Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 24, 2007

Guest poster Sophia on the CNN "religious warriors" sham

Sophia wrote a great comment on the CNN miniseries this week that deserves its own post:

=====================================================
I have watched all three segments, practically fell asleep during the third (on "Christian Warriors"; was very interested by the second, and was deeply disturbed by the first, which showed Jews as extremists, ugly, rich, and manipulative, not to mention violent, thieving, and bad.

On the other hand, we had uber WASPs Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush, James Baker, Charles Percy and John Mearscheimer - people deeply involved in big business and international politics - explaining how the sneaky, pushy, manipulative Joos run the US. The term "more powerful than Foggy Bottom" was actually used by Amanpour, as were these statements:

"6,000 miles away, in New York, defiance comes dressed in diamonds... God's Jewish Warriors in America...

"With a smile and a song, they ignore their government's policies."

This came packaged with references to "illegal" settlements and of course, Meir Kahane.

This cartoon was maybe a high point:

http://www.coxandforkum.com/arch...ves/ 000785.html

C & F seem interested to discover that they are presented as part of a Jewish conspiracy, go figure.

http://www.coxandforkum.com/arch...ves/ 001180.html

CNN did manage to scrounge up some hapless fools who had prepared a bomb, but fortunately were arrested by Israeli police before they could set it off. Their target was a Palestinian girl's school - an abominable thing to even contemplate. However rather than attributing this nauseating plot to Judaism it would have been more to the point to metnion the attack that didn't fail: the one that killed 26 Israeli schoolchildren at Ma'alot in 1974, and wounded 60 other people.

Baruch Goldman was prominently featured of course, along with a conspirator who had had designs on the Dome of the Rock, but fortunately was caught and imprisoned and has since renounced violence.

It is interesting to note that one can practically count all these "warriors" on one hand - was this mentioned? NO. There was no discussion of Judaism, no tender scene of a Jewish mother or wife with her family, as there were in both the Muslim and Christian segments.

Not mentioned at all was the REAL destruction of Jewish holy sites, nor the fact that following the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank & East Jerusalem in 1948, Jews were forbidden even to worship in Hebron or at the Kotel.

However, Sabra and Shatilla sneaked in; though Amanpour did mention that it was a Lebanese Christian job, merely invoking Sabra and Shatilla cast yet another pall on the Jewish people. For the fact of the matter is, we have always been collectively responsible even for things we didn't actually do. And I fear this program will merely incite more hatred and misunderstanding, rather than build a bridge as Amanpour stated she wanted to do in the case of the Islamic "warriors".

In contrast, even the most extreme Muslims were given a human face. Interesting aspects of Shia theocracy were investigated. There was no real investigation of Saudi Arabian extremism, however, though Qutb was mentioned, and his aversion to American materialism; of course Muslim Brotherhood was discussed but in the context of a "moderate", mainstream political party oppressed by the Egyptian government.

There was a Palestinian suicide terrorist prominently featured but even he was given a warmly human face: he had hoped to be an artist, and turned to terror after witnessing an Israeli raid that killed a young girl who died in his arms.

No such humanity was granted G*d's Jewish Warriors. No such context, no discussion of the fear and hardship confronting Israel and the Jewish people; even the security barrier was mocked - Amanpour did interview an Israeli lawyer who works for Palestinians affected by the barrier, as well as a Palestinian man who had to move when the Western Wall plaza was constructed. His sad plight was detailed at length and horrible bulldozers were prominently featured.

No. No humanity, no context, no history was granted G*d's Jewish Warriors.

And that is very great shame.

Oh, this is so tempting....

ArabicNews.com is for sale.

Should I make an offer?

Understated headline of the day

From The Australian:

"A nuclear-armed Iran would not be good"

I love the smell of "work accidents" in the morning

Ma'an says:

A member of Hamas' Qassam Brigades was killed, and another four were injured, in an aerial attack from an Israeli military helicopter near Car's Market in Gaza City at midnight on Thursday.

The car in which the five Qassam Brigades activists were travelling was shelled.

According to Palestinian medical sources, ambulances evacuated the corpse of 20-year-old Ahed Said Ahmad Abu Jabal and the four wounded Palestinians to Ash Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The Israeli forces have denied shelling a Palestinian car in Gaza City.

AP has it slightly differently:

An explosion ripped through a car east of Gaza City late Thursday, witnesses said, and hospital officials said one person was killed and another was seriously wounded.

Hamas security officials said Israel fired a surface-to-surface missile at a group of Hamas fighters, killing one and wounding an unspecified number of other fighters, including one who was seriously hurt.

The Israeli army, which customarily acknowledges its air and ground operations against Palestinian militants, denied involvement in its initial response. Some blasts that do not involve the military are caused by explosive devices intended for use against Israel that go off prematurely.

This reminds me of an old Dry Bones strip from the 1970s or 80s - I wish I could find it - where an Arab terrorist, reading a newspaper, says something like, "Hey look! There was a gas explosion in Tel Aviv, killing some kids! Fatima, call a press conference to take responsibility! We Palestinians have to keep up on the news."

The 2007 PalArab self-death count is now at 510.

UPDATE: A PalArab shot and killed in a "family quarrel" during a wedding in the West Bank. 511.

"Shmuel of Arabia "

From the Jewish Journal, by David Suissa

...Rav [Shmuel] Miller has more than stories. He's an expert in Arabic. He can learn Torah in Arabic, and often does. In the pristine shul that he built in his backyard, he teaches his sons and others how to study Jewish texts in Arabic. If it were up to him, there'd be many more Jews learning Arabic.

It's not obvious why this Jewish man would have a passion for a language that today is too often associated with suicide bombers and radical Islamists. Here is a French Orthodox rabbi who has studied at the top yeshivas in Europe; an expert in Talmud, philosophy and mysticism; a lover of Jews, Torah and the Hebrew language; a sofer who writes mezuzahs and Torah scrolls in perfect Hebrew calligraphy; and yet, when the subject of Arabic comes up, his eyes light up like he's one of the kids at the Munchies candy store on Saturday night.

I know the emotional arguments. I've been hearing them for years from my parents, aunts, uncles and their friends who grew up in Morocco. They have nostalgia for the past. They love Arabic music, and they're crazy about the language. It's a little like my Ashkenazic friends who wax about the joys of Yiddish. There are words in the Judeo-Arab dialect spoken by my parents that light up the heart like no word in French or English can.

I remember this one word I was particularly fond of: "Shlemto." If one of her kids would do something wrong, my mother would use that word to convey that "I really love this kid, but I really wish he wouldn't do that, but at the same time, I want everyone to know how much I still love him even when he does something that really annoys me."

That's with one word. There are many others.

In the Morocco that I remember, Arabic was the daily language of emotion.

But what about for Rav Miller, a rabbi who was born and raised in France? His first language is French, then Hebrew. Where does his mad love for Arabic come from?

If you see him, you get some clues. There's a regal, Lawrence of Arabia quality to him. Short beard. Piercing eyes. Always upright. He looks like he'd fit right in with the romantic mystics of the Middle Ages.

But beyond that, after hanging out with him for the better part of a year since I moved to the hood, and seeing him give classes at my place on everything from the patriarchs to Spinoza, I have a simpler explanation for his Arabian passions.

He loves Arabic because he loves Judaism.

Take his love affair with Maimonides. He wanted to read "The Guide to the Perplexed" in the language in which it was written, so he studied it in Arabic. He says this gave him a deeper, "more palpable" understanding of Jewish ideas. For example, the word in Arabic that Maimonides uses for the Hebrew daat (knowledge) is eidrak, which refers to a knowledge that you "apprehend" or "take in." It is a union between the modrak, the one who understands, and the modrik, the one who is understood. Whereas the Hebrew daat denotes something external and impersonal, the Arab eidrak defines a knowledge that is more personal and contemplative, one that ultimately becomes part of you.

