Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Morning links

Daled Amos on how little the Israeli economy needs a "peace" deal.

Israel Matzav on the thousands of Palestinian Arabs who want to become Israeli citizens.

Augean Stables on Wafa Sultan being more American than Americans..

Atlas Shrugs has a spreadsheet with lots of terror statistics worldwide.

Soccer Dad on understanding Condi's motivations.

Alan Dershowitz on "Democrats and Waterboarding."

Dan Gillerman's full statement to the UN on human rights.

Harvard professors: Being Jewish isn't a religious thing

At Harvard University, the Hillel is celebrating a week-long "Jewbilation". One of the events invited three Jewish Harvard faculty to discuss what Judaism means to them. The answers are saddening:

For the roundtable discussion called “Jewish in 2007,” some 60 people gathered at Hillel to hear Law School Professor Alan M. Dershowitz, former Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, and Professor Stephen A. Marglin talk about how they have merged their intellectual and spiritual lives.

In Dershowitz’s case, the famed law professor claims that he hasn’t.

A self-described “agnostic at best,” Dershowitz was the first to explain the nuances of his “secular, perverse, and confrontational” Judaism.

“I am absolutely sure that there is no God who writes Bibles and answers human prayers,” Dershowitz said. “The God I don’t believe in is very much the Jewish God.”

Organizer Asher A. Fredman ’08 said he hoped the discussion, part of a week of events called “Jewbilation,” would give students a chance to reflect on the role of Judaism in their lives.

During the talk, Marglin reinforced Dershowitz’s emphasis on personal choice in religious practice.

“We all have to make our own decisions in light of our own histories and exceptions,” he said.
...
Marglin also considers himself to be culturally Jewish, but his beliefs make him a “secular humanist.”

He added that he continued to practice Judaism for the sense of community it provides.

“Through Judaism, I learned that I could be something other than a self-interested individual, that I could be a member of a community, a link in a chain that went from family to clan to village,” Margolin said.

“This was something that nothing had prepared me for: not my upbringing nor my work at Harvard,” he said.

Gross echoed Margolin’s words, saying, “What I feel most powerfully about being Jewish is being a member of a community.”

“This community has sustained me throughout much of my life,” Gross said.

What these esteemed academics are saying is that while it might be important for them personally to identify as being Jewish, for all their intelligence they have absolutely no answer to tell their children if asked why they should remain Jewish.

They belong to a Judaism of superficiality, of convenience, and, in Dershowitz' case, of redefinition.

It is telling that the Jewish campus organization couldn't find a single professor who actually subscribes to basic Jewish beliefs.

The cycle of violence continues....

An Islamic Jihad leader succumbed to his wounds from Hamas/Islamic Jihad clashes last month.

Naturally, there was a big noisy funeral.

Naturally, Islamic Jihad members chose that solemn occasion to throw stones at a nearby Hamas headquarters.

And just as naturally, Hamas responded with live fire, killing one and wounding four more.

We'll see what the death toll will be at this next person's funeral.

My count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other this year climbs to 571.

UPDATE 11/8: A bomb meant to kill IDF soldiers exploded prematurely in Nablus, killing one. 572.

The Vast Gentile Conspiracy

After hearing an aged British professor launch a diatribe about how Jews control the media in the United States, Carol Gould decided to investigate:

If one accepts that the Sulzbergers are Episcopalian, they can be eliminated as ‘Jewish’ controllers of the New York Times. The Knight Ridder group controls many newspapers. Betty Scripps, who is a stalwart of my local Washington National Opera company, is not exactly a Hadassah lady. The mighty Scripps Howard empire, which rose to prominence a century ago alongside the Cowles dynasty, still controls numerous publications. Names like Gannett, Robinson and McClatchey dominate other media empires, along with Sumner Redstone of Viacom and Boisfueillet Jones of the Washington Post. Then there is the Southern Tennant-Bryan empire. Add to this mix Ted Turner, Murdoch, Dow Jones, Luce and Hearst and I do not see any Jewish conspiracy.

Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson are the three heavyweight network news anchors, and I do not recall any Jews ever sitting in these chairs in my lifetime. Peter Jennings was a fierce critic of Israeli policies and made this known in his ABC News reports. Israel is covered infinitely less on American television than on British media, but when it is it is often portrayed with a critical eye, most particularly on CNN.

The opinion-formers in the United States in primetime are non-Jews: Gwyn Ifyl, Stephen Colbert, Lou Dobbs, Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Bill O’Reilly and finally Keith Olbermann, who is of German Lutheran extraction. In fact, except for the occasional appearance by Bill Kristol, the vast array of television and radio punditry is the exclusive realm of Christian commentators.

It may be time to create a GentileWatch website!

Rumsfeld correct on Gulf Arab mentality

Last week a bunch of internal, informal memos written by Donald Rumsfeld were leaked out and caused a minor embarrassment to the White House. In one of them, Rumsfeld wrote that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims "from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed. An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism."

Not surprisingly, the terror-supporting CAIR complained, and the White House distanced itself from the memo.

The White House on Thursday sympathized with Arab-Americans who took offense to a memo that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote saying that "oil wealth has made Muslims averse to physical labor."
Rumsfeld's belief is "not at all in line with the president's views," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
Asked about Rumsfeld's memo, Perino acknowledged that some Arab-American groups took offense to his comment.
"We are aware that we have a lot of work to do in order to win hearts and minds across the Arab world and the Muslim world and I can understand why they would be offended by those comments," she said.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Rumsfeld's comment reflects the "stereotypical attitude" that led the United States to invade Iraq.
"Our policy was never based on reality," Hooper said. "It was based on the wild ideas of those who wanted to invade the region. ... It shows you what kind of wrong-headed policymakers we had at the time."

The problem is that Rumsfeld's observations were dead-on accurate if you understand that he was referring to residents of the oil-rich Gulf states. In context, it is clear that this was what he was talking about.

Anyone reading the Saudi-based Arab News for any period of time will see more than a few stories about the problems Saudis have with the sheer number of foreign workers they've brought in, legally or illegally, and not only from Pakistan or Korea but also from poor countries in Africa. Amnesty International estimates over seven million foreign workers in Saudi Arabia alone, with limited rights.

And this is not a new phenomenon - hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs migrated to the Gulf in the fifties and sixties, not only because the the economic opportunities there but also because the local Arabs were simply lazy and the Palestinian Arabs who were willing to move and get off the UNRWA dole were hard working and ambitious. It has been observed that Palestinian Arabs essentially built Kuwait's entire infrastructure.

As far as the other half of Rumsfeld's observations, that young spoiled Arabs are ripe for recruiting into terror groups, this is also beyond dispute. As studies have shown, the average terrorist is not poor but comes from the middle class and has above-average wealth and education - and in Saudi Arabia, the middle class means that you only have two or three maids in your house.

It is not a stretch to think that these young men are the prime recruits for terror. As was reported this week, Saudi Arabia is the "hub of world terror."

So what exactly did Rumsfeld say that was wrong or offensive? His observations and inferences were as accurate as any can be about a group of people.

If the White House wants to capture the "hearts and minds" of the Arab world, it will not succeed by pandering to fantasies and myths. Distancing itself from the truth about the Arab world and the sources of terrorism is a giant step backwards.
(h/t Jihad Watch)

Columbia professor: Muslims discovered everything!

From the Pakistan Daily Times:

LAHORE: Muslim scientists have made all discoveries of the current age, said University of Columbia’s Arabic and Islamic Studies prof George Saliba at a seminar at the Government College University (GCU) on Monday. The seminar, titled The Problems of Historiography of Islamic Science, was held at Fazl-e-Hussain Hall. Saliba gave a critique of the standard classical accounts of the rise of Islamic science. He detailed problems in the accounts and explained alternative historiography that described the rise of an Islamic scientific tradition as a result of social and political conditions within the nascent Islamic empire. He said Muslim philosophy was the impetus behind Islamic science that had contributed to various disciplines including botany, zoology, algebra, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology and mathematics in the pre-industrial era. He said the use of decimal fractions was not a Western invention and that it was discovered by a Muslim scientist. He said the binary system, on which the computer was based, was also invented by a Muslim scientist. He said Arab/Islamic science was not an intermediary between Greek science and European science, but was rather the Renaissance that integrated the Islamic science with European science. Saliba also visited the English Language and Literature Department where he engaged faculty members in a conversation on the Islamic and Renaissance paradigms.

