Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Richard Falk loves anti-semitic conspiracy theories

It is really illuminating to read how Richard Falk responds to comments on his blog about his sickening diatribe against Jews and Judaism I posted about last month.

With one rare exception, no matter how outrageous the charge someone brings against Jews, he thanks them for their comments. He ignores or mostly ignores anyone who tries to actually bring facts to his attention.

The worst example came over the weekend, with this comment by "John" in response to the devastating - and mostly bypassed - comment by the reform Rabbi Ira Youdovin I mentioned:

John writes, in part:

The German and Zionist ideologues shared similar ideas with regard to blood and soil. They both came to share Nazi ideology with regard to lebensraum for their manufactured ethnic races.

During World War One, Zionists pursued their selfish interests by getting the war prolonged, to secure the Balfour Declaration by the British Government and to see Christian-Zionist General Allenby occupy former Ottoman Palestine.

The British Palestine Mandate provided the extremist Zionists with an opportunity to deposit and expand their settlements through the displacement of the pre-existing population of Palestinians, for whom their racist ideology cared nothing.

During World War Two, Zionists offered to fight alongside the Nazis against the British and their subsequent Russian and American allies.

In this, they shared similar sentiments with white supremacist Afrikaner nationalists in South Africa.

Where the Afrikaner apartheid regime in South Africa failed, the Zionist apartheid regime in Palestine has succeeded.

This is typical drivel one would expect to see on a neo-Nazi website. But look at how Falk responds:

Thanks, John, for this illuminating and persuasive commentary.

It isn't hard to see that Falk's ability to be objective when given information is non-existent - if the information makes Jews and Zionists into evil beings, Falk believes it uncritically; if they say the opposite, Falk ignores it.

(John goes on to defend his statement by cutting and pasting some supposed Zionist quotes from some anti-Zionist website. I don't have the time to research all of them, although I have once shown how one was very much out of context, but the idea that some Zionists had attempted to work with the Nazis to save millions of Jews from impending doom is well known. John twists these facts into making it sound like Zionists "collaborated" with Nazis. Of course, in the decade before the death camps, negotiating with the Nazis to save them was as debatable as negotiating with Hamas is now, yet Israel is still "collaborating" with Hamas to save a single Jew imprisoned in Gaza. John, bigot that he is, is trying to imply the exact opposite - that Zionists were working with Nazis to send Jews to their doom. Falk does not object to John's "facts.")

(h/t Silke)

Tahrir Square millions: "To Jerusalem we head, martyrs in the millions" (updated)

From the "Angry Arab News Service" blog on Friday:

For those who say that there are no foreign policy goals for Egyptian protesters, you need to watch this. In it, Egyptians (more than 2 million today) in Tahrir Square chant: "To Jerusalem we are heading, Martyrs in the millions." (Yes, it rhymes in Arabic)

Chances are that this was a reaction to the speech by Islamist Yusuf Qaradawi, who said that he hoped to be able to preach in Jerusalem soon as well. The same moderate, not-to-be-worried about Islamist whose bodyguards physically blocked Wael Ghonem - the celebrated Google executive and considered by the Western media the face of the revolution - from speaking.

(h/t DL from Sweden)

UPDATE: Martin Kramer tweets to me, and comments on Yaacov Lozowick's blog, that he thinks it sounds more like "To the palace we head..." He further says that he has asked other Arabic speakers and they do not hear the words spoken here by the crowd. So this might not be correct. (It seems clear that Qaradawi did in fact say that he wants to go to Jerusalem, though.)

Palestinian Arab prisoner quiz question (now with answer)

The number of Palestinian Arab prisoners who have been in Israeli jails for over 25 years has just gone up.

In the comments, take a guess how many there are.

(The answer is in the Arabic article here.)

ANSWER: The number is a mere 30, of which 4 are Arab Israelis and 2 are from Jerusalem.

Libya cuts off Internet; death toll past 100

From AFP:

Internet service was cut off in Libya on Friday as the regime evidently moved to strip anti-government protestors of ways to organize and communicate, according to Arbor Networks.