Similarly, by studying Rabbi Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari in the original Arabic, Rav Miller got a more subtle take on the problematic notion that Jews are the "chosen people." Looked at superficially, the idea of being "chosen" can easily offend other groups by suggesting racial superiority. In Arabic, however, the notion of the Hebrew segula (chosen) is more layered. The Arab term khassuss speaks to a one-to-one intimacy with God. In the original Arabic text of Rabbi Halevi, Jews are more likely to be the "particular, singular, private" people, rather than the more blunt "chosen" people. It's about intimacy, not superiority.

How's that for a disconnect? The language of Osama bin Laden and Hamas can teach the Jews some important subtleties about their own faith.

That does take a little getting used to.

Maybe that's why Rav Miller has no illusions about Arabic classes ever catching on in the Jewish world. Of course, that won't stop him from continuing to give his own classes to his inner circle, and from spending long nights poring through ancient Arab texts written by Jewish sages.

Sounds like a neat person!

A simple test to see who is most dangerous

Tonight's last installment of CNN's series of moral equivalency, which I do not plan to watch, prompts a question to determine who among the religious zealots are the most dangerous:

Are Muslims who walk through any Jewish or Christian "hotbeds" of "extremism" taking their lives into their hands? Can a Muslim walk, in full religious attire, unmolested through Boro Park, Brooklyn or in Bnei Brak? Can he walk though Rome?

Are Christians or Jews who walk through neighborhoods in Gaza or Iraqi cities or Riyadh doing anything that might endanger their lives?

If religious people are in danger of being killed by people of other religions simply because of who they are, it seems a pretty sure bet that the would-be killers are the dangerous ones.

Today's Honest Reporting is quite good

Check out today's Honest Reporting communique.

Especially good are links to Dore Gold's demolition of Walt and Mearsheimer, as well as the Forward's description of their dishonesty.

1960: Pakistan's leader criticizes the Muslim world

Here's a remarkable article from Time from November 21, 1960:

To non-Moslems, Arab leaders often seem more interested in bemoaning lost glories and nursing old grudges than in attacking the problems of the day. Last week Pakistan's Moslem President Mohammed Ayub Khan arrived in Cairo and throwing away a diplomatically phrased set speech, delivered the sharpest criticisms of Moslems by a Moslem heard in many a year.
Ayub spoke plainly on his view of the long-festering problem of refugees along the Israeli border, where more than a million Palestinians—those who fled or were ejected by Israel, and the children born to them since—still inhabit squalid detention camps in Jordan, Syria and the Gaza Strip. The Arabs have let the U.N. look after them, arguing that to provide the refugees with permanent homes and jobs would seem to be acquiescing in the existence of Israel. Ayub remarked pointedly that after partition, his own Pakistan made room for 9,000,000 Moslem refugees from India, and did it without asking or expecting outside help in shouldering the cost.
Moslems should ask themselves, said Ayub Khan, why "all over the world the Moslem communities are the most backward and most uneducated." He answered his own question: Because the Islamic culture let slip its "earlier dynamism," relapsed into "conformism, superficiality and superstition." Said Ayub Khan: "The kingdoms and crowns which the Moslems have lost in the course of history are far less important than the kingdom of the free and searching mind, which they have lost through intellectual stagnation."
Sharing the platform with him, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser as usual blamed all the Moslem world's problems on "imperialists." Ayub disagreed. Parliamentary government failed in Egypt and Pakistan, he said bluntly, "through no fault of that system. I say, it was our fault. We were not yet ready."

The Muslim world is in no better shape today than it was 47 years ago, and Muslim leaders with Ayub Khan's perception remain diminishingly rare.

Amanpour and CNN on Islamic terror

Again, I didn't watch the show, so I cannot comment on editing and music and such. From the transcript it appears to be much better than I hoped, and it seems to be properly eschew justifications and rationalizations for the most part.

A couple of points:

Karen Armstrong, "religious historian," comes off consistently as an apologist for Islamic terror and as the true voice of moral equivalence between Islam and other religions. Christiane Amanpour is much more critical of Islam than Armstrong.

Amanpour is injecting more of her own editorializing, far more explicitly, than she did in the Jewish episode. She seems more offended by Islamic misogyny and discrimination against women than by the terrorists murdering thousands of innocents. The section on women in Islam takes up too much time given that there are so many real topics about Islamic terror that can be covered.

It is nice to see that the final segment was about Palestinian Arab jihadist terror, but that section again seemed short compared to the feminist sections.

In the end, what Amanpour seems to be saying with this series is that all religion is bad, which is the wrong message.

And while this episode for the most part seems to have been properly critical (it did pull some punches when interviewing an American Muslim woman who did the usual apologetic definition of "jihad") the very fact that it is only one of three shows about religious violence ends up diluting the message unacceptably.

According to one website that keeps statistics, the number of people killed by Islamic terror has been 4134 - in just the past two months. The total this year is over 15,000. In other words, the equivalent of a 9/11 occurs every couple of months.

To compare the terrorism done by Jews and Christians in the name of religion to that of Muslims, even implicitly, is obscene.

Oddly enough, Saudi style

The Saudi-based Arab News tries really hard to be a moderate voice in an extremist society. But often it doesn't even realize that its own biases are still quite a bit to the edge.

Here's a story from Arab News which is meant to be funny:

The Bizarre Files: Man Divorces Wife Over Plate of Spaghetti

MADINAH — A Saudi man divorced his wife because she gave a plate of spaghetti to their neighbor. According to a local newspaper report the husband found out his wife dared to give away food to a non-family member when the neighbor came to return the plate. Angry about the gross infraction of house rules, the man took the plate and reportedly broke it over his wife’s head. After assaulting his wife with a piece of flatware, the husband declared an end to their 8-year marriage. A Madinah court recently finalized the divorce. That’ll teach a woman to be kind to her neighbor!

While it is indeed funny to read about a man divorcing a woman over spaghetti, for some reason the fact that the husband assaulted his wife at least twice - which turns this story from comedy to tragedy -is treated as just par for the course.

Fatah officer: "Thanks to US training we killed 1000 Israelis"

From the New York Sun, another eye-opening article by the only journalist who actually interviews Palestinian Arab terrorists :

By AARON KLEIN
Special to the Sun

RAMALLAH -- American-run programs that train Fatah militias were instrumental in the "success" of the Palestinian intifada that began in 2000, a senior Fatah militant told The New York Sun.

"I do not think that the operations of the Palestinian resistance would have been so successful and would have killed more than one thousand Israelis since 2000 and defeated the Israelis in Gaza without these [American] trainings," a senior officer of President Abbas's Force 17 Presidential Guard unit, Abu Yousuf, said.

America has longstanding training programs at a base in the West Bank city of Jericho for members of Force 17, which serves as de facto police units in the West Bank, and for another major Fatah security force, the Preventative Security Services.

This weekend diplomatic security officials announced that the State Department will begin training Force 17 again this year in an effort to bolster Mr. Abbas against Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip in June when the terror group easily defeated American-backed Fatah forces in the territory.
...
Many members of Force 17 and the Preventative Security Services also openly serve in Fatah's declared "military wing," Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which took credit along with the Islamic Jihad terror group for every suicide bombing in Israel between 2005 and 2006. The Brigades is responsible for more terrorism from the West Bank than any other Palestinian Arab organization.