From looking at the professor's web page it seems that he is even overstating his own research. For example, he writes much about how the Copernican theory would have been impossible without two crucial theorems from Islamic mathematicians, but that is a far cry from saying that Muslim scientists are responsible for what Copernicus discovered.

Now, it is possible that in this case the Pakistani reporter was not accurate, but what can we make of the assertion that the binary system was invented by an Islamic scientist? Binary arithmetic can be traced back to an Indian mathematician from 800 BCE, some 1500 years before Islam existed!

Saliba seems to contradict himself as well in the last paragraph of his on-line work describing Islamic influence on European science:

Even when such questions are asked, and their answers are debated -- and it will take more than political history to do that properly -- one could still ask the more perplexing question, namely, that of attaching cultural, civilizational, or linguistic adjectives to the scientists themselves when it is made so obvious that their works and concerns either knew no defined cultural, civilizational or linguistic boundaries, or whatever boundaries they encountered they were at best blurred boundaries. Most blatantly, one still has to find a name for the production of the Tusi Couple, that was first encountered in an Arabic text, written by a man who spoke Persian at home, and used that theorem, like many other astronomers who followed him and were all working in the "Arabic/Islamic" world, in order to reform classical Greek astronomy, and then have his theorem in turn be translated into Byzantine Greek towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, only to be used later by Copernicus and others in Latin texts of Renaissance Europe. What name could one possibly dream up for that kind of science, and whose science it was anyway?

Here he is arguing that referring to certain scientific endeavors or even scientists as being "Greek" or "Chinese" or even "Western" is misleading, because there were many influences on them. Yet he seems to have no problem referring to "Arabic/Islamic science."

Certainly there have been major contributions to various sciences by Islamic scientists, especially in the first half the the last millennium. But it does no one any favors to overstate or exaggerate this influence as if they are solely responsible for every major scientific breakthrough. And it is a bit hypocritical to try to discredit the achievements of non-Muslim scientists on the grounds that they were somewhat influenced by Islamic science, and not to credit the science that pre-dates Islam for influencing Islamic science itself.

h/t Eye on the World

Exclusive picture of "Jewish extremist"

The pro-Hamas Palestine Today website today published an article which it illustrated with this autotranslated caption:

متطرفون يهود Jewish extremists

What a scary looking guy!

It is especially telling that this same website is replete with photos such as this:

- and never will you see the word "extremist" applied to any of these fine upstanding gentlemen.

Fatah/Hamas fighting is temporary - hate for Jews is forever

Remember a few months ago when Hamas released a "Lion King"-type cartoon that took direct aim atFatah in general and "strongman" Mohammed Dahlan in particular?

Looking at the news from just a few months ago one would think that their break was absolute. The fatal mistake is to base decisions on such faulty analysis:

The deputy chief of Hamas' political bureau, Mousa Abu Marzouq, approached Fatah's former Gaza Strip strongman Muhammad Dahlan this week in an effort to mend the division that has plagued Palestinian politics since June, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported.

Al-Hayat said reliable sources indicated that the Hamas leader hoped to open a dialogue that will result in renewed cooperation between the two factions, in the interest of the larger Palestinian cause.

Dahlan reportedly rejected Abu Marzouq's overtures, saying he would not negotiate with Hamas after their takeover of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas and Fatah leaders have made a number of public gestures toward reconciliation recently, including a visit by four Hamas leaders to the presidential compound in Ramallah, the Muqata last Friday.

Al-Hayat said the Hamas officials' visit to Ramallah was not without problems, as the Secretary General of the Palestinian Presidency, Al-Tayyib Abdul-Rahim refused to host the officials in his Ramallah home after another Hamas leader made remarks last week that some Fatah officials interpreted as a plan to take over the West Bank.

Hamas leader Sheikh Nizar Rayyan had declared that Hamas would "pray in the Muqata," which is what the four Hamas leaders did last Friday at the invitation of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Fatah/Hamas rapprochement changes the entire calculus of the wisdom of the West propping up Fatah as a "moderate" alternative and pretending that Hamas has been marginalized. This is a basic mistake that underpins the entire idea of Annapolis.

Hamas' strength has not been appreciably hurt by its takeover of Gaza and world disapproval. There is no sea change in Palestinian Arab opinion against Hamas. It may be laying low in the West Bank but its influence there is much stronger than what the press is reporting.

This is yet more proof that wishful thinking will cause even intelligent people to ignore facts and embrace fantasy.

Evidence of Arab collusion against Arab Jews starting in 1947

Today, "Justice for Jews from Arab Countries" is announcing new evidence that Arab nations colluded to persecute the Jews in their countries before 1948:

To back the claim, the group has reproduced copies of a draft law composed by the Arab League in 1947 that called for measures to be taken against Jews living in Arab countries. The proposals range from imprisonment, confiscation of assets and forced induction into Arab armies to beatings, officially incited acts of violence and pogroms.

Subsequent legislation and discriminatory decrees enacted by Arab governments against Jews were “strikingly similar” to the actions laid out in the draft law, Mr. Urman said.

In January 1948, the World Jewish Congress submitted a memo with the text of the draft to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. It accompanied the submission with a warning that “all Jews residing in the Near and Middle East face extreme and imminent danger.”

At a meeting two months later, however, Charles Malik, the Lebanese ambassador and president of the council, succeeded in a parliamentary maneuver that ended consideration of the memo. Though the event drew news coverage at the time, it has apparently gone unnoticed since.

The Arab League draft law had been drawn up in response to the Nov. 29, 1947, vote in the General Assembly to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.

With the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the status of Jews in Arab countries changed dramatically, because most of those countries either declared war on Israel or supported the war to destroy the new state.

The group cites United Nations figures showing that 856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries in 1948.

“This was not just a forced exodus, it was a forgotten exodus,” said Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian minister of justice who is scheduled to be the main speaker at Monday’s program to open the campaign on behalf of the Jewish refugees.

Ami Isserloff's wonderful resource site, zionism-israel.com, reproduces parts of this draft law created by the Arab League in 1947:

• “All Jewish citizens…will be considered as members of the Jewish minority of the State of Palestine and will have to register [“within 7 days”] with the authorities of the region wherein they reside, giving their names, the exact number of members in their families, their addresses, the names of their banks and the amounts of their deposits in these banks…”

• “Bank accounts of Jews will be frozen. These funds will be utilized in part or in full to finance the movement of resistance to Zionist ambitions in Palestine.”

• “Only Jews who are subjects of foreign countries will be considered ‘neutrals.’ These will be compelled either to return to their countries, with a minimum of delay, or be considered Arabs and obliged to accept active service in the Arab army.”

• “Every Jew whose activities reveal that he is an active Zionist will be considered as a political prisoner and will be interned in places specifically designated for that purpose by police authorities or by the Government. His financial resources, instead of being frozen, will be confiscated.”

• “Any Jew who will be able to prove that his activities are anti-Zionist will be free to act as he likes, provided that he declares his readiness to join the Arab armies.”

• “The foregoing…does not mean that those Jews will not be submitted to paragraphs 1 and 2 of this law.”

That same website reproduces a New York Times article from 1948 that described the World Jewish Congress' petition to the UN based on this draft memo:

JEWS IN GRAVE DANGER IN ALL MOSLEM LANDS

By MALLORY BROWNE

New York Times, May 16 1948, page E4

LAKE SUCCESS, N. Y., May 15 -- For nearly four months, the United Nations has had before it an appeal for "immediate and urgent" consideration of the case of the Jewish populations in Arab and Muslim countries stretching front Morocco to India.

