Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Saudis freak out over Hebrew paper cups

You can't make this stuff up! (Hat tip to OpinionJournal Best of the Web)

Made-in-Israel Paper Cups Used in Local Hospital
Samir Al-Saadi, Arab News

JEDDAH, 22 August 2005 — Paper cups with Hebrew writing disturbed both employees and medical staff at King Khaled National Guard Hospital on Saturday. The catering subcontractor for the hospital coffee shops began using them on Saturday after their usual supply ran out.

“We were shocked and angry,” said an employee. “How can Israeli products be allowed and how did they enter this hospital?” he asked.

The Filipino employee who works in the Al-Musbah coffee shop asked: “Why is everybody mad about the cups?” He was told: “Because they are made in Israel!”

According to hospital officials, the matter is being investigated and action will be taken.

Saleh Al-Mazroi, executive director for operations at KKNGH, said the matter had been referred to authorities in Riyadh and was being dealt with.

On the bottom of the paper cup was a website address and a telephone number. When Arab News looked at the website — www.orion-rancal.co.il. — it was found to be in Hebrew though there were a few words of English: “Israeli disposable paper, plastic and foam dinnerware supplier for restaurants.”

Arab News contacted Ibrahim Al-Musbah, manager and owner, who said, “I thank you for informing me. I will look into it personally and the offending articles will be disposed of.” He added that the company has a supplier in the Kingdom from whom they buy restaurant supplies. According to Al-Musbah, the supplier might be unaware of the problem.

Al-Musbah later contacted Arab News and said that the paper cups had come to his company by mistake. The cups were in a cardboard box that looked exactly like the ones his company normally receives and so the employees did not notice any difference. Al-Musbah added that the supplier was named “Jeelani” and that he would supply Arab News with his contact numbers today.

The paper cups were quickly withdrawn from use but might there not be other, less obvious, Israeli products in our shops and marketplaces?

Horrors! The $15 that they accidentally paid to an Israeli company could have gone for bomb belts!

Australian mainstream Muslim group promotes Protocols of the Elders of Zion

In a transcript of a radio interview in Australia about the Prime Minister meeting with "moderate" Muslim leaders, a moderate Muslim critic mentions a casual fact in passing:

MICHAEL VINCENT: What do you think of the result of today's meeting? Do you think it does progress the dialogue between the Muslim community and the Government?

IRFAN YUSUF: Well, it'll progress the dialogue between the Government and these particular organisations, but then I don't know really how committed these organisations are to, you know, to curbing extremism.

I mean, the last camp I went to, which was organised by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, I was handed a copy of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, as an educational text. It's extremely anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish text.

It's (inaudible) anti-Semitic forgery which was written, I believe, during the Zionist time as a way of encouraging pogroms against Jewish people.

And, I mean, I don't regard that as being, you know, reflective of mainstream Muslim opinion, but unfortunately that's the sort of opinion and attitudes and books and what have you that are being distributed by some of these peak bodies.

Today's future Pal Police funnies

Another in the continuing saga of "Today's criminals, tomorrow's policemen."

In another incident in the West Bank, arsonists set fire to the offices of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Hebron on Sunday night. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, which is yet another sign of increased lawlessness in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hebron residents said the arson was apparently the work of a local Fatah gang whose members were angry because they were not given jobs and money.

Your tax dollars going to terrorists

An interesting part about funding for Fatah terror groups buried in another Gaza-in-chaos article:

In a military training camp run by the ruling Fatah movement, hundreds of young Palestinians marched in formation Monday and sprinted across a sandy lot.
[...]
Competition among armed Palestinian groups over control of Gaza's lawless towns intensified Monday as Israeli settlers cleared out the last of 21 Jewish settlements.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas wants to see carefully orchestrated victory marches under the Palestinian national flag. However, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a few tiny Palestinian Liberation Organization factions have ignored his appeals, already parading their gunmen in a show of force and planning parades once the last Israeli soldiers leave in the coming weeks.

[...]

In southern Gaza, near what was once the Gush Katif bloc of Israeli settlements, members of Fatah's military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, have organized three military training camps for more than 3,000 activists. (Tiny indeed! - EoZ)

[...]
The Palestinian Authority distanced itself from the training camps.

"There is no Fatah army, no popular army," said Tawfik Abu Khoussa, a Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman. "We want to get rid of the military images. After the withdrawal, there is one authority and that's it."

However, the Al Aqsa men said they were getting Fatah funding for the camps, and Palestinian security officials sat in on one of Monday's interviews with camp organizers.

In organizing a small private army, Fatah gunmen in southern Gaza also appeared to be sending a warning to the Palestinian Authority that they could make trouble if jobs are not found for them in the security forces. Many gunmen believe they are entitled to government posts, saying they made personal sacrifices in fighting Israel.

We have mentioned many times before the absurdity of believing that Abbas is a "moderate" when he directly funds the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades terror group. The connection is well known and for some reason the world community doesn't seem to have a problem continuing to give huge amounts of money to the PA knowing that some of it goes directly to a terror organization.

The AP decided that this information didn't have to appear until paragraph 24.

Two good reference articles

CAMERA published a good backgrounder, "Why Palestinians Still Live in Refugee Camps", that explode many of the myths that the media take for granted about Palestinian "refugees." (interestingly, they published the same table I did in an earlier article, but I had not seen theirs before I published mine from Wikipedia.)

And, via Israpundit, here is "Confessions of a Once-Hopeful Leftist," by Jared Israel, that does a nice job laying out the basic truths of the conflict and the true goals of the Palestinian Arab leaders.

Palestinian "Police" punchlines continue

More insanity from the Palestinians that the world thinks sounds normal in the bizarro Palestinian world. In today's double feature, we have the interesting idea of paying former terrorists more so they abandon their lives of crime.

It brings a whole new meaning to the expression "pay for their crimes."

Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Nasser Youssef has decided to double the salaries paid to the PA's security forces.

The increase in salaries is an attempt to attract more recruits to the PA security forces and to prevent them from opting to join terrorist organizations.

Meanwhile, back in Gaza:

Palestinians from the ruling Fatah party armed with assault rifles converged on the Gaza parliament building on Sunday to demand jobs in a protest that underlined challenges ahead for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

At least 200 al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades gunmen, most dressed in black, demanded jobs while accusing officials of corruption. Some fired into the air. The protesters came close to scuffles with police before commanders on both sides ordered calm.

They then dispersed.

"We are here only to send a message that Fatah fighters should be treated fairly. Jobs should be secured for those who made dear sacrifices," said Abu Jihad, a spokesman.

I can just see the want-ad now:

WANTED: New Palestinian policemen. Must have fired at Jews. Will consider rock throwers. A previous stint in jail a plus. We will do a background check to ensure previous membership in terror organizations. Send resume, along with references, blackmail and threats to shoot us, to: Abu Abbas, on top of Arafat's grave, Ramallah

Statue of Liberty, 8:30 AM

I am very lucky in that I can see the Statue of Liberty looking south from my cubicle window. I am about a mile away from it so I can't take any really good pictures without a much better zoom, but the lighting was pretty interesting at 8:30 even though there was a lot of smog today.

Enjoy!

Haveil Havalim #33 is up

Another excellent issue of Haveil Havalim, a round-up of the week's best postings in the Jewish blogosphere, is now at SoccerDad . One of my articles made it there.

The birth of modern Islamic terror

An amazing article by John Roy Carlson from October 19, 1948 in the Palestine Post about the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Essentially every point the author makes applies today; eerily so. The graphic format is a little hard to read but it is worth it, especially the parts about the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Azhar University, about liberalism in interpreting the Koran, the various competing Muslim fundamentalist groups, and the affinity they had with Nazism.

Before this point, Arab terror was not primarily religious-oriented; it was more nationalist, anti-Western and anti-semitic. The rise of Muslim fundamentalism changed the game and it is more important to understand the origins today of a movement that is responsible for 9/11.

