Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Internal Hamas coup plot against Haniyeh?

The anti-Hamas Palestinian Press Agency is reporting that internal Hamas divisions are so bad that the radical members headed by Mahmoud Zahhar are planning to assassinate "prime minister" Ismail Haniyeh.

According to the Arabic article, Zahhar and one other extremist head (autotranslated as Siam Said, and I don't know who it really refers to) hate Haniyeh for betraying Hamas principles. The article claims that the plan has six steps:

1. Kill Haniyeh sooner rather than later so as not to expose internal Hamas divisions publicly.
2. Blame Fatah for the assassination, thus killing off the remaining Fatah opposition in Gaza.
3. Start a defamation campaign against Abbas in the West Bank as being against Palestinian Arab unity by ordering the hit.
4. Make it appear that Hamas is the victim and Fatah the aggressors to weaken international support for Fatah.
5. Regaining support from the Muslim Brotherhood which has been critical of Hamas for going away from core principles.
6. Any remote chance of negotiating with Israel on any topic like a long-term truce will be scuttled forever.

While the article is fairly long and detailed, and PPA has been pretty accurate lately, one cannot discount the possibility that this article is really meant to deflect last weekend's news that Hamas accused two Fatah members of plotting to assassinate Haniyeh, along with "confessions" aired on Hamas TV.

Adar I 13

A rabbi and a priest are driving one day and, by a freak accident, have a head-on collision. Both cars are totally demolished, but amazingly, neither of the clerics has a scratch on him.

After they crawl out of their cars, the rabbi sees the priest's collar and says, "So you're a priest. I'm a rabbi. Just look at our cars. There is nothing left, yet we are here, unhurt. This must be a sign from God!"

Pointing to the sky, the rabbi continues, "God must have meant that we should meet and share our lives in peace and friendship for the rest of our days on earth."

The priest replies, "I agree with you completely. This must surely be a sign from God!"

The rabbi is looking at his car and exclaims, "And look at this! Here's another miracle! My car is completely demolished, but this bottle of Mogen David wine did not break. Surely, God wants us to drink this wine and to celebrate our good fortune."

The priest nods in agreement.

The rabbi hands the bottle to the priest, who drinks half the bottle and hands the bottle back to the rabbi.

The rabbi takes the bottle and immediately puts the cap on, then hands it back to the priest. The priest, baffled, asks, "Aren't you having any, Rabbi?"

The rabbi replies, "Nah... I think I'll wait for the police."

Another letter in Bahrain paper against gays

As a follow-up to the story about Bahrain's anti-gay campaign comes this letter in the Bahrain Gulf Daily News:

I AM encouraged to read in your pages that MPs will be stopping homosexuals from entering Bahrain from other countries.

Homosexuality is a foreign disease that Arabs fortunately neither suffer from or wish to see.

I recently saw a homosexual in a mall and do not wish to see another ever again. Well done MPs.

F O

Well, there you have it, then. Problem solved!

Followup on last Friday's "work accident"

PCHR came out with a preliminary report about the explosion last week that killed 8 in the Bureij camp:

At approximately 20:50 on Friday, 15 February, a huge explosion rocked El-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. The explosion occurred in the house of Ayman Atallah Ahmad Fayed (41), an activist in Al-Quds Battalions, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad. The explosion destroyed the ground-floor concrete house completely, killing the activist, his wife Marwa Azzam Fayed (39), and three of his children: Basma (12), Ali (17), and Ayyoub (5). A fourth son, Adam (15) was seriously injured. In addition, three of Fayed’s neighbors were killed: Zakaria Nabil El-Kefafi (17) who was in Fayed’s house at the time, Talal Salah Sa’id Abu El-Oun (16), and Atallah Samir Mohammad Ismail (24). Approximately 60 people were injured, including 23 women and 20 children. Among the injured are 14 people suffering serious injuries. The explosion destroyed 6 nearby houses completely, and caused extensive destruction in 10 other houses. Dozens of houses suffered damages.

Over the past three days, PCHR and Al-Mezan have conducted a preliminary investigation in this tragedy. The Center’s fieldworkers and lawyer gathered field information and eyewitness testimonies from the scene of the tragedy. The preliminary findings point to the following:

- There is no evidence to confirm that the explosion was caused by rocket or aerial bombardment by Israeli occupation forces (IOF), as mentioned in some media outlets. It is more likely that it was an internal explosion the circumstances of which are unclear as of yet. Eyewitnesses confirmed seeing smoke and fire issue from Fayed’s house seconds before the explosion. According to similar incidents in the past, this indicates that it may have been an internal explosion.

Not only "some" media outlets, but every single Palestinian Arab "news" outlet reported this as an Israeli bomb (usually being shot as a rocket from an F-16) and not one even mentioned the possibility of a "work accident."

Of course, PCHR still holds out the hope that it might have been an Israeli booby-trapped bomb that killed and injured all those people - a highly unlikely possibility, and even if it was true the majority of the damage would have been from the secondary explosions caused by the possibly hundreds of rockets in Mr. Fayed's basement.

I adjusted the death count to account for the large number of minors killed, meaning that out of the 25 Palestinian Arab self-deaths this year, fully 10 of them are women or children.

Meanwhile, in the Negev...

At least 16 Qassam rockets were shot at Israeli civilians by Arab terrorists on Monday, as well as at least 5 mortars. 10 people suffered shock and there was one injury in the evening when a rocket hit Sderot, and earlier 4 kibbutz residents suffered from shock from a rocket landing near a medical clinic.

This is the worst day for Qassams since February 8. Of course, for many people, this is considered a cause for celebration and glory.