Abu Yousuf, the Force 17 officer, received American training in Jericho in 1999 as a member of the Preventative Security Services. He is a chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Ramallah, where he is accused of participating in anti- Israel terrorism, including recent shootings, attacks against Israeli forces operating in the city, and a shooting attack in northern Samaria in December 2000 that killed the leader of the ultranationalist Kahane Chai organization, Benyamin Kahane.

After the Kahane murder, Mr. Yousuf was extended refuge by Yasser Arafat to live in the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader's Ramallah compound, widely known as the Muqata. Mr. Yousuf still lives in the compound.

Prime Minister Olmert last month granted Mr. Yousuf amnesty along with 178 other Brigades leaders reportedly in a gesture to Mr. Abbas.

Speaking during an interview for the upcoming book "Schmoozing with Terrorists," Mr. Yousuf said his American trainings were instrumental in attacks on Israelis. "All the methods and techniques that we studied in these trainings, we applied them against the Israelis," he said.

"We sniped at Israeli settlers and soldiers. We broke into settlements and Israeli army bases and posts. We collected information on the movements of soldiers and settlers. We collected information about the best timing to infiltrate our bombers inside Israel. We used weapons and we produced explosives, and of course the trainings we received from the Americans and the Europeans were a great help to the resistance."

Mr. Yousuf said the training included both intelligence and military tactics.

"In the intelligence part, we learned collection of information regarding suspected persons, how to follow suspected guys, how to infiltrate organizations and penetrate cells of groups that we were working on and how to prevent attacks and to steal in places," he said.

"On the military level, we received trainings on the use of weapons, all kind of weapons and explosives. We received sniping trainings, work of special units especially as part as what they call the fight against terror. We learned how to put siege, how to break into places where our enemies closed themselves in, how to oppress protest movements, demonstrations, and other activities of opposition."

Mr. Yousuf seemed to anticipate criticism for speaking publicly about the training. He's not "talking about U.S. training in order to irritate the Americans or the Israelis and not in order to create provocations," he said. "I'm just telling you the truth."

CNN's and Amanpour's biases

I have no real intention of wasting two hours of my life watching the "even-handed" CNN show, "God's Jewish Warriors", which is meant to show that Jews deciding to live in parts of historically Jewish land are morally equivalent to, say, Muslims bombing children. But we do have a transcript, and here are only a few of Christiane Amanpour's problematic pronouncements from just the first couple of sections:

SHISSEL: We have the Holy Land. It's where God says this is where the Jews has to live.

AMANPOUR: But it is also Palestinian land. The West Bank -- it's west of the Jordan River -- was designated by the United Nations to be the largest part of an Arab state.

The UN's designation does not make it Palestinian land any more than the Balfour Declaration makes all of Palestine Jewish land. Amanpour's logic means that much of Israel itself within the Green Line is "Palestinian" Arab land. Subtle bias to be sure but she is basing Arab claims on what is effectively a moot point.

AMANPOUR: Preventing a Palestinians state is precisely the point for right-wing settlers. They want Israel to annex the occupied land permanently, but not give the Palestinians who live there full democratic rights.

No, it is the Arabs who want to make a state based on denying others' rights. The Jews want to make a state based on their right to have a state. There is a big difference, and Amanpour is conflating Arab goals with Jewish ones. The Palestinian Arabs never showed a real desire for a state there when Jordan held it.

AMANPOUR: The impact of God's Jewish warriors goes far beyond these rocky hills. The Jewish settlements have inflamed much of the Muslim world.

So is the reason they are bad because they cause Muslims to be upset? Amanpour just gave Arabs and Muslims carte blanche to riot and murder because "inflaming" them is something to be avoided at all costs. This is not an argument against settlements, it is an argument to accept Muslims as irrational players who must be appeased no matter what they demand.

AMANPOUR: And, although the number is small, there are terrorists -- Jewish terrorists, including some who would even kill Palestinians children.

Saying "the number is small" doesn't mean that she won't devote much of her show to them - what appears to be an entire 15 minute section. The power of watching the video will overwhelm the words she speaks, and she knows that.

AMANPOUR: As a young man, Porat studied to become a rabbi. At morning prayers, he straps on Tefellin, leather boxes containing handwritten verses from the Torah. And he recites an affirmation of faith that dates from the middle ages.

PORAT (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Every day, I say these words: "I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah."

Thus neatly associating all religious Jews with religious terrorists, by showing this strange ritual and enforcing religious Jewish "otherness" to her worldwide audience.It was from here, according to Muslim scripture, that the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven around the year 630. But Hebrew scripture puts the ancient Jewish Temple in the same location, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.This is not in Muslim "scripture." It is a purposefully erroneous interpretation. Comparing a provable myth with a proven fact is incredibly dishonest.

For the next 1,900 years, even the last remnant of the temple known as the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, was lost to the Jews.

(on camera): But the 1967 War changed all that, when Israel ordered its army to capture the Old City. The soldiers entered here, through the Lion's Gate. It's a short distance to the sacred sites.

Another lie - Jews lived in Jerusalem the entire time except when Jordan expelled them in 1948. By not mentioning that fact she absolves Arabs from one of the biggest crimes of 1948.(Plus, there are other remnants of the Temple in Jerusalem.)

BARNEA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Let's put it this way, I've always liked my sandwiches and my omelets with ham...
(later)
(on camera): What did you think when you saw not just the Wall but the Mosque?

BARNEA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): It made a big impression.

AMANPOUR: Holy?

BARNEA: Holy. Yes, sure.

Amanpour chooses an anti-religious secular Jew to describe a Muslim place as "holy" - she puts the words in his mouth! - to weaken the emotional case that Jews have for the Temple Mount and make the Jewish claim seem arbitrary and unimportant.

AMANPOUR: But to Yakov Barnea, it was a military victory pure and simple.

BARNEA: I don't know nothing about God in this matter of fighting.

Of course, in 1967, most secular soldiers and Israelis were incredibly affected by Israel's recapture of the Old City. Amanpour will never say that Barnea is the fringe element in Israeli society - by implicit definition, Jews who feel emotions about Jerusalem are the crazy ones.

THEODOR MERON: You can justify a lot of things on grounds of security, but you cannot settle your population in occupied territories. AMANPOUR (on camera): No doubt in your mind?

MERON: No doubt.

AMANPOUR: No wriggle room in the law?

MERON: Not really.

Notice that she doesn't interview any legal scholar who disagrees. Since she found an Israeli to say what she "knows" to be true, that's all the research that this topic needs.

The other sections of the show are predictable - interviewing Jimmy Carter and John Mearsheimer about that all-powerful Jewish lobby which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the premise of the show; a bit about Christian Zionism which is similar, and then the set pieces of real, honest to goodness Jewish "terrorists" who pretty much have not killed anybody but who talk about it. Obviously that is the highlight of the show.

Some biases are subtle and some explicit; but they are undeniable. Comparing this show with the Muslim episode will show the biases far better, as certainly they will bend over backwards to minimize the widespread support of terror in the Muslim world even as they maximized supposed Jewish support for terror in this piece of journalistic garbage.

UPDATE: Blogs commenting on this travesty include Mystical Paths, Discarded Lies, Debbie Schlussel, Atlas Shrugs, Dhimmi Watch, Boker Tov Boulder, and Kevin and Patrick. Plus Sharon Cobb and The Atheist Jew, Cheat Seeking Missiles and Seraphic Secret.

Seraphic Secret tried to count the number of times Amanpour said "God's Jewish Warriors" - according to the transcript, the number is 60.

Saudi maid gets arrested after being beaten by employers

This would make a great episode of Saudi Vice, but in this case it appears to be the regular Saudi police, not the Muttawa:

One of the Indonesian maids allegedly beaten up by her employers two weeks ago was taken into custody on Monday from hospital where she was being treated for her injuries.