Arabs accelerate media attacks on Israel

One of the biggest hopes of the wishful thinking accompanying the Gaza withdrawal is that it will lead to "peace." In the West, a peacemaking move is regarded as something that is naturally reciprocated with good-will gestures. But in the Arab and Muslim worlds, it appears to be a chance to increase the hateful rhetoric and absurd conclusions.

Here's a selection from Arab and Muslim writers over the past couple of days.

The Providence Journal published an op-ed by Mazin Qumsiyeh comparing post-withdrawal Gaza to apartheid South Africa, justifying terror, and referring to Zionist "ethnic cleansing."

Aljazeerah.info (from Georgia) blames Israel for Darfur and seems to be claiming that Israel wants to expand to Africa through the Sudan.

A New York writer names Preston Taran calls for the destruction of Israel, saying that a two-state solution is impossible. He openly calls for war in the name of Arab pride:

Therefore, “we have nothing to lose but our chains.” We cannot continue under these circumstances forever. Do we want our children to continue witnessing our humiliation? Do we want them to look us in the eyes and see our powerlessness? Do we want to keep on losing our children to Israeli murder? I do not think so. It is time to break the chains and end the “pleasant talk.”

Hamas has said, to no disapproval from the Arab world, that they will now move the terror attacks to the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The PA-controlled Palestine Media Center published an Al Ahram editorial slamming the Gaza withdrawal as a facade. It also mentions "territorial contiguity" as a requirement for a Palestinian state, meaning that Israel would have no territorial contiguity itself.

The next stages, from the Arab perspective, are clear, and all are consistent with Israel's destruction and inconsistent with any real desire to live in peace with Israel:

Do not create an independent state in Gaza because that would lessen pressure on Israel.
Move Kassam rockets to the West Bank because (they think) that is what caused the withdrawal.
No Palestinian state without all of Jerusalem.
No Palestinian state without cutting Israel in two.
No real Arab aid to Palestinians; their suffering is what keeps them useful.
Keep taking land, even tiny bits; never compromise. (Shebaa Farms is a good example.)
Use Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah to create the illusion of moderation by the PA.
Always blame Israel for every worldwide terror attack so Europeans will do the same.
Use Western standards of morality to castigate Israel; use Arab standards of morality to justify terror.
Lie continuously and often, because the West will report it as fact.
Keep pressuring about "right of return" to destroy Israel demographically.
Keep referring to Palestinians as "refugees" although in no other case are the descendants of refugees ever referred to as such. This way there are always more Palestinian "refugees," never fewer.
After the 1967 borders come the 1947 partition borders, then no borders at all.

There will be no softening of rhetoric as a result of Gaza - on the contrary, it will only increase. Because, ultimately, today's Israel is sensitive to world pressure and those who want to destroy Israel have an inexhaustible supply of means to apply it.

Liberals blaming US for Muslim terror. Again.

As predictable as ever, we have a new article from The Nation going through a history of the Muslim Brotherhood and blaming 1940's era American bigotry (and perceived Western bigotry today) for today's Muslim terrorism. This was written by a Naomi Klein.

Hussain Osman, one of the men alleged to have participated in London's failed bombings on July 21, recently told Italian investigators that they prepared for the attacks by watching "films on the war in Iraq," La Repubblica reported. "Especially those where women and children were being killed and exterminated by British and American soldiers...of widows, mothers and daughters that cry."

It has become an article of faith that Britain was vulnerable to terror because of its politically correct antiracism. Yet Osman's comments suggest that what propelled at least some of the bombers was rage at what they saw as extreme racism. And what else can we call the belief -- so prevalent we barely notice it -- that American and European lives are worth more than the lives of Arabs and Muslims, so much more that their deaths in Iraq are not even counted?

It's not the first time that this kind of raw inequality has bred extremism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian writer generally viewed as the intellectual architect of radical political Islam, had his ideological epiphany while studying in the United States. The puritanical scholar was shocked by Colorado's licentious women, it's true, but more significant was Qutb's encounter with what he later described as America's "evil and fanatic racial discrimination." By coincidence, Qutb arrived in the United States in 1948, the year of the creation of the State of Israel. He witnessed an America blind to the thousands of Palestinians being made permanent refugees by the Zionist project. For Qutb, it wasn't politics, it was an assault on his identity: Clearly Americans believed that Arab lives were worth far less than those of European Jews. According to Yvonne Haddad, a professor of history at Georgetown University, this experience "left Qutb with a bitterness he was never able to shake."

When Qutb returned to Egypt he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, leading to his next life-changing event: He was arrested, severely tortured and convicted of antigovernment conspiracy in an absurd show trial. Qutb's political theory was profoundly shaped by torture. Not only did he regard his torturers as sub-human, he stretched that categorization to include the entire state that ordered this brutality, including the practicing Muslims who passively lent their support to Nasser's regime.

Qutb's vast category of subhumans allowed his disciples to justify the killing of "infidels" -- now practically everyone -- in the name of Islam. A movement for an Islamic state was transformed into a violent ideology that would lay the intellectual groundwork for al Qaeda. In other words, so-called Islamist terrorism was "home grown" in the West long before the July 7 attacks -- from its inception it was the quintessentially modern progeny of Colorado's casual racism and Cairo's concentration camps.

Why is it worth digging up this history now? Because the twin sparks that ignited Qutb's world-changing rage are currently being doused with gasoline: Arabs and Muslims are being debased in torture chambers around the world and their deaths are being discounted in simultaneous colonial wars, at the same time that graphic digital evidence of these losses and humiliations is available to anyone with a computer. And once again, this lethal cocktail of racism and torture is burning through the veins of angry young men. As Qutb's past and Osman's present reveal, it's not our tolerance for multiculturalism that fuels terrorism; it's our tolerance for the barbarism committed in our name.
[...]
The real problem is not too much multiculturalism but too little. If the diversity now ghettoized on the margins of Western societies -- geographically and psychologically -- were truly allowed to migrate to the centers, it might infuse public life in the West with a powerful new humanism. If we had deeply multi-ethnic societies, rather than shallow multicultural ones, it would be much more difficult for politicians to sign deportation orders sending Algerian asylum-seekers to torture, or to wage wars in which only the invaders' dead are counted. A society that truly lived its values of equality and human rights, at home and abroad, would have another benefit too. It would rob terrorists of what has always been their greatest recruitment tool: our racism.

The ability to write an article like this without giving the slightest amount of blame to the people who actually plan terror attacks is nothing short of amazing. I suppose that Naomi Klein has just given carte blanche to black people or native Americans to start blowing up other Americans at shopping malls because of historic racism - and she would be the first to defend them.

She likes the theme that the West perceives that "American and European lives are worth more than the lives of Arabs and Muslims." What she glaringly fails to address is that American and European lives are worth more to the terrorists than the lives of Arabs and Muslims. How else to explain the entire idea of suicide bombing? (I know, she must consider it noble.) How else to explain the huge number of Muslims killed by other Muslims? How else to explain the concept of Jihad as it is normally used - as a holy war against the infidels? (And is she writing as many words about deaths in Africa and Indonesia as she is on Arabs and the West? Perhaps there is a little racism there, too, according to her "logic"?)

Her other points supposedly supporting her thesis are nothing short of absurd. Qutb was tortured by Nasser's thugs and she somehow uses his Colorado experiences to blame the West.

And not a word that Muslim extremism may be, just maybe, fueled partially by an interpretation or misinterpretation of the Koran? Nope...they might as well be secularists; religion cannot enter the worldview of this uber-liberal because religion is only a corrupting evil when practiced by Westerners; in the Third World it is some sort of civilizing factor that couldn't possibly be included in the calculus of terror. Nope...that's all our fault. (I wonder if Klein's vision of "deeply multi-ethnic societies" have as much room for Christian fundamentalists or West Bank settlers as they do for extremist mosques.)

So the words of a Muslim terrorist said to a Western reporter about a propaganda film launches this poor excuse for an opinion piece in The Nation. The only thing noteworthy about this is that anyone can write any claptrap that fits the editorial line of the magazine and get published.

(Of course, this also applies to some conservative publications as well. Over the years I have found way too many things written that said nothing but just filled space in partisan publications; they could have been written by a 'bot. Critical analysis by partisan editors is way too rare.)

