Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Aspen station decides not to air Holocaust denial film

An Aspen public-access TV station has decided not to air a Holocaust-denial video that was being pushed by a 9/11 "truther":

The GrassRoots TV board of directors voted Monday to ban a controversial Holocaust-denial film.

Steve Campbell, founder of Citizens for 9/11 Truth, asked the station to air "Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II" on Oct. 1.

But after prescreening the film, which questions conventional wisdom about the Holocaust, GrassRoots TV board members stopped the airing, pending further debate.

The board held an open forum on the matter Oct. 11 to gauge community reaction.

"The GrassRoots Television board has decided not to air the film 'Judea declares War on Germany,'" GrassRoots TV board chairman Alan Feldman said in a statement after the board meeting Monday.

"After careful consideration and community input, the board concluded that this film is obscene, repugnant to the generally accepted notion of what is appropriate in our community. GrassRoots TV will not allow the station to be used as a vehicle to incite hatred against any group. GrassRoots Television will issue a more detailed statement to our community in coming days."

Feldman promised a board policy in the future: "Our community spoke, and we have given it a lot of rational thinking," Feldman said. "We have the ability to refuse to air something if we believe it's obscene."

Campbell called it a "poor decision."

"Unfortunately, it shows basically what I and others have tried to say about this whole issue," Campbell said. "There are those who don't want you to see this information, and they'll do anything they can to stop you from watching it. And that's just what they're doing."

Campbell has shown other controversial films on GrassRoots, as well as on Rifle's public access station, he said.

He called the debate over "Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II" a matter of "conscious-raising."

"I just think that it's a travesty what's going on," Campbell said.

Campbell said he is not planning any legal action against GrassRoots but added, "By censoring this film, it's only going to make people watch it more."

Campbell said that while he is being censored now, "The truth will come out. It's just like the grass that grows between the cracks in the sidewalk."

He said he might try and air the film in another venue, but he was disappointed that the large audience in Aspen wouldn't see it.

"This is part of the beginning of the loss of our freedoms of expression and speech and the dissemination of information just so certain people can maintain their status quo," Campbell said.

As I mentioned last week, the Aspen Times newspaper editorialized that the film be shown.

Notice how they cover this story above: giving far more space to the illiterate anti-semite ("conscious-raising"?) than to the people who made the decision. Not to mention the oh-so-politically correct way of referring to one of the purest forms of hate speech as simply "controversial" and as "question(ing the) conventional wisdom about the Holocaust."

The "censored" video is available at Amazon (one reviewer, 4 stars) and can be seen on-line if you care to look for it.

The name of the production company, believe it or not, is Amalek Productions.

Sixty years ago: Wishful Western thinking about Arab goals

Sixty years ago, in October 1947, the big news from Palestine was that both the US and the Soviet Union had accepted the idea of partition. It was still very unclear how exactly partition would occur - the prevailing thoughts were that a multinational force, perhaps the UN, would go into Palestine and enforce the partition.

The entire world was very concerned as to what would happen. The Arab League met in Beirut, plotting a response, and there were reports of Arab armies mobilizing on the borders of Palestine, getting ready to attack.

In the October 13th Palestine Post, Great Britain sought to assure the world that the Arabs were only posturing, and had no intent to actually attack. American experts concurred:

Arab leaders in Haifa rushed to assure everyone that while Arabs might want to use oil as a weapon against America for their support for partition, they would never attack anyone:

Three additional stories in the October 15 Palestine Post quoted various people who assured the world that there was nothing to worry about.

Great Britain had this to add:

Yes, everything would be orderly. They wouldn't just leave and allow the Jews to be indiscriminately slaughtered, would they?

And the Arabs also were at pains to show that they had no intentions of provoking violence, and any reports to the contrary were Zionist lies:

Experts had no problem weighing in as well. After all, the very idea of Arabs attacking was simply not logical:

On the 16th, it was reported that Egypt was sending troops to the Sinai border - but this move was also dismissed as just posturing:

Meanwhile, Syria and Lebanon openly called for war. But the all-knowing analysts for the Great Powers knew that they were not serious:

So sixty years ago the Middle East was on the verge of a momentous decision; a meeting at the UN to happen in November that would have far-reaching implications. The best and brightest political minds on the planet had an array of facts before them - Arab threats and statements, how Arabs had acted in the recent past, the seething hatred Arabs had for the Jews. And almost every single one of them chose to ignore anything bad that the Arabs did or said, and replace cold facts with wishful thinking and assumptions that Arabs are more pragmatic than they had shown themselves to be in the past.

Over this four day period, as the region was hurtling towards a war whose impact is still being felt, the prevailing conventional wisdom was that everything would be all right. Immediately after the UN partition vote would start a string of major Arab attacks against Jewish civilians from all directions.

In the months to come it would become more and more clear that despite all of these assurances, despite all these rosy predictions, despite promises that everything would be done to keep things peaceful - despite all that, no one would protect the Jews from the Arab armies who were preparing even this early to destroy them. The Zionists realized this and they knew that they could only rely on themselves, and God, to help them.

Sixty years later, the Arabs are making it clear that if things don't go the way they want, they will start a new round of violence. Even so, the world's superpower is assuring Israel that the Arabs have no intention of continuing their murderous ways, and is pressuring Israel to turn itself back towards how things were in1947, with hostile Arabs living once again amidst the Jews they hate with a passion. The great powers are promising that there will be no rockets from the West Bank, that Hamas is not biding its time for the PA to gain land diplomatically that could then become the basis for a West Bank Hamastan, and that - however improbably - Gaza will once again come under "moderate" PA control.

Once again, wishful thinking is replacing real analysis and observations, and empty promises are being offered in exchange for Israel's security.

The Arabs are highly sensitive to symbolism, and they are looking at November 2007 to be the watershed event that will help turn back the events of November 1947. And so far, they have willing partners in the UN, EU and United States - and even the Israeli government itself - all anxious to risk everything on the basis of blind hope.

After all, it is easy to gamble with lives when they are not yours.

Condi: Now is the time to reward terror

From AP:

Secretary of State Condoleezza said Monday it was "time for the establishment of a Palestinian state," and described Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as the most serious in years.

Let's see. In the seven years since the last great lame-duck presidential push to create a Palestinian Arab state, what have the Palestinian Arabs done to make them more deserving of a state?

Have they decided to compromise on land? No.
Have they decided to give up on their demands to destroy Israel demographically? No.
Have they done any concrete moves to stop terror attacks against Israel? No.
Have they stopped terrorists from taking over Gaza? No.

In fact, since 2000, they launched a major terror war against Israel, they've launched hundreds of rockets and thousands of mortars, they've killed thousands of Israelis and each other, they've freely elected a terrorist government, they've cheered Israeli and American deaths, they showed allegiance to Saddam Hussein, they've smuggled thousands of weapons into Gaza, and they've increased their anti-Israel rhetoric. They've watched their justice system collapse, they've hired thousands of terrorists to be their "security forces," they've fought each other, they've circumvented democracy, they've threatened and kidnapped journalists. The relative peace that Israel enjoys now is entirely because of Israeli actions, and not at all because of the PA. Hamas still has great influence in much of the West Bank outside Ramallah. Fatah still exists as a terrorist organization behind many terror and rocket attacks, despite being part of the "government." Palestinian Arab heroes are those who managed to kill the most Jews. Their universities churn out terrorists; their imams broadcast incitement against Israel and America on TV, every official from the President on down continues to extol the "resistance".

So, Condoleeza, why exactly is now the time for them to get their own state? I'd love to know what they've done to impress you so much since 2000. Installing (probably illegally) a well-respected prime minister who is too scared to speak against terror publicly seems to be their greatest accomplishment from your perspective.

From their own perspective, however, their greatest accomplishment had been to get the Secretary of State to respond to all of their 7 years of terror and incitement with a statement that now is the time to establish a Palestinian Arab state.

How else can this be perceived besides being a reward for terror and hate? If there is another way to interpret this, please enlighten us, Condi. I must be too dense to figure it out.

Anti-semitic act at the UN? Reporters stay mum.

