where gay rights are non-existent, where women's rights are restricted, where there is no free press, where Palestinian Arabs cannot become citizens, and where there is an entire economy built on abuse of south Asian workers.

So why are no so-called human rights activists asking bands to boycott the UAE?

As far as I can tell, Maroon 5 has never played in Israel, although there are a number of websites begging them to visit. Yet they have no moral qualms about visiting a country that has such huge human rights abuses and restrictions of freedom.

And not one human rights group calls for a boycott of artists from performing in Dubai.

Egypt looking at changing constitution - will it include Article 2?

Last week the BBC reported that while some opposition groups want to rewrite Egypt's constitution from scratch, others are concentrating on very specific parts.

Today the head of Al Azhar University said that there was one section of the constitution - Article 2 - that he says will definitely not be changed, and any attempt to do so would be an act of sedition:

Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).

It will be interesting to see if any of the other parts of the constitution that favor Islam will be up for review. For example:

Art.11: The State shall guarantee coordination between woman’s duties towards her family and her work in the society, considering her equal to man in the political, social, cultural and economic spheres without detriment to the rules of Islamic jurisprudence (Sharia).

Art.19: Religious education shall be a principal subject in the courses of general education.

There is, however, a lively debate at Al Ahram where a surprising number of people want to scrap Article 2 and make Egypt's constitution congruent with universal human rights norms.

Guess who Iran blames for demonstrations

Perhaps the most predictable "news" story ever, from Iran's FARS agency:

The Zionist regime and its hirelings inside Iran have clearly had a hand in the Monday afternoon frenzy in Tehran, an Iranian legislator underlined on Wednesday.

The seditions staged now and last year find their roots in materialistic thoughts and aspirations of the seditionists and the lead and backup of the Zionists, Shabib Jouyjari said in an open session of the parliament.

Another Iranian legislator had also earlier condemned the Monday riots, and said masterminds of the seditious plot - Mehdi Karroubi, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Seyed Mohammad Khatami - have received financial support from the Zionists.

"The very aim of the seditionists is to overthrow the Islamic Republic, a goal which has received the financial and mental support of the Zionists," member of the parliament's Cultural Commission Fatemeh Rahbar told FNA on Tuesday.

I had no idea my mental support was so effective.

NYT spins US as prescient on Egypt. Senate shows otherwise.

From NYT:

President Obama ordered his advisers last August to produce a secret report on unrest in the Arab world, which concluded that without sweeping political changes, countries from Bahrain to Yemen were ripe for popular revolt, administration officials said Wednesday.

Mr. Obama’s order, known as a Presidential Study Directive, identified likely flashpoints, most notably Egypt, and solicited proposals for how the administration could push for political change in countries with autocratic rulers who are also valuable allies of the United States, these officials said.

The 18-page classified report, they said, grapples with a problem that has bedeviled the White House’s approach toward Egypt and other countries in recent days: how to balance American strategic interests and the desire to avert broader instability against the democratic demands of the protesters.

Sounds like the Obama administration is really on top of things, right?

Well....

A senate hearing Wednesday revealed that top US intelligence agencies are largely ignorant about the current situation in Egypt and unfamiliar with the agenda of the country’s radical Islamists.

"It's hard to at this point to point to a specific agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood as a group," National Intelligence Director James Clapper told senators. When asked about the group’s attitude to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, he said this was a difficult question before assessing “they are not in favor of the treaty.”

Asked about the Muslim Brotherhood’s position on weapons smuggling to Hamas in Gaza, Clapper said he was unaware of the group’s declared stance on the issue. He said that a wait-and-see attitude was also required before determining the Muslim Brotherhood’s position on Iran.

Intelligence officials also conceded in the hearing that they did not pay enough attention to social media networks, and that they were not closely monitoring Tunisia, where the wave of ongoing regional unrest started.

So who are you going to believe - an alleged secret 18-page memo whose existence is leaked to a newspaper that has a love affair with Obama, or the actual actions and words of a bumbling administration that has never considered monitoring Facebook as a potential source for information over three years after Syria recognized it as a threat and banned it?