The Indonesian Embassy was not informed beforehand of the transfer nor has it been allowed official access to the woman or her fellow maid, who was also beaten up by the employers and is still in hospital.

“Tari Tarsim, 27, has been taken away by police to an unknown destination, while Ruminih Surtim, 25, is still in the hospital recovering from her injuries,” Sukamto Javaladi, labor counselor at the Indonesian Embassy, told Arab News yesterday.

A vicious attack two weeks ago on four maids working for the same employers in Aflaj in the Riyadh region resulted in the death of Siti Tarwiyah Slamet, 32, and Susmiyati Abdul Fulan, 28. Tari and Ruminih were left severely injured in the incident. Seven members of the family that the maids were working for are also being held.

The Indonesian Embassy has not yet been officially notified of the incident and only found out about it through Indonesian nationals in Aflaj.

Tarsim and Surtim were admitted into intensive care at Aflaj General Hospital and then were transferred last week to the Riyadh Medical Complex where they have been placed under 24-hour police guard.

“Tari was transferred to police custody yesterday (Monday) but we don’t know why,” said Adi Dzul Fuat, vice consul at the Indonesian Embassy. “The policewoman guarding their room at the hospital told us that Tari has been transferred to jail,” he said.

So the employers beat up four maids, killing two and sending the other two to the hospital. What possible reason could they be arrested for?

Tarsim spoke to Arab News about the attack when she was at Aflaj Hospital. She said that the 17-year-old son of her employer whipped her with his igal accusing her of practicing witchcraft.

...
Speaking about accusations that the maids practiced witchcraft, which is a legal offense, Al-Dandani said, “The maids are denying this completely. And regardless of whether it is true or not, the accusations do not give employers the right to beat them and kill them.”

Ah, witchcraft. It all makes sense now.

Heartwarming children's news from Gaza

First, from the Jerusalem Post:

...Two Palestinians, identified by Gaza doctors as children ages 10 and 12, were killed in the northern Gaza Strip.
The IDF said the air strike targeted Palestinians who were loading a Kassam onto a rocket launcher and that terrorists were hit.
Palestinian rocket teams have been known to send young children to retrieve rocket launchers after the projectiles are fired, the IDF said in a statement, adding: "In light of the reports, it seems likely that this was the case here."

And then from Ma'an:

An 11-year-old boy was seriously injured when an explosive device went off in Yabna refugee camp, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

A medical source from Abu Yousef An Najjar hospital said that Mahmoud Mohammad was admitted to hospital, suffering from serious injuries.

Child abuse seems to be one of the founding principles of Hamastan.

August Qassam Calendar

Earlier calendars:
July
June
May
April
March
February

Surprise! Corruption at Gaza power company

From Ma'an:

Details of financial and administrative corruption in the Palestinian power company in Gaza was revealed by the deputy chair of the Palestinian power authority, Kan'an 'Ubeid, on Monday evening.

At a press conference in Gaza City, 'Ubeid said there was evidence of money and grants being embezzled as well as finances provided for projects that never materialized.

He called on the European Union to send monitors and auditors from local and international companies to investigate the accusations that money paid in utility bills was ending up in Hamas' coffers.

'Ubeid also called on President Mahmoud Abbas to bring to justice those alleged to have been involved in corruption at the power company. He revealed that a number of suspects have been arrested and have admitted to stealing fuel from the company.

He accused the Palestinian minister of information Riyad Al-Maliki of falsely claiming that Hamas took control of the power generating company and its income.

"There had been a contract with a local company to supply 430 thousand litres of fuel to run the company's generators, and the grant was stolen by the former general manager of the company, the financial manager in cooperation with the supplying company," 'Ubeid explained.

'Ubeid also a grant of 586,000 US dollars from the European Union appeared to be unaccounted for.

So the PalArabs blame Israel for not having power in Gaza, then they blame the EU - and, as usual, the real reasons for their problems are their own people.

Nasrallah: "I'm a small soldier of the Imam Khamenei"

Just in case there are a couple of million Lebanese out there who still think that Hezbollah is defending Lebanese sovereignty and independence:

The Lebanese news agency Al-Markaziya has reported that Iranian television correspondent Bijan Nobaveh has revealed that parts of his August 11 interview with Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had been censored.
He said that the censored parts included Nasrallah saying, "We are willing to turn into body parts so that Iran will be strong, since when Iran is strong we too are strong" and calling himself "a small soldier of the Imam Khamenei."

Jonathan Cook continues his lies

I have discussed Jonathan Cook before, and normally I would just leave it at that and chalk him up as yet another Israel-basher who gets his jollies by publishing his lies on far-left websites like Counterpunch. However, he also prints articles in The Guardian and as such, his lies need to be exposed.

His latest in The Guardian discusses a couple of the criticisms that pro-Israel advocates had of his earlier column on how Israel will start bombing Iranian Jews to get them to leave. Of course, he doesn't discuss the explicit lies and implicit bigotry I pointed out in that column - because it is easier to defend against cherry-picked weak arguments than strong ones.

The funny thing is that he tries to be careful to keep the worst lies out of his Guardian columns, but his lies and his intellectual dishonesty when making his tendentious anti-Israel arguments in his other articles makes all of his writings more than suspect.

For example, his latest screed about the Lebanon War includes this paragraph:

Recent reports have revealed that one of the main justifications for Hizbullah's continuing resistance -- that Israel failed to withdraw fully from Lebanese territory in 2000 -- is now supported by the UN. Last month its cartographers quietly admitted that Lebanon is right in claiming sovereignty over a small fertile area known as the Shebaa Farms, still occupied by Israel. Israel argues that the territory is Syrian and will be returned in future peace talks with Damascus, even though Syria backs Lebanon's position. The UN's admission has been mostly ignored by the international media.

The facts: An unnamed Israeli official said that the UN cartographer decided that Shebaa Farms was Lebanese territory. The UN denied that it made that determination and indicated that determining sovereignty was not the cartographer's job. In other words, Cook's claim that the UN "admitted" that Shebaa Farms is Lebanese is simply a lie.

Another claim, one that Israel hoped might justify the large number of Lebanese civilians it killed during the war, was that Hizbullah fighters had been regularly hiding and firing rockets from among south Lebanon's civilian population. Human rights groups found scant evidence of this, but a senior UN official, Jan Egeland, offered succour by accusing Hizbullah of "cowardly blending".

Besides the fact that there are videos showing the rockets coming from houses, Human Rights watch admitted that "of course Hizbullah did sometimes hide among civilians, breaching its duty to do everything feasible to protect civilians and possibly committing the war crime of deliberate shielding..." even as it condemned Israel for hitting civilians. Cook could have phrased his argument that Israel's reactions were disproportionate but instead he again crosses the line from fact to fantasy.

The war began on 12 July, when Israel launched waves of air strikes on Lebanon after Hizbullah killed three soldiers and captured two more on the northern border. (A further five troops were killed by a land mine when their tank crossed into Lebanon in hot pursuit.) Hizbullah had long been warning that it would seize soldiers if it had the chance, in an effort to push Israel into a prisoner exchange. Israel has been holding a handful of Lebanese prisoners since it withdrew from its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon in 2000.

Notice his wording - Israel started the war when it retaliated for offensive Hezbollah actions. Since Hezbollah always said it wanted to kidnap (and kill) Israelis, they are off the hook in Cook's twisted mind as far as any responsibility for starting the conflict. He also implies that the Lebanese in Israeli jails are just hostages, not criminals nor terrorists. No doubt he supports the release of Samir Kuntar, just like his Hezbollah heroes.