Kfar Darom, 1946-1949

Kfar Darom was refounded in 1946 as part of "Operation Negev", an ambitious one-day program to build five settlements on JNF-owned land in October, 1946.

Even though the political implications were clear, the local Arabs welcomed the new Jewish villages, as this Palestine Post article shows:

The village was integral in the 1948 war, repulsing Egyptian attacks even before Israel declared its independence:

And the attacks continued, as Kfar Darom was the first line of defense against the Egyptian army. And the members were nothing short of heroic against a much larger and better-equipped enemy.

Unfortunately, Kfar Darom's isolation made it impossible to hold on to it, and the village was abandoned later in 1948.

But Jews are compared to the moon, where every month it appears to disappear only to come back again. And the members of the 1946 incarnation of Kfar Darom founded a new village a year later in the Negev:

New US Ambassador to UN does his job

A good article showing the cluelessness of the Jew-hatred of the UN and the direct criticism from Ambassador Bolton.

This is an auspicious start for the new UN ambassador. Let's hope that he continues to do his job in the spirit of Moynihan and Kirkpatrick.

The United Nations’ funding of a Palestinian Arab propaganda campaign timed to coincide with Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip has increased tensions between the U.N. and American officials.

America’s newly installed ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, labeled “inappropriate and unacceptable” the United Nations Development Program financing of materials bearing the slogan “Today Gaza, Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

Mr. Bolton said yesterday that the UNDP had failed to explain why it funneled money to the Palestinian Authority to back the production of banners, bumper stickers, mugs, and T-shirts bearing the provocative slogan as well as UNDP logos.

Responding to angry reactions from Jewish and Israeli leaders, UNDP officials yesterday said financial support from the agency was intended to help the Palestinian Authority communicate with Palestinian Arabs during Israel’s evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza. (Communicating how to build rockets? - EoZ)

In a letter to the American Jewish Congress, which had decried the funding of the propaganda materials, a UNDP administrator, Kemal Dervis, said it was “not at all acceptable” that the agency’s logo was placed on the propaganda.

“We cannot be involved in political messaging,” Mr. Dervis wrote. The UNDP manages nearly $4 billion in donor resources annually, operating in 166 countries.

The response from the UNDP was not sufficient, Mr. Bolton said yesterday. “Funding this kind of activity is inappropriate and unacceptable. We plan to raise the issue with UNDP and with others,” he said in a statement to The New York Sun. In effect, Mr. Bolton expressed to the UNDP that the most serious problem for his office was not the logo, but the fact that the agency supported that message with its checkbook.

William Orme, a spokesman for the UNDP, told the Sun by telephone yesterday evening, “We’ve seen Ambassador Bolton’s comments, and we are taking this matter seriously.”

This is the fourth explusion of Jews from Gaza

A fascinating timeline I found on this site shows the history of Gaza. During the first millenium, after the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews slowly moved back into Gaza. (The remains of one 1500 year old synagogue are still there today.) The number of Jews moving there accelerated during the Middle Ages and throughout the tumultuous history of the region.

During WWI, the Ottoman Empire ordered the eviction of Jews from Gaza City.

Jews returned in small numbers during the 20's, but were forced out by the Arabs during the riots in 1929, leaving all their possessions behind.

In 1946, the kibbutz Kfar Darom was founded the east-central part of Gaza on the same area as the Kfar Darom mentioned in the Talmud in around the year 500. It was abandoned under Egyptian fire in the 1948 war.

Of course, under Egyptian rule, no Jews were allowed to live in Gaza. They started returning after the Six Day War, with Kfar Darom being built for the third time in 1970.

So while history may be repeating itself in that Jews are being forced to leave Gaza, who knows - history may also repeat itself where Jews may end up going back there yet again.

Exclusive offer for Elder of Ziyon readers!

Yesterday I was playing with a new, awesome digital camera and decided to take some pictures of Manhattan from the place I work. I took ten shots and stitched them together to make what is effectively a 33 megapixel panoramic view of lower Manhattan.

Here is a much-reduced version:

To give you an idea of how large the full picture is; here is a small slice:

If you want to download the full gigantic picture, it is here (sorry, filehost.to is no longer working - EoZ) It is over 3 MB.

Enjoy!

Kassam rockets kill more Arabs than Jews

Ha'aretz reports:

Ever since the Palestinians began to manufacture and launch locally produced missiles, about four years ago, most of the casualties they have inflicted - dead and wounded - have been Palestinian, and not Israeli.

The legendary Palestinian regard for human life remains legendary.

Hamas: Gaza withdrawal will help Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq

Sometimes, Hamas tells the truth.

Gaza is being perceived in the Arab world not only as a victory over Israel but as a victory of militant Islam over the West.

At the height of Israel's disengagement, Mahmoud Zahar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, said that from the Palestinian perspective the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza signifies the collapse of the Zionist outlook and is "a sign of the final battle that will decide the conflict."
"It is a defeat for Israel, which did not find an answer to the Kassam rockets or the war of the tunnels or to suicide attacks."
Zahar expressed confidence that the disengagement will lift the morale of the Arab and Islamic world and will affect the battle for Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We are part of the great world plan whose name is the world Islamic movement.
"We do not recognize the State of Israel nor its right to control any of the land of Palestine.
"Palestine is holy Islamic land that belongs to Muslims the world over," he emphasized.

Here come the Macau terrorists!

Often you will see the media hammer home how densely populated the Gaza Strip is, as if that excuses terrorist behavior and the fact that the Palestinians have failed to build a decent infrastructure there over the decades. Well, unfortunately, there seem to be many far-more crowded (and yet productive) areas of the world.

It's a wonder that we don't see any suicide bombers from Hong Kong or Gilbraltar.

Country/region	Population	Area (km²)	Density
Macau, SAR, PRC	449,198	25.4	17,685
Monaco	32,409	1.95	16,620
Singapore	4,425,720	692.7	6,389
Hong Kong	6,898,686	1,092	6,317
Gibraltar	27,884	6.5	4,290
Gaza Strip	1,376,289	360	3,823

Gaza has less than one quarter of the population density of Macau and Monaco, those hotbeds of terror.

How do you say "hypocrisy" in French?

It always amazes me how countries that have no problem pressuring Israel to give more and more and more to Palestinian thugs, despite decades of terror attacks and murders of Jews, become so hawkish so quickly when a single one of their citizens becomes a victim of a much smaller attack - one that would barely make Page 17 of Le Monde if it was against an Israeli Jew.

Where are the French newspaper articles pointing out that Hamas might have kidnapped the journalist, and that the PA is short of ammunition so cannot be held responsible to police their own people? Where are the supporters of the "moderate" government of the PA defending their efforts to find the kidnappers? Where are the politicians pointing out that Hamas has a humanitarian as well as a militant wing and that they shouldn't be punished for the crimes of the "activists"?

And the bigger question is: how quickly after the journalist is released will the French revert to pressuring Israel to give more to the terrorists?

France has threatened to halt financial and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority unless a French journalist who was kidnapped in Gaza City earlier this week is freed unharmed.

PA officials said the threat was delivered to the PA on behalf of French President Jacques Chirac, who is 'extremely disturbed' by the abduction.

The journalist was identified as Muhammad Ouathi, an Algerian Muslim with French citizenship who was working as a soundman for French Television Channel III.

More than 80 non-governmental organizations on Tuesday called for the immediate release of Ouathi. They also urged the PA to arrest the kidnappers and bring them to trial.

Tags: Middle East, Palestine, Israel

San Jose Mercury News equates settler supporters with terrorists

The magical words that have been used for years to downplay terrorists murdering people are now being used to describe Jews with no intent to hurt other Jews:

Police, militants clash in Gaza

By MICHAEL MATZA, DION NISSENBAUM AND MARTIN MERZER

Knight Ridder Newspapers

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip -- Clashes erupted Tuesday between Israeli authorities who stepped up the use of force and militant supporters of the Israeli settlers who faced a midnight to leave their homes in Gaza.