Even four months ago, it was the Zionist view that Jews residing in the Near and Middle East were in extreme and imminent danger. Now that the end of the ,mandate has precipitated civil war or even worse developments in Palestine, it is feared that the repercussions of this in Moslem countries will put the Jewish populations in many of these states in mortal peril.

...Already in some Moslem states such as Syria and Lebanon there is a tendency to regard all Jews as Zionist agents and "fifth columnists." There have been violent incidents with feeling running high. There are indications that the stage is being set for a tragedy of incalculable proportions.

Nearly 900,000 Jews live in these Moslem and Arab countries stretching from the Atlantic along the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Zionist leaders today are convinced that their position is perilous in the extreme.

When the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations meets in Geneva next July, this matter will come before it.

On Jan. 19. 1948, the World Jewish Congress submitted a memorandum on the whole problem to the Economic and Social Council, asking for urgent action during the spring session of the Council.

This plea arose to some extent from statements, made by Arab spokesmen during the General Assembly session last autumn, to the effect that if the partition resolution was put into, effect, they would not be able to guarantee the safety of the Jews in any_ Arab land.

The memorandum of the World Jewish Congress went into considerable detail on this danger. It cited the text of a law .drafted by the Political Committee of the Arab League which was intended, to govern the legal status of Jewish residents in all Arab League countries.

It provides that beginning on an, unspecified date all Jews except citizens of non-Arab states, would be considered "members of the Jewish minority state of Pales-tine." Their bank accounts would he frozen and used to finance resistance to "Zionist ambitions in Palestine." Jews believed to be active Zionists would be interned and their assets confiscated.

Later information submitted to the Economic and Social Council was to the effect that:

In Syria a policy of economic discrimination is in effect against Jews. "Virtually all" Jewish civil servants in the employ of the Syrian Government have been discharged. Freedom of movement has been "practically abolished." Special frontier posts have been established to control movements of! Jews. .'

In Iraq no Jew is permitted to' leave the 'country unless he deposits f5,000 ($20,000) with the Government to guarantee his return. No foreign Jew is allowed to enter Iraq even in transit.

In Lebanon Jews have been forced to contribute financially to the fight against the United Nations partition resolution on Palestine. Acts of violence against Jews are openly admitted by the press, which accuses Jews of "poisoning wells," etc.

...Conditions vary in the Moslem countries. They are worst in Yemen and Afghanistan, whence many Jews have fled in terror to India. Conditions in most of the countries have deteriorated in recent months, this being particularly true of Lebanon, Iran and Egypt. In the countries farther west along the Mediterranean coast, conditions are not so bad. It is feared, however, that if a full-scale war breaks out, the repercussions will be grave for Jews all the way from Casablanca to Karachi.

The National Post (Canada) adds that the UN was complicit in this affair as well, essentially ignoring months of entreaties by the WJC:

[Cotler] said he and his research colleagues will also present evidence showing the United Nations failed to investigate the matter, in part because an Arab League representative ran the agenda at one of its key debating chambers.

"It is now clear the United Nations has played a singular role in expunging the whole question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries on the Middle East agenda for the last 60 years," Mr. Cotler said.

The atrocities done by the Arabs against Jews in the wake of partition and Israeli independence are well documented - and the pages of the Palestine Post had many stories, big and small, contemporaneous with this persecution:

But this is the first time that proof has been offered that this persecution appears to have been pre-planned and coordinated.

What people search for to find me

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This time at least there were no entries for "elder sex" which I've seen multiple times.

Hate speech at University of Oregon

As I mentioned last week, Holocaust denier Mark Weber ended up speaking at the University of Oregon and he publicly stated his sickening, anti-semitic views with campus approval:

A much-hyped lecture by revisionist historian Mark Weber and an accompanying protest of it happened last weekend - just not at the same time.

Originally scheduled for Friday night at McKenzie Hall, Weber's lecture was postponed because his flights were delayed. But the protest of about 50 people went on.

Quakers and local peace activists gathered outside the hall in the cold and listened to speeches from preachers and rabbis. One sign summed up the basic argument of those present: "Support Palestinians, Not Nazis."

Pacifica Forum is a weekly discussion group that meets in McKenzie Hall. Founded by Professor Emeritus Orval Etter, the groups' Web site has links to "Holocaust Revisionism" sites. Mark Weber is the director of the Institute for Historical Review, which describes itself as "the world's leading Holocaust denial organization."

Weber's speech happened on Saturday in the Fir Room of the EMU. Titled "Free Speech vs. Zionist Power," it focused on the influence of the Israeli lobby on U.S. foreign policy.

Weber compared himself to Desmond Tutu, opponent of South African apartheid, and former President Jimmy Carter, who have both come under fire for public criticism of Israel's policies toward Palestinians.

Weber dismissed what he called "silly arguments" presented in editorials and letters in The Register-Guard leading up to his visit, and said "the same arguments used by bigots throughout history" had been used to silence him or discourage people from attending his lecture.

The main point of Weber's speech was that the U.S. stands in opposition to the rest of the world when it supports Israel, and it does so because Jews are a minority with disproportionate power that comprises 11 percent of the nation's elite, including 25 percent of all journalists and publishers. Weber attributed those statistics to political science professor and author Benjamin Ginsburg.

Not only is it dangerous to give such influence to such a small minority, Weber argued, but he said Jews are by nature distrustful of non-Jews and are part of a worldwide separatist movement.

Weber said that history had already been revised by others who ignore that "Jews wielded tremendous if not dominant power in the first years of the Soviet regime."

"Bullshit!" junior Andy Saxton shouted.

"No, he's right," a man in the front row shouted back.

"I wanted to see if he really believed it or if he was just getting paid for it," Saxton later said of Weber's talk. "I think that his speech was anti-Semitic drivel in the guise of political dissent."

Saxton said he is a Democrat and leans "more toward supporting Israel than I do supporting this guy."

That seemed to be untrue of many in the room, even those who came to protest Weber.

"I find myself in 65 percent agreement with you tonight," John Saemann said. A self-described Jewish Quaker, Saemann said he opposes Israel's treatment of Palestinians and many other policies, but disagreed with Weber's broad strokes against all Jewish people.

"When I declared I was a Quaker, I said when I smell anti-Semitism I become an instant Jew," Saemann said.

Many in the crowd raised objections to Weber's past and his association with the National Alliance, a white nationalist organization. Weber served as the editor of that groups' newsletter, which he described as a "white racialist" publication.

But Weber said that was a red herring.

"It's irrelevant," he said.

"If (conservative author) David Horowitz is speaking, no one mentions he was a Communist. What I say should be judged on its own merits," he said.

Catherine Berger, who described herself as a non-traditional undergraduate, called Weber's remarks "a different generation of misinformation."

"My mother is German and grew up under the Nazis. I was told to be here to see if anything had changed, if they had gotten the right ideas, and they haven't. It hasn't changed," she said.

So U of E allows this group of bigots to have weekly meetings using its facilities. If they are willing to talk about all Jews as being a threat to the world in a publicized speech like this, who knows what they say when the press isn't there?

An interesting inference if one accepts Weber's premises: If Jews only comprise 11% of the nation's "elite" and 25% of our journalists, and they still manage to create the entire agenda for the nation, then Weber must feel that the other 89%/75% of non-Jews are really, really gullible and stupid.

He hates goyim more than the Jews do!

Put not your trust in princes

YNet has a provocative editorial by Sever Plocker, arguing for territorial compromise from a purely economic perspective:

Oil-exporting Mideastern countries earned roughly $600 billion from oil and gas exports. In the years 2003-2006, the export revenues of these countries totaled about $2,100 billion.

This year, export revenues of Middle Eastern oil-rich nations will reach another $700 billion; should the price of oil reach $100 dollars a barrel, the revenues will leap forth to $850 billion. Next year, in 2008, the Arab-Muslim Mideast’s oil revenues will cross the $1,000 billion mark. We should remember this number: One thousand billion dollar revenues from oil and gas exports in one year.

Israel’s GDP, that is, the total value of all the products and services produced in Israel, will total roughly $170 billion this year. Or in other words, the Muslim-Arab world’s oil export revenues are at least six times higher than all of Israel’s domestic production….