US offers to push Israel under bus. PLO says it isn't enough.

From Foreign Policy:

The U.S. informed Arab governments Tuesday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.

But the Palestinian's rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesdy of Arab representatives and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution Friday, according officials familar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospects that the Obama adminstration may cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security Council.

Still, the U.S. offer signaled a renewed willingness to seek a way out of the current impasse, even if it requires breaking with its key ally and joining others in the council in sending a strong message to Israel to stop its construction of new settlements. The Palestinian delegation, along with the council's Arab member Lebanon, have asked the council's president this evening to schedule a meeting on Friday. But it remained unclear whether the Palestinian move today is simply a negotiating tactic aimed at extracting a better deal from the United States.

It is nice to see that the UN Security Council can now safely ignore uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, and Iran and put the priorities back where they properly belong: on some family living in Ma'ale Adumim who want to add a bathroom to their house.

Omri Ceren at Commentary acerbically writes:

In a way, this is a natural follow-up to the administration’s bumbling in Egypt, where they managed to alienate all parties in the Middle East except the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, and Iran’s assorted proxies. This gesture won’t win us any lasting goodwill from Arab elites. WikiLeaks showed that they care far more about geopolitical stability than they do about the settlements, such that the spectacle of the White House abandoning a second ally for the second week in a row would be met with worried chagrin, regardless of what they say out loud.

More to the point, and by now out of genuine curiosity: who exactly does the Obama administration envision having as a Middle East ally, say, six months from now? Strategic administration leaks about the Egypt crisis have already signaled a renewed chill in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. U.S. backing for a UN resolution wouldn’t detonate the alliance — military-to-military ties are too strong for that — but it would be the end of cooperation between this White House and this Israeli government, a government that a militarily and now diplomatically besieged Israeli public would rally behind.

And that’s before we get to how our UN mission, representing the world’s only hyperpower, seems to believe that “bargaining” means “getting progressively closer to the other side’s position.” We’re negotiating with the likes of Libya and the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon over whether we should protect one of our last Middle East allies against a biased UN lynch mob. It’s almost difficult to believe that the Iranians, per J.E. Dyer’s must-read post, are at this very moment literally sailing their way into regional hegemony.

(That J. E. Dyer link is indeed must-read, but I don't think I'll have a chance to blog about it.)

An email correspondent, who is not a fan of Israeli settlements, has an interesting perspective:

As I see this resolution, at WORST it REITERATES the US position, namely that it "does not accept the legitimacy of CONTINUED Israeli settlement activity." This is problematic for the Arabs in multiple ways. First, it does NOT declare pre-existing settlements as illegitimate, only "continued" activity. Second, it offers no actionable items. Third, it would invalidate Palestinian attempts at recognition either of statehood or borders, both of which at least some of their leadership hope to accomplish or at least use as leverage. This resolution would accomplish nothing for the Arabs. If they were to accept it as binding, they would be insane.

The real idiocy here is that the Obama Administration proposed it. The only result of this asinine proposal is that relations between Israel and the US will become further strained and America will be seen as an even worse friend of its only ally in the region, having just abandoned another, Egypt. The Arab nations almost certainly laughed the US representative right out of the room. The Palestinians may even feel offended by this resolution. This administration clearly just doesn't get it.

Richard Falk's defense of Khomeini, 1979

From Bret Stephens in the WSJ:

It's what the good people on West 40th Street like to call a "Times Classic." On Feb. 16, 1979, the New York Times ran a lengthy op-ed by Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, under the headline "Trusting Khomeini."

"The depiction of [Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false," wrote Mr. Falk. "What is also encouraging is that his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals."

After carrying on in this vein for a few paragraphs, the professor concluded: "Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country."

Whoops.

The Times is at it again. Last week, the paper published an op-ed from Essam El-Errian, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Guidance Council, who offered this soothing take on his organization: "We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians." Concurring with that view, Times reporter Nicholas Kulish wrote on Feb. 4 that members of the Brotherhood "come across as civic-minded people of faith."

