Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 09, 2006

More from the Iranian hajj hate festival

MEMRI has video of the Party in the Desert. Notable: the level of pure hatred shown by the Religion of Peace, how even when Muslims are talking to Muslims they have integrated the anti-Bush liberal talking points (it is comical how the murderous Great Satan is singled out for wiretapping phones without a warrant!) and the Freudian slip at the end about "peaceful nuclear technology."

TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=991.
Crowd: "Israel is the enemy of Allah."
Man: "May the hands of the infidels be chopped off."
Crowd: "May the hands of the infidels be chopped off."
Man: "May the hands of the infidels be chopped off."
Crowd: "May the hands of the infidels be chopped off."
Man: "[Chopped off] from the land of the believers."
Crowd: "From the land of the believers."
Man: "The audience will now split into two groups: One group will settle the score with America, and the other will settle the score with Israel. This group now: Death to America!"
Crowd: "Death to America!"
Man: "Death to Israel!"
Crowd: "Death to Israel! Death to America!"
Man: "Death to America!"
Crowd: "Death to America!"
Man: "Death to America!"
Crowd: "Death to Israel! Death to America!" Death to Israel!"
Man: "All together now: Death to America! Death to Israel!"
Crowd: "Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel!"
[...]
Speaker: "Today, the impure world Zionism, in the modern Age of Ignorance, has emerged with the same [polytheistic] ideology, but with new methods. It wants to take over the fields of economy, of culture, and politics, as well as the military, throughout the world."
[...]
"We, the pilgrims who have come to the house of God, condemn the plots and the measures taken by the international Zionism - the deceitful Satan who spreads heresy, polytheism, and idolatry, enslaving human beings with a new method. It abuses the divine religion of Moses. It takes satanic measures, and arouses the world's hatred towards this divine religion and its true followers. We denounce these criminal acts. We call upon the world of Islam and the free peoples to take significant measures to thwart the satanic policy of this camp."
Crowd: "Allah Akbar. Allah Akbar. Allah Akbar."
Speaker: "We, the pilgrims who have come to the house of God, strongly condemn the aggressive measures of 'the global arrogance,' led by the idol and center of evil, the criminal America. We condemn it for its aggression, warmongering, its murder, plundering, torture, espionage, its abductions, and its secret jails. We strongly condemn it.
"We emphasize that the occupation forces must leave the lands of Islam. We express our hatred and our disgust at the mother of all corruption of this century, the Great Satan, and at its illegitimate offspring, the plundering Israel."
Crowd: "Allah Akbar. Allah Akbar. Allah Akbar."
[...]
Speaker: "My believing brothers, I will now read to you the text of the call of the leader of the Islamic revolution, Imam Khamenei, to the pilgrims who have come to the house of God:"
[...]
"...Today, the fleets of arrogance are, once again, using new methods of deceit, in order to perpetuate and strengthen their control over the Islamic world. Their slogans of spreading democracy and human rights is one of these methods of deceit. The Great Satan, who embodies evil and violence against humanity, raises the banner of defending of human rights, and summons the peoples of the Middle East to democracy.
"The democracy that America wants to implement in these countries, however, means that general elections - which pretend to be popular, but are in fact American elections - will give rise, by means of conspiracies, bribery, and deceptive propaganda, to obedient American collaborators.
"These collaborators will accomplish America's goals of arrogance, and first and foremost stopping the spread of Islam, and removing Islamic values from the scene."
[...]
"The fact that the slogan of democracy is being raised by the greedy people who for many years have supported the dictatorial regimes in Asia, Africa, and the American continent is completely unacceptable. Likewise, when the call to fight violence and terrorism by those who support Zionist terrorism, and who carry out the bloodiest kind of violent acts in Iraq and Afghanistan this is a mockery."
[...]
"The American and British governments, which permit the torture of suspects, and the spilling of their blood in the streets, and the tapping of citizens' phone calls without a court order, do not have the right to claim they are defending civil rights.
"The governments that have blackened the face of modern history with their production and use of nuclear and chemical weapons to not have the right to impose their patronage on the issue of preventing the spread of weapons of mass... on the issue of preventing the spread of nuclear technology."

Austria's Federal Chancellor and the rotating Head of European Union Wolfgang Schuessel said here Monday the EU has no reason to impose sanctions against Iran because of Tehran's nuclear policies.

Speaking to the reporters after meeting with members of European Commission, Schuessel said, 'Although there have always been the possibility of imposing sanctions, the EU member states take that measure as the last option'.

He added it is not time to consult about sanctions yet.

At the same time, EU rotating president condemned Iran's announcement to start its nuclear research.

Schuessel stressed the EU is following the issue with concern because Tehran is distancing from a settlement based on consensus.

Isn't it interesting that santions are now the last resort - and attacking their nuclear facilities is not even a possibility?

One must wonder why Europe bristles at the US always taking the lead in tackling world crises, whether rightly or wrongly, but when the EU actually has a chance to do something, they invariably close their eyes and plug their ears and sing "LA-LA-LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

Iranians sure know how to have fun!

Par-ty! Par-ty!

Thousands of Iranian pilgrims participating in the 'Disavowal of Pagans' ritual in this sacred desert on Monday issued a resolution condemning the existence of a mercernary government called Israel by big powers.

Expressing their hatred towards International Zionism, the pilgrims condemened the crimes and machinations being committed by the Zionist regime.

The ralliers urged all Muslims to unite in order to neutralize the satanic policies of International Zionism.

They further condemned the hegemonic and war-mongering policies of the US and its allies that find expression in the occupation of Islamic states, massacre of civilians, torture of prisoners and establishment of secret and inhuman prisons.

The pilgrims expressed their affirmation to the peaceful use of nuclear technology as a legitimate right of all nations, including Muslims, and denounced the imposition of double standards on Islamic and western states in certain fields, particularly in the field of nuclear energy.

Stressing the rich economic and trade potentials of Muslim states, the ralliers called for establishment of an Islamic market and greater participation of Muslim nations in the production and distribution of goods.

Voicing their support for the people of occupied Iraq, they condemned terrorism in whatever form in that war-torn country.

Meanwhile, the pilgrims renewed their allegiance to the aspirations of the Founder of the Islamic Republic, the late Imam Khomeini, and Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

Tens of thousands of Haj pilgrims gathered in the Desert of Arafat, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Mecca, chanted anti-US and anti-Zionist slogans during the `Disavowal of Pagans' ceremony held here Monday.

This is like Vegas East!

More details in an inexplicably separate article from the same august source:

Tens of thousands of Haj pilgrims chanted anti-US and anti-Zionist slogans during the `disavowal of pagans' ceremony held here Monday.
"God is Great," "There is no Deity but Allah," "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" were among the slogans chanted by the masses in unison as they gathered in the Desert of Arafat, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Mecca, for a day of prayer and meditation.
The faithful -- men clad in two-piece seamless white shrouds and women all covered except for their hands and faces to symbolize equality -- converged on Arafat by bus and on foot from the tent city of Mina, where they spent the night.

With any luck, an alternate energy source will come soon, making oil obsolete and allowing them to stay in tent cities permanently, just like their holy ancestors.

Shocking omission at the JIB awards

As I was looking at the JIB award nominations this morning to vote for my favorites, I was shocked to see that AbbaGav was not nominated (successfully) for Best Jewish Humor Blog.

So since one point of the awards is for people to see blogs they would not otherwise see, I wanted to point my readers to AbbaGav.

AbbaGav has the sense of humor that you must have when you know that the rest of the world is crazy and you are the only sane one. (Not to mention that the world would love to see you disappear, because you are the cause of all their problems.)

The black humor and sheer prolificity (to coin a term) makes AbbaGav my favorite funny site of the moment, so I recommend it highly.

(This entire missive is just a ploy to get Gav to comment on my blog, because the comments have been pretty light lately.)

Demolition Democratzia

It is fascinating watching the Palestinian Arabs pretend to embrace "democracy."

We have the Palestinian Authority, which is a subsidiary of Fatah - a terror group - running as the moderate alternative to Hamas, a terror group.