Hundreds of protesters were arrested or detained and several injuries were reported during a sporadic series of shoving matches. Extremists also torched several vehicles, tossed rocks at authorities and threw acid and other caustic agents at them.

So the same words that are used to describe Al Qaeda, Hamas and the British bombers now apply to Jewish demonstrators.

By the way, the "acid" incident seems to be close to fictional. In Israel they are reporting that the police claim that demostrators threw acid or ammonia on one policeman.

I wrote a letter to the Mercury News complaining about this:

I am outraged at the words you have chosen to describe the protests against disengagement in Gaza.

It is well known that many newspapers dislike the word "terrorist", with the specious claim that it is a loaded term. So for years we have seen terrorists described as "militants", or, in some cases, "extremists." So when we see a headline that says "Police, militants clash in Gaza" we have a good idea that it is referring to either Israeli or Palestinian policemen and members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

However, today I see not only a headline but the contents of an article referring to Jewish settler sympathizer-protesters as both "militants" and "extremists." The only violent act that is referred to is an alleged splash of acid on a policeman, which I have not been able to verify in any Israeli online news source outside of a single mention that "police claimed" that one policeman was splashed with either acid or ammonia.

So we possibly have a case where your report lacks veracity, as it didn't have any qualifiers on the "fact" that acid was thrown on multiple policemen.

But more troubling is the implicit moral equivalence of protesters who have stated numerous times that they have no intention of physically hurting anyone, and members of Al Qaeda and Hamas who explicitly state and act to kill hundreds of people.

This is a perversion of the English language, and it succeeds in doing exactly what you claim to want to avoid by not using the word "terrorist" - you are making an obscene moral judgment by using the exact same words to describe diametrically different sets of people.

There is a good definition of terror - it is the purposeful targeting of innocent civilians. It is not hard to call members of Hamas or Al Qaeda "terrorists." But to call them "militants" and "extremists" when you also give the same name to overwhelmingly peaceful protesters betrays a bias that is way beyond what a newspaper should exhibit. It is insulting, sickening and unacceptable.

Tags: Middle East, Palestine, Israel

Update: The newspaper replied to me with a form letter saying they will not publish my letter without more personal information. Of course, I was not interested in being published: I wanted a reply.

Israeli armor saving American lives in Iraq

Yet another story that the mainstream media wouldn't touch because it doesn't fit with their agenda.

The speed and effectiveness with which American military trucks were equipped with armor in Iraq had a lot to do with Israel’s war with Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists. For over a decade, Israeli troops have had to drive trucks through areas containing Islamic terrorists. The ambush methods of these terrorists were similar to those encountered in Iraq, and it was from this experience that Israeli firms developed kits for armoring trucks. These kits included 10mm steel plates, cut and shaped to fit a particular type of truck, plus bulletproof glass for the windshield and windows, and brackets and other hardware needed to attach the armor. Thus when thousands of American military trucks had to get armored in 2003, the Israeli firms had kits already designed. Thus many, if not most, of the American armored trucks in Iraq got that way because of Israeli designed, and often Israeli manufactured, armor kits.

Reuters: Kidnapping is just a form of protest

Reuters' "even-handedness" continues on in bizarre ways as it justifies Palestinian kidnapping of journalists:

GAZA, Aug 15 (Reuters) - Palestinian gunmen abducted an Algerian Muslim journalist working for a French television station on Monday, his TV crew said, the latest in a string of kidnappings of foreigners in the Gaza Strip.

Mohamed Ouathi, a soundman for France 3 Television, was walking back to his hotel in Gaza City with his television crew when three unmasked men armed with rifles threatened him, pulled him into their vehicle and drove away.
[...]
Palestinian militants have kidnapped several foreigners in the past in a sign of growing chaos in Gaza, caused mainly by those opposed to reforms President Mahmoud Abbas has carried out in his Fatah group and those protesting against alleged corruption in his government.

Ya gotta love a "news" agency that bends over backwards so much to justify terrorist crimes, reducing them to a mere "protest", no different from a letter to the editor.
Tags: Middle East, Palestine, Israel

On Sunday in Gaza City, Hamas strung blazing green banners: 'Resistance wins,' read one, 'so let's go on.' Around the corner was a banner from the Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by a more secular faction, Fatah. 'Gaza today,' it read, 'the West Bank and Jerusalem Tomorrow.' A tag line said the banner was paid for by the United Nations Development Program.

Nice to know that the UN is spending its money so wisely. I guess there are no longer any Palestinians who need food or jobs.
Tags: Middle East, Palestine, Israel

One year of blogging

Boring nerd stats:

TruthLaidBear ranks me as blog #9973, which is frankly pretty bad. ("Slithering Reptile" in the Ecosystem.) I used to be ranked higher but then the blog URL had to change and evidently some people never found me again.

Technorati shows 10 blogs that link back to this blog.

I am still short of 10,000 page-hits. This blog still barely registers on the JBlogosphere, except that SoccerDad seems to like me and I get lots of links from his blog.

By far my most popular post was this one, which ended up spinning off its own blog that has far less traffic than this one. Fame is fleeting.

I recently got a very nice compliment from Linda of Something and Half of Something, saying:
"I read your blog several times each week, in my humble opinion, it is one of the best out there."

People find me mostly through jrants.com and jewishblogging.com, with a sizable percentage from Google searches. I am also proud to be the only hit when Googling for "Joo Rays."

For those interested in the name of the blog: I used to spend massive amounts of time on Yahoo News Message Boards, arguing about Israel with idiots, and spending way too much time coming up with thoughtful responses that end up scrolling off the page in a few minutes. One of the handles I used was "Elder of Ziyon" because someone had already taken the name Elder of Zion. So I migrated out of MB hell and into the blogosphere, hoping that my articles might be accessible longer to a larger audience, as well as hoping to be able to keep my own repository of interesting articles (this blog originally was only quoting others' articles with very little comment from me.)

I know I can increase my audience by doing things like posting links to my site on LGF (or even Havel Havalim), and also by posting more personal blog entries, but so far I have been happy with people just finding me. It is more meant to be a reference blog than a conversational blog and while I enjoy and appreciate people commenting, I'm more interested in making sure that news articles and opinions are published that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

But I am sure that this blog will continue to evolve over the coming months anyway. Hope you like it!

The peaceful democratic Palestinians and evenhanded Reuters

Palestinians, and Reuters, in a nutshell:

Dozens of members of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction, some of them armed, stormed into a government building in the West Bank on Saturday to demand jobs, witnesses said.

The incident in the town of Qalqilyah was another sign of growing lawlessness and frustration at lack of economic opportunities in the Palestinian territories.

'We belong to Fatah. We ask you to leave your offices. The offices will be closed until our demands for employment are met. Our protest is peaceful so far,' one of the Fatah members told the employees, who complied immediately.

The Fatah men then closed the offices with chains and locks and departed, leaving several members of the group behind to guard the building. Police did not intervene.

[Abbas] promised during the presidential campaign to boost employment and recruit into PA institutions gunmen who have confronted Israeli forces during a four-and-a-half year uprising. Promised jobs are yet to materialize.

OK, in five very short paragraphs, we see:

* Palestinians use violence and threats of more violence to extort what they want.
* Palestinian officials and police willingly give in to blackmail from any thugs who walk in the door.
* Reuters will excuse criminal behavior as simple "frustration" on the part of the criminals.
* Abbas promised to reward with jobs anyone who ever shot a bullet at a Jew.

What Reuters fails to mention in its background information is the small fact that most of the Palestinian "police" are just paid terrorists themselves who don't bother to go to work. For some reason, Reuters also fails to mention the likelihood that these "members of Fatah" would probably be considered terrorists by any sane definition of the term.

But you can only fit so much background information in an article, right? Might as well stress the information that shows the terrorists' points of view.

A sad anniversary

Today is Tisha B'Av, the saddest day of the year that commemorates countless national tragedies, foremost being the destruction of both Temples but it has expanded to also include tragedies that didn't happen on this day, such as the Crusades and the Holocaust.

