Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 23, 2005

A real Chanukah present for Elder of Ziyon readers

Over a year ago I came up with an interesting idea.

I am not nearly as fluent in modern Hebrew as I should be, but I thought that since Arabic and Hebrew are so similar, if I could create an Arabic font that used corresponding Hebrew characters, people who were very familiar with Hebrew but who didn't know Arabic letters could read and begin to understand Arabic newspapers. All you have to do is configure your browser to use this font for Arabic, or cut and paste the Arabic to a word processor and then change the font to this HebArabic font.

In other words, change this:

مسؤولون : قريع سحب ترشيحه من الانتخابات

قال مسؤولون فلسطينيون يوم الجمعة ان رئيس وزراء السلطة أحمد قريع الذي استقال من منصبه الاسبوع الماضي ليترشح على قائمة حركة فتح للانتخابات التشريعية سحب ترشيحه. وأضاف المسؤولون أن قريع اتخذ هذه الخطوة احتجاجا على عدم قيام الرئيس الفلسطيني محمود عباس بتأجيل الانتخابات وبسبب دمج قائمتين متنازعتين لفتح ... التفاصيل

Into this:

With only a limited amount of Hebrew knowledge you can pick out the words "Palestinian" and "Mahmoud Abbas", and you see many words beginning with the "al-" prefix.

Here is possibly a shortcut way for Hebrew speakers to learn Arabic.

So I commissioned someone to create the font to my specs, and they did.

It isn't perfect: there seem to be different Arabic standards, right-to-left sometimes gets messed up, and altogether it is not a plug-and-play type thing. I am not doing technical support for this! But it is a fun tool to play with.

It works under Windows but I see no reason it shouldn't work on Macs as well.

Here is the font in ZIP format. Enjoy, and Chag Sameach!

Good news roundup

Israeli creates popular diet with lots of bread
Petah Tikva scientist find gene that causes mental retardation
Copper oxide in textiles keeps bacteria away
Israel lends billions more than it borrows
New high-tech boom in Israel

Two sides to every story?

Which one makes more sense?

Iranian and Arabic news

Israeli news

Israeli occupation troops on Wednesday murdered a Palestinian activist in the northern West Bank town of Hamas.

The troops reportedly arrested and then killed Ziyad Mousa whom the occupation authorities accuse of having killed an Israeli occupation soldier earlier this year.

According to eyewitnesses, Israeli troops stormed a building in downtown Jenin where they killed Mousa.

The eyewitnesses said Mousa was only armed with a pistol and didn't resist arrest.

"Despite this, the troops killed him in cold blood rather than arresting him."
The eyewitnesses described the killing of Mousa as "a cold-blooded murder and extra-judicial execution."
Hamas officials in the West bank called on the international community to condemn the murder.

"Where is the international community which cries out whenever a Zionist is killed or injured?" said one Hamas spokesman in the northern West Bank.

An elite Border Guard unit shot and killed one of Hamas’ commanders in the West Bank town of Jenin wanted by security forces for killing an IDF soldier in November.

Ziad Suleiman Khalil Moussa, 28, of Marka near Jenin, was located in Jenin Wednesday afternoon and killed in exchanges of fire between Border Guard policemen and Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank town.

Moussa was responsible for the killing of IDF Sergeant Yonatan Evron, 20, near Jenin last month.

A trained police dog was killed and a policeman was lightly wounded during the operation. The policeman was treated at the scene and then taken to Afula’s Emek hospital.

Two Palestinian gunmen were also injured and taken to a Jenin hospital in Palestinian ambulances.

Palestinian Authority officials said Moussa’s killing will draw Hamas back into the cycle of violence, after a long period of commitment to a truce with Israel.

NerdTests.com User Test: The Orthodoxy Test.

When even a computerized test cannot categorize me, I know I'm doing something right.

(from Lamed Zayin, via Elie, via OrthoMom, via Town Crier....)

The United States of Islam

It is not easy to understand the motivations behind Iran's Ahmadenijad (see "Towards a psychoanalysis of Iran" and "Media analyzes Ahmadinejad - and gets it wrong"). It is tempting to denounce Ahmadenijad as a madman, or to come up with explanations that are incomplete.

The real explanation is surprisingly simple: Ahmadenijad is positioning Iran to become a world superpower, and to a great extent he has already succeeded.

What makes a superpower? Part of it is military might, to be sure, but a more important component is the ability to lead. Ahmadenijad's rhetoric is not aimed at his people; rather he is stepping into the vacuum that the Islamic world has had for decades - trying to become a leader in the war against Islam's enemies.

There is a strong religious component to this desire, as I have mentioned before and as this article spells out very well, but it appears that Iran's president is aiming not only to make Iran the religious center of Islam, but the political center as well.

How does one assert political leadership of the Muslim world?

Take the one issue that all Muslims agree on (the destruction of Israel) and outdo all of the others.
Take on the undisputed existing world leader, showing bravery where everyone else is frightened.
Create the most powerful military in the Islamic world, one that now threatens the West.
Strengthen industry and scientific R&D to become technologically independent of the enemy:

The Supreme Leader pointed to the threat posed by the global arrogance led by US against different nations and said that under such circumstances, there is not way but, to get stronger, rely upon Almighty God and bolster self-confidence to make use of domestic potentials.
Ayatollah Khamenei said that nations should get stronger in the field of economy, science and politics, adding that reinforcing military and defensive capability is a major need for the nations.

Act as a leader, speaking for other countries (notice the use of the plural "nations" in the quote above)
Improve economic and political ties with more neutral countries. (A significant percentage of the Iranian news agency's stories are about economic initiatives with Europe, Asia and Africa - Iran hardly feels isolated even after its verbal provocations.)
Attack the enemy militarily (Hezbollah, Iraq)

It is worth emphasizing that while the Arab world has become anti-intellectual and anti-science, the Iranians are anything but. In many ways their path to superpower status is similar to the US' path - military, economic and technological might.

Looking at the world map with this perspective, Iran's "bloc" already includes essentially the entire Arab world, much of Africa, Pakistan, North Korea and probably Indonesia. Russia and China are pretty much neutral, although some former Soviet republics are solidly in the Islamic camp. India may not be Islamic but it has more Muslims than any Muslim country.

And as European countries becomes more Islamic and remain dependent on Islamic oil, it is not entirely clear that they are solidly in the US camp in this battle - a significant part of their population is very sympathetic to an anti-Western viewpoint. Iran is not only aiming at increasing its power, but in isolating the US as well.

Nuclear capabilities, along with missile technology, will cement Iran's leadership status as the world's second superpower. And the Iranians have already noted that North Korea became a nuclear power without the West stopping them, and they fully expect that while the protests will be noisier, things will end up exactly the same for them.

From all appearances, it looks like they are right.

Anti-semites crawl out from under rocks to support Ahmadinejad

One of the interesting side-effects of Ahmadinejad's public Jew-hatred has been how it is emboldening other assorted bigoted trash to show their miserable faces in whatever venues they can find.

Check out Holocaust-denier Mark Weber's article in "Axis of Logic" (reprinted from the Tehran Times), terror-supporter Preston Taran's ravings in Amin, and Kim Peterson (supporter of bombings) and his defense of Ahmadinejad in Dissident Voice.

When you wipe away the veneer of pseudo-logic, all that is left is pure Jew-hatred masqerading as liberal, universalist values.

Iran TV adds blood libel to its hit parade

The Iranian mass psychosis have been keeping MEMRI very busy.