Both groups have impeccable terrorist credentials. Fatah has the legacy of master terrorist Arafat - and they are trying to capitalize on it:

But Fatah is also trying to be seen as a moderate party, a pursuer of peace with Israel. This schizophrenia is making it hard to get anything done. Not to mention the intra-Fatah fights: between the "young guard" and the old-timers, between the Tunis leadership and the Ramallah leadership, between the Palestinian "police" and the Abbas.

At the same time, Hamas has a consistent message - destroy Israel and get rid of the Fatah corruption. A single-minded focus on terror can only help, with a healthy dose of Islamic fundamentalism (Hamas, just like Al Qaeda, is a direct descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood.) Add this to the fact that Hamas has actually shown interest in improving the lives of ordinary Palestinian Arabs (in order to recruit them to terror, but still...) and it is hard for Hamas not be seen as the clear winner in any fair election - even though most actual Palestinian Arabs would prefer the pre-intifada world, they do not want to be led by the corrupt and hypocritical Fatah.

So now that the democratic table is set for Hamas to win any elections, the Western world suddenly becomes anti-democratic, or at the very least it gets its own schizophrenia about how Palestinian elections should be. This is in no small part due to the Bush mantra of "democracy" when in fact the mantra should have been "freedom."

Democracy depends on an emotionally mature nation, and the Palestinian Arabs have acted any way but mature. Asking them to vote in the screwed-up world they live in is like asking seven-year olds to vote based only on the content of cereal commercials.

That being said, I do not have the same problem with Hamas running for elections that most of the Western world seems to. There is no real difference between Fatah and Hamas in their policies vis-a-vis Israel, just Hamas is more honest about its goals. A Hamas leadership would not have the Arafatian-style lies and half-measures to lean upon to make the world pressure Israel to make even more concessions. And it does appear that the world is wearying of the entire Palestinian Arab problem, as it is finally noticing that even when Israel gives them land for free, the Palestinian Arabs cannot show any ability to govern. (I think giving up Gaza the way it was done was a mistake, but this was one positive result.)

Also, any election that Hamas wins will be the last elections of "Palestine" - shari'a law will become the norm and some Imam will become the de-facto dictator.

Now that the Palestinian Arabs have a chance to show the world that they can run a country, they will show the exact opposite. Too bad so many innocent people had to die to prove what should have been obvious from the beginning.

The UN gives Hamas a raise, the PA keeps "refugees" in camps

Hat tip Iris blog.

We've known about the UNRWA support for terror for years, but this article shows even more clearly how much Hamas uses UN funds for its own terror activities.

It also adds a telling detail - that the PA itself refuses to dismantle "refugee" camps in Gaza to allow its people to live in decent conditions! As we've known for years, the supposed leaders of the Palestinian Arabs and of other Arab countries are more interested in keeping Palestinian Arabs in miserable conditions (to pressure Israel) than they are in their welfare. There is little that proves this as clearly as the facts in this article.

The decision taken at the end of December 2005, by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to provide a large increase in salaries for its thousands of workers, contributes directly to HAMAS’ coffers. The significant raise takes effect this month.

The 7.5 – 21% increase for UNRWA’s workers was ostensibly enacted to bring their salaries closer to the much higher level of Palestinian Authority employees. UNRWA is “the second biggest employer” in Gaza after the Palestinian Authority.

The UNRWA raise also has had the dire effect of increasing UN funding to HAMAS. Most UNRWA workers in Gaza – in fact 90 percent - voted for HAMAS in their 2003 union elections. HAMAS also runs the union’s executive committee, and controls 23 of the 27 seats in of the workers’ representatives in the different sectors, such as teachers, clerks, services, etc.

Since HAMAS deducts membership fees of its activists from their UNRWA salaries, the UNWRA raise contributes directly to the HAMAS budget

The more HAMAS gains the more Fatah stands to lose. Indeed, a Gaza Fatah leader and candidate for elections in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, Doctor Sallah Bardawil, strongly protested the UNRWA salary increase. On December 29, 2005, Bardawil noted that the HAMAS election campaign is supported directly by fees paid to HAMAS by its UNRWA members. According to Bardawil, HAMAS also finances its activities with additional contributions from the Palestinian public and the Muslim World.

However, since Hamas, like its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, obligates each member to pay dues proportionate to 3 to 5%, of their salary, the raise increases both the Zakat – the obligatory payment of at least 2.5% of their annual income – as well as the membership dues. Thus, the UNRWA workers’ contributions add more funds to the HAMAS campaign chest.

Israel demanded long ago and repeatedly that UNWRA fire workers who are members of the Hamas terror organization. Many of the terrorists and the suicide bombers were either UNRWA employees, or originated from UNRWA run refugee camps and educational institutions. UNWRA denied the charges despite the evidence.

UNRWA, since its establishment in 1949, together with the Arab/Islamist nations, and with the Palestinian Authority since 1993, has been working to preserve and continue the Palestinian refugee problem, rather than eliminating it. Thus, UNRWA maintains the Arab/Israeli conflict. In the latest telling example, even after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, when the Palestinian Authority refused to help the refugees in the refugee “camps,” despite receiving generous international aid for economic development, UNRWA did not demand that the PA resettle the refugees. For example, the PA received $100 million from the United Arab Emirates (UAE),) to build a new town named Sheikh Khalifa City, in honor of the UAE president on the ruins of MORAG, one of the Israeli settlements. This new city was to house the families of shahids, prisoners, and families harmed by the conflict.

Yet, despite the poor housing conditions in the refugee camps, the Palestinian Authority deliberately refuses to settle these refugees in the new city. The PA maintains this attitude in order to maintain the refugee problem, and to claim the Palestinian “right of return” to Israel. UNRWA plays along with the PA. Moreover, it provides financial support to HAMAS, which is devoted to the perennial Jihad against Israel and the West.

You can now vote for your favorite Jewish and Israeli blogs at the JIB Awards.

I am happy to see that Rose's Story did make it in the competition for Best Series!

You are allowed to vote once every three days, so you can spread your votes among worthy nominees or try to stack the deck for your favorites! :)

The first round of voting is open through January 19th.

Ethical terrorists save the day!

Hamas is mad as hell, and isn't going to take it anymore!

GAZA CITY, January 7, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – Palestinian resistance factions have accused the Palestinian Authority of failing its security responsibility, revealing plans to set up a joint force to maintain order and grind the raging chaos in the territories to a halt.

'If the PA dragged its feet over this issue, we would set up a special security force to undertake this responsibility,' Ezz El-Dine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs and Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades, said in a joint statement, a copy of which was obtained by IslamOnline.net on Saturday, January 7.

They stressed that the PA was expected to restore order, maintain security and adopt a zero-tolerance policy with those behind the recent anarchy.

The factions pointed the finger at 'suspicious bodies' for plunging the Gaza Strip into a state of lawlessness.

The factions further denounced the unrest at the Gaza-Egypt border and the spat of kidnappings in Gaza , saying these irresponsible acts did not reflect the ethics of the Palestinian people.

'We condemn this incident in the strongest possible terms as it badly hurts the image of the Palestinians, who only use their weapons against the Zionist enemy,' read the statement."

Isn't it heartwarming to see Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad work together in the spirit of unity, ethics and brotherhood to make Gaza the paradise it is meant to be - where weapons and explosives are only to be used against Jews?

I'm sure the EU and UN will be praising this new, tripartisan movement as a positive sign towards peace.

(I must also mention how snazzy the terrorists look in their green Hamas caps. So friendly!)

Chilul Hashem

The list of people happy about Sharon's illness:

It does not reflect well on these people to be in such company.

Washington DC Imam: Muslims will destroy Jews, Israel

These words come not from some bizarre fringe Saudi cleric, but from Imam Mohammed Al-Asi, the "the elected Imam of Muslims in Washington DC". A quick Google finds many Muslim sites quoting him approvingly. His latest screed ends thusly:

Little do they know, but the Jewish worshippers of Israel who are publicly celebrating 57 years of a historical aberration are, by all the forces of history and divine decree, celebrating the coming of a day when they will have to come to terms with Islamic self-determination in the Holy Land area and beyond that into the expanses of Africa and Asia. The prophet of Allah, upon whom be peace, summed it up when he said:

'The final hour shall not commence until the Muslims engage Yahud in warfare. And the Muslims will deal the deathblow to Yahud. These Yahud will hide behind timber and boulder that will call out on Muslims: “O Muslim there is a Yahudi in disguise, come and annihilate him.”

