Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Abbas lie #3871: Hamas gives up violence, accepts "1967 borders"

The president of the Palestinian Authority continues to lie, and the media continues to eat it up.

The latest:

Fatah and Hamas agreed that future Palestinian resistance to Israel will utilize popular and peaceful means, rather than military moves, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared Saturday.

In an interview with the Euronews channel in Brussels, Abbas recounted his meeting with Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal about a month ago.

"We set the agreement's pillars, and Hamas agreed with us that resistance will be popular and adopt peaceful ways, rather than military resistance," the Palestinian president said. "The solution is the establishment of a state in the 1967 borders, and Hamas agreed to that, as well as to holding the elections on May 5, 2012."

Let's go over some of the things Hamas leaders said at the 24th anniversary rally last week:

"Resistance is the way and it is the strategic choice to liberate Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea and to remove the invaders from the blessed land of Palestine," Haniyeh told the crowd, which chanted: "We will never recognize Israel."

"Hamas, together with other stubborn resistance factions, will lead the people towards uprising after uprising until all of Palestine is liberated," Haniyeh said, referring to territory that includes the occupied West Bank and what is now Israel.

Denying speculation that Hamas would turn its attention to nonviolent resistance, Mr. Haniya said: “Today we say it clearly. Armed resistance and armed struggle are the strategic way to liberate the Palestinian land from the sea to the river.”

Abbas has floated this idea a few times in recent weeks. The only English-language version I had seen was in Hurriyet in late November - and it is self-contradictory:

The militant Islamic group Hamas is ready to accept a Palestinian state within 1967 and is open to a discussion of recognizing Israel, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday.

“I would wish that Hamas would agree to this,” Abbas told reporters during a visit to Vienna. “Maybe this will be an issue to talk about in our next meeting.”

Abbas also said the group, which runs Gaza, would only conduct “peaceful” resistance.

So is he saying what Meshal really said, or what he hopes Meshal would say at the next meeting?

Since Abbas hasn't met Meshal since then, it looks like Abbas was just trying to massage his lie.

Of course, no Hamas-oriented website has noted this supposedly profound change in policy for the terror group. Because it never happened, it never will happen, and it never could happen.

But Abbas knows that no matter how ridiculous the claim is, he'll manage to snag a few credulous Western reporters to believe him.

Videos of Egyptian police beating women and men

Al Masry al Youm reports:

Internet users are circulating a video that appears to show members of Egypt's army assaulting an older female activist called Khadiga al-Hennawy.

Hennawy was near the cabinet building on Qasr al-Aini Street on Friday when clashes erupted between protesters and security forces.

In the video, two officers are seen dragging Hennawy by the hair. One lets go of her hair to kick her, before other officers join in, beating her with batons and dragging her out of view.

Another video released Saturday shows police mercilessly beating a man and a woman, whose clothes they tear off.

So macho.

(h/t CHA)

Fatah declares "war on normalization" with Israel

Palestine Press Agency quotes Al Quds al Arabi saying that Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah-dominated PA has decided to declare "open war" on all cooperation between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis, formal or informal.

Fatah official Hatem Abdel Qader confirmed the report, saying "Yes...Let it be known to everyone that we will prevent any Israeli-Palestinian meeting in Jerusalem, and will try to thwart any Palestinian-Israeli meeting held in the Palestinian territories, whether in Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv", adding "There is formal approach we have in the Fatah movement to prohibit and prevent the holding of these meetings."

The article says that activists from the Palestinian national factions in Jerusalem on Monday "foiled" the "Conference of the Israeli-Palestinian Confederation" at the Ambassador Hotel in the eastern part of Jerusalem, where the hotel management said that they could not guarantee the safety of the conference attendees because of threats.

Speakers scheduled at the conference included Shlomo Ben-Ami, Sari Nusseibeh and Uri Avnery.

Which side wants peace again? From reading the media, it is so hard to tell.

Hundreds of hours of the Adolf Eichmann trial are available on YouTube.

I just randomly chose a part where he is being cross-examined. It is chilling.

Meanwhile, an exhibit showing artifacts from his abduction is going on display this month in Israel.