Steven Edwards in the National Post writes an opinion piece saying that sometimes it is best to ignore racist and bigoted acts because publicizing them plays into the hands of the haters. The example that he brings, of a Jewish/Israeli colleague brushing off such an incident, seems to imply that someone at the UN made a threat against a Jew there:

A Jewish colleague recently returned to his desk at the United Nations to discover someone had anonymously dropped off a full-colour map showing Nazi-controlled Europe in 1942.
An Israeli, he had days earlier been among journalists Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the anti-Israel Iranian President, had approached after giving a press conference.
Ahmadinejad had no idea who any of the journalists were as he sought to charm them with a handshake, and quickly withdrew his hand when my colleague announced he was a "proud Zionist."
The colleague could have made all sorts of fuss about the appearance of the Nazi map, suggesting there had been a connection between that occurrence and the handshake with Ahmadinejad, or even other anti-Israel sentiment at the UN, of which there is much.
To my surprise, he did not dwell on the incident, saying only he wouldn't mind knowing who exactly left the map and why.
It seems likely the map depositor was trying to make some sort of negative -- even threatening -- point. My colleague's reaction disempowered that person.

With all due respect to Mr. Edwards and his friend, an explicit anti-semitic act at the United Nations should be exposed. This is not the same as a random swastika in a public place, which is bad enough, but this implies that an employee or associate of the organization that is supposed to be a major upholder of peace is guilty not only of misoziony but also of naked Jew-hatred. That is, by definition, newsworthy.

It is arguable whether the Jewish victim disempowered his attacker by ignoring him, or it is entirely possible that his ignoring it could empower that person to do something worse later, but what cannot be denied is that this event is something that should have been exposed.

For that matter, so should the handshake incident between this Israeli and Ahmadinejad. I could find no record of this, from any of the hundreds of journalists that covered the Iranian thug's visit, just as they ignored Karnit Goldwasser's encounter with Ahmadinejad - witnessed by dozens of reporters and academics.

What the hell is wrong with journalists when they argue that they should be reporting less, or when they accept invitations from a dictator for dinner and refuse to report it, as Brian Williams and Christiane Amanpour evidently did?

Journalistic bias should be towards more news, not less, especially in an era of unlimited Internet bandwidth. Imagine the outcry from journalists if a politician would argue that they shouldn't have covered the Columbia bias cases last week.

These stories not being reported seem to indicate that the mainstream media is an old-boys club as opposed to a group of people dedicated to exposing real news.

These guys love him!

Only Israel can "raise tensions"

From Arab News:

The Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) is set to renew its excavations soon at the Al-Magharebah Gate in the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound near the Western Wall (Al-Buraq Wall) in Jerusalem after receiving the approval of an Israeli ministerial committee, which may exacerbate tensions with neighboring countries ahead of next month’s planned Annapolis peace summit, the Israeli organization Ir Amim reported yesterday.

Also from Arab News:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday she will tell Israel that its expropriation of Arab lands erodes confidence in its commitment to a two-state solution.

Let's review a couple of stories from just the past couple of weeks:

Palestinian Arab negotiators demand to control the holiest spots in Judaism
Arabs turned Joseph's Tomb into a garbage dump
Palestinian Arab leaders threatened a third intifada if they don't get what they want
The PA newspaper had a cartoon calling on Allah to kill Americans

For some strange reason, none of these news stories was accompanied with phrases saying how these Fatah moves could "exacerbate tensions" with Israel, or that they could "erode confidence".

It's almost as if these "negotiations" are pre-determined to be completely one sided! Naaaaah, there must be some other explanation.

PalArabs love statistics. So do I.

The PA put out a press release today saying that since 1967, some 191 Palestinian Arab prisoners have died in Israel jails. As usual they are spinning this as an example of horrible human rights abuses by Israel, and they painstakingly break down how many were jailed pre-Oslo and post-Oslo, how many died from alleged torture and other causes. Lots and lots of numbers.

Let's forget the fact that this year alone at least 540 Palestinian Arabs have been killed by each other, which makes 191 dead over 40 years seem to be a pretty good record. But let's try to look at the numbers.

At the moment, there are some 11,000 PalArab prisoners in Israeli jails, and that number has been rising the past couple of years. In 2004 there were 7000. During the Oslo process, Israel had released practically all of its prisoners; in 1997 there were only about 250 and in 1999 there were at least 650. In 1980 there were close to 3000.

Another Palestinian Arab organization claims that since 1967, some 650,000 Palestinian Arabs have been detained by Israel.

These are hardly complete numbers, but it sounds like a reasonable assumption that at any point in time since 1967, a couple of thousand Palestinian Arabs would be in jail on the average.

Now, according to the CIA Factbook, the current mortality rate in the West Bank is 3.85 deaths per thousand, and in Gaza it is 3.74. So in any given year, one would expect some 4 prisoners per thousand to die anyway (this could be considered misleading because the majority of prisoners are young males, but the media age for Palestinian Arabs is only about 16 years old anyway and there are significant risks of death for young males in the territories from both Palestinian Arab and Israeli defensive actions.)

We would assume that, mirroring standard Palestinian Arab mortality rates, and guessing that the rate of increase in numbers of prisoners from 2000 to 2007 is fairly steady, that just in the years 2000-2007 we would have seen over 180 prisoners die. However, only 68 have died since 2000 according to the new statistics.

For the years prior to 2000 it is a bit harder to guess, but from 1993-1999 we will assume 400 per year average, which would come out to an expected total of 10 to die in that timeframe.

Similarly, if we assume a steady average of 3000 prisoners at any time from 1967 to 1992, we would expect to see 11 to die a year, which would add up to 275 dead prisoners since in that timeframe.

So, if we assume a constant mortality rate over all those years (which is clearly underestimating the real numbers), we would have expected about 465 prisoners to die naturally, rather than the 191 recorded.

The only conclusion one can make is that Israel treats its Palestinian Arab prisoners far better than they would be treated in their hometowns, and that when they are in prison they die at less than half the rate that they would be expected to die at home.

This doesn't jive with the reports of torture and horrid prison conditions that Palestinian Arabs love to tell the world.

I would like to thank the PA for releasing these statistics that show the world that even Palestinian Arab prisoners, in less than optimal conditions directly under Israeli control, are still treated far better than they pretend.

HH CXXXVI

Haveil Havalim #136, a compendium of the best of the JBlogosphere, is out at Soccer Dad.

This week I am honored that he chose my posting on Misoziony. My thirst for the power of coining a new word continues unabated - Google now has 11 listings for that word, almost all of them from automated aggregators that picked up on my postings, but still...

Check out HH!

Terrorists for Hillary

Excerpts from an article by the incomparable Aaron Klein in the Jewish Press:

There is a tendency to think of terrorists as living like barbarians in caves. Actually, a lot of terrorists, certainly those in Gaza and the West Bank, reside in well-decorated apartments with all the trappings of a modern production company. They have some of the most advanced communications equipment in the world and are quite Internet-savvy.

While terrorists spend much of their time in the field carrying out or planning attacks or undergoing or leading military training, they also find the time to follow the news media closely....

I was stunned by how closely some terrorists follow U.S. developments – how familiar they are with our political system and a lot of the top players. The day after the April Democratic debate, I happened to call Abu Jihad, one of the leaders of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terror organization, for an article I was writing about Palestinian rocket capabilities. Out of the blue during our interview, without any prompting on my part, Abu Jihad commented on how thrilled he was with the Democrat debate.

"We see Hillary [Clinton] and other candidates are competing on who will withdraw from Iraq and who is guilty of supporting the Iraqi invasion. This is a moment of glory for the revolutionary movements in the Arab world in general and for the Iraqi resistance movement specifically," said Abu Jihad. "I think Democrats will do good if they will withdraw as soon as they are in power."

...One of Abu Jihad’s bosses, Nasser Abu Aziz, the deputy commander of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the northern West Bank, said the debate proved "the invasion of Iraq was judged by Allah to be a failure. America needs to stop letting its foreign policy be dictated by the Zionists and the Zionist lobby. The Democrats understand this point and want to prevent this scenario." He declared it is "very good" there are "voices like Hillary and others who are now attacking the Iraq invasion."