From Newser:

[T]he death toll keeps climbing in Libya's protests. Moammar Gadhafi's minions killed another 20 people today, bringing the five-day total to at least 104, says Human Rights Watch. Gadhafi has effectively shut off Internet service and forbid media coverage, but witnesses told AP of attacks by police and government loyalists wielding guns, knives, and even anti-aircraft missiles.

Islamists 1, young secular Egyptians 0 (SoccerDad)

Thomas Friedman:

Indeed, it is no surprise that the emerging spokesman for this uprising is Wael Ghonim — a Google marketing executive who is Egyptian. He opened a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said,” named for an activist who was allegedly beaten to death by police in Alexandria. And that page helped spark the first protests here. Ghonim was abducted by Egyptian security officials on Jan. 28, and he was released on Monday. On Monday night, he gave an emotional TV interview that inspired many more people to come into the squareon Tuesday. And when he spoke there in the afternoon, he expressed the true essence of this uprising.

Roger Cohen:

The sea of people pulsated with energy, galvanized by the words of Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who got the Mubarak treatment — 12-day disappearance, blindfolding, interrogation — before a tweet that will one day be etched in some granite memorial: “Freedom is a bless that deserves fighting for it.”

Reality:

Google executive Wael Ghonim, who emerged as a leading voice in Egypt's uprising, was barred from the stage in Tahrir Square on Friday by security guards, an AFP photographer said. Ghonim tried to take the stage in Tahrir, the epicentre of anti-regime protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, but men who appeared to be guarding influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi barred him from doing so.

Ghonim, who was angered by the episode, then left the square with his face hidden by an Egyptian flag.

(from SoccerDad via email)

So the Iranian ships are coming through Suez after all

Although it looked for a little while that this was a false alarm, it looks like it is true.

From YNet:

Egypt has approved the passage of two Iranian warships through the Suez Canal, a source said on Friday, a move that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman previously described as "provocative."

"Egypt has agreed to the passage of two Iranian ships through the Suez Canal," the security source told Reuters.

The two ships would be the first Iranian military vessels to pass through the canal since Iran's 1979 revolution.

To navigate the strategic waterway, naval vessels need the approval of Egypt's Foreign and Defence Ministries.

J. E. Dyer at Commentary describes why this is a big deal:

The big shift here is in political perceptions of power. The important facts are that revolutionary, terror-sponsoring Iran — under U.S., EU, and UN sanctions — feels free to conduct this deployment, and Syria feels free to cooperate in it. Egypt’s interim rulers apparently saw no reason to block the Suez transit, in spite of the Egyptians’ very recent concern over Iranian-backed terrorists and insurgents operating on their territory. Saudi Arabia, for its part, considered it prudent to host the Iranian warships last week — in spite of the Saudis’ own conviction that Iran has been aiding rebel groups that threaten Saudi territory.

The cooperation from the Arab nations should not be misread, however. The Arabs have no desire to see Iran in a position of regional hegemony. The threat of that prospect will raise the stakes for the governmental turmoil in the Arab world. The view is likely to gain momentum that Arabs need to organize as much to counter Iran as to address their own domestic issues. That factor — so inimical to the unforced development of political liberalism — was never going to be dismissible; the Iranian warship deployment makes it inevitable.

In information-speak, Iran is “inside our OODA-loop” right now: acting faster than we have prepared to react. Complacent assumptions about inertia in the status quo will not be borne out. Iran’s proximate strategic objective is consolidating the rule of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Former prime minister Saad Hariri declared his opposition to the Hezbollah-backed government in a speech on Monday; Hassan Nasrallah is promising that Hezbollah fighters will occupy Galilee; Ehud Barak warned on Wednesday that Israel might have to enter Lebanon again to counter Hezbollah. With the battle lines being drawn, Iran’s posture is hardening: the Islamic revolutionary regime is “all in.”