It is entirely possible, however, that this esteemed Imam is a liar, as his name is not mentioned anywhere on the Islamic Center of Washington website. According to the ADL, the Islamic Center denies any connection to him.

Even so, the existence of such an Islamic supremacist bigot who is publishing incitement and hate against Jews in the US is noteworthy.

Democracy in action

By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer
At least 15 pilgrims were killed Thursday and 39 injured when a building near the Grand Mosque collapsed around them just after they returned from midday prayers, the Interior Ministry said.

The tragedy in Islam's holiest city came as millions of Muslims converged for the annual hajj pilgrimage, which begins Sunday.

A statement from the Interior Ministry, quoting Ali al-Tuwejli, head of Mecca's civil defense team, said the death toll could reach 20 and the number of wounded could number more than 80.

A civil defense official told government-run Al-Ekhbariya television that the 40-year-old building's foundations were cracked and too weak to support the weight.

While this is of course a tragedy, there is an interesting media angle to this story:

How can the media report anything that happens in Mecca and Medina objectively when no non-Muslims are allowed in those cities?

If only Muslim reporters and photographers are allowed in the cities, and clearly they themselves regard the cities as holy, will they report news or just toe the official line?

How do we know that this building collapse wasn't a bomb that would embarrass the Saudi government, for example?

Apparently, here is how "due process" is done in Palestinian Arabia:

* Arrest the criminal suspect.
* Let him go.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip Jan 5, 2006 — Palestinian authorities on Thursday released a militant held in connection with the kidnapping of a British family in Gaza, a day after his followers went on a rampage and smashed holes in a wall along the Egypt border.

Palestinian security officials refused to comment on why they released Alaa al-Hams, a militant from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. The group is affiliated with the ruling Fatah Party.

'I was released as a result of the agreement reached between Fatah and the (Palestinian) Authority yesterday. This will calm all types of protests from our side,' al-Hams told The Associated Press by telephone.

Al-Hams was arrested late Tuesday on suspicion his group kidnapped human rights activist Kate Burton and her parents for two days last week. They were released unharmed.

Early Wednesday, his supporters stormed government buildings in the southern Gaza town of Rafah and blockaded the border crossing with Egypt. Later, they hijacked bulldozers and broke down a wall along the border, sending hundreds of angry Palestinians streaming into Egypt.

Two Egyptian troops were killed and 30 were wounded by gunfire in the rampage, a brazen challenge to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' authority.

It is funny how when Israel controlled Gaza, all terrorist activity was blamed on Israel and no one considered that the terrorists are just criminals who are inculcated in a culture of violence. Every terror attack had a "reason" and that reason was never plain Jew-hatred.

Now that they don't have Israelis around, they are attacking their own supposed leadership. And their allies in Egypt. And any Western supporters who happen to be around.

Haters don't need a reason to hate, and the constant attempts to "understand" them is counterproductive, to put it mildly.

Mi-mi-mi-meme

I was tagged by Elie for the "four" meme. Why there are more than four questions, I do not know.

Four jobs you've had in your life:

Sunday-school teacher
Computer security consultant
Video editor
Font designer

Four movies you could watch over and over:

Groundhog Day
My Cousin Vinny
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Shawshank Redemption

Four places you've lived:

Allentown, PA
Edison, NJ
Philadelphia
Pikesville, MD

Four TV shows you love to watch:

The Simpsons
The Prisoner
Taxi
South Park

Four places you've been on vacation:

London
The Bahamas
Cancun
Israel

Four websites you visit daily (or at least every weekday):

Four of your favorite foods:

Yodels
Tribe of Two Sheiks Cracked Chili Pepper Hummus
Schwarma
Calzones (every pizza shop makes them radically different)

Four places you'd rather be: (I'm assuming at the moment, not lifetime)

Israel
Home instead of work
Bermuda
San Francisco

Four books you'll read over and over again - not counting Torah:

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series
Harry Potter series (at least before the 7th book comes out)
Any Scott Adams' Dilbert books
Our Bodies, Our Selves (kidding!)

Four that I'll tag with this Meme:

Rogue Jew (because he said hi on my tagboard)
Callie
Atheist Jew
Maharal (because he made a nice comment to me)

Professional courtesy

Earlier today it was reported that Palestinian gunmen burst into a house in Rafah and tried to kidnap the parents of Rachel Corrie, an American activist who was killed in 2003 as she protested the demolition of a house in the southern Gaza town.

According the Corries' host, the five gunmen appeared to be affiliated with Fatah, though it was unclear whether they were from the same group that blockaded the border.

The gunmen eventually relented after being told who their targets were, he said.

Just waiting for the Corries to issue a statement blaming Israel...

In other news...I wonder if it was a Caterpillar?

A group of gunmen associated with Palestine's ruling Fatah movement has used a stolen bulldozer to smash through a barricade on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

I wish I knew what he was talking about

Anyone know what this is?

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi here Wednesday condemned a Zionist company's humiliating act against Muslims, saying it shows the stupidity of the company's officials.
"This measure shows the Zionists' grudge against not only Muslims but also all who believe in the Almighty.

"A printed card which apparently mocked Muslims and their religious beliefs explicitly indicated the lack of confidence of the followers of Zionism in the sanctity of al-Aqsa Mosque as the first qibla of Muslims and a holy site for all Ibrahimite religions," he said. (That statement by itself is priceless. -EoZ)

The spokesman added, "Iran's Foreign Ministry calls on the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the UN Secretary General (Kofi Annan) to show a strong reaction to and condemn such an act of impudence.

"Other regional and international organizations are also required to protest the impudence of the Zionist company and seriously adopt necessary measures to punish it," he said.

So what did the "Zionist company" do? And how can I get a copy of this card?

Give 'em what they want

Sometimes, you find Arab positions that are even more bizarre than usual.

Two examples from today's news:

Dr. Elias Akleh in Arab2000.net (slogan: "Looking forward to the 20th Century") argues that a Palestinian state just plays into the hands of the imperialist Western infidel dhimmi descendants of apes and pigs. So, presumably, he is against the establishment of such a state. Sounds fair to me.

Cybercast News Service discusses the peculiar Wahhabi phenomenon of destroying all major Islamic landmarks:

Al-Ahmed, a Saudi scholar and expert on Saudi political affairs, estimates that the majority of Islamic landmarks in Saudi Arabia have already been destroyed. Islamic architecture expert Sami Angawi told media earlier this year that at least 300 historical buildings have been leveled in Mecca and Medina over the past 50 years.

"A telling example is the house where the Prophet Mohammed was born and [another] house he lived in until he was 29 are going to be demolished," Al-Ahmed said. Also destroyed was the 18th -century Ottoman-era Ajyad Fort. "They destroyed it at night. They blew up the hill where the fort was situated to make room for hotels," Al-Ahmed said.

Other reportedly destroyed sites cited by Al-Ahmed include: the first house in Islam, where the prophet Mohamed held secret meetings with his followers, which was destroyed in the 1980s; the houses of the prophet in Medina, where he lived for the last 10 years of his life; the Al-Fadik mosque in Medina built during Mohammed's life and destroyed in July 2003; and the Ali Al-Oraidi Mosque and Shrine in Medina destroyed in 2004. "It had been in operation for 1,200 years," said Al-Ahmed.

Behind the destruction is the Wahhabist strain of Islam, which seeks to destroy any revered physical structures that clerics believe could lead believers to idolatry, said Al-Ahmed. Real-estate development, especially around Mecca and Medina, which hosts millions of pilgrims every year, is also a major factor.

Religious politics also plays a role. When authorities allegedly destroyed one of the five renowned "Seven Mosques" built by the Prophet Mohammed's daughter and four of his "greatest Companions," Wahhabists were approving. "The mosques are not welcomed by Wahhabis," said Al-Ahmed. "It's partly political. They don't want Shia to go there to pray."