"Bahrain's growing gay problem"

From Gulf Daily News:

A NATIONWIDE crackdown on homosexuals could be launched in Bahrain, including tougher immigration checks to stop foreign gays entering the country. It would include a study to determine how widespread homosexuality is in Bahrain.
Parliament's foreign affairs, defence and national security committee has already backed the proposal, which would force the government to carry out the study.
It is in response to what MPs see as Bahrain's growing gay problem and foreigners found to be gay face deportation, said committee secretary Jalal Fairooz.

He said the study was being carried out despite the fact that the Education Ministry claims there are no homosexuals in schools.

"The Interior Ministry has told us that it already bans suspected homosexuals as they try entering the country from Bahrain International Airport," said committee secretary Jalal Fairooz.

However, he claimed the ministry said homosexuals pretend not to be gay by posing "manly" until they make it past immigration.

"They look manly as they come to the airport, but when they get in they return back to their unaccepted homosexual attitude," said Mr Fairooz.

"Homosexuals are found in huge numbers at hairdressing salons and beauty and massage spas, which the ministry regularly inspects."

However, he said many homosexuals were slipping through the net because the ministry was having problems determining if they were gay or not.

"Those who look homosexual or offer customers personal services are being caught by police and taken to the Public Prosecution," he said.

He described gays as "dangerous" and a "threat to our society and Islamic values".

"That's why the proposal asks the government to come up with a study on the problem and eliminate it before it increases and becomes hard to control, as more gays enter the country," he added.

Columnists and letter-writers have been having a field day:

That pink shirt of mine is definitely going in the bin, in light of Bahrain's new crackdown on gay men.

The next time I travel and return via Bahrain International Airport, I shall be speaking in the deepest voice I can muster, walking like John Wayne and keeping Sara and the kids as close to me as possible.

For, apparently, immigration officials keep an eye out for anyone they think may be gay, with a view to putting them back on the plane!

Bahrain is cracking down on what MPs say is a growing number of gays, chiefly to be found in male hair salons and in massage parlours.

I can understand the country's concern at what it sees as an increasing influx, but it also has to ask itself why this is proving such a popular destination for gays!

When I first arrived here I was 20 years younger, had a full head of hair and was much prettier than I am today, with the result that I got a great deal of unwelcome attention from the gay fraternity.

Each evening I would stand waiting for a taxi near my flat and could guarantee at least two or three offers from passing drivers, in the five to 10 minutes I would be at the kerbside - all of which, I hasten to add, were politely declined.

I have images of an airport full of overtly-masculine immigration officers making men parade up and down a white line to see if they swing their hips, or maybe they have devised some kind of wrist-o-meter, which gauges limpness?

For a nation that is populated almost exclusively by men who sport mustaches and haircuts modeled on the late Sir Freddie Mercury (of Queen fame) and who wear skirts, it is a pretty bold statement to 'Clampdown on gays'.

It sounds like Bahrain might be on the verge of becoming a new Key West!\

UPDATE: Another letter writer is a bit more supportive of the government's campaign.

Egypt discovers another 100 kg of TNT

A drop in the bucket, but better than nothing....

Egyptian security forces on Monday uncovered an explosives cache containing 100 kilograms (220.5 pounds) of TNT hidden in sacks near the country's volatile border with the Gaza Strip, a police officer said.
The cache, found buried a few feet deep in the soil in a deserted area of the northern Sinai peninsula, came after police acted on a tip from local Bedouins, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

The find took place near Sheik Zuwiyed town, some 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

The Bedouins led the authorities to the location of the explosives. A total of three sacks of TNT were found, the official said.

Smuggling across the border into Gaza or Israel has long provided a livelihood for some Bedouin. Weapons, cigarettes and foreigners seeking jobs in Israel are all taken surreptitiously across the border.

Last week Egypt discovered 250 kg of TNT, and two weeks ago arrested a Palestinian Arab with an unknown quantity of TNT as well.

Of course, Gaza is awash in TNT. A recent Der Speigel article interviews a Qassam rocket maker as he says that they have enough material to keep producing rockets for years:

The team can make up to 100 rockets per night shift, but today it won't be more than 10. Instead of the usual 12, only three of Abdul's men have turned up tonight. "The other guys are over in Egypt, shopping," he says, adding that the militants are just ordinary people who want to experience the open border with the neighboring country. Will they be looking for ingredients for building the Qassams? "Hardly," the oldest of the group laughs. "They are buying potato chips. We have enough raw materials to last for a few years."
The presence of smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border have ensured that there is never a lack of supplies. "The TNT comes to us from Sudan via Egypt." Other elements arrive by boat across the sea to Gaza. "We get some from Eastern Europe." The raw materials for one large rocket cost up to €500. The money to finance the operation comes the same route as the materials.

Arab slums much worse than PalArab "refugee" camps

A couple of weeks ago the Washington Post published an article (no longer available; excerpted here from AP) that showed that both Gazans and Egyptians were surprised that Gaza was in comparatively better shape than Egypt was:

A little travel has gone a long way toward changing perceptions in Gaza.
After excursions to Egypt across a border breached by Hamas militants, some Palestinians pepper their local Arabic dialect with Egyptian expressions while others say they are shocked by the poverty there.
Jihad Jaradeh, 24, a Gazan whose family owns a furniture shop, reached the Egyptian town of El Arish, some 25 miles from the border. Although shop owners doubled and tripled prices, Jaradeh paid up, saying he even gave extra "because they looked so poor."
Many Gazans who visited Egypt remarked on the discrepancy between their more glamorous image of urban Egypt - derived mostly from movies - and the run-down border region of unpaved streets and small houses they encountered.

A trickle of Egyptians also made it into Gaza. Mohammed, an Egyptian truck driver who rented his truck to Palestinians to ferry goods into Gaza, pointed to cars crowding a nearby street and said: "I thought conditions here would be harder than this. I thought people would be starving."