With America heading toward 2008 presidential elections, I talked with the terrorists about which parties they favor and who specifically they want to see in the White House.

Overwhelmingly they told me they hope Americans sweep the Democrats into power, in part because of the party’s position on withdrawing from Iraq – a move, as they see it, that ensures victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," said Jihad Jaara, an exiled member of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. "This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq."

...Regarding the Democrat debate, Ala Senakreh, chief of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank, said making statements is not enough, but Democratic policies make him hopeful.

"It is not enough to compare Iraq to Vietnam. There must be a big campaign to start this withdrawal. What is happening now in the Congress is encouraging, it gives hope for a change, but I am afraid that it will still take time. As for us, this proves that the resistance always succeeds by the end of the day."

I read to the terrorists an interview on CBS’s "60 Minutes" in which then-House Minority Leader and now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, stated, "The jihadists [are] in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean we stay there. They’ll stay there as long as we’re there."

Muhammad Saadi, a leader of the Islamic Jihad terror group in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, laughed. "There is no chance that the resistance will stop," he said.

An American withdrawal from Iraq, Saadi explained, would "show the resistance is the most important tool and that this tool works. The victory of the Iraqi revolution will mark an important step in the history of the region and in the attitude regarding the United States."

Abu Ayman, an Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin, said he is "emboldened" by those in America who compare the war in Iraq to Vietnam.

The exiled Al Aksa member Jihad Jaara said an American withdrawal would "mark the beginning of the collapse of this tyrant empire [America]." He added that America’s vacating Iraq would also "reinforce Palestinian resistance organizations, especially from the moral point of view. But we also learn from these [insurgency] movements militarily. We look and learn from them."

Hamas’s Abu Abdullah argued that a withdrawal from Iraq would "convince those among the Palestinians who still have doubts in the efficiency of the resistance."

...I asked them about particular presidential candidates. Overwhelmingly, they favored Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Brigades chief Ala Senakreh, who planned and orchestrated multiple suicide bombings and has himself carried out at least a dozen shooting attacks against Israelis, told me he "hope[s] Hillary is elected in order to have the occasion to carry out all the promises she is giving regarding Iraq.

"I hope also she will maintain her husband’s policies regarding Palestine and even develop that policy. President Clinton wanted to give the Palestinians 98 percent of the West Bank territories. I hope Hillary will move a step forward and will give the Palestinians all their rights."

Abu Hamed, leader of the Al Aksa Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip, said,"...The Iraqi resistance is succeeding. Hillary and the Democrats call for withdrawal. Her [Clinton’s] popularity shows that the resistance is winning and that the occupation is losing. We just hope that she will go until the end and change the American policy, which is based on oppressing poor and innocent people."

Ramadan Adassi, leader of the Al Aksa Brigades in the Anskar refugee camp in the northern West Bank, said he also backs Hillary. With a straight face, Adassi said he was worried that if Hillary defies Israel she will be brought down like her husband, claiming White House intern Monica Lewinsky was an Israeli implant sent to lure Bill Clinton into a sex scandal after he pressured the Jewish state to evacuate territory to the Palestinians.

"If Hillary goes too much against the Zionist interests she will face the same conspiracy like her husband who fell into the trap of Lewinsky," said Adassi. "I have no doubt [Lewinsky] was planted by the Zionists, who wanted to send a message to all future American presidents – do not go against the Israeli policy. Bill Clinton made the Oslo agreement and promoted peace but the Israelis did not give him a chance."

The notion of Lewinsky as an Israeli agent is commonly believed in the terror community. It came up many times in my conversations and interviews with Palestinian terrorists.

The terrorists weren’t familiar with the particulars of some of the other presidential hopefuls, but they all knew of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. He is quite famous in terror circles for the time in 1995 when he booted Yasir Arafat from an invitation-only concert at New York’s Lincoln Center celebrating the UN’s fiftieth anniversary. ...

"Giuliani doesn’t deserve to live or even to be mentioned," said Brigades leader Ala Senakreh. "He wants war and he will most probably receive war. He hates Palestinians and we hate him. He hates Arafat and I tell him that it is Arafat who brought us to be very close to our independent state after decades during which Israel and your government did everything in order to prevent us from having our state."

Ramadan Adassi threatened Giulani: "If I had the occasion to meet him, I would hurt him. For the sake of the American people Giuliani shouldn’t be elected. He is a disgusting guy and I think Americans must think very hard about their future and their soldiers who will be killed when they come to elect their leaders."

A few notes on Coulter

The Ann Coulter/Donnie Deutsch kerfuffle has elicited a lot of comment in the JBlogosphere, with the battle lines seeming to mostly depend on the political leanings of the specific blogger. Right-leaning Jews tended to defend her, saying that her comments were simply a statement of her beliefs which coincides with that of many Christians. Left-leaning Jews tended to label her anti-semitic. At least one crossed party lines but then came back (although his viewpoint seems to be far more nuanced than most.)

While it appears that her "replacement theology" is not necessarily universal Christian thinking, I think we can safely make the assumption that she was espousing a set of personal beliefs that many other Christians share. For a Jew who is secure in his/her beliefs, this should not pose a problem - everyone who has a belief system, by definition, thinks that others are wrong.

Her comments were not anti-semitic by any means, but they were offensive.

Jews who grow up as a minority in a largely Christian nation often must fend off unwelcome but well-meaning attempts by Christians to embrace their beliefs, and, yes, to become "perfected." This can be considered a minor annoyance or a major offense, depending on the temperament of the receiving party, but in no case are these considered welcome. Religion is a personal thing and when others feel it is their right to try to enlighten you, they are by definition causing offense on some level. The fact that most religions condone proselytizing is no excuse for actually proselytizing in a multi-religious society - as with one's fist, the right to swing it ends at my face. Most Christians know this. Coulter cannot be unaware that while her beliefs are not offensive, describing them to a mass audience is offensive to Jewish listeners.

Coulter is a very intelligent woman. Unfortunately, as with most loudmouthed pundits, intelligence does not equal wisdom, and Coulter is far from wise.

IQ-type question

What is the next number in this series:

1,0,17,27

Bonus: What's the ninth number in the series?

The Iranian inferiority complex - Nobel Prize edition

According to the Iranian Fars news agency:

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2007 was awarded to Doris Lessing, an English writer of Iranian origin.

Lessing who was born in Iran's western province of Kermanshah is now a citizen of Britain.

Now, her real biography says:

Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

She may have been born in Persia (not Iran), but she is far from Iranian. As the BBC says, she was a "child of the British empire," and she is British through and through.

For Iranians to have such a compelling need to pretend that a prestigious prize has anything remotely to do with them betrays a massive inferiority complex. Reading the Iranian press shows this to be true - the smallest accomplishments are trumpeted as huge victories and Iran is especially sensitive in the area of scientific and military research, trying mightily to show how advanced it is.

While the Iranian psyche is not the same as the Arab psyche - Persians are much harder workers and value education more - this inferiority complex is a trait that Iranians share with the Arabs. The common denominators is probably the honor/shame culture combined with the West's supremacy in practically every cultural and scientific sphere. The fact that Iran and the Arab world "loses" in most of these "battles" (as they would think of them) is a constant source of pain to their pride, so whenever they actually accomplish something, no matter how trivial or peripheral, it takes on a huge symbolic importance.

Life in honor/shame cultures is a zero-sum game - if they "win" a Nobel Prize, for example, they think they have also caused the West to "lose" it and therefore they think that they have "humiliated" the West. This is of course their projection of their own thoughts every time a Westerner (or, especially, an Israeli) does something that is way beyond their own abilities.

Peaceful Palestinian Arab Eid al-Fitr

Today's the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and what better way to celebrate than violence?

Ma'an reports in its headline (no link yet) that a family feud in Hebron resulted in one dead and two injured.

Hamas claims that PA security forces stormed a mosque in Nablus.

A Hamas car was bombed in Gaza injuring a man; Hamas blamed Fatah.

A 16-year old boy took down a Hamas flag in Deir al-Balah in Gaza; a number of Hamas forces severely beat him.