Where the Abu Bakr mosque stood, there is now an ATM machine, said Al-Ahmed. The home in which the founder of Islam grew up is slated to be destroyed, as well as his birthplace, which has a library built over it. Two major battlefields with both historic and religious significance have also reportedly been paved over.

So if the Wahhabis want to come to Israel to destroy the Dome of the Rock, I think Israel should welcome them with open arms.

Both of these initiatives can go a long way in increasing understanding and love between the peoples.

Hamas will eliminate corruption and bring back law and order to the Palestinian Arab territories.

But graffiti artists defacing walls for AFP photographers will evidently have a free pass.

Good thing that this dude isn't dyslexic - imagine how embarassed he'd be if he had written "SHAAM" instead.

Call for Papers: Terror Conference '07

The National Conference to Support the Resistance just finished a very successful program in Lebanon. Details helpfully provided by the Lebanon Daily Star:

BEIRUT: The National Conference to Support the Resistance said that Hizbullah is a "national duty and the only real option to defend Lebanon's territories, national sovereignty and independence."

In a final statement adopted on Monday at the end of the two-day conference, protecting the resistance was at the top of a list of 14 recommendations.

The conference endorsed Friday the option to resist and confront the "American-Israeli schemes against Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries."

Several civil society organizations took part and emphasized the need to promote the culture of resistance and reinforce the society's immunity to meet the current challenges facing Lebanon.

During the conference, eight working papers were discussed. Some of them dealt with "Distinction between Terrorism and the Resistance," "Role of Culture in the Resistance," and "Methods to Reinforce National Unity."

The conference president Yehya Ghaddar read out the 14 recommendations and said "several similar conferences and activities will be held in Lebanon soon."

Following the discussions and interventions, participants announced the establishment of the National Gathering to Support the Resistance in order to increase the participation of the civil society organizations in the gathering.

In the recommendations, the conference called upon the National Gathering to Support the Resistance "to strengthen the awareness about the nature of the Zionist enemy and its danger."

Furthermore, the recommendations said comprehensive and civil resistance should be a priority of the civil society, the parties, forces and youth, cultural and women's associations.

The conference also called "to mobilize all immigrant forces to confront the Zionist project that targets Lebanon's territories, people, state and entity."

It also made an appeal to "generalize Lebanon's national culture among immigrants so that they form a pressure group wherever they are and defend the resistance and national interests."

This perennial favorite conference among the biggest and best terrorists in the world may have been the most fun yet! The 2002 Conference, although it included such after-hours activities as "Blow up the Jewish child" and "Hang the US President", suffered from the extended name of "The National Conference to Support the Resistance and Freedom and Reject US Interference" and it was widely acknowledged that the extra four words made the acronym TNCTSTRAFARUI was a bit too hard to pronounce, even in Arabic.

But this year's was a smash! Delegates had break-out sessions in the evenings, over drinks of Mecca Cola. These "birds of a feather" sessions allowed bombmakers to socialize and network with Arab governmental officials in an informal way.

The highlight of the conference had to be the Honor Killing session on Saturday night. The delegates went "out on the town" in Beirut, looking for any unmarried woman who was socializing with a man (or a woman ugly enough to be a man.) Dragged by their hair to the delight of onlookers, their throats were slashed in the Grand Ballroom as their proud parents looked on.

It is not too late to register for the 2007 conference! Of particular importance are any scholarly papers that can prove that Jews are genetically closer to apes than humans; much research is being done in prestigious Arab universities and they are very close to announcing a breakthrough. "How to talk to CNN" is another always popular topic.

Of course, the usual papers extolling Nazism and at the same time identifying Zionism with Nazism are welcome, as always.

We might not have the global star-power of some other conferences, but we are confident that we are the leader in Middle East terror conferences, and we intend, inshallah, to stay number one!

Hotel packages are available - make your reservations now!

More stats from the "calm"

As a followup to yesterday's post about the end of the fake "calm," here are the numbers:

As Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and Fatah's Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced an end to their self-declared truce of January 2005, under which they pledged to refrain from attacking Israeli targets, an annual summary of terror activities for 2005 released by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on Sunday revealed that a total of 2,990 attacks were launched against Israeli targets. The attacks occurred after the truce was announced the report stated.

...There was a significant increase in Kassam rocket attacks on Israel with 377 recorded, compared with 309 in the previous year. At the same time there was a decrease in mortar shellings with 848 launched in 2005 compared with 1,231 in 2004. There was also a drop in bombing attacks with 199 recorded in 2005 compared with 592 in 2004. A total of 1,133 shooting attacks were carried out by terror groups in 2005 compared with 1,621 in 2004.

In 2005 security forces arrested 160 potential suicide bombers in raids in West Bank villages and towns, 59 affiliated with the Islamic Jihad, 29 with Hamas, 47 with Fatah Tanzim, 14 with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and 11 with other terror groups.

Over ten attacks a day during the "calm."

I see stuff like this on "Law and Order" all the time!

About 200 policemen stormed government offices in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Monday to protest at the failure of the Palestinian Authority to fight growing lawlessness, witnesses said.

The incident was the latest sign of chaos in Gaza, which has suffered growing internal unrest since Israel withdrew last September after 38 years of occupation. (What? It is not a "cycle of violence?" - EoZ)

Firing into the air as they ran through the streets, the policemen raided government offices, courthouses, an election office and the municipality building in Rafah.

They smashed windows at the Interior Ministry building and forced the staff to leave.

The number of police taking part in the protest swelled to some 200 officers, most of them armed, who forcibly shut down one government building after the other.

'We are calling on all officers to take off their uniforms because the Palestinian Authority has tied the hands of policemen, preventing us from implementing law and order,' one policeman told Reuters.

The police rampage followed the killing of a police officer in fighting with a Rafah clan on Thursday. After that incident, Palestinian police backed by gunmen imposed an armed blockade on the Rafah border crossing and forcibly ejected travellers.

Witnesses said the police did not wear uniforms -- in protest at what they said was the Palestinian Authority's failure to give them the power to restore law and order in Gaza. Some wore masks.

Masks! What a great idea! I wonder where they got the idea of masks from?

Here is a picture from September of Palestinian policemen wearing masks. Who could have been their inspiration?

HH #51

This week's Haveil Havalim is now up, hosted by Shiloh Musings. It is yet another excellent collection of the Best of the Jewish Blogosphere. And I'm not just saying that because of the links to my blog.

Because, this time, there aren't any!

I would be crushed, but the combination of the JIB awards and the fact that I got more hits today than ever before helps to ease the pain.

The fake "calm" is over

The fake "tahadiye" that Palestinian Arab terror groups said they agreed to in March 2005 is officially over.

Of course, during that "calm" the only let-up in terror attacks is because of Israeli responses to terror and the terrorist desire not to sabotage the Gaza withdrawal, not from any real commitment from the terrorist side. The amount of logistics involved in organizing a suicide attack proves quite well that the "calm" was a joke.

As Daled Amos points out, there were 23 major terror attacks during the supposed calm. He does not count the hundreds of rocket attacks and unsuccessful attacks on Jews during that same time.

There never was a truce (as the wire services called it) or even a calm. The constant references to such by the media will not be missed.

The fundamental problem

This morning I saw two very different essays that touched on the same theme from different worlds.

Redneck Texan wrote a very articulate essay arguing that the real clash of civilizations between Islam and the West is inevitable unless the West surrenders, and bemoaning the fact that in many ways the West is acting in French mode.

The Balitimore Sun published an essay and review of recent books about religious fundamentalism that argues that there is really no difference between Islamic fundamentalism and the fundamentalism of any other religion; that all fundamentalisms encourage violence. Although the author does mention that Islamic fundamentalism has a violent component that is lacking in other religions, she doesn't press the point.

I'm not quite as right-wing as Redneck Texan. Perhaps my own religious views make me more sympathetic to Islam as a religion as opposed to Islamism as a political ideology, although it gets harder to distinguish the two as time goes on. But to downplay or ignore the fact that the only major religious bloodshed that is occurring today is exclusively due to people who claim to be acting in the name of Allah is suicidally shortsighted.