This theme has been reinforced by former Reuters reporter Mona Eltahawy, hardly a fan of Israel. From Indian Muslims:

I must confess that when Hamas militants blasted holes into Egypt's border to end an Israeli blockade on Gaza, my first thought was how lucky those Gazans were. Landlocked and living on less than $2 a day—their plight rarely elicits envy, I know. But there are Egyptian slums that swim in more sewage and are submerged in even greater poverty. In those slums, chronic diseases go unchecked and uncured, and children grow up next to the dead in tombs turned into makeshift-housing.
Yet nobody rushes to blast holes into the imaginary border of poverty that suffocates those slums, nor are they sporting t-shirts urging us to sympathise. Why?

Because Israel cannot be blamed.

For decades, successive dictators in the Arab world have sacrificed their respective national concerns on the altar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, telling us it must be resolved before any kind of progress can be made, whether it's stopping terrorism, embracing democracy or ending poverty. Unsurprisingly, despite peace with Israel for the past 29 years, Egypt still suffers with the same problems.

As a Jerusalem-based Reuters correspondent in 1998, I visited several Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, and was astonished to see living conditions better than in the slums of Cairo, my hometown. (Frustration and not mean-spiritedness compels me to make that comparison.)

Despite its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, the Egyptian regime discourages its citizens from visiting Israel or the Palestinian areas, so few can even make the comparison.

Arab media, particularly the state-owned kind, are equally discouraged from focusing on national issues – such as the desperate state of our slums – and instead devote most newsprint and airtime to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Iraq. The latter never got much attention when Saddam Hussein was filling mass graves with Shi'ites and Kurds, but catapulted to the top of the news bulletins when the Arab world's other bete noire – the United States – invaded Iraq in 2003.

Recently the baton of Palestine passed into the firm and dangerous grip of Islamists. Years of corrupt Fatah leadership handed Hamas a 2006 electoral victory, which unfortunately paved the way for civil war between the rival factions, shattering illusions that Palestinian leaders cared more for their people than their jostle for power.

The masked gunmen of Hamas – who lob rockets into Israel with little regard for the consequences for their own people – are now the heroes of the day for bombing the Egyptian border. Egypt, to the west and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction to the east are seen as Israel's surrogate jailers of Gaza, and the more Israel tightens its grip, the more that scenario is magnified.

Some Egyptians struggled to square their fears over seeing armed Islamists bomb their country's borders with their desire to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The popular social networking site Facebook became home to some heated arguments in groups titled "Save Gaza for Humans Not Hamas" and "Get the Palestinians Away from Arish—We Want Our Borders Back."

A young Egyptian woman told me she considered Hamas' action at the Egyptian border an 'invasion': "They did blow up the border. Putting women and children first does not make it ok," she said. "They attacked the Egyptian forces. They acted like thugs. It was a political move, and they had no respect for Egypt. That's why I want them out really."

It is still the rare Arab voice that points out the obvious - Palestinian Arabs in "refugee" camps have been given decades of free food, shelter and education, not to mention attention, that Arab countries do not provide for their own citizens.

Most Palestinian Arabs left the area for much more lucrative jobs in the Gulf and would have happily settled elsewhere had the Arab countries allowed them to become repatriated as refugees rather than purposefully keeping them stateless.

The ones that stayed in these "camps" for generations are the lazy ones who feel that free medical care, housing and food are their right long after their status of "refugees" is long gone by any sane definition. And this mindset that Palestinian Arabs deserve this exalted status at the expense of all poor Arabs has penetrated Arab society to keep a self-perpetuating problem alive for purely political reasons.

Israeli pop culture going mainstream

From JPost:

Joseph Cedar, director of the Oscar-nominated Israeli film Beaufort, and an Orthodox Jew, has resolved a thorny Shabbat dilemma.

Traditionally, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences holds a high-profile public symposium for the five finalists vying for the best foreign-language film Oscar on the day before the award ceremony.

This year, the symposium will be on Saturday morning, Feb. 23, and Cedar was uncertain whether he could participate on a Shabbat.

"I had a long talk with my rabbi in Israel," said Cedar, 39, who is in Los Angeles with his family now in anticipation of the awards. "He decided that I could attend as long as I didn't use a microphone and walked to the event at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater."

Cedar figures he can cover the two-mile distance in about an hour, an almost unheard feat for pedestrian-phobic Angelenos, but no big deal for Israelis - even for an Israeli who was born in New York, but whose parents made aliya when he was five.

In the meanwhile, the excitement in Israel about its film industry's first Oscar nomination since 1984 is building up.

Gilad Millo, the resident Israeli consul for public affairs, said that more than a dozen of the main Israel media outlets will send television and print reporters to cover the Oscar ceremonies.

Millo termed the Oscar nomination a "landmark event" and an auspicious beginning of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.

And also from JPost:

An indie artist from Ramat Hasharon has become the first Israeli to crack the Billboard Top 10.

Yael Naim, a 29-year-old IDF veteran, earned Billboard's coveted "Hot Shot" designation last week with "New Soul," an English-language single that scored the highest debut of any song on the music magazine's singles chart.

The song ranked ninth in total sales across the United States on the chart issued February 16...The song also ranked second on Billboard's list of digital singles, while Naim's self-titled album landed at sixth on the magazine's digital albums chart.

The song's soaring Billboard debut follows a week spent at #1 on the iTunes Top Songs list, and certified Naim's rapid emergence on the American music scene.

Unknown in the US a month ago, Naim has become the breakout performer of early 2008 with "New Soul," which earned massive exposure last month after being selected for an aggressive marketing campaign for the MacBook Air laptop.

Born in Paris to immigrants from Tunisia, Naim moved to Israel as a four-year-old, later serving in the IDF and recording songs in French, English and Hebrew.