Here are the relevant parts of Falk's sunny prognosis for a wonderfully tolerant Islamic Republic:

How wrong can you be?

And yet this joker is still respected as if his opinions have any passing resemblance to reality.

A lawyer destroys the Turkey flotilla conclusions

I posted last week about the published conclusions of the Turkey flotilla report, but did not look at the legal issues they brought up. A well-known expert on international law emailed me and wrote his first impressions of the report conclusions:

The report appears not to have been carefully proofread because it not only contradicts itself, it also indicates possible war crimes by the passengers. For example:

19. Israeli soldiers fast-roped down to the Mavi Marmara from helicopters. Three were subdued by the passengers. They were taken to the lower decks where they were treated for their non-lethal injuries.

21. The shooting spree of the Israeli soldiers continued in spite of the white flags waved by the passengers and multilingual surrender announcements made over the ship’s PA system.

#21 says passengers waved white flags, while #19 acknowledges that passengers attacked Israeli soldiers as they boarded (“Israeli soldiers … were subdued by the passengers). If these were the same passengers, and the white flags came before or during the attacks on soldiers, the passengers committed the war crime of perfidy.

#40 also demonstrates extreme sloppiness:

40. Israel’s ultimate objective through its "blockade" has been to punish the people of the Gaza Strip for supporting Hamas. This is why Israel chose in 2007 to impose a "blockade" although there were other options, and to persistently maintain it even though it did not yield its purported military objectives.

The naval blockade was declared and imposed in January 2009, not 2007. Plainly, since the Turks do not even know when the blockade was imposed, they have no knowledge about its motives, and have no basis for their false claim that “Israel’s ultimate objective through its "blockade" has been to punish the people of the Gaza Strip for supporting Hamas.” Indeed, from #40, it appears that the only “evidence” the Turks have in support of the claim is the (false) “fact” that Israel imposed the blockade in 2007.

The report’s legal conclusions are contradictory as well as being wrong in several places.

E.g., the report says that blockades are only lawful in international conflict (not true – blockades have been imposed in non-international conflicts, see e.g., http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284210429984110.html); the report says that hamas-israel is a non-international conflict (probably true); and that Israel belligerently occupies Gaza. Now, not only is this last statement obviously wrong (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1577324), if it were true it would mean that Hamas-Israel is an international conflict, because there can be no belligerent occupation without an international conflict or the occupation of a foreign state’s territory.

35. The "blockade" was also unlawful in its implementation and practice.

36. The "blockade"s "open-ended" nature did not comply with mandatory notification requirements under customary international law, particularly those relating to duration and extent.

37. The "blockade" was unlawful as it was not reasonable, proportional or necessary.

38. The "blockade" was excessive in the damage it inflicted on the population of the Gaza Strip in comparison to the expected military advantage.

39. The "blockade" was unlawful as it constituted collective punishment of the entire civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

The conclusions in 35-39 are simply wrong, but to argue it would be necessary to see more of the report.

42. Under customary international law, vessels carrying humanitarian aid cannot be lawfully attacked.

#42 is wrong no matter what the report says. The carrying of “humanitarian aid” does not render a vessel immune from boarding or inspection, or give it a right to run a blockade. Even if the ship’s content were properly understood as humanitarian, the ship still had the duty to allow itself to be boarded, and its refusal to cooperate with Israeli forces made it a legitimate belligerent target.

There are other bits of legal puffery, like 43-45.

The same kinds of errors and inconsistencies plague the factual findings and the mixed law-fact findings.

For example, #4 states that "Prior to the convoy’s departure, an understanding was reached among Turkish, Israeli and American officials that the convoy would eventually steer towards the Egyptian port of Al-Arish, when faced with compelling opposition. Events demonstrated that Israel did not abide by this understanding." If there was an understanding that the convoy would steer toward El Arish, it clearly was not honored, but the failure to abide by the understanding was obviously the convoy's and not Israel.