Djibouti,Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait protests

From Al Arabiya:

Thousands of opposition supporters, mainly students, gathered in Djibouti Friday to demand President Ismael Omar Guelleh step down, witnesses said.

The rare demonstration in the tiny Horn of Africa country was organised amid mounting opposition to the president, who last year had the constitution amended to allow him to seek a third mandate in upcoming April elections.

"IOG out", read one banner, using the president's initials, as most Djiboutians do. "No to a third mandate", read another banner.

Amid a tight police deployment, the demonstrators gathered at a stadium with the intention of staying there until their demands are met.

Hundreds of Syrians staged a protest against security forces after traffic police beat up a young man in the capital's Old City, an opposition website reported on Friday.

The Dubai-based all4Syria.info said Imad Nasab, son of a shopowner in the cobbled commercial strip of Hariqa, was assaulted by traffic police officers, sparking a spontaneous rally on Thursday in solidarity with the victim.

"The Syrian people will not be humiliated," chanted the crowd.

"Police, thieves" and "We will sacrifice our soul and blood for you (President) Bashar (al-Assad)" were some of the slogans used by the demonstrators.

Also...

Clashes broke out Friday in Jordan's capital between government supporters and opponents at a protest calling for more freedom and lower food prices, injuring eight.

The Amman protest drew about 2,000 people, including hard-line leftists, Muslim conservatives and students calling for reduced power for the king and the chance to elect members of the Cabinet.

Students from the growing "Jaayin" or "I'm Coming" movement chanted: "We want constitutional reforms. We want a complete change to policies."

"They beat us with batons, pipes and hurled rocks at us," said Tareq Kmeil, a student at the protest. "We tried to defend ourselves, to beat them back."

Meanwhile, at least two people were killed in Yemen on Friday when clashes broke out between police and protesters.

Also Kuwait, where the protesters are stateless Bedouin.

Death tolls are mounting in Bahrain and Libya.

Danny Ayalon on the Arab world's upheaval

From Danny Ayalon in the Huffington Post:

[S]ome [European and American analysts] still see every event in the Middle East, minor or major, as connected to Israel. Many of these analysts are so preoccupied with Israel or the so-called "Middle East conflict", a term that ignores or dismisses all other conflicts in the region as irrelevant and non-newsworthy, that they have no understanding of the region beyond Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

One would think that the recent events in Tunisia, Cairo, Yemen and elsewhere would demand soul-searching and humility on the part of these talking-heads who pontificate from their comfortable think-tanks and self-appointed analyst positions in Washington, London and Brussels.

Some of these analysts have not amended their tired and outdated thinking even after the recent events, merely stating the relationship of the unrest to Israel and the peace process. They have become the dinosaurs of international affairs and foreign policy analysis and will not be shaken from their ideological foundations by facts that contradict their thinking.Many of these analysts, some who claim experience in Middle East affairs, like those who claim to have been part of a peace process negotiating team when they did little more than make the tea, lack a keen understanding of the region. They fundamentally ignored the UNDP Human Development Report for Arab states report in 2009 which was a virtual roadmap for the events that took place during the last few weeks.

This report stated that the Arab world is lacking in all areas of human development, such as freedom, women empowerment and education. In addition, nearly 40% of the Arab world lives below the international poverty line. For the Arab world to merely maintain its current position, which is at the lowest rung on the development ladder, it will need to create 51 million jobs in the next ten years.

The report, co-authored by Arab scholars was a scream in the dark for many western analysts to wake up and face the very real problems affecting the Arab world. In addition, the free Arab press relates to these issues on a daily basis. However, this patronizing and perhaps even chauvinistic approach by some analysts tells the people of the region what they should be thinking rather than learning and listening.

Nevertheless, they cling to the tired and discredited claim that building a few of apartments in Ariel is what drives the so-called "Arab street" to distraction.

Paris Hilton converts? Arab sites get fooled by satire (updated)

Firas Press quotes American news outlets as saying that Paris Hilton is wearing a veil and has converted to Islam. It says she plans to open an Islamic school in Los Angeles and is changing her name to Tahirah.