Right now in Israel the "disengagement" (or, as the Arabs view it, unilateral Jewish surrender) is starting.

And tomorrow is the first year anniversary of this blog.

I remain saddened by the incredible amount of sin'at chinam in the Jewish blogosphere. The sin of Loshon Hora is bad enough when applied to an individual, but when used against a group of people it is literally unforgivable.

How many times have we seen JBlogs issue screeds, sometimes in the guise of humor, against Lubavitchers or Haredim or Modern Orthodox Jews or Likudniks or Roshei Yeshiva or Jews from Brooklyn or Jews from Teaneck or Gaza settlers or religious politicians in Israel or America? These attacks happen daily, and unfortunately the attacks are not usually aimed at the ideas that may be objectionable but to the people that believe them.

Sometimes, one sees a blog seriously discuss ideas, defending and attacking opinions. Of course this is admirable and in a loose sense it is essentially democratizing the halachic and hashkafic methodologies from previous centuries.

But, shamefully, these posts and blogs seem to be in the minority. It is easier to disparage people, especially when one has a willing audience who is happy to laugh at the jokes - and provoke a more extreme attack next time.

In general, as my readers know, my political views tend towards the conservative. But I believe something that is shockingly liberal. I believe that almost all Jewish and Israeli leaders usually do things because they honestly believe that their decisions are the best for the nation as a whole. I believe that Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres passionately believe that disengagement is the right thing to do now, I believe that those who want to ban certain books believe they are doing the right thing, I believe that people fighting for or against metzitzah b'peh truly believe their arguments. I may strongly disagree with various opinions, but I hope I do not disparage the people who hold them. Conspiracy theories make little sense to me. It makes much more sense to be "dan l'chaf zechut", to give these leaders the benefit of the doubt, and argue against their ideas rather than try to come up with bizarre theories as to how they are really trying to do X.

I believe in achdut, unity. It hurts to see such petty and absurd infighting in the JBlogosphere. A sizable part of the world would like to see us dead, and it seems to me that we should be concentrating on what we have in common rather than what separates us.

Arms race means something different in asymmetrical warfare

Not surprisingly, Israeli scientists are in the forefront of developing high-tech defenses against terror. A case in point:

Researchers have developed a pocket-sized device for detecting sub-milligram quantities of peroxide-based explosives such as those reportedly used in the recent bomb attacks in London.

‘We’ve prototyped and tested the peroxide explosives detector (PET) in our laboratories, as well as in field experiments, and it works,’ said PET’s patent holder, Ehud Keinan of Israel’s Haifa Technion. ‘Now it’s ready for commercialisation and use by all law enforcement agencies and anyone dealing with security.’

There is strong interest from some of the world’s top security organisations, Keinan told Chemistry World, although London’s Metropolitan Police counter terrorism unit declined to comment. The new device is the size of a large fountain pen and costs less than £15 per unit.

The PET ‘pen’ shows a strong colour change when any peroxide-based explosive is detected. Suspect material is collected or swiped with a silicone-rubber test pad and inserted into the pen. Three test chemicals are then sequentially injected into the transparent chamber: a suitable organic solvent; followed by an aqueous solution of strong acid, which decomposes any putative explosive and releases hydrogen peroxide; and finally a mixture of a dye and a peroxidase enzyme.

If a peroxide-based explosive is present in the original sample, the solution turns a deep blue-green in about three seconds. Sub-milligram quantities of an explosive can be detected by this pronounced colour change.

‘The simplicity of the chemistry...is beautiful,’ said Andrea Sella, of University College London. He warns, though, that it is probably not suited to the high throughput screening needed by airport security.

Dr. Keinon spent years working on this device, because Palestinian bombs are often built using TATP, using the same cheap ingredients used in the London bombs.

Here is a perfect example of the asymmetric war that Israel has been in, and that the Western world is waking up to: spending millions to develop defenses against weapons that can be built for $150.

The terror-supporters never tire of saying that the "freedom fighters" are at a disadvantage, because the industrialized nations have tanks and planes. But in fact, it is the terrorists who have the advantage - because they have no morals.

To the West, human life is extremely valuable; to the Palestinian and other terrorists, it is almost worthless. So the West needs to spend time and money figuring out how to counter the crude but deadly weapons of the depraved - to save our lives. Hamas and Fatah don't want their people's lives saved - in fact, they are worth more dead because of the great PR that results.

Guns are cheap. Bulletproof vests are expensive. And they can't stop the shooter from aiming a little higher or lower next time.

And the trend favors the terrorists - there will always be new ways to build deadly weapons from easily-available materials, and it will always take years to build an imperfect defense against those weapons.

So while defensive measures are of critical importance, and it shows our humanity in stark contrast to those of our enemies, ultimately the only thing that will end the war is to make the warfare symmetrical again - to show the same disregard for their lives as they show to ours. Including real collateral damage.

Their desire is genocide; they just don't have the weapons yet. All the negotiations and compromises in the world will not appease them. Pulling our punches is not the way to win this war.

The sooner it happens, the more lives will be saved.

Presbyterians give great investment advice

A column by Vincent Carroll:

Last week the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. announced it would pursue "progressive engagement" with five companies whose activities, in the church's view, contribute "to the ongoing violence that plagues Israel and Palestine." So let's see how evenhanded the church is in its ramped-up activism toward the Middle East.

Four of the companies - United Technologies, Motorola, Caterpillar and ITT Industries - sell equipment or technology to Israel. The fifth, Citigroup, reportedly transferred money from charities that turned out to be fronts for terrorist groups, a charge Citigroup describes as an "outrage."

In short, the Presbyterian Church will address Palestinian violence by demanding that one company stop doing something it may not even be doing, and which it certainly wouldn't want to do, while it will address Israeli behavior by seeking to strip that country of material essential to fighting and defeating terrorists.

By the church's own description, United Technologies provides helicopters "used in attacks in the occupied territories against suspected Palestinian terrorists." Suspected? Was the Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin only "suspected" of engineering terrorism, for example, when Israeli gunships caught up with him last year in Gaza?

The church's anti-Israel position is grounded in the belief that the font of violence in that region is the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, together with Jewish settlements. A 2003 resolution by the church general assembly actually says that "Since the war of June 1967 . . . (the Israeli-Palestinian) conflict has generally been characterized by violence" - as if the period from 1948 to '67 weren't just as bloody.

In the wake of 9/11, there's simply no excuse for misconceiving the ambitions of the Islamic extremists who compose a nontrivial portion of Israel's sworn enemies. It's time for Presbyterian congregations around the country to pull their leadership back from the edge of this moral crater.

He is of course right, but he misses the fantastic investment opportunities being handed to us by the PCUSA. Based on the Presbyterians' track record, you may want to invest in these four Israel-linked stocks. PCUSA originally targeted Caterpillar in June of 2004, and check out what happened since then (compared to the Dow Jones Industrial Average):

Not too shabby!

Bush is not immune to the wishful thinking disease

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -
President Bush says a planned pullout of Jewish settlers from occupied Gaza "will be good for
Israel."

Bush's remarks, in an interview given to Israel's Channel One television and aired on Thursday, appeared to be an attempt to boost Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against Jewish rightists seeking to thwart the withdrawal due to start on Aug. 17.

"I believe the decision that Prime Minister Sharon has made and is going to follow through on will be good for Israel," Bush said, interviewed at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Asked why he thought Israel's "disengagement" from the occupied land would help Israeli security, Bush replied:

"First of all the previous system wasn't working. There was an intifada (Palestinian uprising), there was death, there was killing. And if you notice, there's been a calm in attacks."

Palestinian militants have generally observed a ceasefire since February.

The Israeli reporter asked Bush whether he understood critics who argue the withdrawal will bring more Palestinian violence rather than calm it.

"Oh absolutely, I understand. And I can understand why people think this decision is one that will create a vacuum into which terrorism will flow," Bush replied.

"I happen to disagree. I think this will create an opportunity for democracy to emerge and democracies are peaceful."

And if this Gaza experiment doesn't work - what will the US do then?