(h/t Yoel)

Egyptians demanding Israelis goods from Gaza tunnels!

Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist quotes Egyptian media as saying that the demand for Israeli products is growing in the northern Sinai.

According to the article, Gazans have been smuggling Israeli goods outbound from the Gaza tunnels and into Egypt, where customers are demanding higher-quality Israeli goods - even when they are more expensive than local products.

Israeli cream is in high demand, but smugglers are also selling milk powder, shampoo, biscuits, chocolate, halvah - and even Israeli hummous!

Vendors say that the Israeli products are in high demand. In the past they would erase the "Made in Israel" logos, but they no longer do, as it is a selling point.

The chairman of the Sinai Chamber of Commerce is concerned, saying that the influx of Israeli products is worrying him, as it is hurting local manufacturers.

(h/t Nadav)

BDS Fail: Apple to open development center in Israel

From Globes:

Sources inform "Globes" that Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) has decided to open a development center in Israel focusing on semiconductors. The decision was taken even before the company entered into talks to acquire Herzliya-based flash storage solutions provider Anobit Ltd..

Apple has hired Aharon Aharon, a veteran player in Israel's high tech industry, to lead the new development center.

Although Apple is a global innovation leader, the company is a relatively small investor in R&D. The producer of the iPad and iPhone invested $2.4 billion in R&D in 2010, which was only 2% of its revenue, much less proportionately than other high-tech companies.

Apple's deployment of R&D activities is in line with this policy and the company has only one technology development center, which is at company headquarters in Cupertino, California. All activities outside of company headquarters revolve around marketing, sales and support. Strategic development is carried out at home. The planned Israel center will therefore be the company's first such center outside of its California headquarters.

The planned Anobit acquisition is a big deal as well.

Sorry, BDSers, but you have to give away your iPhones and iPads now.

(h/t Ian)

A love song to an AK-47 on PA TV

From Palestinian Media Watch:

A new Palestinian Authority TV music video honoring Arafat glorifies Fatah use of violence and venerates the rifle. Last month it was broadcast 7 times on official PA TV.

The song speaks of Arafat's life and idolizes him as a model of violence, revolution, and war. It celebrates through words and visuals the violence of the rifle: "Boom out loud, oh voice of the machine gun... Oh AK-47, make sounds of joy."

The lyrics are, frankly, hilarious.

It starts off with a faily predictable paean to Arafat, with a shout-out to his wonderfully moderate successor Abbas, or as they say, "Abu Mazen," his nom de guerre.

Engrave on the rifle butt the symbol of Fatah's Al-Asifa [unit]
My trigger makes sounds of joy to the Elder (Arafat)
while the rifle sounds aloud
Boom out loud, oh voice of the machine gun,
Yasser [Arafat] lives inside us
[Despite] the day (of his death) on Nov. 11,
the [Palestinian] cause has not died
He is present inside us as an idea and as light,
a fire burning in [our] chest
He [Arafat] taught the whole world how to revolt.
Yasser - symbol of freedom
Oh Elder, I swear by [your] uniform and your keffiya

Oh bullets of the defiant, [your] shot fights 100 [men]
He lived and died in an atmosphere of war,
he crossed the world from east to west
Mahmoud Abbas is on the same path
when it comes to [our] state and identity
We fired the rifle, we faced the storm
We responded to the cannon with a pistol
Using stones, we ignited a revolution and wrote [history], oh Fatah men

It would have been wonderful if they had pulled old footage of airplane hijackings, the Munich Olympics and other highlights of Arafat's life while they sing "He taught the whole world how to revolt."

But then the song turns a bit fetishist.

The song lovingly goes over ever single part of the AK-47 body, ending with, well, a climax:

On the rifle butt, we have engraved [Fatah's] symbol
On the grip, we have engraved "Arafat"
On the top cover we have inscribed the history of the free
On the barrel - the name of the homeland
The flash-suppressor ignited and burst
Here it is, oh rifle sight
The state is only a few meters away
Oh action-spring, receive and shoot [bullets] continuously
Change the magazine - there are hundreds [of them]
Load it into the chamber
Oh AK-47, make sounds of joy and salute the Elder (Arafat)"

I didn't know Arafat was an "Elder," but I guess it makes sense - he would have fit right in with some of the other so-called "Elders."