#5 states that "No attempt was made by the Israeli forces to visit and search the vessels before taking any other action." Israel was not under any obligation to visit and search the vessels once it determined their aim was to violate the blockade. What is more, it did demand a tow to port for inspection, which the Mavi Marmara resisted.

13. Prior to their attack, the Israeli forces did not proceed with standard warning practices, i.e. firing across the bow, to indicate an imminent use of force.

17. The Israeli forces opened fire with live ammunition from the zodiacs and helicopters onto the passengers on deck, resulting in the first casualties.

20. Israeli soldiers shot indiscriminately, killing and wounding passengers, once on the upper deck.

#13 is plainly a lie. So is #17. And so is #20. The Turks should be challenged to provide evidence for this slander.

16. The Israeli military did not at any time pause to re-assess the situation with a view to consider the least violent options in face of the passengers’ self-defence.

#16 is a mixture of lie and faulty legal analysis. The passengers did not engage in self-defense as they had no legal right to use force to repel Israelis boarding the ship. Once the passengers used force, they ceased to be protected civilians and became legitimate targets against which Israeli soldiers had a right of self-defense. Israel had no obligation to give the passengers time to continue their attack on the soldiers.

19. Israeli soldiers fast-roped down to the Mavi Marmara from helicopters. Three were subdued by the passengers. They were taken to the lower decks where they were treated for their non-lethal injuries.

#19 demonstrates that in fact the passengers did take a direct part in hostilities (they “subdued” Israeli soldiers) making those doing the “subduing” legitimate targets.

Thomas Friedman's fantasy - and Egyptian reality

My latest post on NewsRealBlog looks at Thomas Friedman column in today's NYT.

Excerpt:

Friedman has fallen hook, line and sinker for the Arab lie that they give the West that Arabs are only anti-Israel because of the “occupation.” In Egypt, it is pure, old-fashioned Jew-hatred that drives anti-Israel sentiment.

And that Jew-hatred is not state-sponsored. Egypt has worked to publicly give the impression that it treasured its Jewish minority and history. It recently renovated historic synagogues and annually allows Jewish pilgrims to visit the gravesite of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira every January.

While some of the Egyptian media will sometimes have anti-Semitic articles and TV shows, it does not appear that this is coming from the state — but from the people themselves, including Egypt’s so-called liberal opposition.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t SoccerDad for alerting me to the Friedman article)

Andrew Sullivan, another Israel hater who cannot read

I am being increasingly convinced that Israel-haters have lost all ability to read leaked memos without having their Zio-sirens interfering with their ability to comprehend basic English.

We saw plenty of examples with the Palestine Papers, but here's one from Andrew Sullivan on a Wikileaks cable.

First, the paragraph in question from the August 2008 memo:

Regarding the Tahdiya, Hacham said Barak stressed that while it was not permanent, for the time being it was holding. There have been a number of violations of the ceasefire on the Gaza side, but Palestinian factions other than Hamas were responsible. Hacham said the Israelis assess that Hamas is making a serious effort to convince the other factions not to launch rockets or mortars. Israel remains concerned by Hamas' ongoing efforts to use the Tahdiya to increase their strength, and at some point, military action will have to be put back on the table. The Israelis reluctantly admit that the Tahdiya has served to further consolidate Hamas' grip on Gaza, but it has brought a large measure of peace and quiet to Israeli communities near Gaza.

The bolded sentence is what gets Andrew Sullivan up in a tizzy, as he quotes another English-impaired analyst, Daniel Luban:

The memo does not say that the Israelis believe “military action will have to be put back on the table” because at some point Hamas will break the ceasefire, but rather because Hamas would like to maintain the ceasefire to strengthen its position. Thus if the memo accurately reflects the Israeli government’s thinking, it would appear that the Israelis were, from relatively early on, contemplating breaking the ceasefire in order to cut Hamas off at the knees.

Um, no.