This is not journalism, and these are not facts. Ironically, Jonathan Cook rails against people advocating for Israel while he, weekly, advocates for Hezbollah. If he wants to write opinion columns for the Guardian, he is free to do so, but the readers should know how dishonest he has been in his other writings.

YNet reports:

The Leo Savir Foundation for a Mediterranean Vision 2020 within the Peres Center for Peace, Fundación Picasso, and the Newspaper Al-Quds are launching a new project in which young people from the Mediterranean region will compete to express their personal interpretation of Pablo Picasso's famous 1949 painting, Dove of Peace.
Newspapers from the region will be partners to the project, among them Yedioth Ahronot (Israel), Al Ahram (Egypt), Asba (Tunisia), Le Matin (Morocco), and Malta Star (Malta). The panel of judges will be comprised of representatives of the Peres Center for Peace, Fundación Picasso, Al-Quds, and the participating newspapers.
Entries to the competition may be submitted between August 1 and September 30, 2007.

Notice the aim of the contest: just for children to describe their visions of peace, nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict or anything like that.

But this is way too radical for the intellectuals in Tunisia:

Hundreds of Tunisian jurists and intellectuals have condemned the participation of a Tunisian newspaper in a competition for children organised by an Israeli centre.

They threaten to legally challenge what they describe as "symbols of normalization with the Israel."

This competition, called "The World's Children and Picasso's Dove of Peace", is being organised by the Leo Safeer institution which is part of the Israeli Shimon Peres centre for peace.

The competition is for children to express their opinions about peace in newspaper articles, taking their inspiration from Picasso's painting, "Dove of Peace".

Signatories to a petition protesting against the Tunisian newspaper's participation in the competition include the secondary and elementary education unions, the popular resistance committee, and the committee supporting Iraq and Palestine, the Dean of Lawyers Basheer Al Said, and prominent journalists such as Fatima Kray.

They issued a statement saying, "we strongly condemn any attempt to let our children be involved in those practices. Those practices are an attempt to erase the Arab national struggle, history and murdering the future of the coming generations".

The petition which was entitled "No to Normalization, Yes to Resistance" demanded the Tunisian daily newspaper, Al Sabah and the other Arabic newspapers withdraw from "this Zionist competition because it serves the enemy and Shimon Peres who once called the Arab people dirty, ignorant and backward".

Al Sabah said in its Thursday editorial that its participation in the competition is on the basis of the principle that "peace is not made with friends but with enemies."

So are these mainstream Tunisians who are against their children writing about peace "moderates" or "extremists?"

A survey of Palestinian Arab newspaper veracity

Tomorrow is the 38th anniversary of an attempt to burn down the Al Aqsa mosque by an insane Australian Christian named Michael Dennis Rohan.

How many Palestinian Arab newspapers will mention that it was a non-Israeli Christian who set the fire?

Palestine Today (Arabic): "Tuesday August 21 the thirty-eighth anniversary of the burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969, as occupation forces set fire to the mosque and the flames spread and consumed Saladin pulpit and the altar of peace and Zakariya many parts of the mosque."

WAFA (Arabic) - Implies that it was Israel but doesn't say it explicitly.

Palestine Press (Arabic) - Implies that it was Israel.

Ma'an (Arabic) - Calls Rohan an "extremist" without saying his religion, implying he was a Jew.

Ma'an (English) - does refer to him as a "non-Jewish tourist."

IMEMC (English) - "an event commemorating the 38th anniversary of burning the Al Aqsa mosque by a fundamental Jew..."

Petra (Jordan) English - "Michael Dennis Rohan, a Jew from Australia, gained worldwide infamy on August 21, 1969, when he set fire to the Al-Aqsa mosque, located atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem."

Xinhua (China) - "The fire, set in 1969 by an Israeli settler, caused the burning of the eastern wing of the mosque."

Gulf News - "In one of the worst days in the city's history, an Australian extremist with Jewish leaning tried to burn down Al Aqsa Mosque."

Al-Hayat al Jadidah (Arabic):" The bulletin pointed out that the ill-fated fire occurred 38 years ago at the hands of the offender, "Dennis Michael Rohan," which Australian citizenship belonged to the "Church of God", which believes بنبوءات Torah, which claims that Jesus Christ to Earth after staying building temple over the ruins of the Aqsa Mosque, and after he joined Rohan offender to a number of members of the Church of volunteers in one of the settlements of the West Bank."

An intriguing letter from Haniyeh to Bashir Assad

Ma'an Arabic reports on a letter that Hamas leader Haniyeh sent to Bashir Assad, dictator of Syria.

First, some background:

There are a few refugee camps on the Syria/Iraq border, and the Palestinian Arabs who live there have fled Iraq in terror. Syria is not letting them in. Syria is certainly not letting them become citizens, as one would expect "brothers" to act.

There is a good, historic reason why Syria and most other Arab countries refuse to help out Palestinian Arabs and allow them to settle permanently in their countries. Since 1948, they have been dead-set against allowing them to become citizens because they don't want the refugee problem to go away - they want refugees to fester in dire conditions to use them as pawns for the West to pressure Israel.

The Orwellian twist is that the Arabs do this ostensibly to preserve Palestinian Arab nationalism and unity. If the refugees would have been absorbed as refugees throughout history have been, then there would no longer be a "Palestinian cause." The fiction that Arabs have been telling each other for some 60 years is that their mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs has been for the PalArabs' own good. This narrative has been so universal that no Arab, Palestinian or otherwise, dares to disagree with it. Instead, they twist their thought processes around in remarkable ways to allow them to think that mistreatment is a good thing.

Now, there are hundreds or thousands of people whose ancestors came from Palestine, who have lived in Iraq for decades, who have never been allowed to become Iraqi citizens and who now are truly being persecuted, unlike the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs who have been getting free food and education courtesy of the UNRWA. These people really do need help, and the obvious people to help are those who rule the Arab countries that border Iraq.

Now we can read the letter and see the hoops that PalArabs have to jump in order to pretend that being mistreated for decades is all for the best: (autotranslated):

Gaza-together - Prime Minister Ismail Haniya article, a letter to Syrian President Bashar Assad price of the Syrian leadership's position towards the Palestinian cause and to serve the Palestinian people.

Haniya called on the Syrian leadership to intervene immediately to take decisions that end suffering of Palestinian refugees in camps and Walid Al-Tenf, and the Sphinx.

Haniya said in the letter "we value your positions nationalism advanced toward the Palestinian cause, and greatly appreciate your hard work and continued in service of the Palestinian people, you know, Your Excellency, the President enormous suffering experienced by your brothers, your sons in the camps Walid, and Al-Tenf Sphinx and some airports and seaports Arab, they hope Your Excellency to intervene. Personal decisions that end suffering complex and interrelated and accumulated by allowing them to live a decent under your auspices in your venerable, an extension of the proceedings in support of issues of national homeland in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and other Arab countries, as we bring you security broken, we call Bvkhamtkm that this interesting case and special care of yourself and the appointment of a representative of your Excellency to pursue the matter or what you deem appropriate, your brothers Palestinians caught in these camps and your Kararakm waiting. "

By asking Assad to let them into his country, to ask him to treat them like human beings, Haniyeh knows that he is upsetting the status quo of Arab nations treating PalArabs like dirt. But since that treatment is for the greater good of their cause, he has to ask nicely for the Syrian dictator to break the rules and not treat them quite so badly.

This is a remarkable illustration of the convoluted Arab thinking that accompanies the standard Palestinian Arab "refugee" narrative.

Palestinian children hold candles during a power cut in Gaza city August 18, 2007. Israel plans to open a Gaza Strip crossing for several hours to let fuel be transported to the territory, the army said on Saturday, a day after power generators there shut down due to a fuel blockade. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Poor Gazan children forced to use candles because racist Israel is blockading fuel to Gaza?