Hamas was accused of stealing medical supplies from a hospital in Gaza.

One injured in Hamas/Islamic Jihad clashes in Rafah.

My count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by other Palestinian Arabs this year is now at 538.

UPDATE: A 22-year old and a 5-year old were killed in Qalqiya in what appears to be a clan clash with some "security forces." 540, and the number of women and children killed so far this year is at 70.

Free speech for the intolerant: The anti-Israel rally in London

Some delicious irony at The Guardian, with the usual amount of leftist cluelessness:

By Peter Tatchell

In London, this year's al-Quds demonstration - held last Sunday - had the themes of: "End Child Killing! End Oppression! End Israeli Apartheid!" It was supported by the left-wing Respect Party, 1990 Trust, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Islamic Human Rights Commission, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. The post-march Trafalgar Square rally was addressed by the Respect Party MP, George Galloway, and by the former Daily Express journalist, Yvonne Ridley.

As a long-time supporter of justice for the Palestinian people, I decided to join the protest. I am against Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, its divisive Berlin-style wall, its illegal nuclear weapons programme and its often indiscriminate military operations that kill innocent Palestinian civilians.

But I object to the way the al-Quds Day marches invariably hijack the Palestinian cause and use the occasion to also support the tyrannical, Holocaust-denying Iranian regime and its fundamentalist, terrorist offshoots, Hamas and Hizbullah - two organisations that mirror the Israeli disregard for international law, human rights and innocent civilians. Defenders of Hamas and Hizbullah claim that these two movements have popular support. True. So did the Nazis. Hitler won the most votes in the 1933 elections. But that did not make him right or justify his anti-humanitarian policies.

By aligning justice for Palestine with the injustice of the Iranian autocracy, al-Quds Day undermines international sympathy and support for the Palestinian people. While it suits the public relations purposes of the tyrants in Tehran to pose as anti-imperialists and defenders of an oppressed people, Iran's support for Palestine is the kiss of death.

The London al-Quds march was almost exclusively Muslim and fairly devout, judging by the preponderance of hijabs and beards. I joined the marchers, carrying two placards. One with a Palestinian flag and the slogan "Free Palestine", and the other emblazoned with the words: "Oppose the government of Iran, Support the people of Iran."

The latter placard included a photograph of a 16-year-old Iranian girl, Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh, who was publicly hanged in 2004 in the city of Neka for "crimes against chastity", after having been sexually abused during her early teenage years. Tehran hanged the female victim of abuse, not the male perpetrators. Then the ayatollahs lied that she was 22, to cover up the fact that they had hanged a minor, contrary to international human rights laws that Iran has signed.

This case of state-sponsored murder is, of course, just one aspect of a much wider pattern of human rights abuses by the Iranian regime, including the arrest and torture of student and trade union activists; the execution of Sunni Muslim leaders and ethnic Arabs and Baluchs; the closure of newspapers and detention without trial of journalists; and the arrest of more than 100,000 women for the crime of dressing "immodestly" (such as letting a few wisps of hair show from under their hijab).

The Iranian regime has all the characteristics of fascism, albeit in a clerical form. Its suppression of human rights is on a par with Franco's Spain, PW Botha's South Africa and Pinochet's Chile. But whereas the latter three dictatorships provoked global protests, Tehran's tyranny elicits mostly silence and inaction from left and liberal opinion. Why the double standards?

As soon as I turned up at the al-Quds demo, I was subjected to a barrage of violent, threatening invective from large sections of the crowd. Some started chanting: "Tatchell is a Zionist, Tatchell is a paedophile. Get out! Get out! Get out!'"

This paedophile slander was accompanied by allied falsehoods that I support "western attacks on Muslim lands" - despite my long-standing opposition to Russia's war in Chechnya, the war in Iraq and plans for a US attack on Iran.

Such lies show the moral depravity of many Islamists, who readily borrow from the tactics of Stalinists and the BNP to smear and discredit anyone who disagrees with them. Indeed, some fundamentalist leaders have admitted that it is morally acceptable for Muslims to lie in order to defeat "infidels" and to advance the Islamist cause.

I was treated to a torrent of hatred all the way from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square. Some of the al-Quds marchers shouted things like: "You are all Zionists and CIA agents. How much money did Bush pay you to come here today?" Others claimed: "Stop posing as a supporter of Palestine. You have never supported Palestine" - malevolently disregarding the fact that I was a founder member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in 1982.

Six of the al-Quds marchers made attempts to physically attack me. It was only police intervention that stopped them.

What I found odd is that the people who abused and attacked me were supposedly ultra-devout Muslims. Yet their manner was more thuggish than pious. Like their Iranian mentors, they no doubt claim to represent true, pure Islam. In my view they behaved in a most un-Islamic and unreligious way; offering very negative, unattractive caricatures of the Islamic faith and the Muslim community.

Many of the marchers appeared to identify with pro-Iranian Shia fundamentalism, which preaches a gospel of hatred and violence against Jews, gay people and even against other Muslims who disagree with their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.

None of my Muslim friends believe this bigoted nonsense, and most Muslims in Britain reject such intolerance. In my prison and asylum work, helping many gay and straight Muslims, I am constantly encouraged by imams who show great compassion and tolerance. They happily work with me, despite my atheism and gayness. This is the kind, gentle face of Islam that never seems to be newsworthy.

A different kind of Muslim predominated last Sunday. Many of the marchers were carrying Hizbullah flags and chanting: "We are all Hizbullah now." When I pointed out that Hizbullah kills innocent Israeli civilians, and endorses the execution of women and gay people who transgress their extremist version of Islam, I was told things like: "That's good. Society has to have order. These punishments are necessary for the good of society."

To Taichell's credit, he recognizes that human rights issues should apply to all. His characterizations of British Muslims appear to be a bit too sunny, as I would guess that most of those who treat him with respect have very little problem with Hamas or Islamic Jihad targeting Israeli civilians. Moreover, the fact that the British leftists who co-sponsored this hatefest did not speak out against physical attacks by the protesters on one of the few non-Muslims marching.

And just imagine - if, in the UK, a die-hard supporter of Palestinian Arabs gets physically attacked in public during a rally with many police around, how safe can Jews feel walking around Trafalgar Square? It appears that Great Britain is replacing a free culture with a fear culture.

This violent, hateful rally did not get any coverage in the mainstream British press, nor was there any condemnation of the sponsors.

Blogger Edgar Davidson was there and mentions:

What amazed me was that, on what should have been a lovely Sunday afternoon for London's tourists and shoppers alike to enjoy the centre of town, the police not only allowed this demonstration but actually closed the whole of Piccadilly and the streets around it for what turned out to be several hours. Anyway, when we got to the demonstrators we held up some Israeli flags; the police told us to put them away (although, to be fair, they did tell us that there was a counter-demonstration we could join). But it is a bit ironic that the Islamafascists are allowed to carry Hizbollah flags and placards inciting terrorism (all funded by a regime that is killing British soldiers in Iraq) but the police would not allow an Israeli flag to be held up for 'fear of inciting them'. I cannot begin to describe how disgusting were the scumbags on this march. Their contempt for Western values and hatred of Israel, was accompanied with a barrage of vicious anti-semitic abuse. Make no mistake this lot (despite the Neturai Karta idiots walking alongside them) were openly calling for death to Jews (not just Israel). They chanted "Kill, kill kill the Jews at us when they saw us with the Israeli flags.

Harry's Place blog shows the counter-demonstration, which was really an anti-Iran demo, not a pro-Israel one.

The British and the Wall

Yisrael Medad points out that the PalArabs are claiming ownership of the Western Wall and notes the claimed basis for this in international law, from a British commission in 1930 that was established in wake of the 1929 Muslim pogroms against Jews. Read his posting first.