The political component is what gets lost in the argument. I do not believe that there are any theocracies in the world today besides Islamic theocracies. Once a nation adapts fundamentalist religious law as national law, or a major component of national law is religion-based, that is when the dangers of religious fundamentalism become apparent. It is not likely that we will be seeing a Christian nation arise that is aimed at forcing the "second coming" so while it may be possible to argue that all fundamentalisms have a violent component in theory, in fact the only one that is a danger to the world is Islamic.

The Islamists have no qualms about couching their political arguments in religious terms, making the Western kneejerk reaction of supporting freedom of religion the major stumbling block in fighting Islamism. This mixing of politics and religion only helps the violent Islamic supremacist cause, as it paralyzes the West's reaction to Islamic terror.

So while I may be naive in my sympathy to Islam as opposed to Islamism, I think it is critical that the world make the same distinction - one is a religion that should be protected, the other is a violent political supremacist ideology that must be eradicated as quickly as possible. And the only way that will happen is through war, ugly as it is.

Perhaps even more importantly, Muslims themselves must clearly distinguish between the two. The fact that they appear to overwhelmingly support the political ideology of Islamism will only hurt them in the end, and it does not reflect well on their religion.

Palestinian Arabs cheapen their own lives again

An interesting detail about Thursday's terror attack, where a Palestinian Arab who aimed to blow up a children's Chanukah party was stopped by a true hero. The Palestinian media, of course, had a different take:

"Three citizens were heroically martyred today in an explosive operation
that targeted Israeli soldiers at a roadblock south of Tulkarm," declared
Voice of Palestine radio in the lead item of its two main news shows
Thursday afternoon.

The other Arabs that were killed were innocent bystanders, who were goign about their daily business. Yet the Arab media refers to them as "martyrs."

What makes something valuable? It is a simple question of how much importance people place on something. If people decide that a yellow substance that can be mined is valuable, then gold becomes valuable. Pet rocks and Pokemon cards once had value, but as people lost interest the items became less valuable.

It is easy to say that human life has infinite value, but in fact human life is only as valuable as people make it. If a community acts as if life is valuable, where much effort is spent in keeping human beings alive and safe from harm, then life itself becomes commensurately valuable.

On the other hand, if a community shows disdain for the lives of its own citizens, then they obviously do not value life as much and in a very real way their community's lives are worth less than the lives of the community that truly values life.

So, in a very real sense, Palestinian Arab blood is cheap - due to the acts of the Palestinian Arabs themselves.

By celebrating deaths of their own people, by even celebrating the deaths of people who had no desire nor intent to die, the Palestinian Arabs show how they truly feel.

Israel has shown far more regard for Palestinian Arab lives than the Arabs themselves have. Far more Palestinian Arabs have been killed by fellow Arabs and by each other than by Israelis. Palestinians under Israeli "occupation" were treated far better than those in Lebanon and Syria and under the PA, in every sense - economic, educational, medical.

Something is very wrong when the Palestinian Arabs' supposed enemies value Arab lives more than they themselves do.

The planets are aligned. Daughter of Ziyon has a new post.

The always beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon has decided to grace the JBlogosphere with her description of my nephew's wedding last month.

Take the racism test!

I was going through some old posts of mine when I used to waste my time frequenting Yahoo Message Boards before I discovered how much fun it is to instead waste my time blogging. Here's an oldie but goodie:

Do you consider Israel's policies racist? Take the Racism Test to see if you are racist too!

Do you believe that:

Jews should be able to live in a Palestinian state?
Jews should be able to own land in Palestine?
Jews should be able to build their own communities in Palestine?
Jews should be able to vote in Palestinian elections?
Jews should be able to freely immigrate to Palestine; no discrimination in immigration policies?
Jews should be able to freely worship at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and Rachel's Tomb outside Bethlehem?
Jews should be able to worship on the Temple Mount?
Jews should be able to be elected in a Palestinian parliament?
A Jew should be able to be elected President of Palestine?

Answer only one "no", and - congratulations! You must be a racist!

Today's Egyptian Police Phunnies

One of today's bottom stories. After all, Arabs killing people is not a big deal.

CAIRO (Reuters) - At least 10 Sudanese refugees died and around 50 were injured on Friday when Egyptian police dispersed a three-month sit-in by thousands of Sudanese demanding to be moved to another country, officials said.

The head of the local ambulance service, who did not want to be named, said 20 bodies had been taken to medical centres, but the number could not immediately be confirmed.

The Interior Ministry said 10 people had died in what it said was a stampede among the protesting refugees, who have been camped at the site in an affluent part of Cairo. It said 75 police officers were also injured when they tried to move them.

Witnesses said about 2,000 riot police stormed the camp site early on Friday and beat those inside with truncheons and sticks after officials had failed to persuade them to board buses waiting to take them to another site.

Pools of blood were visible on the pavement as men in the camp fought back with sticks and hurled bottles at the riot police, who also fired water cannon to try to disperse them.

About 4,000 police in total ringed the site, near the offices of the U.N. refugee agency, where the Sudanese had set up camp in squalid conditions in protest against what they said was poor treatment since they fled Sudan's lengthy civil war.

'The security forces were present to ensure a process of transporting those mentioned (Sudanese) and to prevent squatting,' the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Reuters witnesses said there were about six unconscious Sudanese, some of them young children, lying on the ground.

A doctor who examined a girl aged about four who was brought to him after being found unconscious said: 'She's dead.'

Just another day in a country that gets $2 billion annually from the US.

Poll: Arabs lose interest in the Palestinian issue

A poll released by the Arab American Institute looked at attitudes of the Arab people throughout the Middle East towards various issues:

Arab American Institute: Arab Attitudes Poll 2005:
1. The most important political issues facing the Arab world are largely the same in 2005 as they were in 2004: expanding employment, improving health care, and education ranking first, second, and fourth. In third place is an issue we did not include in our 2004 poll: ending corruption and nepotism. It is noteworthy that “resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” has dropped from second place in 2004 to seventh place in this year’s survey.

I have a theory about this.

In years past, the Arab governments had a monopoly on information that the Arab public could see, and from the middle of the 20th century until a couple of years ago, they had no problem using that monopoly to manipulate public opinion for their own purposes. This was clearly not the case in the earlier part of the 1900s; the Palestine Post articles I've been researching from the 40's shows that the Arab people were far more independent and outspoken than they had been in the 60's or 90's. They had no problem criticizing their government, and the divide between them and their supposed leaders was apparent.

The Arab people of the early 20th century were far more concerned with their personal family welfare than with any geopolitical issues. National boundaries were meaningless, as Arabs freely moved between areas to where ever they could best provide for their families. In fact, most "Palestinian Arabs" moved to the area after the Jews started moving in en masse for purely economic reasons - a large percentage in the 20's and 30's.

Not to say that they were all happy with Jews taking power in Israel; the Arab mental block against "losing" land that was once Muslim is strong. But to the average Palestinian Arab the Jews brought more prosperity and they co-existed fine. It was the leadership that felt threatened by Jews in power.

As Israel was restored, the neighboring Arab nations wanted to fight it by any means possible, and one very effective way was to manipulate Arab public opinion. The West has always had an irrational fear of the mythical "Arab street," and the Arab leaders used this fact as a weapon, threatening the West constantly with unleashing the power of their angry citizens. It was of course a joke - they were pulling the strings all along, and their citizens had little freedom to protest anything against their governments.

The best example of public opinion whiplash occured in Egypt during Camp David. The Egyptian press praised Israel for dismantling towns in the Sinai, showing TV footage and making Egyptians sympathetic towards peace. As soon as the Sinai was in Egyptian control again, the press did a quick 180 and the incitement started anew.

The Arab governmental control of their media had other consequences, of course. They could limit world coverage of their own atrocities, such as the Syrian massacre of 20,000 in Hama, and they could distract their people from their own corruption by playing up imagined Jewish crimes.

In the new century, things started changing. Three trends are funadmentally changing the ability that Arab governments have to manipulate public opinion: Satellite TV, the Internet, and the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now ordinary Arabs can see what is going on from different perspectives. Self-criticism is increasing. People want more freedom. They are no longer dependent on the government line. Even though the Arab countries are still far from democratic, the leaders are clearly reacting to their citizens, rather than just pushing them.