It’s hard to exaggerate the implication of such figures. They shape a new Middle East, but not the kind of Mideast President Shimon Peres dreamed of. Arab and Muslim oil exporters no longer need Israel’s assistance in order to integrate into the global world. The world is knocking at their doors. The approved investment plans of the Emirates alone are estimated at $800 billion for the next five years.

And we are not there.

A two-hour flight away from Tel Aviv, on the sands of the desert, we are seeing the emergence of an oil- and gas-based Arab-Muslim economic empire never before seen in this region. Its power will grow from one year to the next. It will be a major player in deciding the fate of the global economy.

Yet all of this is happening without us. The Arab economic prosperity, which is so close to our borders, is completely skipping us. It is still not being directed at us. The Arabs have not yet internalized their power and wealth. It came too quickly and too easily. Yet they will internalize it, grasp it, and start conducting themselves accordingly.

For Israel, this is the last chance to “get on the bandwagon” and join this new reality. We must change our national perception: Israel’s economy, with all its technological achievements, will continue to dwarf in the face of the accumulated wealth of the Arab-Muslim Mideast. Our economy will decline to a much greater extent if we do not have any access to this wealth.

Such access can only be facilitated by signing an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to end the conflict. The most blatant Israeli existential interest is to advance the signing of such agreement, and through it normalize our ties with wealthy oil exporters – we can then start trading with them, selling to them, and taking part in their development plans.

The opening of Mideastern markets to Israel could double the annual growth rate of our economy from 5 to 10 percent. The Arab wealth would also enable an economic-financial resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem, once such agreement is reached by all parties. This will require no more than a donation of 5% of the foreign currency reserves of oil-exporting countries or of their annual export revenues. There would still be money left, via wise business investment, to turn the future Palestinian state into a growing region.

Those who prefer to keep dozens of West Bank settlements over the opening of Israeli embassies in Riyadh and Qatar and over opening the Saudi and Libyan market to Israeli exports are anti-Zionist in my view. They understand nothing when it comes to the new Mideastern balance of power. They will leave Israel deep in the shadow, and in practice jeopardizes the foundations of our existence.

This is a seductive argument, one that many Israelis subscribe to.

It is also wrong, shortsighted and dangerous.

While he spends most of the article discussing the undeniable growth of the oil economy, Plocker papers over exactly how Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank would turn the implacably hostile Arab world into a friendly trading partner. More importantly, he completely ignores the character of the resultant Palestinian Arab state that would be his neighbor.

The Arab economic boycott of Israel has been in place, officially or unofficially, since before 1948. Israel’s trade with Egypt and Jordan has not skyrocketed in the time since their respective peace agreements; in fact some Egyptian firms have been penalized by the WTO for still complying with the boycott. Conversely, clandestine trade with Arab countries still nominally at war with Israel continues to grow. Israel would probablybenefit economically by an agreement but the trade would remain clandestine and hidden to the Arab public and would be hampered by the anti-semitism that has not abated at all in the Arab world. There would be no bonanza for Israel.

Plocker somewhat deceptively implies that Israel’s economy is shrinking in the face of this tsunami of Arab growth: “Our economy will decline to a much greater extent if we do not have any access to this wealth.” Of course, Israel’s economy is not declining at all; as even Plocker observes in other columns. He probably means “relative to the Middle East” but this is much different from the doom and gloom he is implying. It is not clear why Israel is threatened by an annual economic growth of 5%, regardless of the growth of the oil rich countries. It is also a fantastic guess on Plocker’s part that Israel’s economic growth would double should trade increase.

Israel’s economy is also far more diversified than that of the Gulf states. Plocker makes a basic error in assuming that the boom in oil prices will continue unabated. It is quite likely that these high energy prices will spur the faster development of alternative energy resources as they become more economically feasible, and the stunning growth that he forecasts would then disappear. The Arab world’s economy is so heavily weighted to energy that it is not a very stable area to subsume Israel’s security interests.

Plocker is an economic editor for Yediot Aharonot so perhaps he can be forgiven for looking at the world through the prism of economics. Even so, how much has Israel benefited economically from its withdrawal from Gaza? The IDF still makes daily forays into Gaza to root our terrorists; Israel is spending money to develop anti-Qassam defenses, Sderot’s economy is close to nonexistent. Israel’s economy has grown since then but how much has been because of the goodwill engendered from the withdrawal and how much would have happened anyway? If Plocker wants to use a purely economic viewpoint to argue for a Palestinian Arab state, these are the questions he should be researching.

Which brings up the weakest part of Plocker’s argument: Israel’s security. It is likely that an independent Palestinian Arab state will, in short order, turn into an Islamist state. Israelis so desperately want peace that they are willing to turn a blind eye to what is happening in the Palestinian Arab world in particular, and the Arab world in general. Only last year Hamas won a popular election and even with the hundreds of millions pouring in to prop up Abbas it is far from clear that a new election would have any different results. An Islamist state on Israel’s eastern and southern borders - with only a few miles between it and the Mediterranean - is not worth any amount of money.

Even if Abbas retains leadership, he has little control over the terrorism that is sure to follow any agreement. Instead of Israeli checkpoints stopping countless terror attacks over the Green Line, Israel would return to being a nation under siege.

Plocker’s wishful thinking comes into full display when he airily says that the powerful oil-fueled Arab states would put billions of dollars into solving the “refugee” problem. Why, exactly, would a peace agreement with Israel make Arab states more likely to help their Palestinian “brethren” when their trillions have failed to do so up until now? On the contrary, the Arab states have made it clear that they want to keep the Palestinian Arabs in as much misery as possible, giving next to nothing to UNRWA and giving more money towards Palestinian terrorism than housing. They have passed laws enshrining discrimination against Palestinian Arabs. They have made it clear that they want to “refugee” problem to fester, not disappear.

And, unfortunately for the Israeli optimists, the reason is because they are still more interested in destroying Israel than helping Palestinian Arabs. While they might allow some Israeli agricultural equipment or medicines to arrive on their lands, they are still living with the ultimate insult to Arab masculinity - the existence of a Jewish state on Arab lands and the constant reminder of their war losses. Economics does not trump the deep-seated bigotry that the average Arab has against Jews having any control over land in the Middle East. Even should Israel help create another terror state next door, there will inevitably be border disputes a la Shebaa Farms and there will always be perceived insults to Arab honor a la Danish cartoons and Israel will always be the lightning rod for Arab anger. No amount of concessions can change that.

Perhaps King David put it best when he said (Psalms 146:3)”Put not your trust in princes…in whom there is no hope.” Israel cannot mortgage its security to the promise of an economic boom that the princes of Arabia may - or may not - agree to.

(cross-posted to Israellycool)

Some PalArabic news

Palestine Press Agency (pro-Fatah) says that a Hamas jeep recklessly hit and killed a 38-year old woman in Gaza City, bringing our 2007 PalArab self-death count to 568.

The same agency reports that Hamas leaders are preparing to escape to Egypt via tunnels if Israel invades Gaza. Brave fighters!

Palestine Today (pro-Hamas) picks up on a Maariv story (also in YNet) that Israel will deduct from the tax revenues it gives the PA the cost of the damage from rocket fire. Of course Hamas won't feel any of that shortfall.

Ma'an (Arabic) reports that Fatah in Gaza is trying to get a massive rally for Monday to commemorate the third anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat. Since everyone loves Abu Ammar they are trying to leverage that into a show of support for Fatah in Gaza.

Al-Hayat al-Jadida (Fatah) said that Mahmoud Abbas demanded Israel to adhere to its obligations under the "roadmap" and called on the US to pressure Israel to do so. Since the roadmap puts as a precondition that the Palestinian Arabs stop trying to kill Israelis this is beyond hypocritical.

Al-Hayat adds another demand from Mahmoud Abbas - that Israel release 2000 prisoners as a "confidence building" measure as well as demolish roadblocks before the Annapolis summit/meeting/gathering.