From reading the report, I believe that one of the reasons that the British sided with the Muslims is because the very idea of "ownership" of the holiest place on the planet was so totally repugnant to the rabbis who testified as to its Jewish character:

The Jewish Side do not claim any proprietary right to the Wall. The Jewish Counsel are of opinion that the Wall does not constitute a property in the ordinary sense of that word, the Wall falling under the category of res divinum or res extra commercium. On the basis of that point of view the Jewish Side protest against any and every form of innovation in the structure of the Wall and its immediate surroundings carried out by the Moslems. The Jewish Side have submitted to the Commission a detailed "Note on recent Moslem innovations at the Wailing Wall," which is annexed to this document (Appendix XI). The plaintiffs refer to a pronouncement made by Sheikh Hafez, when he was examined as a witness before the Commission, with reference to the properties dedicated as Waqfs (pages 711-712), to the effect that some learned lawyers and some jurists would say that such property is the property of God while some say that it is the property of nobody. In this connection the Jewish Counsel ask the Commission to accept the above definition which would have the advantage of solving entirely the problem.

In other words, the Jews' intense knowledge of the extreme holiness of the Temple Mount was interpreted by the secular British as an admission of non-ownership, thus strengthening the Muslim case.

The Muslims, on the other hand, had no problem claiming complete ownership:

It is here a question about property which has belonged to the Moslems for many centuries.

Obviously, from a legal perspective the Jewish claim was not the best argument, but it proves beyond a doubt to whom the area is more important.

But interestingly, the current Arab claim that the Wall is theirs under international law based on this document is contradicted by their very own words in the document itself:

The Palestine Arab nation have rejected continually and in every opportunity the British Mandate over Palestine, and therefore they cannot be bound by any arrangement or regulation derived from that. Mandate; nor can they be bound by anything pertaining to what is known as the national home policy. My statement in this direction should not be taken as indicating any departure from that attitude which was adopted by this nation in exercise of its right to determine its own future.

Second: Moslems state that all contentions relative to Moslem sacred places should be dealt with only by competent bodies as prescribed by the Sharia Law. Other bodies can have no jurisdiction whatever by the Sharia Law. Other bodies can have no jurisdiction whatever on these places.

The Muslims, in their arguments before the Commission, already said that they do not consider the Commission to have any legal right to determine anything. It is rather hypocritical for them now to claim that they have the right to the Wall under international law when they themselves explicitly reject that document itself by their own words in this very report.

"Do what we want or we'll kill you" redux

This seems to be a recurring theme....

From al-(ha)Aretz:

Also Thursday, senior Fatah official and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia warned that if the upcoming regional peace summit does not yield results, Palestinians are likely to respond with a third, more intensified uprising, Army Radio reported.

"If the talks fail, we can expect a third and much more severe intifada," Qureia, who is also known as Abu Ala, was quoted as saying. Qureia currently heads the Palestinian negotiating team.

He warned that there would likely be heavy bloodshed in the case of failed talks at the summit, which is scheduled to take place in November in Annapolis, Maryland. The Second Intifada began shortly after the Camp David accords in 2000.

This is standard operating procedure for Arabs and Muslims, in venues throughout the world. And when the threats aren't as explicit as this, they are always there - because the West knows that when there's a pissed-off group of Arabs, violence is never far behind.

And when given a choice to pressure the reasonable, compromise-minded Israelis or the blackmailing, terror-threatening, take-it-or-leave it Arabs, is it any wonder that the world chooses to push Israel to make more concessions? Israel's not going to attack the world if it doesn't get its way, and Arabs have already proven that they are more than happy to threaten mass murder - and follow through.

(h/t Eye on the World)

Today's Walt/Mearsheimer lie

From JPost, on a W/M talk at MIT:

"A critically important issue when talking about America's terrorism problem is the matter of how US support for Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians relates to what happened on September 11," said Mearsheimer, who played the role of attack dog, while Walt set the stage.
Mearsheimer suggested that the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the "most powerfully recurrent in [Osama] Bin Laden's speeches," who, he said, had been deeply concerned about the plight of the Palestinians since he was a young man. He said that Bin Laden's concern had been reflected in his public statements throughout the 1990's - "well before 9-11." Citing the 9-11 Commission report, Mearsheimer and Walt argued that Bin Laden wanted to make sure the attackers struck Congress because it is "the most important source of support for Israel in the United States," adding that Bin Laden twice tried to move up the dates of the attacks because of events involving Israel. Mearsheimer and Walt went on to argue that 9-11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences in the United States as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with US foreign policy favoring Israel. "Its hard to imagine more compelling evidence of the role US support for Israel played in the 9-11 attacks," said Mearsheimer.
"In short, the present relationship between Washington and Jerusalem is helping to fuel America's terrorism problem," he went on to say.

I addressed the purposeful misreading of the 9/11 Commission Report, that time by Walt, last year. The 9/11 Commission emphatically said that OBL's animosity towards the US was at best only peripherally affected by US support of Israel.

Notice also Mearsheimer's sleight of hand - by saying that OBL was "deeply concerned" about Palestinian Arabs he is implying that this was his main motivation for 9/11. This logic is flawed - would they say that OBL's fighting the Soviets was also motivated by his "deep concern" for Palestine?

Most of all, Bin Laden's own statements make it clear that his concern for US support of Israel is almost an afterthought. Two fatwas from the 1990s can be found online calling on Muslims to kill all Americans. The 1996 fatwa is named "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" which makes it abundantly clear that it is American troops on holy Muslim soil that got his panties in a bunch, not its support for Israel - he buries that reason in the long text. And his 1998 fatwa spelled out his major three reasons to kill Americans, and support for Israel was a distant third:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.

The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So now they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.

Obviously OBL and his like-minded Islamists hate Israel with a passion. But they also hate America - possibly even more - for reasons quite independent of Israel, as OBL's words make clear. These "academics" once again fall into a trap of creating a theory to begin with and then finding facts to support that theory afterwards, ignoring any counter-evidence. This is not scholarship.

In short, Walt and Mearsheimer are liars when they say that support for Israel is the major reason for Islamic terror against America. Anyone who reads the entire OBL fatwas would see that clearly - but W/M know that most people won't bother. And the inconvenient facts that terror attacks in the UK, France and elsewhere cannot be so neatly explained by their absurd theory are just not going to be mentioned.

Tunnel collapse in Gaza - another mega-attack thwarted?

From Ma'an:

Gaza – Ma'an – A tunnel collapsed in the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, injuring a number of people.

The casualties are believed to have suffocated in the incident, according to Mu'awiya Hassanain, the director of emergency and ambulance department in the Palestinian ministry of health.

Tunnels on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt are frequently used for smuggling goods, particularly weapons into Gaza from Egypt.

The last sentence seems irrelevant. The Al-Bureij camp is in central Gaza, far from the border with Egypt.

It is, however, relatively close to the Israeli security border in Gaza (see here for a huge detailed map.)

The most obvious explanation is that a large effort was underway to tunnel under the border to attack Israeli civilians, or to attempt to kidnap another Israeli soldier. Judging from the map, it could easily have been a mile long.

Imagine what Gazans could accomplish if they put their energy, creativity and talents to purposes other than killing Jews?

cross-posted to Yourish

Lakewood attacker screamed "Jew! Jew!" - WCBS

More details on the attack:

LAKEWOOD, N.J. (CBS) ―
A New Jersey rabbi on his way to synagogue was brutally beaten with a baseball bat just steps from his home and left a bloody mess on the ground, police say, and many believe he was targeted because of his religion.

Gauze and rubber gloves still litter the ground where 53-year-old Lakewood rabbi Mordechai Moskowitz was savagely attacked with an aluminum bat. His face and head were so badly damaged that the paramedic who responded was his own nephew and didn't even recognize him.

"You wouldn't recognize him. It doesn't look like him, like anything like he used to look," said another one of Moskowitz's nephews, Moshe Rotberg.

Rotberg spent all night at the hospital with his uncle, who had to be placed into a medicated coma because of his condition.

"This was totally instigated by somebody's either sickness or hate," said Rotberg.

Moskowitz was attacked under the darkness of night in the middle of Princeton Avenue near 12th Street in Lakewood. While he was being attacked, residents tell CBS 2 they heard his attacker yelling at him.

"He started screaming, 'Jew! Jew! Jew!' Every time he hit him with the bat he banged and screamed 'Jew' again," said a neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous.