That is the question that needs to be answered now. Will we say that clearly these Palestinians are more interested in destroying Israel than building a state and the roadmap is a sham, or will we pressure Israel to give up more land and further reward terror?

And Bush's naivete isn't stopping there. Democracies aren't peaceful; free societies are peaceful. Freedom is the key, and as can be seen now in the formation of the Iraqi constitution, a democratic Islamic state without true freedom is little better than a dictatorship. There is no magic in "democracy" that ensures that people grow up tolerant and peaceful - Iran's elections were democratic - but a free society is far more likely to be peaceful.

WorldNetDaily: Who's victimizing whom in Mideast?

Joseph Farah again cuts through the bull.

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

For a moment, just put aside all of your preconceived ideas about the Middle East.

The conventional wisdom of the U.S. State Department, the European Union, the United Nations, the international media and, of course, the Arab oil potentates suggests the root problem is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is suggested that Israel is not doing enough to help the poor, homeless Palestinian Arabs.

The truth is just the opposite.

Israel has done more for Palestinians than all the other countries in the world combined. It has built schools, infrastructure, provided jobs and extended full citizenship rights.

What have the Arab powers done?

* provided money for terrorism against Israel;

* paid bounties for martyrdom;

* instilled anti-Jewish hatred and incitement;

In Lebanon, now freed from Syrian military occupation, officials are still debating whether Palestinians living there should be permitted to practice the job of their choice. In the recent past, they have been denied the most basic civil rights, including the right to own property. Even today, to perform the most menial jobs, Palestinians in Lebanon must pay exorbitant fees for work permits.

Yet, the U.S. State Department, the European Union, the United Nations, the international media and, of course, the Arab oil potentates are all silent on these human-rights abuses.

It is apparently OK for Arabs to deny other Arabs their most basic civil rights. In fact, Arabs are denied their most basic human rights in every Arab country.

It is apparently also OK for Christians to be persecuted in the Middle East by the Muslim majority.

It happens in every Arab country, including the Palestinian Authority. The Christian population is dwindling throughout the Middle East. More than 2 million have fled the region in the last 20 years – and many more in the 80 years before that.

Yet, the U.S. State Department, the European Union, the United Nations, the international media and, of course, the Arab oil potentates are all silent on these human-rights abuses.

Meanwhile, in the next two weeks, several thousand Jews, many of whom have lived for a generation in thriving communities, showcases of prosperity and freedom for their neighbors, will be uprooted from their homes and businesses for no other reason than they are Jews.

And, of course, the U.S. State Department, the European Union, the United Nations, the international media and, of course, the Arab oil potentates are not only silent on these human-rights abuses, they are actively promoting this ethnic and religious cleansing as part of a "roadmap to peace."

It is so hard for me to understand why people are unable distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, up and down, right and left, when it comes to the Middle East. It is as if this part of the world is actually in some parallel universe where everything is backward or upside down.

As an Arab-American journalist who has covered this region of the world, I tell you what is happening in the Gaza Strip this month is a human-rights horror, a catastrophe of monumental proportions. It is akin to Robert Mugabe's mass demolition of homes in Zimbabwe, but worse – because this is not the work of some lone madman, it is part of a blueprint drawn up by the so-called "enlightened" nations of the world.

The so-called "disengagement plan" in Gaza represents an acknowledgement by the "civilized" world that it is all right to turn Jews out of their homes for some "greater good." Only 60 years after the Holocaust, once again, Jews are being forced at gunpoint to move because they are Jews.

Mark my words, it will not end here.

The reason these Jews are being forced out is to make way for a Palestinian state, a new country founded on a precept that no Jews are permitted to live within its borders.

This "disengagement" is an invitation for more expulsions of Jews, more restrictions on Jews, more ethnic cleansing of Jews.

It's time for a reality check: Who's victimizing whom in the Middle East?

I've mentioned before that I cannot see a long-term future for the Jewish communities in Gaza. But to retreat unilaterally is exactly what makes this appear to be a victory for terror. This is far worse than leaving Lebanon, an area on which Israel had no claim and no citizens living there. Appearances are everything in the Middle East, and a unilateral withdrawal is identical to a military surrender with the victor imposing the terms. A negotiated agreement (have Arab countries pay the expenses to move Jews elsewhere, for example; or Israel keeping a few square miles of Northern Gaza and annexing it, a non-aggression pact, a statement that Palestinians limit their "right to return", having the Arabs say "please" - anything!) would make it much harder for this to be perceived as a military victory by Hamas, and as such a reward for rocket attacks - and a clear invitation for more.

Palestinians do not want a state (Ehud Ya'ari)

An Israeli centrist looks at reality.

Do the Palestinians genuinely want a little state of their own? And if so, can they stand up on their own two feet, muster their strength, and shape up for the necessary effort? The answers will soon be in - straight after the disengagement is completed - and they may well turn out to be different than those expected. The Palestinian leadership, it may transpire, is not so keen on the independence that's being offered it, and either way, it may lack the energy required to reach that goal.

Only then will we know whether the call for a Palestinian state within the lands captured by Israel in 1967 is merely a slogan, a battle cry or a real political platform, just a banner to be waved in defiance and to rally support, or a national agenda.

Posing these questions is sure to infuriate many. Is it conceivable that the Palestinians do not yearn, as any other nation would, for a sovereign state? After all, the demand for the establishment of a state in the West Bank and Gaza has been the core of their struggle against Israel, at least for the last 30 years, and the justification for the tremendous sacrifices they have made - thousands killed, tens of thousands wounded and imprisoned, economic disaster, social
collapse.

That all makes sense, but the conclusion does not necessarily fit the facts. And the truth is that under the abundance of familiar rhetoric, not much heartfelt enthusiasm is discernible. There's no doubt that the Palestinians have had more than enough of Israel and the occupation, the hated roadblocks and the economic exploitation. Yes, they want to free themselves from all that. But they are not sure, or at least more and more of them are not convinced, that establishing a little state is the right way to go about it. If the price of the independence of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, even if East Jerusalem is thrown in to the package, is to be fenced out of Israel, with the gates to be opened only when the Jews want them opened, Palestinian feet begin getting cold.

There is no great faith on the other side that there is much chance that a state can be established in the foreseeable future in which one would feel good to be a citizen, or more appropriately, a subject. Despite the flow of foreign aid, average Palestinians cannot look forward to prosperity. They are aware of the great difficulty entailed in overcoming the prolonged anarchy that has become a way of life, they are frightened of the internecine bloodbath that may take place, they are anxious that not only Israel will distance itself from them, in line with its strategy of unilateralism, but that their Arab neighbors too will keep them at arm's length, as Egypt and Jordan have been doing for years.

Therefore, many of my Palestinian acquaintances are asking themselves, what's the use of a state of their own that will become, in their own eyes, a sovereign cage? What's more, they may well ask, wouldn't continuing confrontation with Israel - with all the heavy, daily price to be paid - also offer substantial advantages? Wouldn't burying the hatchet signify reconciliation with too little? If this is so, would it not be better not to disengage from Israel,
and instead to continue holding on to it in a bloody embrace, to fall into its unwilling arms in exhaustion? And the state? The state can wait.

This train of thought has not yet been expressed publicly. Indeed, even Hamas, for whom the little state has never been its heart's desire, declares that it is ready to accept it, although of course not to pay for it with peace or - perish the thought - recognition of the State of Israel. This is also the mood in the ranks of important parts of the Fatah movement. A state? Surely, but only under terms that leave open the option of resuming the conflict - no security barrier, no waiving of the "right of return," no agreement to Israel's retention of "settlement blocs." And, Palestinian leaders of the highest rank say in private conversations, if such a state is not immediately attainable, why, there's no reason to rush.

The bottom line is that there are more Israelis eager to see a Palestinian state than Palestinians who want to part from the Israelis. There are many Israelis, and I am among them, who believe that a two-state solution is much better than the Oslo system of two governments in one country, but the Palestinians prefer the latter system, which gives them a regime and armed forces, but without an agreed-upon permanent border.