Here's the video:

Israelis saving the world, again

From AFP:

Israeli medical researchers say they have developed a new technique for blasting cancer tumours from the inside out which reduces the risk of the disease returning after treatment.

Tel Aviv University professors Yona Keisari and Itzhak Kelson are about to start clinical trials of a pin-sized radioactive implant that beams short-range alpha radiation from within the tumour.

Unlike conventional radiation therapy, which bombards the body with gamma rays from outside, the alpha particles "diffuse inside the tumour, spreading further and further before disintegrating," a university statement quoted Keisari as saying.

"It's like a cluster bomb -- instead of detonating at one point, the atoms continuously disperse and emit alpha particles at increasing distances."

The university said that the process takes about 10 days and leaves behind only non-radioactive and non-toxic amounts of lead.

"Not only are cancerous cells more reliably destroyed, but in the majority of cases the body develops immunity against the return of the tumour," the statement said.

The wire implant, inserted into the tumour by hypodermic needle, "decays harmlessly in the body," it added.

It went on to say that in pre-clinical trials on mice, one group had tumours removed surgically while another was treated with the radioactive wire.

"When cells from the tumour were reinjected into the subject, 100 percent of those treated surgically redeveloped their tumour, compared to only 50 percent of those treated with the radioactive wire," it said.

"The researchers have had excellent results with many types of cancer models, including lung, pancreatic, colon, breast, and brain tumours."

It added that the procedure would begin clinical trials at Beilinson hospital, near Tel Aviv, "soon."

Something new to put on the list of items for BDSers to boycott.

(h/t Mike)

Bibi advisor's letter to the New York Times

From JPost:

Dear Sasha, I received your email requesting that Prime Minister Netanyahu submit an op-ed to the New York Times. Unfortunately, we must respectfully decline. On matters relating to Israel, the op-ed page of the “paper of record” has failed to heed the late Senator Moynihan's admonition that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but that no one is entitled to their own facts. A case in point was your decision last May to publish the following bit of historical revision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.

This paragraph effectively turns on its head an event within living memory in which the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan accepted by the Jews and then joined five Arab states in launching a war to annihilate the embryonic Jewish state. It should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact-checking. The opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known. They consistently distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace. They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu and virtually every Israeli official somehow reflects government policy or Israeli society as a whole. Worse, one columnist even stooped to suggesting that the strong expressions of support for Prime Minister Netanyahu during his speech this year to Congress was "bought and paid for by the Israel lobby" rather than a reflection of the broad support for Israel among the American people. Yet instead of trying to balance these views with a different opinion, it would seem as if the surest way to get an op-ed published in the New York Times these days, no matter how obscure the writer or the viewpoint, is to attack Israel. Even so, the recent piece on “Pinkwashing,” in which Israel is vilified for having the temerity to champion its record on gay-rights, set a new bar that will be hard for you to lower in the future. Not to be accused of cherry-picking to prove a point, I discovered that during the last three months (September through November) you published 20 op-eds about Israel in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune. After dividing the op-eds into two categories, “positive” and “negative,” with “negative” meaning an attack against the State of Israel or the policies of its democratically elected government, I found that 19 out of 20 columns were “negative.” The only "positive" piece was penned by Richard Goldstone (of the infamous Goldstone Report), in which he defended Israel against the slanderous charge of Apartheid. Yet your decision to publish that op-ed came a few months after your paper reportedly rejected Goldstone's previous submission. In that earlier piece, which was ultimately published in the Washington Post, the man who was quoted the world over for alleging that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, fundamentally changed his position. According to the New York Times op-ed page, that was apparently news unfit to print. Your refusal to publish “positive” pieces about Israel apparently does not stem from a shortage of supply. It was brought to my attention that the Majority Leader and Minority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives jointly submitted an op-ed to your paper in September opposing the Palestinian action at the United Nations and supporting the call of both Israel and the Obama administration for direct negotiations without preconditions. In an age of intense partisanship, one would have thought that strong bipartisan support for Israel on such a timely issue would have made your cut. So with all due respect to your prestigious paper, you will forgive us for declining your offer. We wouldn't want to be seen as "Bibiwashing" the op-ed page of the New York Times. Sincerely, Ron Dermer Senior advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu

Hamas has announced the death of Ahmed al-Mamlouk on Thursday.