Lakewood police say they have no evidence that the attack was a hate or bias crime, but were able to find the baseball bat used and have a description of the attacker.

The suspect is being described as a black male, 30- to 40-years-old, clean shaven, wearing a dark plaid shirt and dark baggy pants. He is described as being approx. 5-foot-10 to 6-feet tall. He was last seen running south on Princeton Avenue.

Meanwhile, the principal at Lakewood Cheder School where Moskowitz teaches third grade says the children there are anxious for their favorite teacher to come back.

"They know that he was wounded, that he was in the hospital. I think most of them knew he was beaten. We're just hoping and praying for him that he should recover quickly," said Lakewood Cheder School Rabbi Yehuda Pirutinsky.

Moskowitz remains in critical condition at the Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

And more, which contradicts the story above:

Six people saw the attack on Mordechai Moskowitz, 53, of Lakewood, just before 8 p.m. Tuesday, at Princeton Avenue and Carey Street, police said. Neighbors said he was heading to a synagogue on Squankum Road, said Detective Lt. Joseph Isnardi.

Witnesses told police they did not see or hear any apparent reason for the attack, Isnardi said. There was no evidence to classify the assault as a bias crime, police said Wednesday, and nothing was stolen from Moskowitz.

The victim's nephew, Moshe Rothberg, said he did not believe his uncle was targeted because of his religion. However, he said he was eager to see what police uncover.

Isnardi said Moskowitz is conscious and able to speak.

Rothberg, of Lakewood, said his family was comforted by more than three dozen people who came to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, where Moskowitz was taken Tuesday night.

Another college newspaper article blaming Israel for all evil

The author of this article, for the Daily Campus of the University of Connecticut, takes pains to appear objective in his brief history of the Arab/Israeli conflict - but he really tries to demonize Israel as much as possible.

Here was my reply:

It is literally impossible to describe the conflict in such a small space, but that doesn't mean that George Maynard has the right to be extraordinarily selective in some facts and wrong in others.

This history completely ignores Arab attacks against Jews in Palestine that started as early as the 1880s and continued through pogroms in 1921, 1929, and 1936-39. This context is critical in understanding why Palestinian Jews even armed themselves to begin with.

In 1967, Israel had very few arms from the US - they was mostly from France - and Maynard again chooses to ignore the extreme rhetoric and daily threats to destroy Israel by Egypt's Nasser and other Arab leaders. He also ignores Nasser expelling the UN troops from Sinai and closing the Straits of Tiran from Israeli ships, an act of war. It is also disingenuous to refer to the West Bank in 1967 as "Palestinian territories" as Jordan had annexed them, with Palestinian Arab approval, around 1950. And his characterization of Israel somehow "causing" Jordan to join the war is laughably biased - Israel warned Jordan repeatedly not to attack and Nasser lied to King Hussein that he was winning the war to bring him in.

UN Resolution 242 does not call for Israel to withdraw from all the territories.

It is fascinating that Egypt and Syria's sneak attack on Yom Kippur, 1973 doesn't rate a mention in this history. Neither does Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, giving up the Sinai, with its oil fields and air fields and dismantling settlements, all for peace. Perhaps these events don't put Israel into a bad enough light for Mr. Maynard?

This "history" goes on and on - ignoring the constant Palestinian Arab terror attacks against Israel as well as the West in the 1970s, the Palestinian attacks from Lebanon that sparked the first Lebanon war, mischaracterizing Camp David and the beginnings of the intifada, and generally whitewashing Palestinian Arab crimes while twisting history for his own purposes.

It would be far more accurate to say that for nearly a century, Jews have attempted to live in peace with their Arab neighbors and the Arabs have been a bit less amenable.

For a series I am working on about the history of Palestinian Arabs, see my blog entry here: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychological-history-of-palestinian.html

If you can find any errors of fact in there, I would be most happy to correct it.

It takes time to correct articles like this, and the number of people who read it is probably tiny, but it is far worse to leave them unanswered.

My Qassam numbers are very low

The IDF just announced that since Hamas' takeover in Gaza there have been about 350 rocket attacks and 650 mortar attacks against Israel.

My count of Qassam rockets, looking only at articles I happen to catch in the Israeli press, is roughly half this number in that time period.

Which means that not only do Israelis have to worry about rockets coming at the rate of nearly 3 a day, but also that the attacks happen so often that many do not even get into the news.

Misoziony, hate speech and freedom

Continuing on my musings of misoziony...

If we accept at face value the claim that the rabid misoziony of Israel-bashers is not motivated by Jew-hatred, would it still qualify as hate speech?

To wit: Yesterday there were protests at Columbia University supporting a black professor who saw a noose hung on her office door. It is obvious that this was a purposeful act of hate, a veiled threat of violence and a purposeful evocation of historic lynchings of blacks.

Why isn't anyone considering this free speech? Why is such an act not protected as is offensive art or flag burning is?

The answer seems to be that there is a visceral horror at the pure racism that this event evokes. We have become conditioned to treat racism and selected other types of bigotry against ethnic or religious groups as reprehensible.

Now, there is no doubt that if someone left a sign on her door saying "death to blacks" or, more likely, a worse word this would also be considered beyond the pale and a clear example of hate speech. So would "death to Arabs" or "death to Italians" or "death to Jews" (at least in America.)

Would "death to America" or "death to Israel" qualify?

A quick Google on "death to..." various countries found that the vast majority of references were to Israel and America, with a fair number for the UK and Canada, a few for Western European countries and a smattering for Arab countries. Practically all of the links referred to Arabs and Muslims saying these words. (For example, there was an uptick of "Death to Denmark" references in the wake of the Mohammed cartoon kerfuffle.)

It is a fair bet that when Arabs say "death to..." some nation, they are advocating actual deaths of human beings, not an abstract concept. The fact they celebrate actual deaths of Israelis and Americans would seem to prove that point (notwithstanding that Sami al-Arian claimed otherwise.)

Is this hate speech? Is the hatred of a nation - and its people - as reprehensible as the hatred of an ethnic or religious group?

Last year, Salt Lake City allowed a "death to Israel" rally to take place. The same words can be heard at leftist rallies across the nation, by people who wholeheartedly support Palestinian Arab "resistance" - meaning terror against Israeli civilians.

Saying "death to Israel" is not just an expression; it is a call for mass murder and it is just as bigoted and hateful as any threats against any group. The question is, why is it so easily tolerated as free speech when equivalent expressions against other groups are considered disgusting hate speech?

Ohio Statehouse to host pro-Hamas activist

From FrontPage:

The Ohio State Capitol in Columbus will be the setting for a curious convocation later this month when it hosts an event featuring several well-known Islamic extremists as part of an “interfaith” conference entitled, “The Many Faces of Islam”. The conference, which is to be held in the atrium of the Statehouse on Sunday, October 28^th, will feature two well-known speakers with multiple connections to the HAMAS international terrorist organization, a host of convicted terrorist leaders, and colleagues who fled the US to avoid prosecution on terrorism-related charges. The event is sponsored by the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio.
One of the featured speakers at the conference will be Anisa Abd El Fattah, the chair of the National Association of Muslim American Women based in Columbus....
As one of the foremost spokesman for HAMAS in the US, Fattah has published a litany of screeds denouncing “Zionism” and promoting violence against Israeli civilians. A letter to the editor she had published last month in the Columbus Dispatch (“Israelis in Gaza aren’t civilians”), Fattah indicated that any Israeli man, woman or child in Gaza was fair game for terror attacks: “There are no Israeli civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are only illegal Jewish settlers, who, by Israeli law, are also citizen-soldiers. They are heavily armed with fully automatic weapons.”

In a May 2006 article, “Condemning Zionism is crucial to world peace”, Fattah rages against Israel, arguing that Zionism is an “evil and racist ideology that not only directly contrasts everything we profess to stand for as a country, but that also violates every relevant divine, human rights, or other law, including our own laws, as well as every norm of decency known to the human species.” She concludes her article by adding that Zionism was attempting “to expand into Sudan through Darfur”, and thus, responsible for the genocidal violence there, rather than the Islamic government in Khartoum.