The memo states the quite obvious fact that Hamas was using the calm to import huge quantities of weapons into Gaza through the Rafah tunnels. That's what "increasing their strength" means. And, for those whose memories manage to reach all the way back to 2008, that was a major concern on the Israeli side at the time.

Now, why would Hamas need to import so many new rockets and explosives and RPGs and anti-tank missiles? Who could they be considering using them against? Hmmm, another toughie.

The memo is quoting Israeli officials as saying that there will inevitably be a military conflict between Hamas and Israel because Hamas is building up its strength to strike at Israel at some point in the future, and the tinderbox will ignite.

It does not in the least bit say that Israel is planning to break the ceasefire to attack Hamas. In fact, the memo itself states in the very next sentence that things were relatively better in the Negev communities because of the calm - so only an anti-Israel bigot can interpret the sentence as saying that Israel was planning to attack Hamas and force residents of Sderot to sleep in bomb shelters again.

But Sullivan seizes on this poor excuse for analysis by Luban as being indisputably true.

Sullivan's source Luban also says:

The rockets only resumed in earnest after Israel broke the truce with aNov. 4 raid that left six Palestinians dead; because the raid coincided with the US presidential elections, it was barely reported in the US media.

His source that it was "barely reported in the US media?" IPS News, an extremely anti-Israel publication. Here's what it said:

Consumed by coverage of the Nov. 4 presidential election, U.S. mainstream media ignored a key Israeli military attack on a Hamas target that some Palestinians claim marked the effective end of the ceasefire between the two sides and set the stage for the current round of bloodletting.

While the major U.S. news wire Associated Press (AP) reported that the attack, in which six members of Hamas's military wing were killed by Israeli ground forces, threatened the ceasefire, its report was carried by only a handful of small newspapers around the country.

So according to Luban's source, only AP reported the strike, and it was ignored by the major media.

This is, of course, a lie. A three minute search shows that Reuters, the New York Times, the LA Times and other major media printed the story.

So Sullivan relies on an analyst that relies on a lying anti-Israel news source to buttress his conspiracy-minded thesis that Israel had preplanned an Election Day attack against innocent Hamas members. A source who misinterprets basic English to slam Israel based on evidence that doesn't exist.

Now, that's journalism!

(h/t Aaron)

Afternoon linkdump

True Israel runs down the anti-peace treaty statements from Egypt's army and opposition.

The Washington Post (via YNet) says that Stuxnet did not slow down the Iranian nuclear program as much as we had been hearing.

Saeb Erekat blames the World Zionist Organization for helping force him out of a job. Wow...can we get Abbas to resign next?

Saudi Arabia withdrew extremist books from its schools - including books written by the founder of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

A Gaza journalist was "summoned for questioning" by Hamas, which means that he'll behave like a good boy from now on.

IsraeliGirl shows how you can support the Israel Philharmonic in a scheduled performance in New York's Carnegie Hall that will be protested by the usual bunch of Israel-hating drones.

The New York Post is reporting that CBS reporter Lara Logan was sexually abused and seriously injured in Cairo bya "pro-democracy" crowd who called her a Jew.

Iran is calling on a pro-government, anti-protester protest for Friday. The Iranian media has all but ignored the anti-government protests earlier this week.

An Israeli company is making a splash in the soda world.

Not only democracy advocates are celebrating Mubarak's fall

From the Hamas Palestine Times website....

Here is sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, singing of his joy at the fall of Mubarak.

Qaradawi, one of the most influential Islamic clerics with a popular TV show on Al Jazeera, supports suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.

The only freedom he cares about is the freedom to create a caliphate without government interference.

Iranian military parade follies

From a photo essay of an Iranian military parade celebrating the anniversary of their revolution.

If you have an erection that lasts more than four hours, please seek medical attention.

An awe-inspiring display of pure masculine power.

Everyone loves a circus!

I'm sorry, but all-caps Zapf Chancery breaks every design rule known to man.

Western radical liberals care more about "Palestine" than Arabs

A great op-ed in The Australian by Brendan O'Neill:

"UNTIL the Palestinians are given back their rights we're going to have instability throughout the Middle East," declared John Pilger on ABC1's Q & A last night. "That is central to everything."