Political Analysts on Iranian TV: The Jews Killed Children and Used Their Blood for Passover

Following are excerpts from a TV debate with Iranian political analysts Dr. Hasan Hanizadeh and Dr. Ali-Reza Akbari, which aired on Jaam-e Jam 2 TV on December 20, 2005.

Ali-Reza Akbari: Historians and eye-witnesses, some of whom are still alive... There are still many people who saw with their own eyes what happened 70-80 years ago. These people are alive and are of sound mind. They still possess the analytical abilities they had back then. They are our witnesses, and they deny the existence of crematoria at a place called Auschwitz.

Perhaps the reason... In my opinion, the people who say that the phenomenon of burning Jews on German soil during the World War II crisis is similar to a holocaust do so as a result of propaganda and due to psychological reasons.

In any even, a case of burning people has been registered in history, when many human beings were burnt because of their beliefs. The people who were burnt then were, in fact, Christians. They were burnt by the people who ruled Yemen, who were Jews. This event took place 400 years before the advent of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. Since then, the burning of human beings has been termed "holocaust."

[...]

Host: Were there six million Jews at all at that time, who could have been annihilated in the crematoria?

Hasan Hanizadeh: First of all, this figure is greatly exaggerated. The number of Jews in the world does not exceed 12 million. Only now, 57 years later, has it reached this figure. Clearly, at that time, considering the dispersion of the Jews, there could not have been six million Jews in Europe alone. In any event, the Zionist lobby and the Jewish Agency use this issue as a club with which they beat and extort the West.

Unfortunately, the West has forgotten two horrendous incidents, carried out by the Jews in 19th-century Europe - in Paris and London, to be precise. In 1883, about 150 French children were murdered in a horrible way in the suburbs of Paris, before the Jewish Passover holiday. Later research showed that the Jews had killed them and taken their blood. This event caused riots in Paris back then, and the French government found itself under pressure.

A similar incident took place in London, when many English children were killed by Jewish rabbis. These two incidents still haunt the minds and souls of the Europeans, but due to the growing influence of the Zionist lobby in Europe - or to be precise, the influence of the Jews - these two incidents are, unfortunately, never mentioned.

But don't call Iran anti-semitic - it upsets them.

A special edition, focusing on the effective and innovative recruiting methods employed by the PA Police.

Human resource managers around the world closely watch the PA for ideas on how to find well-qualified candidates for their own companies.

Especially striking are the management interview techniques as well as the insistence that the potential new hires meet their future co-workers in real-world situations so that they can integrate better into their new jobs with a minimum of re-training. Also, PA management negotiates salaries during the first interview, and lets the candidates know their decision instantly.

MBA (Management By Assassination) programs are starting to take notice as well.

A group of Fatah gunmen on Tuesday stormed the Bethlehem Municipality building on Manger Square, demanding money and jobs in the Palestinian Authority's security forces. The attackers left the building 90 minutes later after receiving assurances from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that their demands would be met.

At least 15 masked gunmen, who described themselves as members of Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, forced their way into the municipality at noon. Armed with rifles and pistols, they ordered all employees to evacuate the building immediately and later closed all entrances to the compound. Some of the gunmen took up positions on the municipality roof.

Scores of Palestinian policemen cordoned off Manger Square, ordering shopkeepers and a handful of tourists to leave the area.

A masked gunman who spoke to reporters on behalf of the attackers said he and his friends were trying to send a message to the PA leadership about the need to meet their demands, which include recruiting more than 320 Fatah militiamen to the security forces, resuming monthly payments to each one of them and guarantees that Israel would stop pursuing them.

[Bethlehem Governor] Ta'mari, and the local commander of the PA's Preventative Security Force, Colonel Majdi al-Attari, later entered the building to negotiate with the gunmen. Ta'mari said after leaving the municipality that he had reassured the attackers that he would make every effort possible to fulfill their demands.

Ta'mari disclosed that Abbas personally talked to the gunmen by phone and promised to look into their demands. "President Abbas, who was personally following the case from Ramallah, talked to one of the gunmen by phone and assured him that everything will be ok," he said.

Iran has 3000 km cruise missiles - can reach Berlin

In testimony given on Tuesday by Israel's Director of Military Intelligence, Major General Aharon Ze'evi said something frightening:

Ze'evi said that Iran had recently received 12 cruise missiles with a 3,000-km range, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. 18 such missiles were transported from Ukraine to Russia, of which 12 had somehow managed to end up in Iranian hands. The other six were received by China.

To illustrate, here is a map of what a 3000 km range from Iran's borders would include (this is my map, but if the scale in Expedia is accurate this should be pretty close):

Berlin, Rome, and all of India are in danger from Iranian nuclear weapons.

Not to mention that Ahmadinejad has, according to Geman sources, purchased 18 North Korean missiles with a range of 2500 km - whose range he wants to extend to 3500 km and add the ability to fit with nuclear warheads.

That extra 500 km would include Paris, Oslo and just barely hit the shores of the UK.

The prophet of 1949

An absolutely amazing Page One editorial from the Palestine Post of March 9, 1949. The author, David Courtney, was a non-Jewish British journalist who penned Column One in the 40s and 50s for the Palestine/Jerusalem Post.

The column could have been written today.

Cross-posted to Palestine Post-ings.

Media analyzes Ahmadinejad - and gets it wrong

The liberal media has analyzed the Iranian madman's comments and settled on the least problematic explanations possible. Breathe easy, the New York Times has spoken!

Its first analysis is that Ahmadinejad wants turn back the clock to the 1979 Iranian revolution - and then the Times admits that Iranian unity didn't occur until the Iraq/Iran war, so that doesn't make sense.

Then the Times posits that he wants to isolate his country so he can more easily move Iran's nuclear program forward (why exactly he wants to do this, the Times doesn't explain). But if this was true, the Iranian "news" agency would not be bending over backwards to find allies who agree with him and to negotiate with Europe - see this, this, and this just from today. A significant part of Iran's press is obsessed over international relations.

And finally the august NYT contradicts it's own analysis yet again:

The anti-Israeli oratory also has roots in the president's domestic standing.

Some Iranian analysts say that by increasing the world's hostility, Mr. Ahmadinejad is hoping to reproduce that sense of internal unity.

Iranian analysts say he is also trying to satisfy, and perhaps distract, supporters who have begun to feel disappointed that he has not provided financial relief. Throughout his campaign, Mr. Ahmadinejad promised to try to redistribute the nation's vast oil wealth.

"His comments are more for domestic consumption," said Saeed Laylaz, an Iranian political analyst. "He wants to control the domestic situation through isolating Iran. Then he can suppress the voices inside the country and control the situation."

And then a couple of paragraphs later,the NYT demolishes its own argument:

With Iran facing a raft of problems - widespread unemployment, collapse of rural life as more people head to the cities, and a general sense of drift among the young - Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments on Israel have drawn little domestic attention.

So here we have three theories from "experts" where the NYT's own facts do not fit the theories, but amidst all the handwaving the reader gets the impression that Ahmadinejad has no interest in actually exploding nuclear weapons over any other country.

Here is a textbook case where liberal wishful thinking trumps facts.

The AP has a slightly better analysis, arguing that his anti-Israel and anti-semitic comments are"part of a strategy to keep anti-Israel sentiment alive in the Middle East." But even so, they uncritically quote an Iranian "hard-line lawmaker": "'The bottom line is he wants to keep anti-Israeli sentiments alive,' Afrouq said. 'He doesn't think of military action.' "

The real bottom line is that the media does not even want to admit the possibility that someone could be evil. This goes against all liberal thinking - no one is bad, just misunderstood.