An April 2006 article by Fattah, “A Religious History of Justice and Palestine”, begins with her pronouncement that “[t]he racist and colonizing legacy of the Zionist Christian Church, and the Synagogue continues into the 21^st Century…”.

This is one of the featured speakers at the “interfaith” conference at the Ohio State Capitol.

Read the whole thing, plus followups by the same author, Patrick Poole.

More details on Lakewood beating

From the Asbury Park Press:

LAKEWOOD — Police have released a composite sketch of the man being sought in the attack on a third-grade Orthodox school teacher Tuesday night.

The investigation into the attack of Mordechai Moskowitz, 53, of Lakewood, is being conducted by Lakewood Police Detectives Greg Staffordsmith and Steve Wexler, along with Investigator Carlos Trujillo-Tovar from the Ocean County Prosecutors Office.

Police are asking the public to call if they have any information or saw anything out of the ordinary about 8 p.m. Tuesday on Princeton Avenue, Isnardi said.

The first comment on the article is somewhat less than sympathetic towards the Orthodox Jews of Lakewood:

It's terrible that this man was almost killed. That being said, why should anyone from outside of the orthodox cult get involved in solving this crime?. I doubt any of them would do likewise. The orthodox want nothing to do with Lakewood outside of their own interests (segregated housing, segregated schools, welfare, etc.)

UPDATE here.

EUdiots show their love for terrorists again

From JPost:

Calling Gaza a "prison" and a "ghetto," European Union parliamentarians harshly condemned Israeli actions there in a special session held in Brussels on Wednesday.

During the hour-long, heated debate in advance of a Thursday vote on a resolution, parliamentarians, as well as EU officials, called on Israel to open the Gaza borders to alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis in the impoverished area where 1.1 million of the 1.4 m. population are dependent on the international donations for basic food supplies.

In one of the more impassioned speeches, Belgian MEP Veronique De Keyser called Gaza a "ghetto" where "people are dying little by little with cameras trained on them."

While the IDF is working on a proposal to close the borders between Gaza and Israel in favor of Egyptian crossings, EU parliamentarians called on Israel to find a solution to the problem.

In particular, it urged Israel to live up to its commitment to ensure pedestrian passage at Rafah and full commercial movement in Karni.

The Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June forced the closure of the main commercial crossing into Israel at Karni and the pedestrian one into Egypt at Rafah. The third major crossing into Israel at Erez has been opened for limited pedestrian traffic.

Since June, the IDF, along with the United Nations, has worked to bring basic supplies, agricultural products and limited goods into the area through alternative crossings at Sufa and Kerem Shalom.

Among the stumbling blocks to opening the crossing have been continued mortar attacks by Hamas on the passages and the absence of a viable plan to replace the Fatah personnel who had manned the Gaza borders on the Palestinian side.

In a more measured speech than some of the others, Portuguese Secretary of State for European Affairs Manuel Antunes Lobo attacked Israel's decision last month to declare Gaza a "hostile territory" and said that such a move "exacerbated" an already bad situation.

"The European Union recognizes Israel's legitimate right of self defense but asks Israel to carefully consider the consequences of its decision." He added that "access and movement" agreements regarding the borders need to still be respected even in the current situation.

The EU, he said, remains committed to helping out the Palestinians financially both in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2006, it gave out €688 million in humanitarian assistance and this year it has already shelled out €425m., he said.

EU Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said she was particularly disturbed by the fact that the border closures had forced the suspension of important water and sanitation projects.

But even as she took spoke of the EU's continued financial commitment to the Palestinians, she called on the Arab states - who have not contributed in the same way we did - to step up and "do their part in the future."

One British MEP, Chris Davies, said it should be Israel and not EU taxpayers who should foot the bill to solve the Palestinian humanitarian crisis.

"What does it have to do with the EU? Gaza is an Israeli prison camp. It is the Israelis who should be responsible. They are the ones that keep them in misery," said Davis.

The level of EU depravity and hypocrisy stays pegged at 11 on a scale of 10.

They pay lip service to Israel's security needs but do not blame Hamas for anything that is happening in Gaza. They say that all responsibility for Gaza is Israel's, not their Arab brethren who they admit contribute next to nothing to solve the "humanitarian crisis." They blame the closing of Karni on Israel and do not acknowledge the terrorist attacks at that border crossing.

The hypocrisy really hits home when they blame Israel for Rafah being closed. Somehow, Egypt manages to open it for wanted terrorists to travel to Gaza and the EU which is supposed to monitor it disappears.

So it is Israel's fault that the Rafah (and Karni) agreement stipulations have been abrogated by Hamas' takeover of the Strip?

So the EU can insist that Israel negotiate with a group sworn to destroy it?

So when a people democratically elect terrorists, they must eb shielded from the consequences?

So Egypt has no responsibility for Gaza, and only Israel does?

So the EU cannot deign to mention weapons smuggling, Hamas/Fatah civil war, religious coercion, torture and all the other things that make life in Gaza hell that are quire independent of Israel?

These moral midgets love to stand up and accuse Israel of crimes - and their use of the word "ghetto" is no accident as they try so label Israel as being Nazis without actually saying it - when they have histories of colonization whose associated atrocities have dwarfed anything Israel could dream of.

Perhaps most tellingly, they promote the stereotype of Arabs as savages, saying that the Arab people cannot possibly be expected to take care of their own, or to act like human beings. No, only Israel is responsible for taking care of the poor animals, in th EU's twisted and bigoted viewpoint. The very idea of Arab responsibility for their role in creating and prolonging a fake "refugee" problem is never to be mentioned - and the idea that somehow Palestinian Arabs have the ability to fix their own messes is not even entertained.

Gaza is not sub-Saharan Africa, and PalArab children are not sitting with distended stomachs and fleas begging for a morsel of bread. Gazans are educated and clothed and fed; they have cars and houses and designer clothes and the Internet. A billion dollars a year flows into Gaza legally, who knows how much more smuggled in suitcases from Saudi and Iranian petrodollars. Gaza could have turned into a Singapore or a Hong Kong if the Arabs had the ability to take responsibility for themselves rather than spend their entire existence whining that somehow they deserve more and more Western support. Gazans have created a successful industry of building rockets and tunnels - efforts that could have been building real businesses where they could export their wonderful goods to Europe itself.

This is the ultimate irony: a group of politically correct Europeans saying, in effect, that Gazans are less than human and must be treated as if they are all mentally ill.

Arabs taking responsibility for their own actions? Mon Dieu!

Speaking of free speech....

One rarely finds the same people who agitate for "free speech" to allow, say, neo-Nazi messages to be broadcast on TV, to be nearly as concerned when a US ally does this:

A Jordanian security court has sentenced former Jordanian MP Ahmad Al-'Abadi to two years in prison for criticizing the royal family in speeches before U.S. Congressmen.
Al-'Abadi's wife called the sentence a political move aimed at distancing her husband from the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Source: Al-Jarida, Kuwait, October 10, 2007

Yes, our friends the Jordanians jail people who say things that tick them off.

Perhaps it is just me, but this seems to be a teensy bit greater violation of free speech than forcing any media to give space and time to any crackpot's ravings. Yet not a single English-language news source mentions this story.

The disastrous idea of "land swap"

Palestinian Arab negotiators are flocking to wire service reporters to float ideas, and today another one came up - the idea of a "land swap" where PalArabs get the same number of square kilometers from Israel that Israel keeps from settlements.

Once again, we have a situation that would sound reasonable if both sides were reasonable, and it utterly disastrous once one understands the Arab psyche.

People tend to forget that before the Six Day War, Israel's borders were just armistice lines. The Arab world did not accept those borders as being anything close to final and they were using military, terrorist and diplomatic ways to try to shrink the Jewish state.