The 23-year old resident of Gaza City was killed while performing a "jihad mission".

Hamas says that he died after a great and honorable jihadist career, filled with hard work and sacrifice and jihad.

Details of his death are unfortunately sketchy. Did he blow himself up? Did he accidentally shoot himself? Did a weapons tunnel collapse on him? Was he secretly accused of spying for Israel?

Whatever it was, Hamas declared him a martyr. That official declaration is what allows Mamlouk to gain his seventy virgins, so it is critically important that the declaration is made. Otherwise Mamlouk's sex life in Paradise would be really disappointing.

May he be joined by thousands more such martyrs who spectacularly fail at killing anyone besides themselves.

Open thread

It looks like I will not be able to actively blog over the next couple of days. I queued up a few posts for Friday but things will likely be very light on Saturday night and Sunday.

So go ahead and party!

Iran planning cyber-attack on US - from Mexico?

A very interesting article in Hudson-NY by Anna Mahjar-Barducci:

Univision, the largest TV broadcaster in Spanish of the United States, recently presented a report showing that Iran is actively preparing an attack against the US to be carried out from bases in Latin America. The documentary, "La Amenaza Irani" ("The Iranian Threat"), illustrated, though undercover footage, how the growing economic, political and military ties Iran has developed in South American countries are rapidly evolving into a tangible threat for the security of the US. The documentary reveals exclusive findings, including secret video and audio recordings that provide information about a planned Iranian-backed cyber attack against the United States from Mexico.

The videos shown were part of a seven month investigation during which a team of journalists tracked the expansion of Iranian interests in the Latin America – including money laundering and drug trafficking activities by terrorist groups supported by Iran. In Venezuela, the team managed to infiltrate Iranian military training camps organized from Iranian-financed mosques within the country.

The documentary also confirms that Iran is behind money laundering and drug trafficking activities that are used to support Islamist networks and training camps in Venezuela and elsewhere, with the ultimate goal of undermining American interests in Latin America and inside the US.

The team of journalist also infiltrated the diplomatic milieu in Mexico with the help of young university students who posed as spies and offered their services to different officials from Iran, Venezuela and Cuba for carrying out a cybernetic attack on sensitive American targets that would cripple U.S. computer systems of command centers such as the White House, the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA and different US nuclear plants.

One of the officials contacted was former Ambassador of Iran to Mexico, Mohamad Hassan Ghadiri, who was videoed while accepting the help of the Mexican students for carrying out a major informatics attack to the US. Univision reports that during his stay in Mexico, Ghadiri "embarked on a campaign to increase the presence of Iran in Mexico. His plan even included a project to open a consulate in Tijuana." The TV channel also reported that Ghadiri tried to grant access into Mexico to Edgardo Ruben Assad, an Islamic activist accused by Argentina of participating in the attacks on Jewish organizations in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994. Ghadiri is shown in the documentary as accepting a plan to launch from Mexico a cyber war on the U.S. Similar attitudes were found with Venezuelan and Cuban high officials, all very interested in supporting an Iranian-sponsored plot against the US.

The idea of the Iranian officials is to create a network of people in South America. One Mexican student was invited to Iran to study Islam for two months. He was ordered to learn about the Islamic religion and the Islamic revolution in order to be sent back to Mexico to preach Islam. While in Iran, the infiltrated Mexican met Muslims from Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia , all of whom had converted to Islam and were studying to open mosques back in Latin America. "One of the Iranian sheiks, Ali Qomi, when I first gained his trust, told me that what they are now doing is waging an intellectual war; what they are planning to do is prepare people with information so that they can attack the masses intellectually. This is what they are doing directly from Qom. Precisely in Qom,"said the undercover student, who was risking his life in Iran.