No one outside of Charles Krauthammer mentions Ahmadinejad's messianic tendencies and his obsession with the second coming of the "12th Imam". No one wants to talk about how the year before his "World Without Zionism" conference he had a "World Without America" conference.

It appears to little old me, without reading Farsi, that Ahmadinejad is looking to move the center of the Islamic world to Iran - and his Islamic world is the of the Islamofascist variety. His threatening statements against Israel and the West are not meant for domestic consumption, rather for worldwide Muslims already being indoctrinated in hate against the West.

He does view the 1979 Iranian revolution as important because it was a victory of Islam over the decadent West, represented by the Shah. But Muslims look at it from a global perspective, not a national one. The surge of militant Islam is not a localized phenomenon. From an Islamist viewpoint, the entire world will become one ummah and a victory in Iran is just one step on the way to worldwide Islamic domination.

This is why the issue of "Palestine" is so important to him - it represents the closest encroachment of the hated West into the Muslim geographic center. But beyond that, the Westernization of Arab countries and Turkey are another threatening trend - witness his recent banning of Western music in Iran. By turning his country into a shari'a state, with the "pure" morality of Islam, Ahmadenijad is trying to influence and pressure other Muslim nations towards fundamentalism and zealotry. And he knows that he has a ready audience in Arab countries. His being elected president has, to him, given him a world stage to promote Shi'ite Islamic supremacy as interpreted by his religious leaders - and he is wasting no time to take advantage of his new prominence.

After all, as I have mentioned before, Holocaust denial is nothing new in that part of the world. But when was the last time it made world headlines?

Ahmadinejad wants nothing less than to turn the world to Islamic extremism, and to be its leader. Threatening Israel can get attention - but destroying Israel would give him a legacy as well as energize the entire Muslim world behind his cause.

Because in the end, given a choice between the most liberal and Arab-loving Israel that Meretz could dream up and a crazed trigger-happy Muslim nutcase, the Islamic world has consistently sided with the nutcases.

Iran: Anti-semites? Us?

The Mehr News Agency has an amusing editorial defending Iran's tolerance towards its own dhimmi Jews:

No pogroms here
TEHRAN, Dec. 19 (MNA) -- With all the uproar about Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s anti-Zionist statements, it’s necessary to set the record straight by putting things in historical perspective.

A small Jewish community has been living in Iran for over 2500 years, and they have never been persecuted. Today they number about 25,000. The Iranian Jews have synagogues, observe their religious rituals, and have complete freedom of religion.

The Jewish community has one representative in the Iranian parliament, which is called the Majlis. Iran’s other religious minorities also have proportional representation in parliament. The Zoroastrians have one seat, the Armenian Christians have two seats, and one MP represents the Assyrian and Chaldean Christian communities.

Although life is not perfect for Iran’s Jews and there is some prejudice against them, there have never been pogroms against the Jews here. Can Poland or Russia say that? Can several other European countries say that? A careful examination of history shows that the Jews have actually been safer in Iran than in Western countries.

The Jews have never been banned from Iran, whereas they were banned in certain European countries. The Jews of Iran were never locked up in ghettos, as was the case in some European countries.

In 2500 years, not one synagogue has been destroyed in Iran. Jewish graveyards have never been desecrated in Iran. In contrast, this still occurs in some Western countries.

There has never been a Kristallnacht in Iran.

This amazing defense boils down to "We never did what the Nazis did, so you can't criticize us!"

Unfortunately, Iran does have more than its share of true anti-semitism. Beyond the fondness Iranians have for the Farsi edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, their Sahar TV aired programs accusing "Zionists" of stealing Arab children's eyes to cure blind Jewish children; and they have accused Iranian Jews of spying for Israel, gouging out the eyes of a 78-year old cantor and then executing him in one case.

And Iranian Holocaust denial has been above-ground for years, especially in the pages of the Tehran Times:

[The] Tehran Times seemed especially obsessed with the Holocaust. Perhaps “the biggest lie in history,” a 25 January 2001 article maintained, took formal shape during the Nuremberg trials, where a confession “obtained by means of torture” became “the cornerstone of the official Auschwitz version.” No one has ever asked “the Jewish swindlers,” who present themselves as “gas chamber witnesses” any critical questions. Yet, “the terrible accusation” of genocide, is based only upon “the lies of a handful of Jewish swindlers like Rudolf Vrba, Filip Mueller and Elie Wiesel,” and “the confessions of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess who was tortured for three days by his Jewish and British interrogators before signing the statement his tormentors had prepared for him” (Tehran Times, 17 Feb. 2001). There is “no documentary evidence for the gassing of even one human being in a German camp,” it added, and the German documents do not confirm “the Holocaust story,” in fact, they “directly refute it” (1 Feb. 2001).

But, hey, they have a point - any Iranian Jews who obediently paid the dhimmi "jizya" poll tax were treated like second-class citizens, much better than 1940's-era Polish Jews. And Islamic supremacism isn't anti-semitism, is it?

Haveil Havalim #49 posted

The eagerly anticipated First Anniversary edition of Haveil Havalim has been published at SeranEz.

Congratulations on all those who helped HH make it to this milestone, most notably Soccer Dad.

Is Ahmadinejad a chimp or an ape? A scholarly debate!

TEHRAN, Dec. 18 (MNA) -- The Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that the view expressed by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad that there are some doubts about the Jewish Holocaust is not something new and is a matter of "scholarly debate".

It has been a matter of considerable debate among zoologists and anatomists as to whether Iran's president Ahmadinejad is an ape or a chimpanzee. Here are some of the scholarly arguments on each side:

First, let's look at the anatomy of the president's face:

Notice the wrinkles surrounding his eyes and his prominent facial hair, as well as his obtrusive nostrils. Many prominent scientists feel that he bears a striking resemblance to Koko the baby ape:

However, his ritualistic behavior more closely tracks those of homosexual chimpanzees.

In this striking similarity, look at Ahmadinejad's facial expressions when he shows his mating ritualistic sexual affection for another male of his species:

Now look closely at the facial expressions of these chimpanzees:

DNA testing would, of course, solve this debate once and for all, but for various political reasons the Iranian zoo that houses Ahmadinejad is not allowing his blood samples to be taken at this time, despite protests by prominent zoologists and other scholars.

So, the scholarly debate rages on.

UPDATE: Others have researched this as well.

When PA has to choose between US and Hamas, guess who wins?

The "moderate" PA has an incredibly consistent record of siding with their supposed enemy Hamas against any Western or Israeli position.

Will the West ever wake up as to the PA's support of terror?

Notice also the cynical use of "democracy" to defend terror.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas on Saturday rejected threats by the US House of Representatives to cut off financial aid to the Palestinians if Hamas is permitted to participate in next month's parliamentary elections.

The resolution, taken on Friday, calls on the PA to set criteria for the participation of Hamas and other terrorist groups in the elections for the parliament and warns of possible repercussions if it does not make sure Hamas obeys to these conditions before the elections.

The conditions set out by Congress for participation in the Palestinian elections require Hamas and other groups to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, to stop terrorism and condemn the use of violence, to stop incitement and to dismantle their terror infrastructure.

Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, urged the White House and the rest of the world not to endorse the position of the Congress.

'We call on the international community to impose pressure on the US administration and prevent it from complying with the decisions of the House of Representatives as this does not serve the peace process nor the US efforts to maintain peace in the area,' he said. 'The legislative elections will be held on time and all Palestinian parties have the right to participate in them. Otherwise, the elections wouldn't be democratic.'

"We categorically reject this decision," PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters in Ramallah. "These are Palestinian elections and everyone should respect the democratic choice of the Palestinian people."