After 1967 and especially after 1973, however, the Arab attitude changed. Once they saw that they could not defeat Israel militarily they dedicated their efforts to get back the land - and the honor - that they lost. Sadat famously said that he'd rather go to war than lose a single grain of sand of the Sinai, and the entire existence of the PLO is largely due to Arab governments using them to get the West Bank away from Jewish control. While they never truly gave up on the idea of Israel's destruction, their more immediate concern was to get back the 1967 losses and that forced them to implicitly recognize the Green Line as being meaningful. In other words, 1967 and 1973 allowed Israel to solidify its hold on the 1949 borders to the point that the world accepted them far more than they did before 1967.

A land swap would smash the idea of the 1949 Green Line as a border of Israel, and it would bring Israel back to its pre-1967 situation, in more was than one. The Arab world would still consider the settlements to be Arab land - there is no question about that - and now they would also gain leverage on 1949 Israeli lands, which haven't been on the table in decades. Every point of contact has the potential of becoming another Shebaa Farms, another excuse to whittle Israel down, another set of terror attacks coupled with impassioned pleas against the intransigent Israelis refusing to give only a couple of kilometers here and there of ancient Arab land - and Westerners believing them. They will insist on a land corridor between Gaza and the West Bank, cutting Israel in half, and that corridor will have to grow in width year after year.

The Green Line was an impossible border for Israel to live securely, and moving it towards the West - allowing even more of Israel to be in rocket range - is not only stupid militarily and from a security point of view, but it will open the doors for the entire Arab world to again believe that they can drive the Jews into the sea.

cross-posted at Yourish

No-man's land: the difference between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs

The AP quotes Abbas' demands:

In a television interview, Abbas said the Palestinians want to establish a state on 6,205 square kilometers (2,400 square miles) of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was the first time he has given a precise number for the amount of land he is seeking.

"We have 6,205 square kilometers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," Abbas told Palestine TV. "We want it as it is."

According to Palestinian negotiating documents obtained by The Associated Press, the Palestinian demands include all of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, east Jerusalem and small areas along the West Bank frontier that were considered no-man's land before the 1967 war.

Let's talk about those small areas:

Two Bay Area visionaries have teamed up to turn a Jerusalem battlefield into a peace park.

San Francisco environmentalist and philanthropist Richard Goldman, the man behind the Goldman Environmental Prize known as the "Green Nobel," and celebrated landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, designer of the FDR Memorial in Washington and the new Sigmund Stern Grove, will receive a special award in June for their part in creating a 1 1/2-mile promenade linking East and West Jerusalem.

The promenade was built across Government Hill Ridge, a mountainside in southern Jerusalem that was no-man's land between Jordan and Israel from 1948 to 1967.

According to the New Testament, this was the Hill of Evil Counsel, where 2,000 years ago Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver on the eve of the crucifixion. More recently, it was where the Six Day War erupted in Jerusalem in 1967.

Thanks to Goldman and Halprin, the site is today a vast, tranquil park with a picture-postcard view that is shared by Muslims, Jews and Christians from across the city and around the world.

The Haas Promenade -- named in honor of Goldman's parents-in-law of the Levi Strauss family, and designed by Halprin -- was completed in 1987. It allows visitors to enjoy a spectacular view of the ancient Old City of Jerusalem, the surrounding biblical landscape and the new neighborhoods of East and West Jerusalem across a park with more than a mile of twisting pathways among olive trees and shrubbery.

The same team extended the park to create the Goldman Promenade, which was opened in 2002. This smaller path meanders eastward through a forest of Jerusalem pines toward an observation point overlooking the Judean Desert, the Dead Sea and the Mountains of Moab in Jordan.

Rather than "Judaizing" Jerusalem, as the Arabs always claim, these Jews worked with the Israeli government to build a beautiful park and promenade for all of Jerusalem to enjoy - Arabs, Jews and Christians.

Now, Mahmoud Abbas, that man of peace, not only wants all of East Jerusalem - not only does he want the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, not only does he want the Western Wall of the Temple Mount - but he is also "demanding" an area that was never even Jordanian.

An area that Jews cultivated and beautified for all of mankind - he wants to take away so it could become another Arab slum. He would prefer to see it turn into another Hamastan rather than let the hated Jews control it.

In the mind of even the most "moderate" Palestinian Arab, Jews must be restored to their rightful, second-class dhimmi status by any means possible. Negotiations, terror false promises of peace - they are all the same as long as the end result is that Jews control less land in the Middle East.

The contrast between Abbas' bigotry and extremism, and Israel's desire to compromise and find solutions for everybody, has never been more striking. His demand for an area that was never "Palestinian" on any map proves yet again that the goal of Fatah is identical with the goals of Hamas - not to gain "Palestinian" Arab lands but to take away land from Jews.

From 1948 to 1967, Palestinian Arabs didn't care when they were under Jordanian or Egyptian rule. their desire for a state was close to non-existent, and their efforts were aimed towards taking away Jewish land, not establishing a "Palestinian" Arab state. And this has not changed one bit.

The international community, cowed by fears of Arab terror, are more than willing to convince themselves that yet another Arab state in part of Western Palestine will help keep bombs out of their cities for a few years. It is that fear, rather than any real desire for truth of justice, that fuels the relentless pressure on Israel to keep on conceding more and more land over and over again in exchange for worthless promises that usually get broken within months. Annapolis is yet another exercise in this chapter of the vast effectiveness of terrorism in accomplishing its goals.

And the diabolical brilliance of Yasir Arafat was in his starting his major terror campaigns against Western airplanes - and then stopping to concentrate only on Israel. He understood that continuing to directly confront the West would bring his downfall, but to offer the West a deal where they only have to sacrifice Israel to mollify the terrorists was an irresistable offer to a world that has no love for Jews to begin with.

Denying reality to promote misoziony

Here's a useful place to use the word I coined yesterday.

A few days ago, the Iranian ambassador to Chile showed up at the launch party of a book about Hashomer Hatzair and he chatted a bit with the Israeli ambassador:

Shortly after the beginning of their conversation, Jalali leaned over and whispered: "I have to tell you something, but don't be offended, it's nothing personal. We are forbidden from speaking with Israeli diplomats."

How does Iran react to this horrible breach of Iranian etiquette? By denying that it ever happened:

An informed source at Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denied certain media reports that Iran's ambassador to Santiago, Chile, had held talks with a Zionist regime diplomat.
The source told IRNA that the news has been published by a daily based in the occupied lands.
He said such propaganda raised by the Zionist media was not something new and authenticity of such claims has never been confirmed.

This is not the first time this has occurred - only last month we saw very similar circumstances:

Officials from Israel and Iran put aside political animosity Tuesday to work together in using Israeli forensics expertise to identify their dead from the crash of a jetliner on a Thai resort island.
"It's human nature to help in solving this problem as soon as possible," Safdar Shafiee said at the Iranian Embassy in Bangkok after shaking hands with Yaki Oved, head representative of Israeli police in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
"In situations like this, you forget the division," Oved said. "The main thing is to help. You don't think about the politics."

And the Iranian reaction?

Iran's envoy to Thailand has denied the allegations that Iranian and Israeli teams had cooperated to identify the Thai plane crash's victims.

Mohsen Pak Aeen said that the Iranian team received help from Thai experts, Iranian and Thai travel agencies and Iranian nationals living in Thailand to identify the crash victims.

Pak Aeen added there was no contact between the Iranian consulate in Phuket and Israeli nationals.

This is pure misoziony - the seething hatred of all things Israeli causes Iranians to deny events that were witnessed by dozens of people. (It is so pathological that they cannot bring themselves to say the word "Israel.")

The inherent irrationality of misoziony discredits anything that Iran says - yet it is so strong that they hate Israel more than they value their own credibility.

Jew severely beaten in Lakewood

From the Star Ledger:

An Orthodox Jewish man was hit on the head with a baseball bat in Lakewood last night, leaving him with life-threatening injuries as authorities searched for suspects, police said.
The unidentified beating victim, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, was found lying unconscious in the street on Princeton Avenue, near 12th Street, about 8 p.m., Lt. Michael Mooney said. Mooney added injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

Police responded to the scene on reports of a man down.

Although the victim was dressed in Orthodox Jewish clothing, police are not treating the incident as a bias crime at this point because they have no suspects or motive, Mooney said.

A baseball bat was found near the victim, and K-9 units were being used in the search.