Here's her New Soul video, watched over 2.7 million times on YouTube:

Adar I 12

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls President Bush and tells him, "George, I had a wonderful dream last night. I could see America, the whole beautiful country, and on each house I saw a banner."

"What did it say on the banners?" Bush asks. Ahmadinejad replies, "UNITED STATES OF IRAN."

Bush says, "You know, Mahmoud, I am really happy you called, because believe it or not, last night I had a similar dream. I could see all of Tehran, and it was more beautiful than ever, and on each house flew an enormous banner."

"What did it say on the banners?" Ahmadinejad asks.

Bush replies, "I don't know. I can't read Hebrew."

Saudi women rush to ditch their hijab when abroad

From an op-ed in the Arab News:

Everyone knows that Saudi women not only remove their abayas once they leave the country, but they also compete in following the latest fashion trends when abroad. They spend a fortune on their outfits so that they don’t feel left out of the fashion parade that Saudi and Gulf women start during summer vacations in other Arab or European countries. The famous streets of London, Paris or Cairo are like carnivals displaying the latest in fashion trend worn by Saudi and Gulf women.
This proves that it’s impossible to impose a certain trend on people when it comes to dress codes or behavior. Threats and terrorizing make people have dual personalities. They become schizophrenic. They will rush at the first opportunity to ditch anything that’s been imposed on them when they’re sure that they are neither monitored nor supervised.
Prohibiting things that the scholars disagree upon and imposing traditions on people will lead to social hypocrisy. It will increase the number of people who secretly do things that they oppose publicly. We need to review many of our social habits that are practiced in the name of religion and are severely restricting Saudi society. We might at one point make peace with ourselves and manage to stand in the face of the changing world.

Unlike many right-wing bloggers, I sympathize with Muslim women who truly want to dress modestly (as long as it doesn't conflict with other human rights or security issues.) However, the Muslim world forcing all women to a certain dress code is nothing less than abuse, and this editorial neatly shows how it is destructive to the very society that pretends that it is acting "morally."

Adar 11 (on time, no less)

A man arrives at Ben-Gurion Airport with two large bags.

The customs agent opens the first bag and finds it full with money so he asks the passenger, "How did you get this money?"

The man says, "You will not believe it, but I traveled all over Europe, went into public restrooms, each time I saw a man pee, I grabbed his organ and said, "donate money to Israel or I will cut off your testicles."

The customs agent is stunned and mumbles: "well...it's a very interesting story... what do you have in the other bag?"

The man says, "You would not believe how many people in Europe hate Israel..."

PalArab rocket hits Egypt

From Reuters:

A locally made Palestinian rocket exploded on the Egyptian side of the crossing point with Gaza on Sunday, damaging an Egyptian administrative building, security sources said. There were no injuries.
The rocket, about 50 cm (20 inches) long, knocked out communications at the Egyptian border post but the building was deserted because it landed early in the morning, they said.

"Maybe it landed there by mistake and was meant to go into Israel. We have informed the Palestinian side and asked for explanations," said a security source who asked not to be named.

This was not the first time this has happened; two weeks ago a Gaza rocket also hit Egyptian territory, causing no damage.

Last week Hamas fired some bullets over the heads of some Egyptians building a new wall between Gaza and Egypt.

The "brothers" are apparently squabbling.

(h/t Backspin)

Adar 10 (also belated)

A rabbi, a priest, and a minister were talking one day. The priest told of an occasion when he was caught in a snowstorm so terrible that he couldn't see a foot in front of him. He was completely confused, unsure even of which direction he needed to walk. He prayed to God, and miraculously, while the storm continued for miles in every direction, he could clearly see his home 20 feet away.

The minister told a similar story. He had been out on a small boat when a hurricane struck. There were 40-foot high waves, and the boat was sure to capsize. He prayed to God, and, while the storm continued all around, for several feet in each direction, the sea calmed, and the minister was able to return safely to port.

The rabbi, too, had such a story. One Saturday morning, on the way home from the synagogue, he saw a very thick wad of $100 bills on the sidewalk.

Of course, since it was Shabbat, the rabbi wasn't able to touch the money.

So he prayed to God, and everywhere, for miles in every direction, it was still Shabbat, but for 10 feet around him, it was Thursday.

Adar 9 (belated)

On the sixth day, G-d turned to the angel Gabriel....

"On this day, I shall create a magic land. It shall be called "Israel". It will stand as holy. Its magnificence will be known the world over. I will choose to send to this land special people of goodness, intelligence and conviction, so the land shall prosper. I shall call these inhabitants Jews."

"Pardon me, Lord", asked Gabriel, "but aren't you being too generous to these Jews?"

"Not really. Wait and see the neighbors I'm giving them."

That legendary Times-UK objectivity

Now, I certainly believe that Israel was behind the assassination of Mughniyeh, the fact is that it has not been proven. For a prestigious newspaper to headline an article "Israel kills terror chief with headrest bomb" seems a bit, shall we say, premature.

Biggest "work accident" in years kills Islamic Jihad family

From Reuters:

Eight people were killed, including a commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, and some 40 were wounded when an explosion destroyed a house in the Gaza Strip late on Friday, a group spokesman and local medics said.
The Israeli army denied any involvement. Islamic Jihad said an air strike caused the blast, which also killed three other militants as well as the wife and two young children of the commander, Ayman Fayed, better known as Abu Abdallah.
Some residents of the al-Bureij refugee camp said they believed there had been an air strike. Others said they heard no aircraft noise or other indications before the explosion.

Witnesses at the scene said they saw debris among the rubble of what looked like the locally manufactured rockets the Islamic Jihad and other groups fire at Israeli towns.