UPDATE: A Gaza "policeman" was killed during a clan clash. 569.

UPDATE 11/7: An Islamic Jihad leader died from wounds from Hamas last month. 570.

Tenure for a bigot

Nadia Abu El-Haj, who teaches anthropology at Barnard College, has received tenure from that institution.

Much has already been written about her book criticizing any archaeology that indicates a presence of an Jewish kingdom in what is now Israel, even though she has no archaeology experience herself. Her pre-conceived notion that there were never ancient Jews in the Middle East is so overpowering that she essentially dismisses the entire field of archaeology as being hopelessly biased against her version of the truth.

This was the only book she ever wrote, and it seems on its own to be pretty powerful evidence that her scholarship is suspect, to say the least. But what most people haven't caught on to is that more recently she has been doing to the field of genetics what she had previously done to archaeology - to reach the identical conclusion. In an article in American Ethnologist she says modern genetics has disproved the idea that the Jewish maternal line originated in ancient Israel (what she calls "Palestine" even when she is talking about a kingdom that predates that term.)

It is an amazing coincidence that she has looked at two disparate fields, neither of which she is an expert in, and reached the identical conclusion - the Jews have no historic right to live in Israel. The fact that she is of Palestinian Arab origin surely has nothing to do with this eerie juxtaposition of separate proofs by assertion.

Perhaps if her only "scholarship" was concentrated in deconstructing archaeology, a case could be made that she is just doing the same as what other postmodernists do. But the fact that she uses her anthropology background as a blunt instrument to pretend to be a scholar in two separate, specialized fields of which she has no real knowledge shows not only that El-Haj is no scholar, but that she has a purely Jew-hating agenda. It is almost beyond belief that such a person, who can only be described as a bigot, can reach such a level at any university, let alone one as formerly prestigious as this one.

Columbia University (of which Barnard is part) certainly has seen its reputation collapse in the past year.

Suleiman built a synagogue on the Temple Mount?

Arutz Sheva mentions in a meeting between Israeli rabbis and White House officials that

[Chief Rabbi of Haifa and Chairman of the Chief Rabbinate Communications Committee Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv] Cohen also recalled the historical fact that the Muslim Caliph Omar Suleiman built a synagogue on the Temple Mount where Jews prayed, and that it was later destroyed by another Caliph.

Does anyone have a source for this?

Honor/shame and sexual harassment in Egypt

From AFP:

CAIRO (AFP) — From lewd looks to inappropriate touching, experts say Egypt's growing street harassment of women is a deep-rooted and largely ignored problem shackling the country's progress.
Sexual harassment in public areas is not limited to a specific age category or social class, says the independent Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR), which is spearheading a campaign against this "social cancer" in Egypt.
Nor does an outward expression of piety protect from sexual harassment, generally defined as "all unwelcome behaviour of a sexual nature, making women feel uncomfortable and unsafe."
"As soon as I step onto the street, I am surrounded by sexual predators," Rasha Shaaban, 23, from the Mediterranean city of Alexandria told AFP. "I don't feel safe, the problem is getting worse. It has become so bad that I want to leave Egypt."
According to the state National Centre for Social and Criminal Research, sexual crimes are on the rise but while they give no official figures, ECWR says that two women are raped every hour in this country of 80 million and that 90 percent of offenders are jobless men.
There are many contributing factors to the increase in sexual harassment. Rising unemployment may push some men to display their machismo on the streets. The huge cost of marriage and the fact that sex outside marriage is forbidden may also explain the behaviour, experts say.
"Men take out their frustration, not just sexual, against women," Engy Ghozlan, who runs the anti-harassment campaign at ECWR, told AFP.
But some men, who believe a woman's job is to look after the home, say that those out on the street are fair game.
"When (a woman) walks out into the street in tight trousers and tight belts, she deserves what she gets," said Mohamed al-Sayyed, 32, who works as an assistant at an upmarket hairdresser in Cairo.
"The women who come here are different from the ones in my village," he said.
Sayyed grew up in a village near Menya, in the conservative Egyptian south. "My female relatives would never be seen swaying in the street like this," he said, defensively explaining the occasional wolf whistles "and more" he directs at Cairene women.
One sociologist, Dalal al-Bizri, sees a strong link between growing religious conservatism and sexual harassment.
She told AFP that a puritan view of Islam brought over from religiously strict Saudi Arabia is partly responsible for the "culture of hate" against women.
"In the sermons of wahhabi (ultra-conservative) preachers on satellite television, we hear the worst things about women, like the fact that they should not be on the street but at home... that they have an inferior status," Bizri said.

In the Arab honor/shame culture, it is inevitable that men with low self-esteem will try to boost their egos by degrading women. People who are mentally healthy have no need to put others down but those living in cultures where honor is more important than life need to feel superior to others - whether the "others" are women, Jews or infidels. Any admission that they are no better than women is a fatal injury to their bruised self-esteem.

See also my posting that 40% of all Egyptian women have been sexually harassed.
(h/t Watcher)

Checkpoint shooting you won't read anywhere else

A 27-year old Palestinian Arab was mercilessly shot in the back at a West Bank checkpoint by the trigger-happy soldiers there.

This checkpoint, like countless others, limits the movement of innocent Palestinians and causes untold misery among the population as they have to humiliated as they pass through.

Of course, since this checkpoint was built and manned by Palestinian Arabs in Qalqiya, this incident will go largely unreported; no "human rights" organizations will count this incident as evidence of oppression, and no left-wing Israelis or Europeans will dare go to monitor the activities there.

When Zionist lions attack!

From the pro-terror "news" site IMEMC:

Israeli soldiers told the villagers of Al Fourdess village, located to the east of Bethlehem, in the southern part of the West Bank, that a Lioness had escaped from the settlement of Qedumem, built illegally on the village land.

...Palestinian villagers from Al Fourdess added that now they have to fear not only the settler and their violent attacks on the locals, but now they also have to fear the ferocious animals kept as pets by the Israeli settlers.

The last wild Zionist animals that terrorized poor Palestinian Arab villages were pigs and wolves.

Bahrain Crown Prince: Iran wants nuclear weapons

This is a first:

LONDON, 3 November 2007 — Bahrain’s crown prince has claimed that Iran is developing atomic weapons or the capability to do so, the first time a Gulf state has openly accused Tehran of lying about its controversial nuclear drive. In interviews with correspondents for British newspapers in the capital Manama, Sheikh Salman ibn Hamad Al-Khalifa also urged a diplomatic solution to the standoff between the West and Bahrain’s close neighbor.
“While they don’t have the bomb yet, they are developing it, or the capability for it,” the crown prince said, warning that “the whole region” would be drawn into any military conflict over this issue. “There needs to be far more done on the diplomatic front,” he added, according to The Times. “There’s still time to talk.”
“We need to be very well aware that this could escalate. And we think that is not advisable,” The Daily Telegraph quoted Sheikh Salman as saying.

Of course, Iran denies that Bahrain did any such thing. From IRNA:

Bahrain Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa deplored a British daily action in distorting the Bahraini crown prince's words concerning Iran. In a meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki here on Saturday afternoon, on the sidelines of Iraq neighbors foreign ministers meeting, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa said, "The crown prince's words published in a British daily is 'distorted' and we officially reject them."

Referring to the aims of a number of media in creating pessimism and misunderstanding among neighboring countries, the Bahraini foreign minister said, "Ties between Iran and Bahrain are very deep and strong and such efforts cannot stop its growing trend."

Exactly how are women treated in Saudi Arabia?

Last Tuesday I quoted Saudi King Abdullah as telling a reporter that "Islam has given the most rights to women in the world and they are strong and important participants in our society."

Today, the Arab News, to its credit, publishes an article by a Saudi woman that takes issue with this idea:

When Is a Saudi Woman Considered an Adult?
Maha Akeel, Arab News

It is surprising and frustrating to see that women in Saudi Arabia, despite all their achievements, continue to be treated as underage dependents who need and are forced to be managed by their male guardians.

It is necessary at this point of Saudi women’s history to address this important issue.