And the Arab people, when armed with real information, tend to see that the importance of the Palestinian issue is nothing compared to the problems they have in their daily lives. Blaming Israel for the problems of someone in Kuwait or Bahrain or even Egypt makes no sense. The Arabs are now feeling more free to express themselves, and freedom is a hard thing to give up once you have had it.

There were other interesting parts of the poll, some unexpected:

2. The most important concerns in personal life are matters close to home; family, quality of work, marriage, and religion. The significance of religion has declined in most countries and is in 5th place among younger Arabs.

3. Overall, Arabs appear to be satisfied with their present situation and optimistic about their future. Most significant changes occurred in Lebanon where both optimism and satisfaction doubled since 2002.

4. Significant majorities of Arabs in all countries accept women in the work place, especially if the reason is to provide financial support for their families, and smaller majorities also support women working for other reasons: “to find a fulfilling career” or “because she wants to work.”

5. In 2005, more Arabs prefer to self-identify with their country of origin, than with their religion, or “being Arab.” In 2002, religion and sect were principle self-identifiers.

6. Overall, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. have rebounded since 2004, but are still slightly lower than the already low 2002 ratings. Negative attitudes toward the U.S. have hardened due largely to Iraq and “American treatment of Arabs and Muslims.”

7. There is a growing pessimism toward “the likelihood of peace.” Positive attitudes have dropped in most countries, most notably in Egypt and Jordan.

8. Only in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates do Arabs report optimism in the promise of finding a job in their own country. Majorities, in the other four countries polled, report that they would relocate to another country to find work.

Each of these are worth an essay in themselves, but much of it is very encouraging and, I would argue, that much of it (acceptance of women in the workplace, less emphasis on religion) is also a result of the freer flow of information to the Arab world.

UPDATE: Daled Amos notices something else interesting about this poll.

PA TV's latest message of peace and co-existence

Palestinian Media Watch captured this:

PA TV program on Jaffa (Tel Aviv):

"It is time for you [Israelis] to be gone. Live wherever you like, but don't live among us. It is time for you to be gone. Die wherever you like, but don't die among us. We have the past here. We have the present, the present and the future. So leave our country, our land, our sea, our wheat, our salt, our wounds. Everything. And leave the memories."

These words of hate are the parting moments of yet another program on Palestinian Authority television calling for the destruction of Israel. The words, calling for the expulsion of every last Israeli from Israel, are spoken while the screen is showing Jaffa-Tel Aviv, Israelis and Israeli flags. Official PA TV has aired this twice in recent months.

To view this clip, click here

The "Roadmap" says:

At the outset of Phase I:

Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel.

Has any pressure ever been put on the PA to stop incitement in their official media?

The Quartet of Cluelessness

The United States and three international supporters of the Middle East peace process said Wednesday that the next Palestinian Cabinet should not include members of Hamas or other militant groups committed to violence.

A statement by the four parties, known as the Quartet, did not name Hamas, but said a future Palestinian Cabinet 'should include no member who has not committed to the principles of Israel's right to exist in peace and security and an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism.'

If the Quartet was serious about this statement, it just ruled out every single member of the PA from running in the election, not just Hamas.

There has not been any unequivocal desire to stop terror by any PA leader. Every terror attack is "condemned" because of its adverse effects on the Palestinian Arabs, not because it is wrong. All current PA ministers are members of Fatah, which expresses its explicit desire to destroy Israel. The fact that the PA maps of the region do not show Israel makes it very clear that they have no long-term desire to accept Israel's existence.

There is no difference between the Fatah members of the PA and the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, except that Fatah is more secular and slightly more willing to make a temporary truce with Israel en route to destroying it. If the Quartet thinks that its statement excludes Hamas only, it is showing only that it still does not have a clue.

Today's PA "condemnations"

Referring to today's terror attack:

Deputy Palestinian Prime Minister Nabil Shaath denounced the bombing, and said that it was a particular tragedy that Palestinians had been killed. 'We want such operations stopped,' he said."

"We only want operations that kill Jews exclusively," he added.

Elsewhere in condemnation news:

Concerning the Israeli newest military escalation, President Abbas condemned enforcing the off-limit zone northern Gaza Strip.

"Israel had no right to reoccupy the Gaza Strip under any pretexts." Abbas said.

And for the trifecta:

Palestinian security forces set up roadblocks throughout the southern Gaza Strip today as they stepped up a search for three British citizens abducted by Palestinian gunmen, the latest in a wave of kidnappings of foreigners in the chaotic area.

"We have contacted all Palestinian official armed organisations, who all condemned this and are helping us search for her from door to door.”

"Palestinian official armed organizations"? So Hamas murderers have some sort of membership card that allows them to blow up Jews but not to kidnap other Westerners?

After a few tense days of anticipation, the 2005 Jewish and Israeli Blog Award page sponsored by the Jerusalem Post and Israellycool is finally up, and I am honored to be nominated in three categories!

For each of those categories, to be honest, I wouldn't vote for myself. There are much better blogs than this one in every respect. Specfically, these are who I believe should win my categories:

Best Designed Blog: Jewlicious is a fantastically designed site. Even my designer, the beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon, agrees that it is better than the job she did here.

Honorable mentions to The View From Here and Oceanguy.

Best Israel Advocacy Blog: Very tough category. Iris was not nominated and it is my current favorite just for its sheer completeness - I now go there as often as Daily Alert to get the latest news on topics I write about.

Of those nominated, I like IsraPundit, Soccer Dad, the Muqata and Smooth Stone, but I have to admit that I am not yet familiar with many of the nominated blogs. Which is one of the reasons I love these awards - to get a chance to see blogs I missed this year.

Best series: I have to go with Aaron's Story at Elie's Expositions. Brilliantly written, absorbing, terrifying and heartbreaking. It is the single best piece of writing I have yet seen on the web.

I was disappointed not to see Rose's Story nominated - it is well worth reading and very well done.

I am looking forward to checking out many more of the nominated sites. It is a shame that many fine blogs were not nominated or did not properly get nominated; perhaps next year a nomination form would make more sense. This is not to take away from the amazing job that Dave at Israellycool has done in getting this organized - yasher koach and thank you! Thanks also to the Jerusalem Post for hosting the awards this year, adding much visibility to the still-young JBlogosphere. And, again, thanks to those who nominated me.

Preliminary voting starts January 9th, so there is plenty of time to check out all the great blogs listed.

Iran's Mehr News obsessed with Holocaust denial

No fewer than seven articles have been printed in the Iranian Mehr "News" site denying the Holocaust in the past month.

Interestingly, the first one came before Ahmadenijad made his remarks - it was an article by an author upset that the UN decided to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Then they added articles where they interview Holocaust deniers and then claim that Palestinians are the real victims of genocide.

But - don't call them anti-semites!

The German state of Bavaria banned a radical Islamist group on Wednesday, saying materials seized from its offices urged Muslims to murder Jews and Christians.

'With today's ban of the Multi-Kultur-Haus (MKH) association, Bavaria is making the limits clear to supporters of foreign extremist organisations,' the state's interior minister, Guenther Beckstein, said in a statement.

Bavarian authorities had been watching the MHK (sic) in the town of Neu-Ulm for some time. Security officials had previously seized textbooks and other publications, materials Beckstein said clearly showed the group's radical nature.

One book seized from the MHK (sic) library called on Sunni Muslims to 'execute Jews and Christians as infidels,' the statement said.

An audio cassette said: 'Oh worthy ones, oh friends of love, send us bombs to kill the Jews with. No to the Jews, no to the Jews!'

I'm just posting this story because I love the name of the banned group: Multi-Kultur-Haus
.

Western multiculturalism and Muslim supremacism are two sides of the same coin, so it is not surprising that an Islamist supremacist group would hide behind that innocuous sounding name.

Shmendrik Award winners announced!

The eagerly-anticipated first annual Shmendrik Awards were given out by Dry Bones. As Yaakov Kirschen says:

The 1st Annual Shmendrik Award "winners" have been chosen! The annual awards “honor” those who most distinguished themselves by their seemingly unwitting support of anti-Semitism.

MEMRI's top 10 Muslim conspiracy theories in 2005

A fun read.