Here's the photo proof:

The only problem is that this came from a spoof news site called The Daily Squib. Here's their "article":

JEDDAH - Saudi Arabia - Former American socialite, Paris Hilton has converted to Islam, her spokesman, Ian Brinkham, has revealed to CBS news.

"She has been toying with the idea for quite a while now and when she was imprisoned at Century Regional Detention Facility in 2007, she encountered a few people who had already converted," Mr Brinkham said.

By converting to the Muslim faith, Paris Hilton has decided to shun her old life as a celebrity skank.

Speaking from an Islamic study retreat in Jeddah, she said: "I have now found total peace in my life. Before, I used to be known as an STD-ridden streetwalker , a 'hoe' and a person of loose morals, but now, things have changed. Allah be praised."

Hollywood Jihad

Ms Hilton plans to return to Los Angeles next week to start her own Islamic school in the middle of Beverly Hills.

"Forget Scientology or Kaballah. This is the religion to be in now. I'm not going to be wearing a piece of red string on my wrist or walk around like a robot talking to Xenu. Islam is the new must-have religion. and I'm going to spread the word of the Koran to everyone," an excited Paris Hilton said.

Paris Hilton also plans to change her name to 'Tahirah' which means 'Pure, chaste' in Arabic. Her Islamic school will open in July and is set to become a popular Hollywood spiritual haunt for many celebrities.

UPDATE: Apparently, her love of Islam was short-lived.

(h/t Anna12)

Al Aqsa dudes freak out over Photoshopped Dome pix

Firas Press reports that the Al Aqsa Heritage people, having a slow news week, decided to condemn some unnamed Zionist websites that apparently show an edited photo of an Israeli flag flying on top of the Dome of the Rock. Although they say that they don't want to give the sites any more publicity, it shows that Zionist plans are to replace the site with a Jewish temple, yadda yadda yadda.

Unfortunately, they didn't provide the URLs of these offensive pictures.

So, I was forced to come up with my own:

UPDATE: Found the photo, at ABNA.ir. Mine's better.

Video: Libyans destroying Gaddafi "Green Book" monument

From Now Lebanon:

New video from Libya shows protesters in the city of Tubruq tearing down a monument to the Green Book on Thursday. The book was written by the country’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and it outlines his political views.

The YouTube site says this happened on Thursday.

(h/t Missing Peace)

Fun trivia fact

Far more Arabs have been killed by other Arabs during protests in the past month than have been killed by Israel in the past two years.

The toll so far:
Egypt 365
Tunisia 219
Libya 24
Bahrain 5
Yemen 4
Iraq 2

Total: 599 (at least)

That's more than quadruple the number of Palestinian Arabs killed by Israel since Cast Lead.

Latest Latma (2/18/11)

Including the Mohammed bedtime story.

Bahrain's revolution more problematic

The protests in Bahrain are not the same as in Egypt or Tunisia. Rather than protesting rising prices or freedom, it appears that the Bahrain protests are mostly by the Shiite majority against the ruling Sunnis.

But it is not as if Bahrain is a wasteland of human rights. It actually has one of the best human rights records of any Arab country and it has a diverse population. Bahrain even publicly called for the Jews who fled the country to come back.(It is not thrilled with gays, though.)

In fact, the major Shiite party wants to have more discrimination! From Wikipedia:

Al Wefaq, Bahrain’s main Shia Islamist opposition party, has for several years tried to introduce racial segregation, calling for the removal of third world immigrants from predominately Bahraini areas. In 2004, the head of Manama City Council, Al Wefaq’s Murthader Bader, called for the introduction of racial segregation in the city with the removal of South Asian nationals to other parts of the country.

So far, this has not morphed into an anti-US protest, but Bahrain is the headquarters of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, and concern is rising there. The Fifth Fleet helps keep the Gulf safe from disruptions of oil shipments that have been threatened by Al Qaeda - and Iran.