Erekat said that the PA's electoral law allows anyone above the age of 18 to run or vote in the elections, scheduled for January 25. "On the other hand," he added, "We have a law that forbids the use of weapons and incitement in mosques and churches. We reject the Israeli and American position and stress that the elections will be held on time."

Once upon a time, like three entire months ago, they had a law against the public display of weapons as well. And the esteemed moderate Mr. Erekat supported Hamas' running in elections based on the bizarre reasoning that running in democratic elections is tantamount to giving up weapons.

Once again, when given a clear choice between supporting the murder of Israeli civilians and banning it, the Palestinian Authority and Fatah choose murder.

Sudanese psychosis

Speaking of psychoanalysis....

Dec 17, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — In an interview led by the Iqra channel — an Islamic satellite TV -, the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir denounced American hostility to Arab and Islamic countries. He also said the international Zionist movement is using all means to eradicate Arabs and Islam and target all Muslim countries, including Sudan.

During the Iqra interview, al-Bashir pointed out that the confrontation will continue.

Can you say "projection?" I knew you could!

Best post?

As the JIB award nominations are underway, a number of bloggers are asking which of their posts were the "best" so they could nominate for "best post."

I think that in general, personal posts have a much greater chance of being "best post" than a political post, but it has caused me to start thinking about which of my posts from this year were the "best."

My historic articles based on articles from from the Palestine Post probably count as my "best" in the sense that the educate people about how this conflict began and they explode a number of myths. My first one, "The Historic Palestinians - A Very Simple Test" got a lot of attention and it did what it was meant to do - prove that the Palestinian Arabs were never referred to as "Palestinians", and in fact the term almost always referred to Palestinian Jews. What this implies as far as the entire history of Palestinian Arabs is left to the reader to decide.

As far as my own original articles, I barely remember them. But for some reason I still see occasional hits to an article from July entitled "Pavlov and the Terrorists" so perhaps it hit a chord with people.

Either way, the JIB awards are coming, so be sure to check out the nominations and vote for your favorites, or at the very least use them to discover other parts of the JBlogosphere.

Towards a psychoanalysis of Iran

Different cultures have different psychologies. While there are always exceptions, to a remarkable degree one can understand nations' actions by understanding their underlying cultural and psychological influences. And even though it may be popular academic theory that we are all the same, it doesn't take much to realize that this is not true.

The Arab psyche in regards to Israel is pretty simple, and I have touched on it in various ways a number of times. Briefly, it is not based on anti-semitism per se; rather it is based on Muslim supermacist ideology combined with Arab pride and territorialism. Since Jews are meant to be second-class dhimmis in this mindset, and since Arabs dominated "weak" Jews in the Middle East for many centuries, the idea that small numbers of Jews could not only control land that they consider Muslim but could repeatedly defeat the combined Arab armies is nothing less than catastrophic (hence, the name Nakba.) It is nothing less than an assault on their basic concepts of Islam and Arab power. The very existence of Israel is, every day, a reminder of their weakness and this is, in a nutshell, why there will never be real peace without a wholesale change to Arab culture.

Iran is a whole different animal. Iran is not Arab, and indeed in some ways Arabs regard Iran as another Israel, a foreign people who have claims on Arab territory. Also, Iran has many non-Muslims which breeds mistrust from the Arabs.

Iranians, in turn, look down on Arabs as well.

Iran seems to have a significant population that is very much against the Ahmadinejad flavored Islamicization - some seem to call it Arabization. This does not seem to translate into any love of Israel - Iran's anti-Israel stance appears to be fairly uniform. But the "moderates" do not like seeing the Iranian president pretend to obsess over Palestinians whom they could care less about. I do not have a way of measuring how many Iranians are in this "moderate" group.

So in Iran at least, many of the people and the government seem to have different psyches, even though the vast majority of Iranians are Shi'ite Muslims.

From the government press and Ahmadinejad's remarks, it seems that the Iranian regime is feeling very isolated and is desperately looking for validation from the world of Ahmadinejad's hate. A few times already I have found articles in Iran's press finding an obscure Indian professor or Lebanese MP who they quote as agreeing with them that Israel is racist or whatever. The open question is whether the validation that they claim from seeing leftists protesting in Europe is grasping at straws, or is it complete denial as to how isolated they really are.

The worrying part about Ahmadinejad is that he really does seem to have messianic tendencies. This article in the anti-government Persian Journal shows a scary tendency of Iran's president to try to hasten the coming of the "12th Imam":

"Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi," Ahmadinejad said in the speech to Friday Prayers leaders from across the country.

"Therefore, Iran should become a powerful, developed and model Islamic society."

"Today, we should define our economic, cultural and political policies based on the policy of Imam Mahdi's return. We should avoid copying the West's policies and systems," he added, newspapers and local news agencies reported.

Ahmadinejad refers to the return of the 12th Imam, also known as the Mahdi, in almost all his major speeches since he took office in August.

A September address to the U.N. General Assembly contained long passages on the Mahdi which confused Western diplomats and irked those from Sunni Muslim countries who believe in a different line of succession from Mohammed.

This indicates, first of all, that Ahmadinejad is even more irrational than he appears, and therefore less predictable - he could literally do anything to bring about his messianic imam.

It also may mean that he feels that the religious center of Islam is in Iran, not Saudi Arabia, and that any moves he makes would be to ensure Iran's predominance and leadership of Islam.

Israel is the one issue that the Muslim world agrees on, and Iran's fixation on Israel may be a way to take this leadership role in Islam.

His now regular threats against Israel, his clear pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the fact that he does not appear to fear a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario as long as it brings about his Mahdi all point to an extraordinarily dangerous and insane enemy who is uniquely impervious to diplomatic pressure.

Iran nuke roundup

It is by now clear that Iran is ruled by a messianic madman for whom the doctrine of mutually assured destruction is considered a good thing.

And Europe will do nothing, wishing, as Victor David Hanson puts it, “Hurry up, sane and Western Israel, and take out this awful thing — so we can damn you Zionist aggressors for doing so in our morning papers.”

Ha'aretz has a rambling analysis that talks about Israel's military options, and seems to concludes that only the international community can stop Iran militarily.

Meanwhile, Iran is running war games and testing out new missiles, and is keeping up its rhetoric:

Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar stressed that Iran will vigorously respond to any kind of aggression.
Making the remark while talking to reporters here in southeastern country, he referred to the threats by some Zionist regime officials regarding attacking Iran's nuclear sites, Mohammad Najjar said Iran's defense policy was quite defensive but stressed that Iranian "armed forces would provide a rapid, strong and destructive response if the country faced any aggression."

Then, in an apparently mentally unbalanced state, the Iranian Defense Minister had something to add:

He said Saddam's sad fate after attacking Iran should teach a lesson to the occupying Zionist regime officials.

The Iranian president, not to be outdone in his daily rant of bizarre fiction, made a speech:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here Thursday said the world politicians and thinkers back Iran's justice-seeking spirit.

Making the remark in a meeting with thousands of university students, the president added, "Today mankind is in search of tranquility and sustainable peace, which could be materialized only through justice, spirituality, and monotheism."
Some countries have piled up their arsenals with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons to keep dominating other countries, regretted Ahmadinejad adding they even embark on testing biological weapons on people in the name of pharmaceutical donation.

"They even openly confess to their acts and shamelessly say that ethics has no place in politics."

He said the unbiased scientists and scholars no longer believe that "liberalism or humanism schools" could ever provide man with sustainable peace, adding people in Europe and the US are also quite disillusioned with their governments in bringing sustainable peace.

I love it when a genocidal maniac talks about ethics.