Funny, other wire services seem to indicate otherwise:

Israel opened the Nahal Oz crossing in central Gaza to allow fuel into the Hamas-controlled coastal strip, but power plant officials said the private Israeli fuel company Dor Alon had yet to deliver any fuel.
Palestinian officials said a European Union aid program, which funds fuel for the plant, has not sent monitors to the crossing to facilitate the shipment as required.

An EU diplomat said an assessment of the funding program was being made and a decision was likely tomorrow.

Dor Alon had no immediate comment, but officials said the supplier was delaying the shipment because it was unclear who would pay for it.

About half of Gaza's 1.5 million residents will be affected by the plant's blackout, power plant officials said.

Israel stopped fuel shipments through Nahal Oz late last week, citing security threats.

Israeli Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the decision to resume deliveries was for Dor Alon to make.

“This is a private company that probably received a security warning from the Defence Ministry. That is why, and rightfully so, the fuel shipments were halted. I assume fuel will start flowing again in a day or two,” Ben-Eliezer said.

Ben-Eliezer said that Israel, which supplies 70 per cent of Gaza's electricity, was in the process of adding a new power line into the territory.

Israel supplies most of Gaza's electricity as part of past interim peace deals.

So Israel supplies most of the electricity into the Gaza statelet that is sworn to destroy it, it allows private companies to sell fuel to Gaza, and the EU is dragging its feet in its role in resuming shipments.

Doesn't sound like a very effective blockade, does it?

The only places I saw the words "fuel blockade" were in a quote from the Palestinian Electric Company, an article from Qatar, and, of course, in the regular Reuters' article on the situation.

Peaceful PalArab weekend

A Gaza man missing for 8 days was found, tortured and shot multiple times, in the evacuated settlement of Netzarim. He died shortly thereafter.

Hamas arrested and reportedly tortured seven Fatah members in Gaza, including an employee of the UN Development Program.

Hamas admits that, sure, it tortures people sometimes - including in prisons - but it is not nearly as bad as the media says.

There are claims that Hamas has been stealing the possessions of Gaza citizens waiting at border crossings.

Three brothers were injured, apparently from a Qassam rocket that fell short in Khan Younis.

The PalArab self-death count is now at 508 for the year.

UPDATE: A Gaza Fatah leader's home was firebombed.

UPDATE 2: Palestine Press mentions the name of an 18-year old murdered in the Jabaliya camp. 509.

Walt and Mearsheimer redux

People are all excited that Walt and Mearsheimer are coming out with their book expanding on their paper last year about how nefarious the Israel Lobby is and how the United States would be better off if we just stopped all support for Israel.

Since their arguments have not become less idiotic over the past year, I see no reason for the counterarguments to have changed either. I discussed the kerfuffle last year here and here.

Peaceful Palestinian Arabs attacking UNRWA

From Ma'an:

UNRWA has on Friday called for the intervention of the Palestinian Authority to prevent its employees being repeatedly subject to threats.

A number of UNRWA employees were detained for several hours in Nablus on Thursday.

In a statement received by Ma'an, UNRWA demanded that the Palestinian Authority intervene immediately to stop those who are attempting to drag UNRWA into the ongoing Palestinian internal conflict.

UNRWA made clear that threats and harassment are hindering their ability to carry out their humanitarian assistance in the Palestinian Territories. Exposing the UNRWA staff to danger limits their ability to continue working, the statement added.

The UNRWA website doesn't say a word about this, not even in theor press release section, and neither do any other newspapers. I guess when the UNRWA criticizes Palestinian Arabs they try to keep it a lot quieter than when they criticize Israel.

Who detained the UNRWA workers? Hamas? The PA? No idea. Ma'an doesn't have any previous articles about this and seems to be purposefully vague about what happened.

Readers of my Palestinian Arab history series will recall that PalArabs attacked the UNRWA as soon as it was set up in the 1950s.

Did Peres just give Hamas more legitimacy?

Unlike previous presidents of Israel, which is a largely ceremonial position, Shimon Peres has been making political statements supporting his suicidal ideas of "peace."

According to Palestine Today (Arabic), Peres has just stupidly opened up a window for European recognition of Hamas, as he spoke to a delegation of US Democratic members of Congress: (autotranslated, slightly cleaned up)

Israeli President Shimon Peres said today that there is a possibility that Israel would offer assistance to Hamas if they focused their activities on economic and humanitarian aspects after their takeover of the Gaza Strip.

During his meeting with a delegation comprising 20 members of the American Congress from the Democratic Party, Peres added "if the Palestinian factions, including Hamas against Israel Fessnerd strongly (?), and if Hamas took the humanitarian field, we will help them."

I usually try to find verification for Palestine Press articles but there is indeed a delegation of members of Congress to Israel happening now who met with Peres.

While the part that was untranslated may mean that Peres put in the standard caveat about recognition of Israel and stopping violence, his words can strengthen the Europeans who are lobbying for recognizing Hamas without the pre-conditions that the Quartet laid out.

PalArab turns Israeli teen into sex slave for PA officials

More news from the group that the West and Kadima think will lead a peaceful PalArab state:

A Palestinian from Ramallah turned an 18-year-old Israeli girl he met on the internet into his sex slave, Ynet reported on Friday.

A few months ago Tal (not her real name) met who she thought was her prince charming in an internet chat room. Following a brief period of online correspondence, the two met in person. The Palestinian took Tal out to restaurants and showered her with gifts, and the unsuspecting Israeli teen thought she had found the man of her dreams.

Within a month of their first encounter she was already in love with him, and did not hesitate for a second when he asked her to move into his home in Ramallah. But shortly after the two began living together the man approached Tal and asked that she “comfort” a friend of his. She agreed to sleep with the friend as a one-time gesture for her beloved boyfriend, but was forced to have sex with others as time went by.

Tal was then brought to a lavish villa, where she and several Muslim women granted sexual services to senior Palestinian Authority officials on a regular basis. Eventually Tal managed to escape and return to Israel.

A volunteer in an organization that offers help to Israeli teenagers who have experienced similar traumas told Ynet that Arab girls from Jaffa have also been lured to the territories under false pretenses.

“The Muslim girls are afraid to return to Israel because they lose their virginity there. When they meet the person in a chat room they are certain that it will lead to marriage. Their families in Israel don’t want them back because they have ‘brought shame’ upon them,” she said.

The volunteer said the victims are usually lonely people from a low socio-economic background.

There have been many documented cases of Arabs sweeping Israeli women off their feet and then abusing them, often marrying them, and there are organizations in Israel dedicated to helping these women escape. In a rare case yesterday, an Israeli court ruled that a woman who escaped should have custody of the children, still in a West Bank village, and the IDF helped save them (this story from Ma'an):

Israeli military vehicles stormed into a house in a village in the West Bank in the early hours of Thursday morning, taking two children from their Palestinian father to be given to their Jewish Israeli mother.

Forty-four-year-old Jabr Issa had been ordered by an Israeli court to hand over the two girls, aged 4 and 1. The Israeli forces were sent to the village of Beit Oula, south of Hebron, to take the children after Issa had not complied with the court order.

Issa was not in the house at the time but the girls' grandfather was unable to stop them being taken away.

Local villagers said that Issa had married the girls' mother, Rifqa, 35, an Israeli citizen, in Turkey in the year 2000. They moved to the village where Issa worked in the construction industry.

One neighbour told Ma'an that problems between the couple began 3 or 4 months ago and Rifqa left the village.

Yousef Taye'a, one of the village residents said "Rifqa used to come to our house. She used to be happy and she speaks very good Arabic."

Issa's brother, Jamal, 37, is also married to a Jewish Israeli woman.