Israel has used air strikes on cars in Gaza to kill a number of militants lately but has not bombed a house there since 2006. Militants have also been killed in accidental explosions and faction fighting, while some Palestinians also accuse Israel of using undercover methods to set off explosions in the enclave.

Haaretz adds:

In contrast to Islamic Jihad, Hamas initially declined to blame Israel, saying it might have been a "work accident" - i.e. that some of the explosives stored in the house might have gone off accidentally. That is also the Israel Defense Forces' assessment, and the IDF stressed there were no Israeli operations in Gaza at the time.

But yesterday all the Palestinian organizations, including both Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, issued statements blaming Israel for the blast.

This is a slam dunk case of a "work accident:" Israel has not been bombing houses; when they used to their targets were always the leaders of the terror groups; Israel admits when it kills terrorists' and the house was apparently a rocket factory.

Of course, Ma'an - the most reliable Palestinian Arab"news" source - doesn't bother to mention any of that as it blames Israel explicitly, showing once again the quality of Palestinian Arab "news".

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 25.

UPDATE: PCHR adds more details, and many more of the civtims were under 18, so I am adjusting the self-death count.

The latest episode of Hamas kidTV

Reuters finally noticed that Hamas is inciting - against Danes, and also Jews:

A man-sized talking rabbit appeared on television in Gaza on Friday to denounce Danish newspapers over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that offended Muslims.

The latest in a line of cartoon-inspired characters that take the message of the Hamas Islamist movement to Palestinian children, the actor in the Bugs Bunny-style outfit also railed against "Zionist filth" and Israel's control of Jerusalem.

The Friday show "Tomorrow's Pioneers" on Hamas's al-Aqsa channel has become a weekend fixture for pre-teens since shortly before the Islamists seized control of the Gaza Strip last year.

A Mickey Mouse-type creation provoked outcry in Israel and was condemned elsewhere as inciting hatred among the young. The mouse, eventually shown being beaten to death by an Israeli, was followed by a talking bee and, now, by Assud the rabbit.

"I want the West to hear this. I want the Danes who offended the great Prophet to hear it," the rabbit said, gesturing to viewers after the show's co-presenter, a girl of about 12 named Sarra, condemned Danish newspapers for reprinting the cartoons after police accused several men of plotting to kill the artist.

"Where are you Muslims? Where are you Arabs?" said Sarra, wearing a headscarf and speaking with precocious eloquence.

"We are all a sacrifice for the Prophet. The soldiers of Tomorrow's Pioneers will redeem the Prophet with all they have."

Earlier, several thousand Hamas supporters demonstrated in Gaza over the cartoons, which were first published in 2005.

Returning to the show's favoured theme of explaining Hamas's goal of an Islamic state in all the area now divided between Israel and the Palestinians, the rabbit told viewers they would recover Jerusalem's holiest Muslim site and cities in Israel:

"We will liberate al-Aqsa mosque from the Zionists' filth," said Assud, whose name means Little Lion. "We will liberate Jaffa and Acre. Will liberate the whole homeland."

Though some parents are uneasy about the show's message it has proved popular with children, not only in Hamas-controlled Gaza but also in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. One girl called Rasha said she was phoning in from Bethlehem, near Jerusalem:

"Who has sabotaged the world if not the Zionist plans?" she sang down the line to the studio in Gaza. Dancing and singing along, Assud the rabbit chimed in: "They have bombarded us." (Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Pseudo-intellectualism is fun!

I noticed a few articles today that where the authors use really big words and have no clue what they are talking about.

Our first example comes from The American Muslim magazine, where author Robert Crane asserts:

In any false ideology, the prefix “neo” indicates that it is false. Placing the “neo” in front of “conservatism,” indicates that it is fraudulent, which is precisely why it is so dangerous.

This is pretty absurd (the prefix "neo-" means "new") and really nonsensical - does he mean that any ideology that isn't prefixed "neo" is true, or does his syllogism only apply to "false ideologies" to begin with?

Crane knows his audience knows nothing that would contradict an even dumber statement:

Much less has Neo-Conservatism had anything to do with spiritual Zionism, which Jews have traditionally understood as the return to God. In this sense, every Muslim should be a Zionist and should be a follower of the greatest spiritual leader of the twentieth century, Rebbe Abraham Izaac Kook, who was the Chief Rabbi of Palestine from 1919 until the outbreak of the first great Palestinian intifada against Brtish imperialism beginning in 1935.

Rav Kook was an ardent Zionist and not only in the "inner jihad" sense that Crane is applying to him; he supported a Zionist state (although not a secular one.) The statement that every Muslim should be a Zionist in Rav Kook's sense of the word is accurate but far from Crane's intent.

Notice also how Crane now retroactively refers to the riots and infighting of the 1930s - where hundreds of Arabs murdered each other - as a "great intifada."

His entire essay is filled with such quasi-scholarly garbage, but it is fun to pick apart.

Similarly, the weekly Al-Ahram English edition is always a source for pseudo-intellectual gibberish. Check this out:

All modern theories, from Hegelian dialectics to Marxian class struggle, from Max Weber's theories on the evolution of government to Sigmund Freud's analysis of civilisation and its discontents, offer insights, however varied, on the law of historical change.

These theories came my mind as I read the Winograd Report on Israel's war on Lebanon in July 2006....The pioneers of the Zionist project were cunning, managing to convince world Jewry that the rape of Palestine was a legitimate thing to do.

What gave momentum to the Zionist project was international support and the sense of vitality Ibn Khaldun so aptly described. For nearly half a century, this vitality survived as new settlers grappled with a foreign land and the fact that they had little in common. Israel was a hybrid. At the top of the social ladder were white settlers from East Europe, followed by Jews coming from Arab countries and Iran. The bottom of the social ladder was left for Jews known as the Falashas. The duality of the Ashkenazi and the Sephardim was only one aspect of disunity in Israel. And war proved to be the one rallying cry that would cement the new country. The Israelis needed wars to keep them together. Indeed, the Zionist project -- as I have said many times before -- is a project of war. It was Israel's very social fabric that triggered what the Zionists like to call "preventive wars".