Here's a troubling question:

Let's say Israel takes out some Iranian reactors. Iran will no doubt be happy to attack Israel. Who will join the war on Iran's side?

Syria, no doubt - Iran would send her troops through Syria. Hezbollah would start lobbing its arsenal of missiles into northern israel, and Palestinian Arabs would do the same from Gaza.

Jordan may have finally learned its lesson not to attack Israel just in the name of Arab unity.

But here is a sobering thought. The top arms buyers in the world, in 2002, were:

Saudi Arabia ($5.2B)
Egypt ($2.1B)
Kuwait ($1.3B)

How much can the US influence it's "friends" to stay out of a war against Israel?

Israeli sources discovered on Thursday that Palestinian police stationed at the Karni crossing planned on assisting in the carrying-out of a terrorist attack at the crossing. Fortunately, the attack was thwarted by Israeli security sources.

The policemen reportedly meant to allow the terrorists detonate a large bomb at the crossing while it was being scanned. The assault also was intended to include opening fire and throwing grenades, according to Israel Radio.

The best defense against Iranian nukes

A great sentence in a great post from AbbaGav:

We'll be watching for the human shields too. Grass roots organizations should be starting about now if they want to get here in time to chain themselves to the best buildings.

Thoughts on compromise, influence, independence, peace

SoccerDad starts with this post of mine and runs with it , decrying the current US administration as now acting in ways indistinguishable from previous ones, vis a vis Israel.

He comments:

The failing of most administrations when it comes to Mideast peace is that they put a premium on its success. This makes the cost of peace more expensive. The Palestinians loving the attention make sure that their demands are sacrosanct and Israel thus must bend to those to those demands or be obstructionist.

His second sentence is very accurate, but it is also partially Israel's fault. If only the Jews would remember their Talmud!

If two persons hold a cloak, one says, "I found it," and the other says, I found it," one says, "All of it is mine," and the other says, "All of it is mine," the first one shall swear that not less than one half of it belongs to him, the other one shall swear that not less than one half of it belongs to him, and they shall divide it. If one says, "All of it is mine," and the other says, "Half of it is mine," the one who says "All of it is mine" shall swear that not less than three-quarters of it belongs to him, and the one who says "Half of it, is mine” shall swear that not less than one-quarter of it belongs to him; the former shall take three-quarters and the latter shall take one-quarter.

If one party claims the entire item in dispute, and the other one says that they share it, the only thing a third party judge can do (absent other evidence) is splitting the difference. Since Jews are always looking to compromise for peace, and the Arabs aren't, this gives the Arabs a much stronger claim. Israel should have long ago defined their "red lines" in this battle. Unfortunately, thanks to Barak, the Israeli "red line" is pretty much the Green Line. This was perhaps the worst legacy ever left by an Israeli leader.

Back to Soccer Dad's first sentence quoted above, though - I look at it a little differently. The reason that the US always ends up pressuring Israel and giving the Palestinians a relatively free ride is indeed because the US puts a premium on solving the problem - and the US only has influence over Israel because of the billions of dollars it gives annually.

This is not the entire problem - Egypt regularly thumbs its nose at the US and still gets billions every year as well. The problem is that Israel feels indebted to the US because of the money and feels she must bend over backwards to make her "good friend" happy. That's what friends do.

The Palestinians have no such pressures. The EU could play a role here but it usually refuses (although yesterday there was a hopeful sign.)

Let's step back. What things did Israel do over the past few years that reduced violence?

Taking the war to the terrorists.
Building the barrier.

These moves were successful in making Israel safer (and consequently making Palestinian Arabs safer.) Any "truce" only came about because Israel was successful in doing these things.

And the world community was against both of them.

World pressure (including US pressure) on Israel is almost always counterproductive to true peace.

The only way to reduce this pressure, specifically from the US, is for Israel to plan to wean itself from American dollars. Absurd agreements like Rafah should never have happened, and if it wasn't for US dollars to Israel, they wouldn't have.

Israel is no longer acting as an independent state; rather as an extension of the US. This is not only a tragedy for the Zionist dream, it is counterproductive to real peace.

The Perdana "Peace" Conference

Right now, another worthless anti-American, anti Israel conference is taking place in Kuala Lampur. It is called the Perdana Peace Conference, and it has attracted some corporate sponsors.

Speakers include:

Najwa Jalamneh, a 15-year old Arab girl who "disclosed continued atrocity and criminal acts of the Zionist regime citing the horror and crimes being perpetrated by occupiers in Palestine;"
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, who writes "Israel is racist" articles;
Antisemitic former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad;
George Galloway, who has said that Zionists control the media;
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who blames Christians for Muslim terror;
Mass murdering Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe;
and many more self-appointed "peace" activists.

Sponsors of this hatefest include Dell Asia and Nestle.

"Obstacles to Peace"

How many times have we heard that the Jewish settlers who live beyond the Green Line are obstacles to peace? A quick search finds here,
here, here, here, and literally hundreds of other times that this phrase was used in reference to Jewish settlements, often by the State Department and the White House.

Well, now these supposed obstacles are gone from Gaza, so we must be that much closer to peace now, right?

The Palestinian Authority, instead of housing citizens in the Gaza communities abandoned by Israel, has turned them into training camps for armed factions. N'vei Dekalim is used to launch rockets.

Many of the 21 communities emptied of their Jewish residents last summer have now been turned into full-fledged military training camps of the ruling Fatah group and of other Islamic terror groups. According to the groups, the communities also act as recruitment centers for the “people's army” being funded by Fatah.

Two Kassam rockets were fired from Gaza, mid-day Tuesday, toward Israeli towns in the western Negev. A Hamas official told the World Tribune that the rockets were fired from former Jewish towns that have been converted into launching sites for the war against the Jewish State.

Last month, the PA official in charge of interior affairs, Nassar Yusouf, toured the training camp erected on the remains of the community of N'vei Dekalim – which was the largest of the Jewish towns in Gush Katif. Yusouf planned to declare the area a closed military zone, but soon realized that armed hordes from his own Fatah faction had set up a military infrastructure in the place.

It must be an oversight by the major media outlets and our Department of State, but not once have I seen terror training camps in Gaza referred to as "obstacles to peace." Not once have I seen anyone in the mainstream press or officials from the US or EU utter the obvious truth that terror is far more an "obstacle to peace" than Jews who want to live on historically Jewish land.

It is mind-boggling that after the Gaza debacle, where the pseudo-statelet is well on its way to becoming Hamastan, that people think that peace is closer now than it was six months ago.

There is only one obstacle to peace - the fact that the Palestinian Arabs, and the Arab and Muslim world at large, cannot accept the idea of Jews living in the Middle East in positions of power, even if Israel was the size of a tablecloth.

Solving that problem will not bring peace, but it is a necessary precondition of peace. Making more concessions to people who ultimately want you dead or dhimmified is the worst sort of wishful thinking.

AFP resurrects the death scorecard

At the end of an article about Israel killing four terrorists, whose car was filled with bombs creating a huge explosion, AFP restarted the old MSM deathcount to make it appear that Israel is four times more monstrous than Palestinians:

GAZA CITY (AFP) - At least four people were killed and three others wounded in an Israeli air strike on their vehicle in the Gaza Strip.
[...]
The latest deaths raised to 4,911 the overall toll since the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, began in September 2000. More than three-quarters of the victims have been Palestinian.

Ah, numbers.

Did they count the Palestinians killed by other Palestinians as "corroborators"?
Did they count the Palestinians who blew themselves up killing Jews?
Did they count the Palestinians who blew themselves up in "work accidents"?
Did they count the Palestinians who were shooting at Jews?