Arutz Sheva had a series of articles about this phenomenon a few years ago, stating some of the problems Jewish women have when they marry Arabs - they are more likely to be beaten than Arab wives, for example.

The right to feel offended (Judea Pearl)

I'm not sure I agree with everything in this piece, but - at least for Jewish liberals who allow their friends to spout casual anti-Israel rhetoric - Judea Pearl (Daniel's father) makes some very good points. Here's part:

We, as Jews, have been grossly negligent in permitting the dehumanization of Israel to become socially acceptable in certain circles of society, especially on college campuses. Our silence, natural resilience to insults and general reluctance to confront colleagues and friends have contributed significantly to the Orwellianization of campus vocabulary and the legitimization of the unacceptable. Most of our assailants are even unaware of the shivers that go down our spines with utterances such as "apartheid Israeli regime" or "brutal Israeli occupation."

But if we take seriously the moral basis for our right to take offense and exercise that right broadly and consistently, a reverse process of de-Orwellianization will ensue.

If instead of avoiding confrontation, swallowing our insults or letting ourselves be dragged into defensive arguments, we simply halt the conversation and assert with honesty and dignity, "Sorry, this is offensive to me," or "This is unacceptable," we will reclaim the respect that our adversaries plan to trample.

History and decency have given us that right.

If we act on it proudly and resolutely, the word will quickly come around that good company no longer accepts smearing Israel with apartheid or bashing Zionism as a crime.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Zionist Youngster elaborates on what bothers him about the article.

How to raise a generation of mass murderers

Click here to see an extended version of a horrific video from Hamas, showing Nahoul the killer bee and his strange sidekick Saraa first saying that when they grow up they will "take revenge upon the criminal Jews...by means of morning prayers, blood, sacrifice, and pain, by means of martyrs, and with endurance." (I couldn't figure out how to embed it.)

Nahoul then goes to torture cats and lions with children laughing in the background (much to the annoyance of PETA), and after some minutes of this Saraa reminds him that the prophet isn't thrilled with that sort of behavior.

This is pretty much a video manual on how to raise a generation of people who only want to kill and torture before they themselves get martyred in glorious, bloody ways.

Lessons from the bombings in Iraq

The recent horrific car bombs in Iraq, targeting an obscure religious sect that presumably doesn't meet some Muslim clerics' standards, illustrate a point about Israel that bears being made explicit:

If Israel would do all the things that the Left demands - if Israel would take down the fence, if all Palestinian Arabs were allowed to move where they wanted to in Israel, if Israel stopped all raids and arrests and roadblocks, if it opened the borders to Gaza - then the Jewish sections left in the area would look the way Al-Qataniyah and Al-Adnaniyah in northern Iraq look today.

The interesting thing is that, intellectually, the Left must realize this. They might mouth predictions that Israeli concessions would bring a happy, peaceful Palestinian Arab society in its wake but no one can seriously believe it. The Jews would be treated far worse than the Yazidi were this week if the terrorists are given half a chance. The unremitting terror attacks from 2001-2004 in Israel is proof of that, and if Hamas and Fatah had access to bigger and better explosives, they would have used them as well.

Even given these obvious facts, the Left seems to prefer an insecure, terror-ridden Israel that meets their standards of "morality" to a state that actively protects its citizens from the surrounding, hostile millions. They would prefer the inevitable resulting mass murders in Israel to having Israel do anything defensive that might, possibly, violate the "rights" of anyone else.

Is it anti-semitism? Is it self-hate for Western culture? Is it the complete absence of sense? I don't know, but whatever it is, a clear picture of what they advocate can be seen today in Iraq.

Former PalArab legislator convicted of involvement in 2002 terror attack

From Jerusalem Newswire:

A member of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction of the PLO, and a former legislator in the PA parliament, was found guilty Wednesday of sending a "suicide" bomber to Tel Aviv in 2002.
The attacker blew himself up in a coffee shop in the coastal city, killing Rachel Tcherkhi, an Israeli woman.

Jamal Tirawi was convicted of sending the bomber and thus of deliberately murdering Tcherki.

Remember - this guy is part of the group that the West supports as "moderate."

YNet adds:

According to the indictment, the suicide bomber that blew himself up in a coffee shop in the city in March 2002 made his way to Israel from the Nablus home of PLC member Jamal Tirawi.

The Fatah member is also accused of recruiting potential suicide bombers.

A little factoid about him from before the terror attack:

Like other leading activists, Mr Tirawi is mindful of the long arm of Israeli intelligence. Behind the lace curtains of his living room, he sat surrounded by 16 of his men. All were armed with M-16s or Kalashnikovs, and his six-year-old daughter played with a Belgian-made pistol.

But despite the assortment of weapons, Mr Tirawi said he was against vigilante justice for suspected Israeli agents.

While he might be against extrajudicial killing of "collaborators," it doesn't stop him from using the idea to do that recruiting he wants:

Wanted Tanzim terrorist Rabi'ah Abu Alil originally tried to employ the boy as a suicide bomber after he and his father quarreled over money. The boy refused, and was taken to an apartment by Abu Alil and another wanted Arab terrorist, Jamal Tirawi. Tirawi is also a high ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence officer, the IDF said.

"Despite the youth's pleas that he be released to his home and left alone, Tirawi and Abu Alil threatened him that if he did not cooperate, they would kill him and distribute a communique claiming he had been collaborating with the Israeli army," the IDF announcement stated. Terrorists photographed the boy wearing a vest and holding a rifle and a copy of the Koran.

Now, try to find a Palestinian Arab "moderate" who is willing to condemn this guy. Good luck with that.

Celebrity deathmatch: Tzipi Livni vs. Julia Roberts

Tzipi:

Ms Livni, a key figure in Israel's contacts with the new Abbas-established administration, said: "I know that it looks tempting and I know that the international community is eager to see a kind of understanding between Hamas and Fatah." But she warned at a news conference with her visiting Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso: "This is wrong. This is a mistake. Big mistake. Huge."

Julia: (as Vivian in Pretty Woman)

Vivian: You people work on commission, right?
Shop assistant: Yeah.
Vivian: Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now.

I think Julia has the edge. She comes off as more self-assured.

Hamas: Buses legit targets, no Jews in Palestine before 1917, goal to wipe Israel out

From MEMRI via Front Page:

The following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on August 6, 2007.

To view this clip visit: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1527.htm.

Interviewer: "Islamic law has forbidden aggression during jihad – by forbidding the killing of women, children, the elderly, clerics who devote themselves to the worship of God, and other noncombatant civilians who do not serve in the enemy's army. Do you consider all the Jews in Palestine to be combatants who have plundered the land? We've witnessed martyrdom operations that targeted buses and restaurants."

Osama Hamdan: "First of all, let me clarify something very important. What is the ruling regarding those who live in Palestine, in the so-called Israel, and who are aggressors and plunderers of the land? The way we see it, they all came to Palestine from abroad, whether before the declaration of the Zionist entity or after it. If you were to conduct statistics within the Zionist entity, you would find that all these people have their origins in other countries – they came from Europe, Eastern Europe, from America, South America, or other places."

Interviewer: "In other words, there were no Palestinian Jews?"

Osama Hamdan: "No, there were no Palestinian Jews. When the British Mandate began in 1917, there was only one settlement on Palestinian land, which included several dozen Jews, who were living there in violation of the law at the time. I would like to mention that under the Ottoman state – regardless of the many reservations we have about it – there was a law that prohibited the Jews from staying in Palestine for over a month.