This is why in the Gaza Strip - whatever the circumstances of the withdrawal - the Palestinians will strive to preserve a close link to Israel. Instead of trying to turn their backs on the erstwhile occupiers, they will do their best to tie themselves to them. The de facto independence that they will achieve without paying any price will not be used to construct a model of successful sovereignty, but rather a base for the struggle for the West Bank and Jerusalem. They will refuse to see the withdrawal as an end either to the occupation of the Strip or to the terrorist activity emanating from it. Listen to Abu Mazen himself: Israel, he says, is "getting out" of Gaza, definitely not "withdrawing."

Israel's aim is to make the Gaza Strip a foreign country, to cut itself off from it, and to have little to do with it. The Palestinians will resist this, insisting that it is not a separate entity, but merely a mutation of the system of two governments within the same country.

As Bill Clinton famously said, "It's the economy, stupid." The entire reason there are a significant number of Palestinian Arabs today are because most of their grandparents moved into the area in the early 1900s to take advantage of the booming economy in Palestine caused by the Zionists who moved there. Thousands more illegally moved from Jordan to the West Bank in the 1990s in anticipation of the economic fruits of Oslo. Arabs throughout history have shown very little allegiance to nations, moving freely between areas of the Middle East as necessary, wherever they could get jobs to provide for their families.

And it is clear to the ordinary Palestinian Arab that they stand to be in better economic shape while they are under "occupation." Not to mention the medical and educational services provided to them by the "hated" Jews.

This article, however, goes beyond that to the psyche of the "leaders." I would argue that Ya'ari is downplaying some other reasons that Palestinian leaders do not want a state - the fact that Israel still exists and is still a cultural/economic/military powerhouse is always going to bother Arabs who see the dhimmis succeed wildly in areas that they themselves could not. It is a painful blow to Arab pride, and nothing short of Israel's destruction can make them feel better. He touches on the fact that the Arab leaders want to continue fighting Israel but he does not make it clear why it makes sense - economics doesn't explain it, because obviously while a terror campaign is happening, Arabs are not going to be employed by Israelis.

The only thing that explains the absurdity of the Palestinian leaders' seeming cluelessness is the fact that, simply, they hate Jews in positions of power.

Chaim Weizmann said "We'd accept a state the size of a tablecloth." That is how a statesman acts, that is how someone who desires freedom and independence acts. This is not even close to how the Palestinian leadership acts.

Unfortunately, while Gaza will prove that Palestinians do not want a state, the world will take away a completely different conclusion - that the failure of Gaza will be due for some reason to Israel rather than the Palestinians.

August 9, 1938: The High Commisioner appeals for peace

I was looking at the Palestine Post from August 9 and 10, 1938, and saw the usual number of attacks against Jews (perhaps 8 mentioned in those two days), mention of a rare incident against Arabs by Jews (that happened a month and a half earlier), and a few incidents of Arab-on-Arab violence, and at least one case where Arabs attacked the British. But this is no different than a recent post I had done, about a violent 24 hours earlier in 1938.

What was slightly noteworthy was that the British High Commissioner addressed the Jews and Arabs of Palestine:

A couple of things are interesting about this three-minute speech:

One is that political correctness and "evenhandedness" was as absurd in 1938 as it is today. The vast majority of terror incidents were (and are) done by Arabs, and the ones done by Jews may be reprehensible but they are insignificant in context - in fact, their restraint seems positively admirable. But the British leader addresses both communities as if they were both equally responsible for the violence, as if the Arab claims that the very existence of Jews on what they think of as Arab lands is an affront that is worse than any number of Arab attacks on Jewish civilians.

The second point is the irony of his statement that violence is counterproductive: clearly that is wishful thinking and far from the truth. Violence is very productive. The entire reason that the Palestinian cause ever got the world's attention is because of the terror attacks in the 1970s. The entire reason Muslims can recruit terrorists so easily is because of the "success" of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah and Hamas and Fatah and Islamic Jihad and Black September and all the other terror organizations that can claim victory in the deaths of innocent civilians.

Appeasement is counterproductive. "Measured responses" are counterproductive. Trying to negotiate with those whose only interest in negotiations are as a stalling tactic is counterproductive. Defining a problem incorrectly is counterproductive. Relying on wishful thinking is counterproductive. But violence, unfortunately, is very, very productive.

And usually, the only way to fight violence is with much more violence. It is a shame, but it is also reality.

The Strange Hypocrisy of Dr. Habib Siddiqui

Dr. Habib Siddiqui is an "anti-war activist" and terror apologist who writes regularly for the Israel-bashing Media Monitor's Network as well as other websites.

I just found this hypocritical gem in an article bashing Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter now in jail:

Miller talked about Jews and their suffering but failed to mention Jewish beliefs and laws against the goyim, the rabbinical sanctioned practices of killing, demolitions, deportations, land confiscations, annexation, etc. [See, e.g., Book of Numbers; Joshua; Mishnah Torah; Sanhedrin 57a, 58b; Baba Kamma 37b, 113b; Soferim 15, Rule 10; Abhodah Zarah (26b); Zohar (I, 25a), (I, 38b, and 39a); Ialkut Simoni (245c. n. 772); Hilhoth Akum (X, 1)] She epitomized a jaundiced view of Israel and the Occupied Territories of Palestine!

In her summary on the life of the Prophet of Islam, she did not quote one Muslim source - none of the classical biographies of the prophet. I wonder if Simon & Schuster, her publisher, would allow a book on Jesus or Moses that does not make a single mention of Christian or Judaic authority. [Unfortunately, such pseudo-scholarship, hate literatures are now kosher, when it comes to Islam.]

In one breath, he pretends to quote Judaic legal sources complete with mis-transilterations straight out of neo-Nazi websites to "prove" that Judaism sanctions wanton murder of non-Jews, sources he has clearly never seen himself and some that are too ambiguous to even look up, and in the next paragraph he decries Miller for "pseudo-scholarship"! He bashes Jews in the name of supposedly defending Islam from people like Miller (who are hardly pro-Israel.)

A web search of "Ialkut Simoni" shows nothing but a litany of Jew-hating sites, all with variations of the same fictional quote: "the blood of the impious is as acceptable to God as he who offers a sacrifice to God" or even "A Jew shedding the blood of a Christian is offering a Sacrifice to god."

Just another run-of-the-mill example of how Muslim "scholarship" goes hand-in-hand with Jew hatred. And this is not the only time he "quotes" from these same bogus sources.

I'd love to know what he is a "doctor" of!

Minneapolis Star-Tribune looks at the word "terrorism"

Bravo to the Star-Tribune for at least addressing the issue of the double-standard that applies to terror attacks when they are against Israelis versus anyone else. Note particularly how the editors of the paper hide behind the wire services in explaining their policy, rather than actually address the issue like adults.

Let's hope that this gets rectified in Minneapolis and that other newspapers start to address this issue as well.

The Star Tribune has taken considerable heat over this language. "This issue has come up countless times over the past several years, and we've had an ongoing conversation with our staff about the use of language in sensitive stories involving acts of violence, war and terrorism. We believe our policy is consistent with all other major newspapers and wire services," said managing editor Scott Gillespie.

But the current approach ultimately doesn't treat all countries equally when they are victims of virtually identical terrorist violence. I disagree with Gillespie and think the newspaper needs to go another round in this debate to strive for a style and policy that is fairer and more consistent.

The inconsistent language in wire service stories the Star Tribune publishes about terrorism has left some readers believing a double standard exists for certain countries or parts of the world. The Star Tribune should challenge that uneven language, editing wire stories for consistency no matter where terrorists strike. Editors make changes in wire stories for many other reasons.

But not when it comes to stories on suicide bombers. "We follow the style of the major wire services and most other newspapers, and our editors said that they do not as a matter of policy or routine change the wire services' descriptions of various groups connected with terror attacks," said Roger Buoen, deputy managing editor for news.