By STEVEN STALINSKY - The MEMRI Report

A Saudi journalist, Mshari Al-Zaydi, wrote about the "disease" of the Arab press blaming others for the Arab world's misfortunes in a London-based newspaper, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, on November 20. "This huge obsession among some Arabs and Muslims regarding conspiracy theories and the belief that the world is lurking in wait to pounce on us, as if the world has no worries other than cooking up plans, policies, and moves in order to realize one objective only: to eliminate Islam, Muslims, and Arabs," Mr. Al-Zaydi wrote.

The following are the top 10 conspiracy theories of 2005:

10. An Iraqi Shiite imam, Jalal Al-Din Al-Saghir, gave a sermon on December 16 that was broadcast on Al-Furat TV. He called Al-Jazeera "a TV channel known to be guided by the Mossad and ... whose purpose is to damage ... Islamic interests."

9. On a program that aired September 30 on Hezbollah-backed Al-Manar TV, the director of Sweden's Radio Islam, Ahmad Rami, (who was found guilty of incitement against Jews and served time in prison) discussed Jews in the West who "have 100% complete control of the media, political parties, trade unions, and publishing houses."

8. Saudi Arabia's Al-Majd TV interviewed a Jordanian lecturer, Sheik Ahmad Nawfal, about Jewish history on November 13. "David and Solomon were among our [Muslim] ranks. If Solomon had a temple, we would be worshipping Allah in it. We would not be worshipping idols and polytheism in it, like they do," he said. "There is no indication that a temple existed there."

7. Following the December 6 C-130 plane crash in Iran, the Iranian Student News Agency quoted the secretary-general of the Association of Muslim Journalists, Parviz Esmaeili, blaming, "U.S. state terrorism." Rambling about American sanctions on Iran, Mr. Esmaeili called on, "all the heads of state in the world" to discuss at international meetings this "plane crash and similar incidents over the past two decades [in Iran] as evidence of the U.S. technological crimes."

6. Mr. Esmaeili went on to tell ISNA that if the attacks of September 11, 2001, were investigated, the probe would show that the perpetrators were "the U.S. government and not phantom players like Al Qaeda." Other programs on Iranian TV devoted to the attacks included French author Thierry Meyssan's August 30 interview with Jaame-Jam2 TV and a November 17 interview with an Iranian filmmaker, Nader Talebzadeh, on IRINN TV.

5. Arab TV has also been rampant with September 11 conspiracies, including Al Jazeera's series "The Truth Behind 9-11," which was widely viewed throughout September, and a retired Egyptian general, Muhammad Khalaf, on Al-Mihwar TV on September 11 of this year detailing the American government's "secret plan" first developed in 1999 by "Bush senior."

4. Books on conspiracies continue to be popular throughout the Middle East. One devoted to the Bush family was the topic of a November 11 interview on Syrian TV featuring Syrian cleric Mohammad Said Ramadhan Al-Bouti: "Bush ... the grandfather of the current American president ... wrote a book about the life of the Prophet Mohammed. In this book, which was published in 1831, he says: 'As long as the Muslims' empire is not destroyed, God will not allow the return of the Jews to the homes of their fathers.'"

3. On December 14, the Syrian state owned daily Teshreen wrote about a book called "The Balance of Horror in an Open War," by Abdul Majid Ammar. It includes an analysis of the "Zionist entity and the conspiracies it hatched against the Arab nation in order to achieve its sinister expansionist plans."

2. Following the December 12 assassination of a Lebanese member of parliament and a leading anti-Syrian writer, Gibran Tueni, Iran's foreign minister, Hamid Reza Asefi, was quoted as saying it was "in line with ... the Zionist regime." A Teshreen headline on the story read, "Israeli Factor Should Not Be Dropped." On December 18, Al-Seyassah quoted Syria's information minister, Mahdi Dakhlallah, as saying, "Tueni was in debt and was killed by his debtors."

1. Many Arab writers have attacked Detlev Mehlis, the lead U.N. investigator of the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Mr. Mehlis's mother has been accused of being a prominent Zionist, as the Syrian judicial Web site Al-Nazaha reported on November 17. The deputy editor of the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya, Abd Al-Wahhab 'Adas, reported November 12 on his mother's "major role in bringing Jews from Germany to Palestine" and that "Mehlis's mother was killed on the Golan Heights by Syrian sniper fire."

September 1943: No Jewish children left in Poland

In response to the new fashion of Holocaust denial sweeping the world, I have here a tiny article buried in the September 3, 1943 Palestine Post, one of hundreds of contemporaneous articles that documented the methodical murder of European Jewry.

Speaking of Munich - The Mahmoud Abbas connection

Now that the world is looking at the Munich terror attack again thanks to Steven Spielberg, this Sports Illustrated article from 2002 has some details that are relevant today.

Following the Oslo Accords of 1993, the mastermind of Black September's Munich attack enjoyed a certain respectability. Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, a.k.a. Abu Daoud, sat on the Palestinian National Council, where in 1996 he joined a majority in voting to revoke the clause in the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction. Though Israel had long known of his role at Munich -- Mossad was believed to have been involved in a 1981 assassination attempt in which he was shot six times -- he even carried an Israeli-issued VIP pass that allowed him to shuttle between his home in Amman, Jordan, and the occupied territories.

All that changed in 1999 after Abu Daoud openly acknowledged his role in the Olympic attack, both in his memoir, Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, published in Paris, and in an interview with the Arab TV network al-Jazeera. Germany issued an international arrest warrant on Abu Daoud, and Israel canceled his travel credentials, barring him from the Palestinian lands he had spent his adult life trying to liberate....

"At the time, it was the correct thing to do for our cause," Abu Daoud told SI. AP
In late July, SI's Don Yaeger went to the Middle East to find the 72-year-old Abu Daoud. After five days in Syria, where he met with leaders of several Palestinian groups, including the Palestinian Authority, PA president Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction and the militant Hamas, Yaeger received a call from Abu Daoud, who said he was in Cyprus. Abu Daoud, who would not reveal where he resides -- saying only that he lives with his wife on a pension provided by the PA -- agreed to answer written questions. Among his claims, in his memoir and to SI, are these:

# Though he wasn't involved in conceiving or implementing it, "the [Munich] operation had the endorsement of Arafat." Arafat is not known to have responded to the allegations in Abu Daoud's book. In May 1972 four Black Septembrists hijacked a Sabena flight from Brussels to Tel Aviv, hoping to free comrades from Israeli jails. But Israeli special forces stormed the plane, killing or capturing all the terrorists and freeing every passenger, leaving Arafat, by Abu Daoud's account, desperate to boost morale in the refugee camps by showing that Israel was vulnerable.

# Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud's allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it." Today the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner "uncompromised by terror," yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
[...]

# While he doesn't regret his role in the operation, Abu Daoud told SI, "I would be against any operation like Munich ever again. At the time, it was the correct thing to do for our cause. ... The operation brought the Palestinian issue into the homes of 500 million people who never previously cared about Palestinian victims at the hands of the Israelis." Today, he says, an attack on an event like the Olympics would only damage the Palestinians' image.

Dead Jews - to the Palestinians, it is both a strategy and a tactic!

Another detail about the moderate Palestinian leader:

Daoud also was interviewed about the Munich massacre for a film called "One Day in September," produced by John Battsek and Arthur Cohn for Sony Pictures Classics. Director Kevin Macdonald said Abu Daoud admitted Black September was merely the cover name adopted by Fatah members when they wanted to carry out terrorist attacks.

The PLO operative recalled how Arafat and Abu Mazen both wished him luck and kissed him when he set about organizing the Munich attack.

Spain is "occupied territory"

Hamas has a children's newspaper that describes the Spanish city of Seville, calling on Muslims to liberate it as well as the rest of Spain.

This is not surprising; Bin Laden himself mentioned "the tragedy of Andalusia" in his videotaped message right after 9/11, referring to the Muslim loss of sovreignty over Spain in the 15th century. And the phrase "tragedy of Andalusia" is not particular to Bin Laden; other Islamist websites use it freely, sometimes as veiled threats.

Here is an excellent Muslim analysis of how mainstream Muslims think of "al-Andalus." Many feel that Madrid was the target of Islamic terror more because of Andalusia rather than Iraq.