The amount of projection in this last paragraph is breathtaking. While no one will argue that there wasn't discrimination against Sephardim in the 1950s, to say that the 1948 war was only meant to give unity to Jews who commonly suffered at the hands of their host nations is too absurd for words, let alone the implication that the Jews started it. (He also seems to think that the Ethiopian Jews were a part of Israel in the 1950s and 1960s.)

Again, the readers of Al-Ahram, thirsty for some sort of scholarly-sounding justification for their own prejudices and hate, lap this stuff up.

French and Saudis refused to nab Mughniyeh

From the WaPo:

...Lebanese officials, exploiting a monitored telephone call, traced Mughniyah to Paris in 1985, only five months after the hijacking of a TWA jetliner, to which he had been linked. He was staying at the Hotel de Crillon, a luxurious hotel across the street from the U.S. Embassy. Tipped off by the Lebanese, U.S. officials asked French police to arrest him and turn him over. Instead, as previously reported in The Washington Post, French agents met with him several times over a six-day period, according to a source closely involved, and worked out an agreement to release him in return for the freedom of a French hostage.

From ABC News:

[Richard] Clarke says the CIA learned that Mugniyah, wanted for a string of terror attacks, had boarded a commercial flight in Khartoum that was scheduled to stop in Riyadh [in 1996.]

"We appealed to the Saudis to grab him when the plane landed, and they refused," Clarke said in an interview broadcast Wednesday on ABC "World News With Charles Gibson."

After the initial refusal, Clarke said, U.S. officials went to the then-crown prince, now king.

"We raised the level of appeals all the way through Bill Clinton who was on the phone at three in the morning appealing to the highest level in Saudi Arabia to grab him," Clarke said.

"Instead, the Saudis refused to let the plane land and it continued on to Damascus," Clarke said.

The same people who complain about "extrajudicial killings" don't give people the opportunity to bring them to justice.

While the French actions were despicable, at least they got something concrete out of it - the release of a hostage.

The Saudis, however, were given a clear choice in 1996 as to whose side they were on - their "good friends" the United States, or Hezbollah. And we see which side they chose.

Another attack in Gaza - by Muslims against Christians

The YMCA in Gaza was attacked:

A band of 14 masked gunmen forced its way into YMCA offices in the Gaza Strip and exploded a library there, Israel Radio reported Friday.

Thousands of books were reportedly burnt in the ensuing fire. The YMCA in Gaza also operates a gym and a wedding hall.

The gunmen laid a second explosive device near a computer in the library but it failed to detonate. Two security guards on the scene were not able to block the intruders; they were taken by them from the YMCA and later released in the northern Gaza Strip.

The latest incident is another link in an ongoing chain of attacks against Palestinian Christians which has worsened since Hamas took power of the Gaza Strip last June.

Notice their target - the library. Any knowledge that is not Islamic is "haram" for the Islamists, so much so that they want to destroy it everywhere.

What they fear most, apparently, is the possibility that any other points of view might be more valid than theirs. Which says a lot about their confidence in their own beliefs.

I've been noticed

There is an Arabic thread about this blog in a message board site called paldf.net. The autotranslation is funny as they note my post about the glossy Hamas magazine and then notice my 2007 self-death count. Plenty of side mentions of "wicked Zionists" and "Zionist criminals" and, of course, that I have a strong relationship with World Zionism. I've received about 40 hits from that site so far!

Even funnier, they put a URL for the Google autotranslation of my site into Arabic! Which, I suppose, is only fair.

By the way, my name autotranslated to Arabic and autotranslated back is either "Hakim Zion" or "Wise Zion." Hakim is of course like the Hebrew "chacham/חכם " meaning wise; ironically al-Hakim was also the nickname of the late terrorist George Habash.

(If anyone knows how to change an uploaded Blogger picture to something else, so that the pictures they stole from me might be changed to something a little more interesting, please let me know.)

Abbas: Most of PA budget is spent in Gaza

Trying to interpret auto-translated text is sometimes tricky but one part of the Wafa transcript of Mahmoud Abbas' speech today at Sanaa University seems interesting:

President Abbas confirmed that despite what happened, the power [PA] is still completely responsible directly for all staff in the Gaza Strip and 77,000 staff members, while in the West Bank 73 thousand staff, and budget spent on the Gaza Strip rather than spent on the West Bank where it is disbursed 58% in Gaza and 42% disposal in the West Bank.

It appears that the West gives hundreds of millions to the PA and the PA gives the lion's share of that money to the same Gaza Strip that the West is pretending to sanction. And the PA, with Western money, still bankrolls tens of thousands of employees in Gaza who are doing next to nothing.

Meaning that Hamas has the luxury not to worry about Gaza residents rioting over not getting paid and can use all of its smuggled cash for building bombs and rockets.

UPDATE: I found confirmation in a February 3 article from Xinhua:

Fayyad explained that his government has spent 58 percent of its budget on Gaza Strip "to ease the life of the people and enhance their living conditions."

As Abbas makes clear, most of this 58% in in paying salaries, so the PA is not even trying to limit its spending of our tax dollars.

It also means that the PA is spending more than double per capita on Gaza than in the West Bank.

Adar 8

A Texan, a Frenchman and an Israeli are on a plane flying over the Pacific Ocean when the engines stop functioning. The plane crash lands on a Pacific Island and the 3 are immediately captured by a tribe of cannibals and taken to their village. The Chief tells the 3 captives that these cannibals are civilized and they have a custom on their island that before they eat anyone, they grant that person his or her last wishes?no matter what they are.