In a press release, Univision said that it had at its disposal "tens of hours of secret recordings, and had conducted extensive interviews with people who participated in the meetings, including a former Iranian ambassador; and [that they had] examined documents ranging from hand-written notes to internal federal reports, and obtained an unpublished video of a failed bomb attack against New York's JFK airport."

We have heard how Iran has been infiltrating gangs in Latin America, but there is a lot of new information here.

The entire Spanish-language report, along with a ten-minute excerpt of the video report, can be seen here.

Unity! PA refuses to give dialysis filters to Gaza hospitals

From PCHR:

On Thursday at noon, 15 December 2011, blood filters ran out at all hospitals in the Gaza Strip, and consequently, dialyses for 450 patients who suffer from renal failure have been stopped.

In the aftermath of this serious development, PCHR participated in a meeting that was held in the office of World Health Organization in Gaza to discuss the serious impacts of the lack of this disposable on the lives of patients. The meeting was attended by figures and international and local organizations that are involved in the health sector.

The participants have concluded that the lack of this disposable seriously endangers the lives of patients, and its lack is the outcome of political differences between the Ministries of Health in Ramallah and Gaza. They have attempted to find mechanisms to provide this disposable but they have not been able as it is fully depleted in medical warehouses and pharmacies, especially in the Gaza Strip. This disposable is available only in the warehouses of the Ministry of Health in Ramallah.

It should be noted that hospitals in the Gaza Strip perform 15 dialyses every day, which requires 150 blood filters.

We're in Month 8 of "unity" between the PA and the Hamas government. And nothing has changed.

Gaza "siege" news

Today, the besieged Gaza Strip received 220 truckloads of aid. It included 13 truckfuls of cement, gravel and iron for construction projects, 40 trucks for UNRWA projects.

In addition, it exported 4.9 tons of strawberries and 6.5 tons of peppers and cherry tomatoes.

Today is typical.

I am fairly certain that if you add together all of the aid sent by Viva Palestina, Miles of Smiles and Free Gaza over the years, they would not equal the amount of aid sent today alone from Israel.

PA lights Christmas tree in city that is losing its Christians

Ramallah was once a Christian city. It had a clear Christian majority under Ottoman and British rule.

When Jordan annexed the town, though, the demographic balance changed. By 1967 it was roughly half Muslim.

Christians fled from Ramallah in the 1990s as the Muslim population grew.

In February 2002, a spat between a Christian and a Muslim turned into a Muslim attack against many Christian-owned businesses, and the PA did nothing to stop it:

[D]etails were emerging of a rampage of Palestinian Muslims against Christian shops and churches in Ramallah after a road-rage slaying last Thursday.

... [P]olice made no attempt to stop the mob, which besieged and damaged a widely respected youth center associated with the Boy Scouts of America after torching the Christian properties.

Palestinian police and security agencies finally stepped in when the rioters moved on local churches.

"The truth is this is a problem between Christians and Muslims," said one Christian businessman. "There is no security for us. Everyone is taking the law in his own hands....This [accused] man's brother, they burned his house, his shops, his cars, and the police of Ramallah stood by and watched. This is the democracy of Palestine?"

"The chief of security at Kalandia was in charge of this rampage," said a Muslim shopkeeper. "The mayor of Ramallah came, saw what was happening, and withdrew. I am a Muslim, but I condemn this. These are savage people."

Altogether, while Christians used to make up 10% of the Palestinian population, that number has now gone down to as little as one percent.

But even though the Palestinian Authority has a horrendous record of protecting its beleaguered Christian population, they are happy to pretend that everything is OK to the world.

Yesterday, PA prime minister Salam Fayyad participated in the lighting of the Ramallah Christmas tree where notables made speeches about how all Palestinian Arabs love Christmas, how Jesus came from Palestine to establish peace, and how they are still living under the yoke of horrendous Israeli occupation.

I'm sure that the 1% of remaining Christians in the territories feel much better.

Iran claims to have 3 US, 4 Israeli spy drones

From Tehran Times:

Iran plans to put foreign spy drones it has in its possession on display in the near future, according to an informed source close to the Tehran Times.