We cannot claim that a Saudi woman has all her Islamic and civil rights when the system insists on considering her immature, irresponsible and dependent on her male guardian no matter how old she is, how highly educated and intelligent she might be or what she has achieved in her professional career. At what age and under what circumstances is a woman in Saudi Arabia considered an independent, sane, responsible adult?

We see story after depressing and humiliating story in our daily life and reported in the newspapers of how women struggle to go about their normal life without unnecessary complications, let alone fighting for their rights in the courts or other government institutions. Why does a young intelligent, ambitious woman needs her guardian’s permission to enroll in a university or apply for work? Does the system even realize that this male guardian does not necessarily have the best interests of the woman when he denies her the right to an education and a job?

At what age is a woman considered old enough to decide to marry whom she chooses legally even if her male guardian objects because he might have ulterior motives for not giving his permission, or might force her to marry someone she does not want? Why is it that the system and society do not raise objections to a father marrying his 13-year-old daughter to a 70-year-old man but objects to a 40-year-old woman deciding to marry someone suitable against her father’s wishes because he would like to continue benefiting from her teacher salary? Or why does a court forcefully divorce a happily married couple because some male relative of the wife objects to the marriage while in another case a woman is forced to stay married to a man she does not want? Where is taking the woman’s own opinion in the matter? Doesn’t an adult, mature woman have a say in matters concerning her own private life? Why is it only the man’s wishes are looked at?

If these are some extreme and rare examples of male guardians abusing their authority over the women in their care, what about the daily obstacles women face if they want to purchase property, apply for divorce, gain custody of their child, or travel abroad? In all these cases, she needs a male guarantor or a male representative or permission from her male guardian. A working woman with sufficient salary and funds cannot purchase a car in installments without a male guarantor signing the papers with her. A woman cannot argue her case without a male representative or finalize legal procedures because judges do not recognize her ID card and insist on two men identifying her. A woman, even a 70-year-old woman, cannot travel abroad without the written, signed and notarized permission of her male guardian, who might be her son or nephew. Is this the respect we give our mothers, and we know how highly respected mothers are in Islam?

Simply going to school or to work or going to a hospital for medical emergency or even shopping is an ordeal for women because we have to worry about how we will get there without that “reliable” male driver we so depend on who might be a criminal or a pervert. How can we trust a woman to raise a child, teach our children and treat our illnesses but we cannot trust her to be a responsible adult behind the wheel? We have asked for our right to be licensed to drive a car like any other Muslim woman in the world because we know there is no religious basis for denying us that right.

Yet, we are told that society would not accept women driving on the roads. Assuming that is true, what is being done about that? Are there any real proposals from society to make driving by women easier and safer such as, for example, discussions in schools, training women to be police officers on the roads and in police centers, setting an age limit or hours of the day or specified zones for women to drive in or even, resorting to the same requirement, having her male guardian’s permission to drive?

Again, the issue is at what age and under what circumstances does the system and society recognize a woman as a responsible, independent adult who can make her own decision and choices and have full rights as a citizen?

Anniversary of Balfour declaration

Israel Matzav does a great and thorough job discussing the history and importance of the Balfour Declaration from November 2, 1917.

The Palestine Post had this to say at the 25th anniversary, during the depths of the Holocaust:

Notice how even then, as Jews argued that the immediate establishment of a state would save countless lives from the Nazis, they still bent over backwards to point out that Jewish immigration to Palestine helped the Arab community and did not displace a single person. Notice also that even then it was assumed that the Palestine spoken of in 1917 included Transjordan. (See also my posting on Eastern Palestine.)

In 1947, on the eve of the UN Partition vote, the Arabs decided to strike on this anniversary, As usual, the strike ended up helping the Jews more than it hurt them:

But while the real Palestinian Arab people took advantage of a nice day off by visiting Jewish shops, their self-declared thought-leaders looked at things a little more violently, figuratively bashing Balfour's head with Arab hammers:

The Jewish claim on Palestine does not depend on the Balfour Declaration, of course, but it was an important moment in modern Zionist history that illuminates much about the conflict.

60 years ago: US probing Saudi oil profits

In 1947 there was concern in the Senate that perhaps the Saudi King Ibn Saud was skimming too much profit off of each barrel of oil he exported.

The US was being charged for oil at the time $1.65 a barrel, 15 cents more than the French.

It appears that at the time the King took some 43 cents for each barrel, but at least one observer felt that he was really skimming far more.

From AP, published November 3, 1947 in the Palestine Post:

Yesterday, oil closed at over $94 a barrel.

Today's Arab fantasy, part 2 - US planes nuked Syria nuke plant

From the Jerusalem Post:

The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two strategic US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a nuclear site under construction.

The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.

The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.

This feeds the longstanding Arab fantasy that Israel is just a puppet of the US (the exact opposite of what they tell gullible Westerners.) The idea that dhimmi Jews can effectively defeat the mighty Arabs is too painful to the Arab psyche to even contemplate; instead they have always told themselves that it was US power that inflicted damage.

The tactical nuke part is a nice touch. This may have been fabricated in expectations that IAEA inspections that may find traces of radiation, and this way they can claim that it was a US nuke that caused it. Or it just might be another way to lick the bruised wounds of their egos.

Today's Arab fantasy, part 1

From IMEMC:

The Al Aqsa Foundation for rebuilding Islamic Holy Sites, warned on Thursday from the dangers of new Israeli excavations carried only fifty meters away from the southern wall of the Al Aqsa mosque, and only a few meters away from the walls of the Old City.

The Foundation stated that the excavations are shaking the ground and causing damages to Palestinian houses near the site.

Also, the foundation reported that the Israeli authorities are conducting these excavations in order construct trade and tourism facilities, and that some of these facilities start underground. The excavations re also carried out to create a tunnel to link these facilities with Al Mughrabi Wall and the Western Wall.

In an urgent press release, the Foundation said that its field teams toured on Wednesday some of the entrances of Silwan town, especially the main entrance which is only a few meters away from the Mughrabi Gate, and observed the excavations which are carried out by huge machines and are heavily shaking the ground which inflicts serious danger to the foundations of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and endangering the houses of the residents in Silwan.

So how close is Silwan to the Temple Mount? Another anti-Israeli site provides a helpful map:

Since the Arabs know that screaming about "excavations" can bring world Muslims to riot, and since they also know that most people don't know enough about geography to see the absurdity of the claims that excavations that occur so far away threaten so ca-called "Al-Aqsa" mosque, they can lie with impunity and get away with it.

Big Satan, little satan

My earlier posting about the critical review given to "The Israel Lobby" by left-wing writer Stephen Zunes gave him too much credit. His major points came directly from Joseph Massad, the infamous Columbia associate professor who is effectively anti-semitic.

It is instructive to look at the argument a little closer, seeing that it is from an intellectual Arab perspective that is being parroted by gullible or malicious left-wing useful idiots like Zunes.

Massad wrote his critique of the "Israel Lobby" paper last year for Al-Ahram:

The underlying argument has been simple and has been told time and again by Washington's regime allies in the Arab world, pro-US liberal and Arab intellectuals, conservative and liberal US intellectuals and former politicians, and even leftist Arab and American activists who support Palestinian rights, namely, that absent the pro- Israel lobby, America would at worst no longer contribute to the oppression of Arabs and Palestinians and at best it would be the Arabs' and the Palestinians' best ally and friend. What makes this argument persuasive and effective to Arabs? Indeed, why are its claims constantly brandished by Washington's Arab friends to Arab and American audiences as a persuasive argument? I contend that the attraction of this argument is that it exonerates the United States' government from all the responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world and gives false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on their side instead of on the side of their enemies.

From the funhouse mirror perspective he is essentially right - the US policies towards the Arab world would hardly be different without the Israel lobby. His problem is not primarily with Israel but with America.

The record of the United States is one of being the implacable enemy of all Third World national liberation groups, including European ones, from Greece to Latin America to Africa and Asia, except in the celebrated cases of the Afghan fundamentalists' war against the USSR and supporting apartheid South Africa's main terrorist allies in Angola and Mozambique (UNITA and RENAMO) against their respective anti-colonial national governments. Why then would the US support national liberation in the Arab world absent the pro-Israel lobby is something these studies never explain.