It seems that most Muslims feel that once some territory is Muslim, it is Muslim forever and needs to be taken back forcefully. In other words, there is no difference between the West Bank, Israel and Spain; it is more a matter of where to focus first.

And it is instructive that Muslims are teaching this to their children, today.

Arab boycott news

A month ago, there were headlines trumpeting the "fact" that Saudi Arabia dropped its long-standing economic boycott of Israel as a pre-condition to joining the World Trade Organization.

Unfortunately, the Saudis deny it:

JEDDAH, 22 December 2005 — Saudi Arabia announced yesterday that it would maintain its first-degree boycott of Israeli products despite joining the World Trade Organization (WTO).

An official at the Commerce and Industry Ministry denied reports that the Kingdom had lifted the boycott. “The Kingdom has lifted only the second and third degree boycott of Israel in accordance with a decision taken by the GCC summit 10 years ago,” the official said, adding that the Saudi accession to WTO was not linked to the lifting of the boycott.

Whether the WTO will still allow Saudi Arabia to join even though it is explicitly breaking the rules remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, AP reports that Israel has a healthy underground trade with Arab countries anyway:

CAIRO, Egypt Dec 26, 2005 — Staff members at a Riyadh hospital got a surprise when they looked at the fine print on the paper cups they were using. Workers in a storeroom at a Dubai hospital were similarly shocked when they took a close look at the tags on a large shipment of uniforms, towels and sheets.

The labels said 'Made in Israel,' according to recent newspaper reports from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have laws that ban imports from the Jewish state.

Experts say the camouflaged trade, with just a small portion receiving publicity, has been going on for years between Israel and its officially hostile Arab neighbors.

The hidden trade is worth about $400 million a year about two and a half times what Israel sold to its official Arab trading partners, Egypt and Jordan, in 2004 said Gil Feiler, the director of Info-Prod Research, a Tel Aviv consultancy specializing in Arab markets, and an economic professor at Bar Ilan University.

Others say such estimates are significantly inflated.

'All the figures are very sexy for the press, but the reality is much less than what is written,' said Dan Catarivas, foreign trade director at the Israeli Manufacturers' Association.

The true amount of Arab imports from Israel is impossible to establish because neither side makes it public, with Israeli-made goods moving to Arab customers through third countries Cyprus or the Netherlands, for example, which list the shipments as local exports.

This naturally upsets the Arab "intelligentsia" who bemoan the fact that Israel gets any recognition whatsoever from anyone.

As was the case in 1946, the Arab boycott against Israel is an ineffective weapon that hurts the Arab people more than it hurts Israel. One would think that after 60 years it would be obvious that Israel's economy is the strongest in the Middle East despite the official boycott, and that the Arab nations that trade with Israel are benefitting. It is also obvious that the entire reason that the Palestinian economy is in a shambles is because of the intifada, the Palestinians lost their jobs in Israel.

Arab pigheadedness once again hurts Arabs while trying vainly to hurt Israel.

"The Society for Resisting Normalization with the Zionist Enemy" was not available for comment.

Disproportionality

AbbaGav, in fine form, displays the trademark black Israeli humor with his solution to Israeli aggression: Proportionality Packs. One size fits all!

I actually have a very proportionate solution of my own to the problem of Palestinian Arab terror, and it is all based on the famous "land-for-peace" formula. Since the entire world seems to accept the concept of Israel ceding land for peace, it stands to reason that the converse should be true as well: if there is no peace, Israel should take more land!

Every terror attack should have a response from Knesset: one square kilometer of "Palestinian" territory will be irrevocably annexed by Israel for every dead Israeli, and it will be named for the victim. All the rest of the land will remain up for negotiation but the Palestinian Arabs would see their dream of a terror statelet dry up in direct response to every terror attack.

Israel can start with unpopulated areas, but it should be methodical and planned, one square kilometer at a time. The night of an attack, the fence goes up and the guards move over.

Given the Pavlovian nature of Palestinian Arabs, this would train the people very quickly not to support the terrorists whose actions are resulting in the exact opposite result than they planned for.

This would stop terror faster than any other "proportionate" response.

The problem in a nutshell

Here, in a nutshell, is why peace will forever be elusive beween Israel and Arabs.

In this article, the writer says that Israel is practicing genocide against Palestinian Arabs, that Israel acts like Nazis, and that Auschwitz is comparable to Sabra and Shatilla.

But he does not deny that the Holocaust happened.

Which means that in any other universe, he would be denounced as an extremist with no concept of history and proportion, as a historical illiterate and as a person who cynically uses the Holocaust to prop up Palestinian Arab pseudo-cause.

But since he is an Arab, he must be a moderate.

The Arab world is utterly bereft of people who can actually speak to these sorts of issues in a reasonable way, so by the fact that his unreasonableness does not extend to advocating genocide, he sounds reasonable by comparison.

These are the sorts of people Israel has to deal with.

Three leading figures of the Middle East have rushed to revise and re-read the Holocaust from a completely immoral and inhumane perspective. Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad began by denying the massacre against Jews ever took place. Soon after, leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, reiterated the same ideas to be followed by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mahdi Akef.

The denial of the Holocaust equates the clearance of Adolf Hitler, with which Islamists should not associate. Such denial is like dissociating Sharon from Sabra and Shatila, Begin from Deir Yassin, the Turks from the massacring of Armenians and Saddam Hussein of his mass murders.

We must draw a line between the fact of the torture of innocent Jews in concentration camps and the Zionist exploitation of the Holocaust with its aim of maintaining a Zionist state that practices the same methods of the Nazis but against Palestinians. For our own sake, we must acknowledge that Zionists cunningly used the genocide of the Jews for political blackmail, whereas no Arab or Muslim organizations have yet documented professionally the genocide of Palestinians to present to the world. Meanwhile, some Arab political parties still insist upon denying the annihilation against the Kurdish village Halabjah and the mass graves perpetrated by Saddam Hussein's regime, however, will seek to justify such horrendous acts!

UPDATE: Judeopundit found an Arab-penned article in Lebanon that did not have the same problems as this one. So the tiny sliver of hope that Israel always clings to, that there might be Arabs who can make sense, has not been completely extinguished.

JIB awards warming up

The Jerusalem Post is getting ready for the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards, with what appears to be a beta test page of the nominations. Not all the categories are there yet but it is looking good! It is also a great page to check out the entire JBlogosphere from.

I also failed to extend my hakoras hatov to those who nominated me (besides the self-nominations, I admit I was weak): Soccer Dad nominated this blog for Best Designed Blog (where most of the credit goes to Daughter of Ziyon) and Judeopundit nominated it for Best Israel Advocacy Blog. Thank you! (I had nominated myself for Israel Advocacy and I nominated the Palestine Post-ings sister blog for Best Series. Part of me hopes that the editors of the Jerusalem Post won't be able to resist the nomination of a blog dedicated to their early years!)

The first round of voting starts next week. Congratulations to the entire J-Blogosphere for some outstanding blogs and articles, and thanks to Israellycool for doing the hard work behind this event!

UPDATE: The voting has been pushed back a week. Check here for details.

Haveil Havalim #50 is out

Daled Amos hosts this week's Haveil Havalim, in which I embarrassingly nominated three articles (two of them at Soccer Dad's request) and all three ended up making it in. So for a brief time I can fool myself into thinking that I am a major star in the JBlog universe.

The three articles are my Chanukah gift to the blogosphere, my comparison of the news coverage of the same event from two very different sources, and my historical posting from 1949 of a very relevant analysis of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem.

Daled Amos himself is too modest to refer to his own great observation about Reuters.

As usual, a great collection of articles and links!

Iranian Mehr "News" verifies - Holocaust really was a hoax!

If this is the kind of "research" that we can expect from the Iranian world, then we don't have to worry much about Iranian nukes.

TEHRAN, Dec. 24 (MNA) -- Following the statement by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who on December 14 called the Holocaust a myth, the Mehr News Agency contacted a number of leading independent historians and scholars from different parts of the world to ask them their views on the idea.

This is followed by quotes from well-known Holocaust deniers and a smattering of emails from first-name-only correspondents.

And yet, Google still considers Mehr a "news" source.