"Their passports and personal documents were taken away from them, and they were given an Ottoman permit at the border, which allowed them to stay for a month on Palestinian land. The only group that can be called Jewish was the one in Nablus. They still live there to this day. The Palestinians regard them as part of the makeup of Palestinian society, and they number no more than several hundred. As for those who immigrated from various countries – they are not Jews.

"Anyone who comes to live in a war zone is a combatant, regardless of whether he wears a uniform. That's one thing. Secondly, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian resistance force intentionally killed civilians. You mentioned the buses. What's an easier target – a bus, which is protected by various security measures, or a school [or] a theater, or a stadium, for example? These civilian targets – in which the killing of women and children is intentional – were not targeted by
"Why were buses targeted? Because they are the means of transport used by the soldiers as well. The Zionist soldiers, who go from their homes to their bases and back, use public transportation, because it is free or almost free. In my opinion, the occupation soldiers also have a security motive in using public transport: They shield themselves behind the so-called 'civilians' within the Zionist entity.

"Therefore, the way I see it, they need to stop using public transportation, or else society should prevent them from using it, because it is the soldiers who are targeted. Just to prove it, in the dozens of operations that were carried out, the Zionists never announced, for example, that 20 children were killed, or that 50 women were killed. On the contrary, if you were to examine who was killed in martyrdom operations that targeted buses, you would find that 70% were occupation soldiers, and they may even have been in uniform at the time of the operation." [...]

"The Final Goal of the Resistance is to Wipe This Entity Off the Face of the Earth"

"We are making the preparations for a confrontation. This is not because we need to be prepared for an Israeli act of aggression – after all, aggression is intrinsic to this entity – but because the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the Earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out."

Interviewer: "Do you think that Mahmoud Abbas, who has found himself in the crisis of the confrontation with Hamas, plays the role of a policeman, who is thwarting the Intifada, the resistance, and the jihad against the Zionist occupation in the Palestinian lands?"

Osama Hamdan: "He plays a role that is even worse than that. Mahmoud Abbas is doing this out of ideological conviction. He has been calling for a settlement ever since 1973. It was Mahmoud Abbas who created the Oslo Accords, and who was brought in by the Americans to serve as prime minister in order to confront Arafat. In my opinion, he plays this role willingly and out of conviction, which is worse than if he were doing it out of commitment to the occupation."

The number of lies per sentence in this little interview is even higher than the usual number that comes out from Arab terrorists.

And if you are curious about the Jews in Nablus that he's talking about, he's referring to Samaritans. It is possible that by defining them as Jews he is also defining the Jews who have lived in Palestine continuously as infidels, not dhimmis, meaning that they are all legitimate targets for being killed.

Of course, we cannot expect too much consistency from people who rewrite history at will, and who conveniently forget terror attacks against schools, shopping malls, discos, bar mitzvahs, cafes, pizza shops, and hotels.

PalArabs celebrate their 11th honor killing this year

From PCHR:

at approximately 18:00 on Monday, 13 August 2007, the body of En’am Jaber Deifallah (37) arrived at Shifa Hospital. The victim is from El-T’wam area in northern Gaza City, and was a mother of one child. Medical sources indicated that she was killed by beating with a sharp object on the head. The victim’s family informed PCHR’s fieldworker that one of the victim’s brothers killed her inside her house in a murder motivated by “honor.”

It is noted that “honor killings” have increased over the past few years in the Gaza Strip. Deirallah is the 11th victim of such crimes this year.

See how much they honor their women?

Google News has nothing about this. The only news source I've seen mention this so far is Ma'an Arabic.

Our PalArab self-death count is now 507 for 2007.

Dr. Mamdooh Fahmy was a surgeon at the Albyaan Menfhoh Medical Center in Riyadh. His colleagues noticed that he didn't seem to practice Islam and they started trying to convince him to become Muslim and practice a religion that despises coercion.

After some time of enduring their repeated invitations to become Muslim, Fahmy finally told them that he was a Coptic Christian, and he would not be changing his beliefs any time soon.

Soon thereafter, Dr. Fahmy received a friendly visit from our heroes, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They insulted him in front of patients and staff, confiscated his car keys, cell phone and wallet, handcuffed him and shackled his feet, and dragged him to a car where they nicely drove him to his house. They then raided his house and confiscated all his written materials, took him to the police station and placed him in solitary confinement.

After five days of this Muslim hospitality, they started interrogating him and referring to him as an 'infidel'.

His crime: Fahmy was accused of missionary activity. It seems that not allowing oneself to be pressured into becoming a Muslim is equivalent to asking people to become Christian, in Saudi Muslim thought.

When the Muttawa finally released him and he tried to get back to his home in Egypt, the Saudi government refused to give him a visa.

Finally, after months calls and letters, Saudi Arabia allowed him to go to Egypt this week.

Once again, the Commission has shown its hatred for vice and its promotion of virtue. Saudis can sleep soundly at night knowing that such zealous defenders of their lifestyle are on constant watch, ready to pounce at even the slightest whiff of infidelism.

Last episode here.

From left to right, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, react during a press conference in the West Bank town of Jericho, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007

Saeb Erekat is one of the most accomplished liars in history, who has said things like "Hamas' running in elections is tantamount to giving up weapons" and "You know, the Jenin refugee camp is no longer in existence…" and "people were massacred. And we say the number will not be less than 500."

In other words, he's a good representative for the Palestinian Arab people. How smart it is to negotiate with a known liar is a different question.

IAP skit: "I am Hamas and I'm going to kill Jews"

From a Fox News transcript for Hannity and Colmes last Friday, on a video shown in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation showing skits put on by the Islamic Association for Palestine:

LOWRY: Steve, as far as I can tell, these skits seem to be classic incitement, anti-Semitic propaganda, urging people on to kill Jews in the name of the intifada.

EMERSON: Well, they're pretty horrifying. They took place in the United States and they were skits put on by the Islamic Association for Palestine, which was a sister organization to the group that's on trial, the Holy Land Foundation.

And the person who makes the statement, "I am Hamas and I'm going to kill Jews" is Mufid Abdul Qatar. He's one of the defendants. And though it takes place in the late 1980s, the fact of matter it goes directly — it's directly relevant to the mindset of those that are on trial today.

It's like a pedophile who's on trial. If a pedophile says, in years before his trial that "I want to rape children," that's relevant to the mindset.

And in this case, the defendant, as well as the organization, clearly indicate their desire to carry out genocide against Jews.

LOWRY: So Steve, what does that do to the line of defense? In particular, the Holy Land Foundation says we were just supporting Palestinian charities and wow, it's really too bad that some of this money may have made it into the hands of bad actors?

EMERSON: Well, I think it puts a definite lie to that claim, because here you have one of the defendants, an official of the Holy Land Foundation, who actually blurts out and says, "I am Hamas."

And in the very end of this skit, which is pretty horrifying, the — Abdul Qatar actually kills the Jew. And you can actually hear children in the audience laughing and applauding.

By the way, the man in the skit who is pretending to kill a Jew, who is on trial as part of the Holy Land Foundation, is the half-brother of Khalid Mashaal, leader of Hamas in exile.

Happy blogoversary to me

3 years
over 3000 posts
well over a million words

Just for fun, I just pasted all my June and July postings into Microsoft Word as examples of typical months. Each one ended up over 140 pages long!

Thanks for reading!

Tunisia forbids access to Arafat's papers

From Ma'an:

The pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported on Wednesday that the Tunisian authorities have refused to open the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's office to the public.

The source added that there have been several attempts to obtain access to the personal archives of Arafat.

The archives include correspondence, documents and secret letters of Arafat, and are believed to reveal the personal life behind the public figure.

The main archives of Yasser Arafat in his Tunisia office are closed to the public.

One can understand how proof of his corruption and homosexuality might be a tad embarrassing.