Massad is where leftist intellectualism and Muslim fundamentalism meet. The "national liberation" movements that he refers to must mean the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. There is no doubt that Egypt, Syria and the rest of the Arab countries are autocratic dictatorships with little regard to human rights, but there is equally no doubt that the alternatives would be worse from anyone who is not a Muslim terrorist or sympathizer.

The US supported the independence of Jordan, Syria, Egypt and all the others who emerged from the Ottoman Empire and colonial rule. Massad doesn't seem interested in Arab independence - he is interested in replacing these independent states with fundamentalist ones, all in the name of "liberation." He skillfully uses leftist talking points to help build an Arab world that is fully aligned with terror.

This following paragraph is particularly enlightening in more ways than one:

Finally we come to the financial argument, namely that the US gives an inordinate amount of money to Israel -- too exorbitant a cost that is out of proportion to what the US gets in return. In fact, the United States spends much more on its military bases in the Arab world, not to mention on those in Europe or Asia, than it does on Israel. Israel has indeed been very effective in rendering services to its US master for a good price, whether in channelling illegal arms to central American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, helping pariah regimes like Taiwan and apartheid South Africa in the same period, supporting pro-US, including Fascist, groups inside the Arab world to undermine nationalist Arab regimes, from Lebanon to Iraq to Sudan, coming to the aid of conservative pro- US Arab regimes when threatened as it did in Jordan in 1970, and attacking Arab nationalist regimes outright as it did in 1967 with Egypt and Syria and in 1981 with Iraq when it destroyed that country's nuclear reactor. While the US had been able to overthrow Sukarno and Nkrumah in bloody coups, Nasser remained entrenched until Israel effectively neutralised him in the 1967 War. It is thanks to this major service that the United States increased its support to Israel exponentially. Moreover, Israel neutralised the PLO in 1982, no small service to many Arab regimes and their US patron who could not fully control the organisation until then. None of the American military bases on which many more billions are spent can claim such a stellar record. Critics argue that when the US had to intervene in the Gulf, it could not rely on Israel to do the job because of the sensitivity of including it in such a coalition which would embarrass Arab allies, hence the need for direct US intervention and the uselessness of Israel as a strategic ally. While this may be true, the US also could not rely on any of its military bases to launch the invasions on their own and had to ship in its army. American bases in the Gulf did provide important and needed support but so did Israel.

Massad now gives a powerful argument for Israel as an effective ally of the US. He even understates Israel's ability to do anything unilaterally, making the assumption that both the Six Day War and the Osirak raid were really American initiatives carried out willingly by their Israeli puppets.

Ultimately, his hatred of America is far greater than his hatred of Israel (which is legendary.) Although it appears that he was born in the US he clearly considers the United States to be the real source of evil on the planet, with Israel just an appendage.

This is not particular to Massad - the entire Arab world looks to the United States as the "big Satan" even as they are happy to keep taking money and weapons from us. Israel is a lightning rod for their hate, and the fact that dhimmi Jews control what they consider Arab land is certainly a contributing factor for their misoziony, but if Israel didn't exist their hatred for America would not be abated at all.

It is interesting that leftists have adopted this anti-American, pro-terrorist line of thinking at the same time that the Arab intellectuals have started framing their arguments in leftist terms. It is also ironic that if the "liberation movements" that Massad champions would win control of their countries, Massad and his fellow Christian Arabs would be at the mercy of the jihadists.

News From Tomorrow

If for some bizarre reason a Palestinian Arab state is created, here are the headlines that we can expect to occur daily:

* Fatah has announced a new military campaign against Israel where they will shower Israel with hundreds of rockets.

* A former PA official is in the hospital after being tortured by Hamas gangs in Gaza.

* Six people were injured from gunshots during a funeral of a terrorist, including a child.

* A car was torched near Hebron belonging to a captain in the PA security services

Of course, these headlines all come from today. But why exactly would things get any better if the PalArabs had their own state? Which of these daily events would stop because the amount of self-government increases? What exactly is the magic ingredient that turns animals into responsible human beings just because you give them more responsibility?

It is more likely that things would become much, much worse. Yet somehow this likelihood doesn't enter into the calculus of those who are hell-bent at giving the Palestinian Arabs their own state.

Alluring Zionist IDF strippers shooting innocent rock throwers

Dave from Israellycool finds an Arutz-7 article from 2001 that is worth repeating:

The Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida carried a story this week about IDF tactics that surpassed all previous accusations of supposed Israeli deviousness - poisoned candies, hormone-laced gum, poisoned wells, magnetized belts - in its bizarreness.

According to an Al-Hayat Al-Jadida front page report, the IDF has turned to using armed, female strippers in its war on upstanding Palestinian boys. The newspaper reports that when the Arab rock-throwing begins, IDF soldiers run for cover. Then, the story continues, after some time of hiding, an Israeli woman stands up on top of a barricade and begins to perform an alluring strip tease. Innocent Arab teenage boys, distracted from the business of rioting, are enticed to approach, when, according to the newspaper, the woman - an IDF soldier - shoots them with a pistol she had hidden in her underwear.

I'm more impressed that the IDF has devised a pistol that is invisible under skimpy underwear than I am that they employ beautiful, irresistible strippers to shoot PalArab boys.

Panning Walt/Mearsheimer from the radical left

Radical left publication Tikkun, a heavy critic of Israel and America, prints a review by Stephen Zunes that finds "The Israel Lobby" to be complete garbage.

The funny part is that Zunes' argument mirrors the arguments that some radical Arabs have made against the book - that America's policies are so reprehensible in total that blaming the Israel Lobby alone absolves the US for its supposed awful foreign policy. So this is an argument that US policy is uniformly reprehensible and not only in the Middle East!

The overbearing power and McCarthyite tactics wielded by the American Jewish establishment against critics of Israeli government policies—particularly against prominent Jewish progressives like Michael Lerner—has made critical discourse about U.S. support for the Israeli government extremely difficult. As a result, it is all too easy to buy into the arguments put forward by John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt in their newly-released book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007) that the ‘Israel Lobby’ is primarily responsible for the tragic course taken in U.S. Middle East policy. The Tikkun Community has recently sponsored a series of public events with the authors, and Rabbi Lerner wrote a lengthy piece in the September/October issue of this magazine largely defending their perspective.

As a political scientist and international relations scholar specializing in the United States’ role in the Middle East, I must disagree. I am in no way denying that the Israel Lobby can be quite influential, particularly on Capitol Hill and in its role in limiting the broader public debate. However, it would be naíve to assume that U.S. policy in the Middle East would be significantly different without AIPAC and like–minded pro–Zionist organizations...
Mearsheimer and Walt, along with their defenders, fail to make the distinction between the undeniable fact that ‘the Lobby’ has limited debate (particularly within the Jewish community) regarding U.S. policy toward Israel and the question as to whether it is the major reason for U.S. policy being the way it is. As Professor Massad puts it, the Israel Lobby is responsible for “the details and intensity but not the direction, content, or impact of such policies.” Indeed, as I pointed out in my article “Is the Israel Lobby Really That Powerful?” [Tikkun, July/August 2006], U.S. policy toward both Israel/Palestine and the region as a whole is quite consistent with U.S. foreign policy toward Latin Amer-ica, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.
Any serious review of U.S. foreign policy in virtually any corner of the globe demonstrates how the United States props up dictatorships, imposes blatant double-standards regarding human rights and international law, supports foreign military occupations (witness East Timor and Western Sahara), undermines the authority of the United Nations, pushes for military solutions to political problems, transfers massive quantities of armaments, imposes draconian austerity programs on debt–ridden countries through international financial institutions, and periodically imposes sanctions, bombs, stages coups, and invades countries that don’t accept U.S. hegemony. If U.S. policy toward the Middle East was fundamentally different than it is toward the rest of the world, Mearsheimer and Walt would have every right to look for some other sinister force leading the United States astray from its otherwise benign foreign policy agenda. Unfortunately, however, U.S. policy toward the Middle East is remarkably similarly to U.S. foreign policy elsewhere in the world.
...Mearsheimer and Walt correctly observe how Washington’s support for Israel despite its human rights abuses against the Palestinians “makes it look hypocritical when it presses other states to respect human rights,” but there is no mention of the equally hypocritical U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, and other repressive Arab regimes. Similarly, they are accurate in observing how “U.S. efforts to limit nuclear proliferation appear equally hypocritical given its willingness to accept Israel’s nuclear arsenal.” But is this any more hypocritical than signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with India or selling sophisticated nuclear–capable fighter bombers to the Pakistani government in spite of those countries’ nuclear arsenals?