Iran is of course supporting the Shiites and denouncing the ruling government. Iran considers Bahrain to be a part of Iran proper and an Iranian takeover of the country to "redeem" it is not out of the question.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is very nervous and there are reports that it has sent its own tanks in to help Bahrain fight the protesters. Saudi Arabia has many Shiites that live in areas of the country where oil is pumped, and a revolution that spreads to the kingdom could be disastrous to the world energy supply.

The knee-jerk reaction to support every seemingly popular revolution can have far-reaching consequences.

UCLA's having "Palestine Awareness Week." Let's help them out.

I just saw a Facebook page advertising UCLA's "Palestine Awareness Week" next week.

I deeply believe in awareness for Palestine, so here is my small contribution to the cause:

Are you aware that Palestine was never a country?
Are you aware that the word Palestine is Roman, not Arabic?
Are you aware that Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab nation?
Are you aware that before 1920, the area known as Palestine included much or all of what is now Jordan?
Are you aware that practically every written history of the Palestinian Arabs starts after Jews started returning to the area in the late 1800s?
Are you aware that practically no Arabs called themselves "Palestinian" before 1964?
Are you aware that the first Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin al Husseini, originally wanted a "Greater Syria" to include Palestine and only changed his mind in the 1920s?
Are you aware that this same Husseini instigated murderous rampages against the Jews of Palestine - including Jewish communities that had been there for centuries?
Are you aware that this same Husseini colluded with Hitler to perform genocide on all Jews during World War II?
Are you aware the Palestinian Arabs have never accepted any peace plan that included a Jewish state?
Are you aware that modern terrorism was created by Palestinian Arabs?
Are you aware that Palestinian Arabs never demanded their own West Bank or Gaza state when they were under Jordanian and Egyptian control?
Are you aware that Yasir Arafat embezzled as much as $3 billion from his people, yet he is still regarded as a hero and no Palestinian Arab leader is trying to find his stolen money?
Are you aware that the constitution of Palestine states that Sharia law would be the main source of legislation?
Are you aware that Mahmoud Abbas bankrolled the 1972 Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes, and that he praised the ringleader of that attack as recently as 2010?
Are you aware that Mahmoud Abbas' doctoral dissertation denied the Holocaust?
Are you aware that Hamas does not want a Palestinian Arab state but instead a pan-Islamic caliphate that spans the world?
Are you aware that the Palestinian Authority still officially states that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem?
Are you aware that the PLO wants to build a state with no Jews in it?
Are you aware that the elected Hamas government has laws discriminating against women?
Are you aware that Yasir Arafat was born in Egypt, but Ariel Sharon was born in Palestine?
Are you aware that the biggest heroes to ordinary Palestinian Arabs are terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi and Samir Kuntar?
Are you aware that the original 1964 PLO charter specifically excluded the West Bank and Gaza from the land they wanted, and their only desire was to destroy Israel within the Green Line?
Are you aware that not a single refugee camp has been dismantled in the territories governed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas?
Are you aware that even after signing the Oslo Accords, Yasir Arafat publicly said that a Palestinian state is simply a stage on the way to destroying Israel altogether?

Just a small public service for Palestine Awareness Week.

Camp David destabilized the Middle East??? (updated)

The rhetorical hoops that Israel bashers force themselves to go through get ever more convoluted. Here's a really egregious example, from Patrick Seale in Foreign Policy:

Israel has been unnerved by Egypt's revolution. The reason is simple: it fears for the survival of the 1979 peace treaty - a treaty which by neutralizing Egypt, guaranteed Israel's military dominance over the region for the next three decades.

By removing Egypt -- the strongest and most populous of the Arab countries -- from the Arab line-up, the treaty ruled out any possibility of an Arab coalition that might have contained Israel or restrained its freedom of action. As Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan remarked at the time: "If a wheel is removed, the car will not run again."

Western commentators routinely describe the treaty as a ‘pillar of regional stability,' a ‘keystone of Middle East diplomacy,' a ‘centerpiece of America's diplomacy' in the Arab and Muslim world. This is certainly how Israel and its American friends have seen it.