Yet, one of the most striking things about the uprising in Egypt was the lack of pro-Palestine placards. As Egypt-watcher Amr Hamzawy put it, in Tahrir Square and elsewhere there were no signs saying "death to Israel, America and global imperialism" or "together to free Palestine". Instead, this revolt was about Egyptian people's own freedom and living conditions.

Yet on the pro-Egypt demonstration in London on Saturday, there was a sea of Palestine placards. "Free Palestine", they said, and "End the Israeli occupation". The speakers had trouble getting the audience excited about events in Egypt, having to say on more than one occasion: "Come on London, you can shout louder than that!" Yet every mention of the word Palestine induced a kind of Pavlovian excitability among the attendees. They cheered when the P-word was uttered, chanting: "Free, free Palestine!"

This reveals something important about the Palestine issue. In recent years it has moved from the realm of Arab radicalism, where Egyptians and other peoples frequently demanded the creation of a Palestinian state, and has instead become almost the exclusive property of Western middle-class radicals, such as Pilger.

Emptied of its nationalist vigour and militancy, the Palestine problem, it seems, is now of little immediate interest to protesting Arabs and is instead the ultimate cause celebre for Western liberal campaigners who like nothing more than having a victimised people they can coo over.

The power and allure of Palestine in Western radical circles is extraordinary. Palestine is the only issue they get excited about. But there is nothing progressive in their pro-Palestine fervour. It is not driven by future-oriented demands for economic development in a Palestinian homeland in the West Bank or Gaza. Instead it is driven by a view of Palestinians as the ultimate victims, the hapless and pathetic children of the new world order, who need kindly, wizened Westerners to protect them from Big Bad Israel.

Today's pro-Palestine leftism is more anthropological than political. It treats Palestinians less as a people who ought to have certain democratic rights and more as an intriguing tribe to be prodded and preserved. Some Western radicals have even adopted the fashions of their favourite tribe. Step on to any university campus in the West, or join any left-wing march, and you'll see concerned-looking youths wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, a politically correct version of blacking up.

This is the politics of pity rather than solidarity. Groups of Western middle-class youth have taken Palestinian pity holidays in the West Bank and Gaza. They turn up and marvel at the dignity of this beautiful besieged people, like those wives of old Victorian colonialists who discovered they rather liked the African tribes they had been sent to Christianise. "I've never met people like the Palestinians. They're the strongest people I've ever met", gushed British peace activist Kate Burton, who hit the headlines in 2006 after being kidnapped by a Palestinian faction in Gaza....

...Palestinian pitiers have no time to think about the inconvenient fact that Hamas is an intolerant political entity that has no time for gay rights or women's equality. Instead, everything gets reduced to a Narnia-style story of wicked witches v happy fauns, because this is ultimately about providing vacuous-feeling Westerners with some much-needed momentum in their lives, not about untangling a messy political reality.

It's very revealing that Palestine has become less important for Arabs and of the utmost symbolic importance for Western radicals at exactly the same time. With the Palestinian people somewhat deflated, the Palestine issue can become perfect political fodder for the victim-oriented, fancy-dress radicals of the modern West.

(h/t Barry Rubin via email)

Here's 15 of Mubarak's billions

This document, apparently from a Swiss bank, is going around the Arabic web. It appears to show Hosni Mubarak deposited about 15,600 kg of platinum in a Swiss bank only one year after entering office:

According to this document, the value of the platinum was nearly $15 billion.

(CAVEAT: I'm having trouble reconciling the numbers; I think that 15K kg of platinum is worth only about $1 billion today, but the only other way I can read the fuzzy document is that he deposited 15 million kg, which would have been worth more than $170 billion at the time and a trillion dollars today - platinum was at $358 a troy ounce in December 1982. So perhaps this document is forged.)

Given that Egypt does not have much of an oil economy, and assuming this document is legit, this sure makes it look like he was stealing from his people, big time.