As a result, the idea that U.S. policy would somehow be “more temperate,” (again to use the words of Walt and Mearsheimer) were the Lobby not so powerful falsely assumes that U.S. policy toward other Third World regions in which the United States had strong strategic, geo–political and economic interests has historically been more temperate than it has been in the Middle East. This is particularly important to keep in mind given that their argument about the Lobby’s influence goes beyond that of Israel and Palestine to include the rest of the Middle East as well, including the Persian Gulf region, in which the United States has had hegemonic designs since before modern Israel came into being.
...
In any case, it is incorrect to assume that most members of Congress stridently defend the policies of the Israeli government because their careers would be at stake if they did otherwise. Indeed, the majority of the most outspoken congressional champions of the Israeli government are from some of the safest districts in the country and need no support from pro–Israel political action committees (PACs) or Jewish donors in order to be re–elected. In last year’s article, I examined a number of cases in which members of Congress allegedly had been defeated as a result of their standing up to AIPAC and made the case that their position on Is-rael was actually just one, and not the most significant, factor in their defeat.

In 2006, ‘pro–Israel’ PACs and individuals are estimated to have contributed more than $9 million to party coffers and congressional campaigns. While that is a significant amount, it ranks significantly below that of PACs and individuals supporting the interests of lawyers ($58 million), retirees ($36 million), real estate interests ($33 million), health professionals ($32 million), securities and investment interests ($29 million), the insurance industry ($21 million), commercial banks ($16 million), the pharmaceutical industry ($14 million), the defense industry ($13 million), electrical utilities ($12 million), the oil and gas industry ($11 million), and the computer industry ($10 million), among others. If campaign contributions had such a direct impact on policy as Walt and Mearsheimer claim, Congress should therefore have a strong and consistent pro-labor agenda since contributions given in support of unions representing public sector workers, the building trades, and transportation workers each were significantly higher than the total contributions given in support for the Israeli government. Furthermore, with rare exceptions, PACs allied with the Israel Lobby do not contribute more than 10 percent of the total amount raised by a given campaign.

The vast majority of the (admittedly few) House members who refuse to follow AIPAC’s line are easily reelected. For example, every Democratic member of Congress who refused to support the July 2006 House resolution supporting Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, a resolution subjected to vigorous lobbying by AIPAC, was reelected by a larger margin than they were two years earlier.
...Perhaps the most misleading argument put forward by Walt and Mearsheimer is their claim that the 2003 invasion of Iraq “was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.” This is ludicrous on several grounds. First of all, Israel is far less secure as a result of the rise of Islamist extremism, terrorist groups, and Iranian influence in post–invasion Iraq than it was during the final years of Saddam Hussein’s rule, when Iraq was no longer a strategic threat to Israel or actively involved in anti–Israeli terrorism. Indeed, it had been more than a decade since Iraq had posed any significant threat to Israel and both Israel’s chief of intelligence and the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff made public statements in October 2002 emphasizing how Israel’s military strength had grown over the previous decade as Iraq’s had grown weaker.
...While a disproportionate number of Jews could be found among the top policy makers in Washington who pushed for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, it is also true that a disproportionate number of Jews could be found among liberal Democrats in Congress and leftist intellectuals in universities who opposed the invasion of Iraq. Furthermore, it is absurd to imply that those who were most responsible for the decision to invade Iraq—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President George W. Bush—would place the perceived interests of Israel ahead of that of the United States. And they were perfectly capable of making such a stupid and tragic miscalculation on their own.

The entire article is like a funhouse mirror that in some sections accidentally show things accurately.

Holocaust denier to speak at University of Oregon

Hate speech on American campuses masquerading as "free speech" is now hitting epidemic proportions. (Hat tip - Anti-Racist Blog)

Critics of a speaker widely viewed as one of the nation’s most prominent deniers of the Holocaust say they will counter his talk in Eugene on Friday with a competing event and a later symposium.
Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, will speak on “The Israel Lobby.” His visit comes at the invitation of the Pacifica Forum, a local discussion group founded by retired University of Oregon professor Orval Etter.
Weber, a historian who grew up in Portland, describes himself as a Holocaust revisionist. But detractors point to Weber’s own writings in labeling him a white supremacist, racist and anti-Semite.
“People may think I’m wrong or I’m right, but they should have a chance to hear what I have to say,” Weber said in a telephone interview from his institute’s office in Newport Beach, Calif.
Local critics affiliated with Community Alliance of Lane County have scheduled a free speech vigil to be held just outside the UO hall where Weber will speak. “We are operating under the theory that the best response to hate speech is more speech,” volunteer Michael Williams said. “We want an opportunity for the community to show its opposition to the kinds of things that Mark Weber stands for.”
Williams said opponents don’t plan to shout slogans or prevent people from hearing Weber’s talk. “We will have a presence that is unavoidable but not obstructionist.”
David Frank, a professor in the Honors College at the UO, said he and two faculty members are planning a Holocaust symposium in response to Weber’s talk.
Weber “has the right to come to campus and make preposterous statements,” Frank said. “But we have a responsibility as scholars to demonstrate the expertise and research that shows his claims are not only false but dangerous.”
Weber’s speech is not the first to draw charges of anti-Semitism against the Pacifica Forum, which last year sponsored multiple talks by Valdas Anelauskas, a resident of Eugene and native of Lithuania who describes himself as a journalist, researcher and “white separatist and racialist.” Anelauskas dedicated one of his lectures to a Holocaust denier.
Weber’s institute “has been battling Israel and the Jews for a long time,” Etter said. “They sort of lead the parade against those who say any extensive criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.”

Etter said he welcomes the controversy sparked by Weber’s appearance because it will “improve understanding in this community about what’s been going on for a long time in regard to Israel and the Israeli lobby .... This will be another pinnacle of free speech.”

Why exactly does Weber have the right to speak on campus? He has the right to speak on a soapbox in a park; he has the right to create a website or radio show to air his hate. But why, exactly, does a college have the obligation to host racists?

Because of this:

The forum has access to UO space because he and forum colleague George Beres are former UO employees, Etter said.

We'll see if the KKK can find a former UO employee to sponsor them as well and give them some more legitimacy.

Halachic discussion of Halloween

A serious discussion by Rabbi Michael Broyde. Not a huge halachic treatise but relevant.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad pointed me to this story.

UN almost admits UNIFIL worse than useless

From JPost:

Hizbullah has succeeded in rearming itself and has obtained missiles with a range of 250 km., a UN report on the implementation of UN Resolution 1701 stated. Such missiles would be capable of striking areas south of Tel Aviv.

Weapons smuggling from Syria into Lebanon, in violation of 1701, is continuing as well.

According to the report, which was quoted by Army Radio, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called the continued arms smuggling "grave."

The report also noted that according to information provided by Israel, Hizbullah was rearming itself south of the Litani River, and that given this development, UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese army were increasing their efforts to patrol the area.

Further, Israeli intelligence passed on to the UN stated that the number of land-to-sea missiles in Hizbullah's stockpile has tripled.

So the new, improved UNIFIL managed to let Hezbollah do pretty much all it wanted to, and now it is a bigger threat than it was last summer. Resolution 1701 is yet another worthless piece of paper generated by that august institution.

Way to go, UNIFIL!