But for most Arabs, it has been a disaster. Far from providing stability, it exposed them to Israeli power. Far from bringing peace, the treaty ensured an absence of peace, since a dominant Israel saw no need to compose or compromise with Syria or the Palestinians.

Instead, the treaty opened the way for Israeli invasions, occupations and massacres in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, for strikes against Iraqi and Syrian nuclear sites, for brazen threats against Iran, for the 44-year occupation of the West Bank and the cruel blockade of Gaza, and for the pursuit of a ‘Greater Israel' agenda by fanatical Jewish settlers and religious nationalists.

In turn, Arab dictators, invoking the challenge they faced from an aggressive and expansionist Israel, were able to justify the need to maintain tight control over their populations by means of harsh security measures.

One way and another, the Israeli-Egyptian treaty has contributed hugely to the dangerous instability and raw nerves which have characterized the Middle East to this day, as well as to the sharpening of popular grievances, and the inevitable explosions which have followed.

Yes, Patrick Seale is really trying to argue that Camp David caused wars, regional instability and somehow caused Arab regimes to mistreat their people.

It takes a mind that is thoroughly twisted by hate to come up with such a scenario.

In Seale's worldview, Israel is, always has been and always will be the aggressor in the Middle East.

He does not seem to have noticed that in the thirty years before Camp David there were 4 regional multi-front wars between Israel and its neighbors; in the thirty years since there have been zero.

He bizarrely regards one of the single most successful military adventures of all time - Israel's bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor, which was designed purely to help Saddam Hussein build an atomic bomb and caused few casualties - as just another example of Israeli aggression.

He similarly regards Israel's bombing of a secret Syrian nuclear site, which no sane person believes was being built for peaceful purposes, as another example of Zionist aggression....

And it is something that Israel wouldn't have dared to do if Egypt was not at peace with Israel!

I'm surprised he didn't put Entebbe in his list of how Camp David "destabilized" the region.

Yet he even goes beyond that and blames Israel for how Arab dictators treat their people! I guess Seale pines for the good old days of Nasser and Assad and Saddam and Gaddafi pre-Camp David, when they treated their people so darn well!

Any way you look at it, the haters seem to check their capacity for rational thought at the door when bad things can remotely be related to Israel by some Rube Goldberg chain of illogic.

(h/t YV)

UPDATE: Zvi in the comments adds:

Number of Egyptians killed in the wars against Israel in the 3 decades prior to Camp David:

* 1948: total Arab casualties were 8000-15000
* 1956: 3000
* 1967: 10000-15000
* WOA 1967-1970: 6000-13000
* 1973: 8000-18500
* And more, killed in 3 decades worth of localized clashes

Number of Egyptians killed in wars against Israel in the 3 decades since Camp David:

* zero

Zero. That's right.

By a staggering coincidence, "zero" also describes precisely how much Patrick Seale really cares or understands about the real interests, freedom or happiness of Arab people in the Levant.

Maybe Patrick Seale doesn't care that the Camp David accords have kept tens of thousands of young Egyptian men (not to mention Israelis) from being pointlessly killed in an endless stream of senseless wars between heavily-armed nations. Maybe he doesn't care that tens of thousands of Egyptian and Israeli mothers don't have to mourn the deaths of their precious children, their husbands, their brothers, their fathers.

Maybe Patrick Seale doesn't grasp that the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel gave Jordan the courage to keep the peace, and kept Syria from engaging in hot wars that would have become increasingly bloody and destructive over time.

Maybe Patrick Seale doesn't bother to consider the historical context - the Camp David accords took place, after all, against a backdrop in which two massive nuclear-armed superpowers were still engaged in proxy wars all over the world, but even these two superpowers were becoming increasingly worried about the potential consequences should a war between Egypt and Israel spiral out of control. The world is not a radioactive ruin today. Maybe we would all have evaded such a fate anyway.

Maybe.

Maybe, in his haste to attack Israel, Patrick Seale doesn't feel a need to stick to the facts. For example, he claims that since Camp David there have been "massacres in the ... Palestinian territories." This claim is simply a lie.