In July, a month riddled with terrorism, examples abounded on how inconsistent this approach makes the language in this newspaper. The bombings July 7 in London were quickly labeled terrorist attacks by the wire services. But a July 12 suicide bombing outside a Netanya, Israel, shopping mall was attributed to "Islamic Jihad militants," a group on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations. On July 13 in Baghdad, a suicide bomber drove into a crowd of children clustered around U.S. soldiers handing out candy, killing 27 and wounding 50. In the first story this was referred to as "insurgency." The first story after the July 22 attack near a Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, resort hotel where three car bombs killed 88 and injured 119 never described this act as terrorism or anything else, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions. Subsequent coverage called it terror.

In particular, these different words have fueled a long-standing debate over how terrorism against Israel is described by this newspaper. Often the word "militant" appears in wire stories about attacks on Israeli civilians. Readers have objected to this for years in letters to the editor, op-ed pieces and a full-page ad in 2002 signed by community leaders demanding the Star Tribune call a terrorist a terrorist when suicide bombers attack Israelis.

The Star Tribune stylebook's entry on "terrorism" and "terrorists" says those terms can be used to describe any deliberate attack on civilians and lists no exceptions. But because the wire services regularly use "militant" in stories about terrorism against Israelis and tend to use "insurgents" in many stories about Iraq, that's how the language often ends up by default in the Star Tribune.

Reinforcing the tendency to treat Israel differently is another entry in the Star Tribune stylebook, which says Hamas is to be referred to in shorthand as "a militant Islamic group" and if it is a major part of a story it should be added that it "has been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization." The wires treat Islamic Jihad the same way. The stylebook and wires use no such qualifier with Al-Qaida, simply labeling it a "terrorist network" with no reference to the U.S. government's designation.

To my mind, when a person intent on a cause straps explosives to his body and detonates himself to harm nearby civilians, he and his supporters become terrorists. Period. This is a scourge civilized people of all faiths condemned during July in blunt language.

Harry Bojman, 57, contacted me after the Netanya terrorist attack to express his frustration at seeing the term "militant" used to describe Islamic Jihad. Editors here note that Hamas and Islamic Jihad may have a history of sponsoring terror, but also run schools, hospitals, charities and political organizations. Buoen suspects that is why wire services tend to describe Hamas and Islamic Jihad as "militant" rather than "terrorist."

Bojman responded that, "I'm sure Bin Laden and his groups have charitable networks." Indeed, this newspaper has reported on the web of charities Al-Qaida has used to launder its finances and the schools funded by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan that fomented extremism.

Whether suicide bombers and others deliberately blow up children and their parents in Oklahoma City, New York, Baghdad, London, Netanya in Israel or Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt, at that horrific moment the perpetrators become terrorists, wiping away all complexity and nuance regarding their cause.

In situations that unambiguous, the newspaper shouldn't shy away from the truth of plain language or hide behind the policies of the wire services.

Red Cross attacked in Gaza

Here's a nice little story that almost completely escaped the attention of the world media. Apparently, highlighting the fact that the Palestinians in Gaza are lawless thugs who have no problem abducting and shooting at aid workers goes against the conventional wisdom that "occupation" is the driving force behind Palestinian depravity. So since it doesn't fit the script, it gets cut out of the story.

It seems that truth is not the driving factor in choosing what news stories to report - only whether the story fits the preconceived notions of the editor.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Monday suspended all its field operations in the Gaza Strip in protest of the deterioration in security.

The ICRC closed its offices in Khan Yunis indefinitely Monday, after gunmen fired dozens of bullets at them. A number of United Nations aid people have been abducted in the Gaza Strip in recent days.

ICRC sources confirmed Monday that it has instructed its people to reduce activity to a minimum - office work only - until the situation stabilizes. Other international sources, including several UN agencies, said the security deterioration may lead the UN to take similar measures.

The series of abductions and the shooting at ICRC offices cast doubt over the Palestinian Authority's ability to handle the security problems in the Gaza Strip, enforce quiet during the pullout and prevent chaos afterward.

August 9, 1934: Current tragedy, future tragedy

A sad headline and a chilling headline in the Augist 9, 1934 Palestine Post that ring alarm bells today.

First is a report of a massacre of Jews in Algeria that was eerily similar to the riots in Hebron in 1929:

While the newspaper blamed "fascists" it is clear that the murderers were Moslems who turned violent on a flimsy pretext, attacking Jews for no reason.

As sad as that was, the following story is scarier:

Once again an "expert" puts millions of lives in jeopardy based on his own hubris and wishful thinking. It shows how we should always take politicians' predictions with a huge grain of salt, as well as how dangerous wishful thinking is in a world where the enemy desires nothing less than genocide and world domination.

Cross-posted to Palestine Post-ings.

Investors' Business Daily profiles CAIR

For some reason, Investors' Business Daily decided to look at one of our favorite terror-supporting "human rights" groups, and it isn't pretty: (Hat tip to LGF.)

An American Muslim pressure group has come out strongly against police profiling of young Muslim men behaving suspiciously at train stations. But the group doesn't have our best interests at heart.

The terror-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, says two New York officials' push for such targeted profiling on city subways is offensive and ignorant.

"Terror comes in all shapes and sizes," insists Wissam Nasr, director of CAIR's New York branch.

Never mind that eight young Muslim men bombed London's tube. Or that 19 young Muslim men attacked New York in 2001. Or that every suspect on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists is a Muslim man, with nearly half going by the name Mohammed.

CAIR's national spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, says police should ignore such obvious terror traits and search riders at random, while paying close attention only to people "sweating." Never mind that during New York's balmy summer months, that would include folks who don't remotely fit the terrorist profile.

CAIR should know better than anyone who does fit the terrorist profile. Three of its own officials were recently convicted of terror-related crimes. One even worked for Hooper. He's now in prison for conspiring to kill Americans.

A lawsuit filed against CAIR by the family of former FBI official John P. O'Neill, who was killed on 9-11, charges that the group, which evolved from a known Hamas front, is "a key player in international terrorism."

Congress is investigating CAIR and has repeatedly invited its executive director to deny the mounting terror charges under oath. But Nihad Awad, a Palestinian American, refuses. If CAIR is not tied to terrorism, why not clear the air at a televised hearing?

Tellingly, CAIR after 9-11 refused to single out al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden for condemnation. After the London bombings, it endorsed an anti-terror edict so broad it was meaningless — and one that was loaded with qualifiers.

Instead of condemning attacks against British or American or Israeli non-Muslims, it hedged by denouncing "all acts of terrorism targeting civilians" and "innocent lives" — leaving non-Muslims to wonder if they fall into those categories, knowing that jihadists don't necessarily consider them innocent or civilian.

(The vaguely worded edict was written by Hooper pal Taha Jaber al-Alwani, who happens to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the ongoing terror case against Sami al-Arian, the alleged U.S. leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.)

We wonder who and what CAIR, which calls itself a civil-rights defender, is really protecting when it fights targeted profiling at train stations and airports.

CAIR may talk a good patriotic and moderate game. But it has a secret agenda to Islamize America.

Before 9-11, its founder and chairman, Omar Ahmad, also a Palestinian American, told a Muslim audience: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

Before coming to Washington, Hooper himself is on record stating: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic."

Hooper is also on record claiming CAIR receives no "support from any overseas group or government." But land records revealed in the book "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington" put the lie to that claim.

It turns out that an anti-Israeli foundation run by the crown prince of Dubai owns the very deed to CAIR's headquarters located almost in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. The foundation has held telethons to support families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Against these facts, it's hard to trust anything CAIR says regarding the fight against terror.

It's plain the group has ulterior motives.

Politicians from Washington to New York should ignore its aggressive lobbying against targeted profiling, a move that could save thousands of constituents' lives.

If anyone should be profiled, it's CAIR.

For more information on CAIR, check out anti-CAIR.

In response to divestment

In response to another idiotic post defending the Presbyterian Church's desire to divest from any companies that do business with Israel, I put together a small list of places that it would be worthwhile to invest in:

Bull Moose Growth Fund does not invest in any companies that make money off of terror-supporting nations.

The Amidex family of funds invest in Israeli companies.

The Blue and White Fund.

Here's a list of mutual funds that invest in Israel from Globes, not sure what the criteria are.