He asks the Texan, "What is your last wish?"
The Texan replies: "I want a 2 inch thick steak with all the trimmings, Cajun fries and a case of Bud." The Chief motions to some of his tribesmen who immediately run into the jungle and come back with the steak, the fries and the beer. The Texan eats his meal and he is thrown in the pot.

The Frenchman is asked: "What is your last wish?"
He replies: "I'd like a case of Dom Perignon and I'd also like a big plate of escargots cooked in the French manner." The Chief motions to his tribesmen who immediately rush off into the jungle and bring back everything the Frenchman asked for. He eats and drinks his fill, and he is then thrown in the pot.

The Chief turns to the Israeli and asks, "And what is your wish?"
The Israeli looks the Chief squarely in the eyes and replies: "I want you to kick me in the behind as hard as you can." The Chief is bewildered and asks the Israeli again, only to receive the same reply. "I want you to kick me in the behind as hard as you can." The Chief shrugs his shoulders, asks the Israeli to turn around, and kicks him as hard as he can. With that the Israeli pulls out a gun and kills the Chief and all of the other cannibals.

The Texan and the Frenchman get out of the pot, look at the Israeli and say: "If you had that gun why didn't you do anything sooner?"

The Israeli replies: "What? And risk being condemned by the UN, EU and the State Department for 'overreacting' to insufficient provocation?"

Western media too nervous to illustrate Mohammed cartoon story

Yesterday, 17 Danish newspapers, in a show of free speech, decided to republish the infamous Mohammed cartoon on their front pages.

Now, this gave Western newspapers a conundrum.

Clearly, the fact that the newspapers published the cartoon is news, but how can they illustrate the story without printing the cartoon themselves?

As can be imagined, the vast majority of liberal, free-speech-loving Western newspapers decided not to risk the wrath of crazy Muslim fanatics and they didn't even print sample front pages of the Danish newspapers.

So far, the only exception I have found is Der Speigel, which printed the picture shown here. Outside of that I have not been able to find a single mainstream newspaper to illustrate this story.

Fear of Islam dictates our "independent" news policy.

So who killed Imad Mughniyeh?

He had no shortage of enemies, as Noah Pollak points out (via Soccer Dad.) And even beyond his obvious enemies, other ones are being revealed - for example, Kuwait.

But in the end, perhaps the best evidence that Israel was really behind the killings is that the bomber was careful not to kill any civilians in what was apparently a well-trafficked neighborhood. None of Mughniyeh's other enemies, with the possible exception of the US, would have cared in the slightest if the entire block was blown up.

Meanwhile, in the Negev...

I count 10 Qassam rockets today, making it the worst day this week.

UPDATE: The total is 12.

And #13 came just before midnight.

AFP falls for Hamas Valentine's Day propaganda

AFP publishes a bleeding-heart story about how Gaza cannot export beautiful flowers for Valentine's Day:

In past years, Ziad Hejazi's colourful Gaza-grown carnations would would adorn the homes of lovers across Europe, bringing an early springtime splash of color to wintry Valentine Days.

But the 35-year-old farmer from the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah says that this year his flowers will be fed to animals because of a punishing Israeli economic lockdown of the Hamas-ruled territory.

"I apologise to the lovers on the day of their love because I cannot bring flowers to them," Hejazi says. "Our flowers have become food for the sheep."

Flower farmers across Gaza, whose sunny climate allows for year-round exports to Europe, have been hard-hit by an Israeli closure regime tightened in June after the Islamist Hamas movement seized power there

...The carnations that might have adorned February 14 festivities in Europe have meanwhile flooded the local market, taking the place of other flower varieties kept out by Israeli restrictions.

"Last year I had 30 different kinds of flowers but now there is only one, the carnation, and very few roses," says Wasim Abdu, 28, a flower shop owner.

His shop is ablaze with red hearts and candles, artifacts of a more cheerful and romantic time in the increasingly impoverished coastal strip.

The rest of the surplus flowers will end up in Gaza's trash heaps and vacant lots, their pastel colors fading in the cool winter sunlight.

The Arabic WAFA version of this story is interesting in comparison (autotranslated):

Roses fragrance emitted from agricultural greenhouses, in the city of Rafah, south of Gaza Strip, not only marred Ruth beasts that has been ignored, on the eve of Valentine's Day, only meal of fresh roses American ready for export.

Millions of red and white flowers and UV trampled cattle and sheep himself in different parts of the Gaza Strip. Varud become the President of the cattle diet, not a luxury, but a copy of the images painted by frivolous Israeli siege on Gaza.

On the brink of agricultural greenhouses in the town of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip presented Majed farm buildings, hundreds of bouquets of roses free of a shepherd who arrived cart donkey cart, which also had a share of the meal and fresh flowers. وفي

On the other side of the greenhouse, shaking the tail cows eat up this meal is rare in the day 'sweetheart'.

So AFP is saying that only carnations and very few roses are available in Gaza because Israel doesn't allow flower imports. But WAFA is saying that roses are being eaten by the animals, not being resold (certainly for more money.)

It is possible that the autotranslation really meant carnations, but the word "varud" above is cognate to the Hebrew "vered" which means "rose."

What seems more likely to have happened is this: There was a major cold snap in January in Gaza, with the frost destroying millions of dollars of agricultural goods. The flowers in that "sunny climate", especially fragile roses, were probably ruined. Which means that they were only useful for animal feed.

And when feeding animals roses, why not get some propaganda mileage out of it, from gullible reporters from AFP and Reuters?