There is only one reason why AFP would decide to use a number like that in an article, and it isn't for context.

Backgrounder on Muslim Holocaust Denial

Iran's president Ahmadinejad's claims that the Holocaust was a myth is hardly surprising, since the Arab and Muslim worlds have been peddling Holocaust denial for two decades now. The ADL has a well-researched paper on the phenomenon from 2001, including Mahmoud Abbas' book that denies the Holocaust - claims he never backed down from.

But Holocaust denial has taken place in the official media of Jordan, the PA, Syria and Egypt.

One tiny example of how institutionalized Holocaust denial is in the PA:

Clue: Jewish center for eternalizing the Holocaust and the lies.
Answer: Yad Vashem (the official Israeli Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem)

From the February 18, 1999 crossword puzzle of PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.
(translated by USA Today, April 4, 2001)

"Palestinian Authority Must...."

Yesterday, the State Department emphasized that the PA must take steps to stop terror. To wit:

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli says Palestinian authorities must do more to stop such attacks:

“The attack once again reminds us of the importance of all sides to do everything possible to contain violence and to tackle terror. The Palestinian Authority must take immediate steps to prevent these attacks, to end the violence, and to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism.”

To achieve the goal of an independent Palestinian state, the Palestinian Authority must put a stop to terrorism.

Strong words!

Too bad they are watered down by the fact that they have been stated so many times before, and not only do the Palestinians ignore these statements; they are rewarded for ignoring these statements!

"Palestinians must recognize the right of Israel and its people to live safe and secure lives today, tomorrow and forever." Bill Clinton, December 14, 1998

"Chairman Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority must immediately find and arrest those responsible for these hideous murders. They must also act swiftly and decisively against the organizations that support them. Now more than ever, Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority must demonstrate through their actions and not merely their words their commitment to fight terror." - George Bush, December 2, 2001
"The Palestinian Authority must do everything in its power to prevent the killing of innocents." - Terje Roed-Larsen at the UN, April, 2003
"Calling Hamas an "enemy of peace," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday that the Palestinian Authority must take decisive steps to disarm the Islamic militant group. " - June 20, 2003

"The Palestinian Authority should take immediate and specific action to prevent terrorist acts against Israel, and its leadership must do more to de-legitimize terrorism among the public." - Kofi Annan, July 17, 2002

"The Palestinian Authority must act now to dismantle terrorist networks that perpetuate such attacks, and to prevent future attacks." - White House, August 13, 2003

"Powell Says Palestinian Authority Must Stop Terrorism Now" - October 16, 2003

"Under the roadmap, Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel. The Palestinian leadership must act decisively against terror, including sustained, targeted, and effective operations to stop terrorism and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. Palestinians must undertake a comprehensive and fundamental political reform that includes a strong parliamentary democracy and an empowered prime minister." - George Bush, April 14, 2004

"The Palestinian Authority must in particular demonstrate its complete determination to combat terrorism." - European Council, June 16, 2005

"And the obligation of the Palestinians has to do with the dismantling of terrorist infrastructure and organizations and they're going to have to do it." - Condoleeza Rice, August, 2005

"The Palestinian Authority must earn the confidence of its neighbors by rejecting and fighting terrorism." - George Bush, October 20, 2005

When dealing with people for whom lives are disposable, words are hardly going to have an impact. It is unfortunate that those making these strong statements have no interest in penalizing those who repeatedly ignore their demands.

Weak Kofi: Annan delivers lame apology for map incident

An interesting followup to the story about the UN wiping Israel off the map:

The particular event in question was organized by the Palestinian delegation in the U.N. and the Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Nasser al-Kidwa, and hosted all of the organization's high ranking officials.

During preparations for the event, the flags of the U.N. and Palestine were placed on the central stage, and a map depicting the territory of Israel was hung on the wall behind it.

However, the map was titled 'Palestine' instead of 'Israel', and all Israeli communities have been curiously erased from it.

Annan, who during the event sat on stage under the map and addressed the audience, apparently failed to notice its peculiarity.

The U.N. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told Yedioth Ahronoth on Monday that 'the map that was displayed at the event is not an official U.N. map. Secretary General Annan believes it was regretful that the map was in the room during his speech. We have informed the event's organizers that such an incident should be prevented from repeating in the future.'

So, according to the UN, the problem is that Kofi Annan was embarrassed by an inaccurate map hung behind him.

The fact that the Palestinian leadership today explicitly denies Israel's right to exist, despite their lies at Oslo, is not worth mentioning.

What exactly is the difference between what Nasser al-Kidwa did and what Iran's lunatic president says? Both negate Israel's existence in no uncertain terms.

But Palestinians are still the world's darlings and therefore need to be rewarded for lying more and more about pretending to want a peaceful solution. Iran is a bit more of a pariah so the UN can afford to criticize its president (while refusing to do anything beyond words.)

HH #49 Anniversary Post

The next edition of Haveil Havalim (hosted next week at the fantastic SerandEz blog) will mark its first anniversary. The tireless Soccer Dad is asking that JBloggers submit a post from about a year ago, to show how our blogs have changed in the past year, or alternatively to write an article about why we started blogging and linking to that.

This blog started in August of 2004, but for many months it was meant to be a compilation of news concerning Israel, terrorism and anti-semitism with very little comment from me. It was still useful and I still often see people finding an old article I posted that is no longer available from the original link.

Other bloggers also started much more complete Israel-news blogs, like News for Members of the Tribe and the excellent Iris, so I started adding commentary and eventually original pieces.

Almost exactly one year ago, one of my earliest commentary posts was tearing apart Reuters' obvious anti-Israel bias in one of its articles.

Since then I have been trying to carve out my own niche in the J-Blogosphere (as SoccerDad put it in a recent comment) .

While I get most of the articles I comment on from Daily Alert and similar sources, I also now will do a regular Google News search on terms like "Zionist." Using this I can often discover interesting articles in the Muslim world, which even when translated into English shows incredible bigotry and hate. Iranian news sources are particularly likely to use the term "Zionist" as an epithet. (For example, now I know that Iran's foreign minister blames Zionists for the assassination of the anti-Syrian Lebanese journalist yesterday.) Much outrageous anti-semitism can also be found this way, helpfully masqueraded as "news" sources by Google.

I also spend time looking through old Palestine Post articles and finding parallels between what Israel went through during its birth and today. I spun off an entire separate blog just to re-post the articles based on that research, and, who knows? Maybe someone will offer me a book deal! For some reason I have blogged a lot from the Palestine Post recently, and even though it is only Monday I think I will nominate my latest article on the Arab League boycott of Jewish goods in 1946-47, which has relevance today.

Anyway, a big מזל טוב to Haveil Havalim on its anniversary, and to Soccer Dad for having created such a successful and important venue for the Jewish Blogosphere!

Since taking office in August, Ahmadinejad has spoken out frequently against Israel in terms which were almost unheard of under his reformist predecessor Mohammad Khatami.

European diplomats say his anti-Israel comments, which have included calling the Jewish state a 'tumor' that should be 'wiped off the map', may cause a delay in planned talks between the European Union and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program.

What a strong response! Delaying talks is sure to make Iran's insane president think twice about his nuclear program.

Good thing we have the EU to protect the world from nuclear proliferation.