But there have been massacres in Syria since Camp David. The Syrian government murdered 30,000 people at Hama a couple of decades ago. That didn't happen because of Camp David. There have been massacres without number in Iraq, as Syrian- and Iranian-trained terrorists infiltrated that country and slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians at a time. There have been massacres in Yemen, and the Sudan. Unlike Israel - or Egypt, for that matter - the Baath in Syria and the Islamists around the region continue to practice destabilization, horror and slaughter on a near-weekly basis.

Seale ignores the fact that what has always driven the violence between Israel's neighbors and Israel is the utter refusal of a gang of greedy and brutal Arab dictators (like Bashar al-Assad and his father), as well as sociopathic control freams and xenophobic terrorists (like the leaders of Hamas, as well as Yasser Arafat) to accept any future in which Israel exists, or to stop specifically arming terrorists to slaughter Jewish civilians.

It's really that simple.

Maybe, in Seale's dreamworld, compromising with the Assad regime on the Golan looks like be a good thing - as if anyone who has compromised with Baathists on security matters has ever benefitted from doing so. Ask the Lebanese.

Maybe, in Seale's fantasies, Syrian-North Korean nuclear weapons facilities, kept secret from the IAEA, were less "destabilizing" than a peace treaty.

Or maybe, if you wish to become a water-carrier for Syria's Baathist regime like Patrick Seale, you are required to check your conscience and love of the truth at the door. This man is Hafez al-Assad's personal biographer and is married to the daughter of Hafez al-Assad's ambassador to the US. Not that he's tied to the regime or anything... .

The Camp David accords encouraged stability and sanity in the region, preventing bloodshed and enabling leaders and citizens to plan their futures without the virtual certainty of a major war every 10 years. It is Seale's patrons who do everything in their power, as they have done for decades, to create chaos and bloodshed. They do this in the service of their own personal power, grasped and held at gunpoint and by arresting an beating down peaceful dissenters. They are butchers at home, and they are butchers abroad. They are men without conscience.

Which brings us back to zero. By another astonishing coincidence, "zero" is the sum total of Patrick Seale's credibility.

Hasbara 2.0 video rental on sale

For the next seven days, I am reducing the price of my Hasbara 2.0 lecture video from $12 to only $5.

Check it out!

Two sickos in one convenient post!

From Commentary's Alana Goodman:

During an interview with Joy Behar last night, Helen Thomas made it clear that she was standing behind her statements that Israeli Jews should “go back” to Germany and Poland. However, she did make a couple of additions to the list of countries that Jews should “return” to, such as Russia and the United States.

“They’ve been free ever since,” said Thomas, referring to the Jews after the Holocaust. “They didn’t have to go anywhere really, because they weren’t being persecuted anymore, but they were taking other people’s land.”

A visibly uncomfortable Behar then asked Thomas whether she considered herself anti-Semitic – and got something less than a clear answer. “Hell no. I’m a Semite. Of Arab background,” said Thomas. “[The Jews are] not Semites. Most of them are from Europe.”

The former White House reporter then launched into a tirade against the Israel lobby. “We have organized lobbyists in favor of Israel,” she said. “You can’t open your mouth. I can call the president of the United States anything in the book, but if you say one thing about Israel … you’re off-limits.”

Asked whether she had any regrets about making her controversial statement last spring, Thomas said her only regret was that “everybody misinterpreted it.”

“You have the Ari Fleischers and the Abe Foxmans distorting everything,” said Thomas. “So I certainly knew that and I should have kept my mouth shut probably.”

After insisting that her statements weren’t insensitive, the journalism veteran launched into a rambling diatribe about Palestinians being “pushed from their homes” in the middle of the night.

Watch the full clip here if you wish. Though you could probably hear a more rational and pleasant perspective on Middle East policy from a ranting homeless person at a bus station.

From Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic:

Nir Rosen, the journalist who infamously mocked Lara Logan (and who was completely dismantled by Anderson Cooper last night), has been saying hugely outrageous things for years, as I've documented here. He is sympathetic to the Taliban; he thinks al Qaeda poses no threat to America; he wishes Americans would "get over" 9/11; and he thinks Israel is an "abomination" that should be destroyed. After I posted about his previous statements, I was flooded with e-mails from Goldblog readers who told me I missed the nuttiest thing Rosen ever said. It came in an article about his Israeli origins, in which he called his homeland a place of "bloody nationalism, paranoid identity and violent religion." In reading this treatise on Israel and its sins, it becomes clear that Rosen (who attended an Orthodox Jewish day school in New York) feels the sort of hate for Israel and Judaism that one associates with the hardest core of Hamas.

The truly revealing part of this treatise comes at the end, when Rosen discusses ways to convince Israel to behave in a way he thinks is just: "I find myself in the unique and painful position of calling for international sanctions against Israel and wondering if a punitive bombing of Tel Aviv, the city I love, until it complies with international law, might be a good (albeit quixotic) idea."

Yes, Rosen is calling for the physical destruction of the world's largest Jewish city. I wrote yesterday that I would try to avoid armchair psychoanalysis in this matter, but sometimes these things are fairly obvious. Rosen, an American of Israeli origin, has spent his career rationalizing the actions of Israel's, and America's, most bitter enemies, and he envisions a day when the world community will conduct a bombing campaign of Tel Aviv. Nir Rosen seems to be engaged in a ferocious attempt to shed his identity to the point where he aligns himself with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Taliban, and argues for the literal destruction of the city from which he came. It is deeply pathetic.

No comment necessary - these haters speak for themselves.

Although the Helen Thomas defenders in the CNN site run the usual gamut.

JOY: You owed Helen some respect. And you didn't show it. And now I have no more respect for YOU. For someone who claims to be Catholic, you sure are a Zionist and your antagonistic Jew-loving one-sided brutality towards this journalism hero who speaks nothing but the damn truth, just shows you're either really a JEW or you're bought and paid for by your JEW MEDIA CORPORATE EVIL

That's me- Jew Media Corporate Evil!

(h/t DM)

Terrorist supporter Qaradawi to address Tahrir Square

From OnIslam (verified by Al Arabiya in Arabic):

As thousands of Egyptians are preparing to celebrate their successful revolution against long-standing president Hosni Mubarak on Friday, February 18, prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi will deliver the sermon of the weekly prayers from Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Qaradawi, the present of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) will deliver the sermon at an invitation from a coalition representing the youth of the Egyptian revolution, OnIslam.net has learned.

The invitation was extended in gratitude to Qaradawi’s role in mobilizing support for the Egyptian revolution.

Thousands of Egyptians are set to gather in Tahrir Square to celebrate their success in ousting Mubarak.

Hundreds of thousands are expected at tomorrow's rally, so Qaradawi - who issues fatwas mandating suicide bombings against Jews in Israel - will have quite an audience.

Qaradawi has been banned from his native Egypt for 30 years.

BDS Fail: Israel's economy surges

From AFP:

Israel's economy picked up in the last quarter of 2010, chalking up 7.8 percent growth and a higher-than-expected annual growth rate of 4.5 percent, official figures show on Thursday.

The figure took analysts by surprise, outstripping expectations of a fourth-quarter growth rate of around 4.0 percent.

Central Bureau of Statistics data show the economy grew by 5.2 percent in the second quarter and 4.4 percent in the third.

Earlier this week, the Bank of Israel (BoI) had predicted fourth-quarter growth of between 4.3 and 4.6 percent.

The annual growth figure far outstrips the 2.8-percent average registered in 2010 by countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the club of developed nations which Israel joined last year.

It also exceeded OECD estimates, which showed Israeli GDP growing by 3.9 percent in 2010.

Last month in its annual report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the Jewish state had emerged "relatively unscathed" from the global recession, and praised the "resilience" of its economy.

I guess that the BDS movement didn't manage to boycott enough Israeli hummus last year.