National reporters and foreign ambassadors based in Tehran will be allowed to visit the exhibition.

The latest domestically manufactured electronic warfare equipment will also be put on show at the exhibition.

According to the source close to the Tehran Times, the foreign unmanned aircraft that Iran has are four Israeli and three U.S. drones.

The most advanced spy drone in Iran’s possession, which was recently downed, is RQ-170 unmanned U.S. plane, which the Islamic Republic announced on December 4 had been brought down by the country’s armed forces.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in a recent exclusive interview with Fox News, said that the stealth drone campaign along the Iran-Afghanistan border will “absolutely” continue.

A number of countries have reportedly asked for permission to inspect the aircraft.

According to the source, the four Israeli drones that are now in Iran’s possession had violated the country’s airspace along the eastern borders, and the three U.S. unmanned aircraft had penetrated into the country’s airspace along either the eastern or southern border.

In an interview published on January 2, 2011, the commander of the Aerospace Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, announced that the Iranian military forces had brought down two foreign spy planes over the Persian Gulf, not mentioning the exact date and location of the events.

Hundreds of North Korean nuclear and missile experts in Iran

From the Korea Times, November 13:

Hundreds of North Korean experts involved in the Stalinist regime’s development of nuclear and missile programs are working in major facilities across Iran, a diplomatic source said Sunday.

“We have confirmed that hundreds of North Korean engineers and scientists have been working at more than 10 nuclear and missile sites in Iran through Humint (human intelligence),” the source said. “The collaboration has been taking place for years.”

North Korea has long been suspected of helping the Islamic state with a secret weapons program.

The source said the North Korean experts are from “Office 99,” under the North’s ruling Workers’ Party Munitions Industry Department. The secret bureau is widely believed to be responsible for the Stalinist regime’s exports of weapons and military technology.

In June this year, the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun reported that Pyongyang dispatched 160 nuclear experts to Iran in an attempt to sell its nuclear and missile-related military technologies.

It claimed that the cash-strapped North was looking to sell its technology to overcome financial difficulties that have worsened since the international community slapped sanctions on it for nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. Since then, arms exports have been one of the major sources of hard currency for the communist North.

The conservative newspaper noted that the North Korean experts were believed to have helped Iran remove a computer virus from its systems at some uranium enrichment facilities and a centrifugal separator.

Last week, the Sankei Shimbun also reported that Tehran and Pyongyang have been jointly operating a secret nuclear research institute in Iran, saying 10 North Korean nuclear weapon scientists are allegedly at the institute to give advice to Iranian physicists.

It went on to say that the institute received “MCNPX2.6.0,” a version of North Korea’s nuclear development software that analyzes the interaction of particles, exposure levels and other factors crucial for the construction of nuclear reactors and warheads.

Iran has thus far denied its military cooperation with the North and insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian energy purposes only.

Some corroboration comes from Michael Ledeen:

The huge detonation at Karaj, which, as I have explained, surprised the attackers and distorted our understanding. The operation was aimed at the Revolutionary Guards Corps, specifically at General Hassan Tehrani Moghadam, who was both the architect of the national missile program and one of the nastiest officials in that legendarily nasty organization. The attackers did not know that there was a large quantity of rocket fuel on the base that day (which was the reason Moghadam was there). The special fuel came from North Korea, and it was supposed to double tne range of Iran’s missiles. The explosion that killed Moghadam and scores of his comrades ignited the rocket fuel, with dramatic results. To date, 377 dead have been reported to the supreme leader’s office. Among the dead are the attackers–they couldn’t escape the big explosion–and at least four North Korean officials, who were there for the celebration.

Ledeen's article points out that all of the recent Iranian explosions and other attacks - including some that were not widely reported - seem to have come from insiders, and he doesn't believe yesterday's Al Arabiya story that Khamenei was the target at Karaj either:

The attackers came from the internal opposition, and so far as I know they had no ties to any foreign anything, not a foreign intelligence service, not a foreign military organization, not a foreign government.