Fatah is a reverse acronym from the complete Arabic name: HArakat al-TAhrir al-Watani al-Filastini, becoming "HATAF", which, since it means "death" in Arabic, was reversed to become "FATAH" meaning "conquest" in Arabic.
The Fatah official emblem shows two fists holding rifles and a hand grenade superimposed on a map of the land they claim as Palestine: present-day Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Fatah joined and began to dominate the PLO in 1969.
The "Palestinian National Authority" is formally delegated its power by the PLO. In other words, the PA is officially run by a terrorist organization.
While there is some controversy about whether the PLO ever modified its charter to recognize Israel (a modified charter has never been published, to my knowledge), Fatah's "constitution" still explicitly calls for Israel's destruction by "armed struggle."
It appears that every major member of the PA is a member of Fatah (including such "moderates" as Saeb Erekat), and not one is known to have said that they do not subscribe to the Fatah "constitution."
Mahmoud Abbas and Farouk Qaddoumi have been in a power struggle over leadership of Fatah and the PLO. Qaddumi, who lives in Tunisia and is adamantly against any compromise with Israel, is the head of the PLO Central Committee and as such, the PA reports to him. Abbas disputes this, and some call him the President of Fatah. Some ugly incidents have occurred as a result.
Either way, it appears that Abbas holds the purse-strings for Fatah in "Palestine" and the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade terror group gets its funding from Fatah.
Qaddoumi wants to move to Gaza.

1946-1947 Arab boycott of Jewish goods hurts Pal Arabs much more than Jews

One of the recurring themes in the history of Palestinian Arabs is the incredible number of times they've been screwed - by their fellow Arabs. From at least the 1940's, the Palestinian Arab leadership and especially the leaders of other Arab countries have not hesitated to use Palestinian Arabs as pawns in their maniacal desire to rid the Middle East of Jews in non-dhimmi roles.

The earliest example of this that I have found occured in late 1945. The Arab League, alarmed at the acceleration of the movement towards Zionist statehood, hit upon a formula that they have repeated many times since then - the boycott of Jewish products (sometimes called "Zionist" products, but as can be seen below, the word "Jewish" was used interchangably with "Zionist" at the time.)

Ain't Arab solidarity grand?

Almost immediately, there were concerns among Palestinian Arabs about the impending boycott and how it would affect their livelihoods:

Notice the outspokeness of the real Arab street about how this would hurt them. "Those in the Arab League who decided on a strike don't worry about us."

Of course, this doesn't stop the Arab leaders, who always know best. On January 1, 1946, the boycott starts as planned. Immediately, there are problems with compliance.

So, the wise Arab leaders decided to extend the boycott to not only Jewish goods but also to Jewish services. No longer could Palestinian Arabs go to Jewish doctors or Jewish-owned movie theaters! That will teach those uppity Jews! (Notice that here is one case where the boycott is explicitly called against "Jews", not "Zionists." The almost inescapable conclusion is that the Arabs were reading from the Nazi playbook, where boycotts of Jewish goods preceded the Holocaust.)

It is also interesting to note that the non-compliance by Palestinian Arabs here in late January is becoming more of a concern to the leaders of the boycott. Not that they were consulted or anything.

The months flew by and the boycott became less and less relevant. Palestinian Arab leaders passed yet another of their many anti-Jewish resolutions at yet another meaningless meeting in August, and called again for their people to abide by the boycott that was still being roundly ignored.

Meanwhile, the Jewish economy was booming as never before! As this October article shows, the Zionists adjusted their economic models to sell more to non-Arab countries. Any effect that the boycott may have had was more than offset by their business in new markets.

As 1946 became 1947, and as Israel became closer to becoming a reality, the Arab leaders refused to believe that the boycott was an abysmal failure. Someone had to be at fault - and that someone was, of course, the Palestinian Arab businessman who refused to go along.

The solution was simple. Bomb the Palestinian Arab businessmen!

Just bombing them in Jerusalem was not enough. This had to become a national event.

It appears that dozens of bombs were set off in Arab businesses by other Arabs as 1947 wore on, putting Palestinian Arabs in the position of either losing their businesses by adhering to a bizarre failure of a boycott, or losing their businesses to the bombs of their leaders who couldn't possibly be at fault themselves.

One at least one occasion, the targeted businessmen had had enough of this.

A "cycle of violence" was now established! But even with the thuggish tactics of the terrorist Arab "leaders," the boycott was still ignored and Jewish businesses were not hurt at all.

The only ones hurt were the ones that the boycott was officially supposed to benefit.

I don't know if this is the first time that Palestinian Arabs were treated like dirt by the people who pretend to champion their cause, but it was certainly far from the last.

Crossposted to Palestine Post-ings.

Hey-hey, Haveil Havalim #48 is out

A Whispering Soul does an outstanding job of finding a ton of cool links in the J-Blogosphere in this week's Haveil Havalim. It appears that the number of links hits triple digits. There is a lot of quality out there in the Jewish blog world and it is nice to see it all in one spot. (Finding the time to check all these links out is a whole 'nother story.)

Yours truly was mentioned as well, and it was for the post I was most proud of this week. So many thanks to whoever nominated me!

(I am working on another major Palestine Post-ings article this week as well, so far I have about 5 articles on a theme and a few more coming. We'll see how much time I get to put it together. )
(UPDATE: I finished it. )

Doctor, I need help. I just can't self-nominate!

I admit I like to be mentioned in the weekly Haveil Havalim, and I admit I like getting the extra hits that mentions like that generate. But I can't nominate myself for these things!

I thought I had a lot of good posts this week, especially the Palestine Post-ings articles on Kiryat Gat/Intel, December 9 1947, and the aborted Palestinian Arab state of 1948. Beyond those, my article on the Palestinian Arab "peace" soccer game got picked up by the Cuanas blog, people seemed to like the Saeb Erekat morality post, and many read the UN map post. And SoccerDad thought I should nominate my post on Paradise Now.

Not to mention that the second annual JIB awards are coming and I also can't bring myself to nominate this blog. It just feels wrong - if people like a blog, it seems to me that they should nominate what they like, not the bloggers themselves. Not that I look down at those who do. It just doesn't feel right to me.

I actually started trying to compose a self-nomination to A Whispering Soul, who is compiling HH this week. I simply couldn't do it.

I think I may need an on-line shrink to help me work through these issues!

The Intellectual Corruption of Academia

Usually, Nobel Prizes for economics aren't controversial. But if one of the winners has the chutzpah to actually think that Jews have the right to live beyond the 1967 borders, well, he becomes a "warmonger" and his theories become "controversial."

Prof. Israel Aumann received the Nobel Prize for economics in Stockholm Saturday evening. Several hundred academics, charging that his theory supports Yesha communities, want the prize revoked.

Prof. Aumann, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, received the honor jointly, shortly after the end of the Sabbath, with American Prof. Thomas Schelling, for their work on understanding conflict through game theory. Aumann brought his entire extended family to the ceremony, where Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf presented the prize.

The Israeli scholar, the eighth Israeli to win a Nobel prize, moved to Israel from Germany in 1956 and is chairman of Hebrew University's Center for Rationality. Prof. Aumann said that war is not irrational and must be studied 'like cancer' in order to defeat it.

Almost 1,000 intellectuals and academics submitted to the Royal Swedish Academy of Science a petition to protest the 'monstrous' act of awarding Prof. Aumann. They charged that he is using game theory to 'justify the Israeli occupation and the oppression of the Palestinians.' They also want the award to be taken back from Prof. Schelling, whom they blamed for inspiring American military strategy that includes bombing civilians.

The British newspaper The Guardian stated that Prof. Aumann, in an interview with an American website, said that Israel made a mistake in expelling Jewish residents from the Gaza and northern Samaria regions.

'From a game theory point of view it was a very bad move. But if I didn't study game theory, I would also say the same thing,' according to the professor.