Of course, as always with things Iranians, you’ve got to caveat what you think you know. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been misinformed. But, on the other hand, I’ve been a lonely voice for quite a while, saying that the opposition (call it the Green Movement, for lack of an updated logo) would become more violent, that the movement was, if anything, more powerful than it was at the time of the big demonstrations a year and two years ago, and that the regime was full of opposition sympathizers and collaborators.

Because it’s obvious that whoever’s blowing up Iran, they’ve got a lot of help from some very important insiders. Don’t take it from me; ask Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He knows that if his enemies can blow up those installations, they can blow up most anything. Of late, Khamenei hasn’t been particularly active in public events. Like his buddy, Hezbollah chief Nasrullah, he’s keeping his head down and his profile low.

Not that Khamenei has taken vows of solitude and silence. He’s fired several top Revolutionary Guards generals and colonels. Al Arabiya and other lovers of fairy tales would have us believe that Khamenei was the target of the Karaj bombing, and therefore he purged the Guards. But Khamenei wasn’t the target (there was no reason to believe he would attend the ceremony; after all, he didn’t even show up for the inauguration of the Bushehr nuclear plant), and while some of the Guards were indeed fired because of the bombings–they came from the counter-intelligence and “defense” organizations who are supposed to protect such facilities–others were fired because of their involvement in the burgeoning financial scandal. Other “analysts” suggest that Khamenei’s son had joined President Ahmadinejad in trying to kill the old man, but there is nothing to it. Ahmadinejad might well want Khamenei to reach paradise with all due speed, but he wasn’t involved in this affair.

The sources upon whom I rely for such information tell me there is more to come, and I’m sure that the supreme leader believes just that. He may not know the provenance of the army amassed against him and his regime, and he may well convince himself, as our own entrail readers have convinced themselves, that he is under siege from the satanic forces in Washington and Jerusalem. But I don’t believe it. Maybe–probably, even-Stuxnet. I don’t think the Greens are up to that one. Maybe, if you insist, some of the assassinations of the physicists, although I rather suspect they were suspected of disloyalty and were rubbed out by the regime.

But this is a major campaign, and I think it represents the revenge of the Iranian people against their torturers, murderers and oppressors.

(h/t Missing Peace)

Iran destroys dome design with hundreds of Jewish stars

From YNet:

The Tehran Municipality has demolished the dome in the city's central square on Tuesday due to criticism that the monument featured Stars of David, which are associated with Judaism.

The Iranian news agency Fars reported that "part of the dome in Revolution Square, which resembles the symbol of the Zionist regime, has been destroyed by municipality workers."

According to the report, the ornamental tiling that adorned the dome has been removed, leaving it bare. It is unclear whether the dome is to be overlaid again with more appropriately-themed tiling.

Fars said that the measure was taken due to mounting disapproval of the dome's appearance. A different Iranian website reported that worshipers from a central mosque held a protest march a few days ago, urging the municipality to remove the Jewish symbols.

Here's the dome, in the middle of Revolution Square, before the destruction:

Don't see the stars? Iranian websites help you out:

Ah, there they are. So let's destroy this evil Jewish Zionist symbol.

And what does it look like after we are done eradicating this evil from our midst?

Yes, right now the stars are more obvious than they were before!

But there is another issue here. The Israeli flag does not only have stars - but two straight lines as well!

As all Muslims and Arabs know, those two lines represent the Nile and the Euphrates, showing Israeli expansionist designs. They are just as terrible as the six-pointed star itself. In fact, I have it on good authority that practically every building in every major city in Iran was secretly designed by Zionist engineers to include at least two parallel lines, usually on the outside walls, just to covertly show their supremacy.

Just to play it safe, that Iranians should also destroy all of their structures that include parallel straight lines.

(h/t T34 and someone else I can't find)

EoZ on your tablet and smartphone!

I just signed up to be a content provider on Google Currents.

Currents is an application that converts newsfeeds into an attractive format where you can read them on iPods, iPhones, iPads and Android devices, on or offline - for free.

From the few minutes I played with Currents, it looks good, although I don't think it automatically updates its editions when I update the blog.

If you want to check it out, just download Google Currents onto your mobile device, search for Elder of Ziyon and add it.

If you like it and want to use it, let me know, or else I won't remember to keep it updated.