"It was a bad move because it sends a signal to the other side that if you apply enough pressure, then we will respond in a way that you are applying pressure. It's a bad move theoretically. It sends the wrong signal," he said. In another interview, he said the Arab-Israeli conflict has been "been going on for at least 80 years and as far as I can see it is going to go on for at least another 80 years. I don't see any end to this one, I'm sorry to say."

Notice that the "academics and intellectuals" aren't protesting that his science or math is wrong - but that they believe (undoubtedly most of them are not familiar with game theory) that these theories are being used to justify wars they don't like.

In other words, math and science and true intellectual pursuits are far less important to these self-appointed guardians of knowledge than doing what they feel is politically correct. These so-called "intellectuals" are against true research and acquiring knowledge, which is beyond ironic.

It is ironic that "academics" are so clueless as to how they are damaging their own reputations as thinkers and seekers of knowledge. It is funny how hysterical these supposedly dispassionate observers become when they disagree with someone's politics. It is sad that many Israeli professors seem to have joined in this farce.

The awarding of Nobel Peace prizes is often controversial, but it is rare for the scientific laureates to generate significant opposition. However, a petition to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences signed by about 1 000 intellectuals and academics from Israel, Europe and America describes the awarding of this year's prize to the two professors as "monstrous".

The critics accuse Aumann -- a member of the hawkish think tank Professors for a Strong Israel, which believes the Jewish state should retain the occupied territories -- of using his mathematical theories to promote his political views.

"Aumann uses his analysis to justify the Israeli occupation and the oppression of the Palestinians," the petition says.

It describes Schelling's theories as directly inspiring the United States military strategy in Vietnam, including the indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

"This strategy resulted in two million civilian deaths and was a complete failure in realising its objectives," the petition says. "Neither of these individuals has contributed anything that improves the human condition; rather, they have contributed to the misery of millions."

The petition is signed by Israeli peace campaigners, economists, academics, Holocaust survivors and left-wing politicians. Signatories from about 50 other countries, including the US and several Arab states, have also supported it. Those from Britain include academics at several universities, members of groups such as Jews against Zionism, and activists in the Respect party.

Shraga Elam, an Israeli writer among those behind the petition, concedes that his objection is to Aumann's political views and not to the quality of the analysis on game theory.

"Every person, including a Nobel Prize laureate, is entitled to his political views," he said. "But ... it is not enough to say that politics does not enter in to it.

"Can a racist or a Holocaust denier receive the Nobel Prize even if he is very talented in his scientific field? Political views are relevant."

There you have it - a self-proclaimed "intellectual" who likes to compare Jews who believe that Gaza shouldn't be Judenrein with neo-Nazis.

What an intelligent, academic argument!

And the sad thing is, these so-called intellectuals have no reason to fear that they will not get tenure or prestigious positions at other universities because of their profoundly censorious views. The left-leaning academic world is an entire culture built on self-congratulatory closemindedness that is the exact opposite of what true knowledge seekers should be.

The war already began: Palestine Post, December 9, 1947

Here is a snapshot of the first page of the December 9, 1947 Palestine Post:

Israel's friends like to say that the combined Arab nations all attacked Israel as soon as she declared her independence. But it is not quite true: they attacked much earlier than that, and the between the time of the UN Partition decision and May, 1948, the Arabs already started attacking Jews all the while gearing up for the much larger war to come. And the British pretty much gave up on any pretense of protecting the Jewish citizens of Palestine.

Iraq wanted to position it's troops in Transjordan:

Arabs attacked and burned Jewish homes, murdering women and kidnapping babies:

Jews lived together with the enemy - no wall, no security, and no interest by the British to keep the peace. At any moment there could be sniper fire, and many Jews were killed just doing their normal day-to-day activities.

The Arab countries continued to criticize the Partition plan but were confident of their ability to kill the Jews who actually thought they had a right to live in peace in the land of Israel - making it a religious obligation to join the war against the Jews: (page 2)

So the time period between Partition and independence was hardly peaceful. The war already started, and it was by no means clear (within a few years of the Holocaust) that any Jews would survive, let alone that Israel would win.

Bush ignoring Israel in "war on terror" speeches

A disturbing op-ed from Sidney Zion. I believe his conclusions are spot-on - the genteel anti-semites and Israel-haters have managed to separate Israel's war against Islamic terror from that of the rest of the world, giving rise to the thought process that somehow the Palestinian terror is more acceptable and legitimate than the Islamic terror in the rest of the world.

The President's omission of Israel as a country affected by Islamic terror strengthens the positions of the fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad immensely - any distancing between Israel and America is a huge victory for the Islamofascist propaganda machine. And there is no doubt that this omission is noted and celebrated in Ramallah and Gaza City.

Repeat a lie enough times and people will start to believe it. This has certainly worked here.

Bush's radar skips Israel

President Bush, in back-to-back speeches defending the Iraq war, has crossed Israel off the list of countries hit by Islamic terrorists.

In his address yesterday to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Bush said: "The terrorists in Iraq share the same ideology as the terrorists who struck the United States on Sept. 11, blew up commuters in London and Madrid, murdered tourists in Bali, killed workers in Riyadh and slaughtered guests at a wedding in Amman, Jordan."

In Annapolis last week, he listed the same countries, adding the massacre of Iraqi children and their parents, who had just been hit outside an Iraqi hospital.

How could Israel fail to make the President's cut? Especially yesterday, after a suicide bomber killed five and wounded 60 in Netanya on Monday. Not to mention that Israel has been the prime target of terror forever.

Is this an oversight by Israel's greatest friend in the White House? Or could it be an effort to appease the Arab world?

Certainly no oversight. In 11 speeches over the past three months in which Bush has talked about terror, he only mentioned Israel three times - once before Jewish Republicans. Yesterday, he left them out again. "The enemy must be defeated on every battle front, from the streets of Western cities to the mountains of Afghanistan to the tribal regions of Pakistan to the islands of Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa."

If he forgot them last week, he was reminded by the Zionist Organization of America, in a tough press release that was cited by a reporter in the White House briefing the day after the Annapolis speech.

Q. "Why did the President do this, given 1,700 Israel citizens murdered by Islamo-fascists, and 10,000 more maimed by them since 1993?"

Scott McClellan, Bush's spokesman: "There's no stronger friend and supporter of Israel."

Q. "Why did he not mention that with all those other countries?"

McClellan: "I don't think that's the way to look at it."

I think Bush put a blue pencil through Israel, and I think he did it because he's in big trouble with the war and all he can think about is appeasing the Arabs.

He likes to compare himself to Winston Churchill. The President should keep these words of his in mind: "If you feed the crocodiles, you'll be his last meal."

UN wipes Israel off the map

Arutz Sheva reports:

The United Nations held a "Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" last week. A large map of “Palestine,” with Israel literally wiped off the map, featured prominently in the festivities.

The ceremony was held at the UN headquarters in New York and was attended by Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Presidents of the UN Security Council and the General Assembly.

Map of "Palestine" from the Jordan River to the sea, with no mention of the Jewish State.

During the festivities, a map labeled a "map of Palestine” was displayed prominently between UN and PLO flags. The map, with “Palestine” written in Arabic atop it, does not include Israel, a member of the UN for 56 years. The map does not even demarcate the partition lines of November 29, 1947, marking a Jewish state alongside an Arab state. The partition was dictated by the UN General Assembly itself.

Map surrounded by the flags of the UN and PLO.

With the map hanging behind him, Secretary-General Annan addressed the public meeting at UN Headquarters.

Kofi Annan sits at the dais with the map negating the Jewish State's existence in the background (lower left side of photo)

I have yet to hear about any world outrage, or even protest from Israel.