"The Muslim Youssef Wali"

In a press release about Joseph's Tomb, Mahmoud Abbas refers to the son of Jacob as "the Muslim Youssef Wali" - Youssef meaning Joseph and Wali meaning "friend" or "master."

Aaron Klein at WND has more:

In the wake of an attempt by Palestinians to burn down Joseph's Tomb – Judaism's third holiest site – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction issued a statement denying it will help restore the shrine, referring to both the shrine and the biblical patriarch as "Muslim."

"Pay no attention to the rumors that we will work with Israel to restore the burial site of the holy Muslim Joseph," said the statement, issued from Nablus, the biblical city of Shechem. "We are going to guard this holy Muslim site."

Joseph's Tomb is the believed burial place of the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into slavery and later became viceroy of Egypt.

Palestinian security officials in Nablus said Monday they were called to the tomb to find 16 burning tires inside the sacred structure. A Palestinian police official who inspected the site told WND there was some fire damage to the tomb.

He said the Palestinian Authority, fearing embarrassment, immediately formed a joint committee from the PA's Force 17, Preventative Security Services and Palestinian intelligence, to find out who was behind the fire.

The move comes after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced last week he would ask Israel's Defense Ministry to work with the PA to reconstruct and restore the tomb, parts of which were destroyed in 2000 by Palestinians, including known PA security officers.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, which granted nearby strategic territory to the Palestinians, Joseph's Tomb was supposed to be accessible to Jews and Christians. But following repeated attacks against Jewish worshippers at the holy site by gunmen associated with then-Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat's militias, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak in October 2000 ordered an Israeli unilateral retreat from the area.

Within less than an hour of the Israeli retreat, Palestinian rioters overtook Joseph's Tomb and reportedly began to ransack the site. Palestinian mobs reportedly tore apart books, destroying prayer stands and grinding out stone carvings in the Tomb's interior. A Muslim flag was hoisted over the tomb.

Every single ancient Jewish shrine in Israel has been belatedly claimed by Arabs - usually only in the past hundred years - to be Muslim shrines instead, as they desperately try to erase any connection between Jews and Israel.

PLO considers all of Israel "occupied"

The Palestine Media Center, which issues press releases for the PLO, has included this tiny item:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) announced Tuesday the opening of its new Jerusalem office in the Israeli-occupied Jerusalem.

Yet the ZOA press release does not mention the address of the new office - so the PLO cannot know what part of Jerusalem it is in. But our "peace partners" are certain that it is "occupied."

Which proves, once again, that to the "moderate" Palestinians, all of Jerusalem even within the Green Line is "occupied."

And by extension, this must mean all of Israel.

One more for the list

This year has beenseemingly more peaceful than last year in the PalArab terrortories, and I am convinced that Hamas is hushing up various deaths by making them look like they came from Israel, but the official 2008 self-death count has risen to 17 as "a 21-year-old Palestinian man named Ahmad Abu Wadi was stabbed to death on Wednesday in the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia by unidentified people."

The Fatah connection to Mughniyah

Time has an interesting tidbit about the late terrorist Imad Mughniyah:

A U.S. official told TIME that Mughniyah had been linked to the 2002 discovery of 50 tons of weapons by Israeli Navy commandos who intercepted a freighter called Karine A in the Red Sea.

Wikipedia mentions:

The captain of the vessel was Omar Akawi, a Fatah activist since 1976 and former member of the Palestinian Authority. According to the Beirut newspaper The Daily Star, the alleged purchaser of the weapons, Adel Salameh (aka Adel 'Moghrabi`) was a former member of Yassir Arafat's staff until the early 1980's "when he was dismissed for conducting private business which conflicted with his official status."

Robert Satloff wrote an extensive article about the Karine A affair, and says

the karine-A was a joint undertaking of Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Islamic Republic of Iran, facilitated through the good offices of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hizballah.

The facts are these: On August 31, the head of the PA'S procurement department, one Adel Awadallah (a.k.a. Adel al-Mughrabi), purchased a 4,000-ton freighter in Lebanon with $400,000 provided by a man named Fuad Shobaki. With the rank of brigadier general in the Palestinian military; Shobaki held the tide of director of the Military Financial Administration; in practice, he was widely considered to be Arafat's closest financial advisor. The acquisition itself was supervised by two PA naval police officials, Fathi Razam and Omar Akawi. On September 12, the day after the World Trade Center/Pentagon terrorist attacks, the boat was registered with the Kingdom of Tonga and renamed the Karine-A. After steaming to Aden, Akawi took over as captain, with a crew of nine Egyptians and Jordanians--who evidently did not know about the arms smuggling plan--plus four armed and well-trained Palestinians. The ship proceeded to waters off the Iranian island of Kish. There, under the watchful eye of a chief aide to Imad Mughniyah--Hizballah's operations commander and the man thought responsible for the bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon and the bombings of the Israeli embassy and Jewish community center in Argentina--the boat was loaded with eighty crates of weapons. Though the weapons were not an outright gift from the ayatollahs to Arafat, they were sold at steep discount--$30-50 million of goods for just $10 million.

So the same "moderate" leaders of the PA were intimately involved in working together with this master terrorist - and murderer of hundreds of Americans as well as Argentine Jews.

No wonder the Palestinian Arabs are so upset that this mass murderer is dead.

Pure brilliance

If you haven't been following the whole Archbishop of Canterbury/sharia flap, the best description humanly possible can verily be founde at Iowa-hawke, whereby he presenteth
the newly-discovered Tale of the Asse-Hatte.

Judeopundit notes a strange image at the Ramattan English website.

At first it looks like the image was "pwned" by an anti-Hezbollah site who changed the image to make fun of the terrorists, but this image is hosted by Ramattan.

The font is a Walt Disney signature font; and it looks like it is trying to translate into some sort of English the Hezbollah logo, as can be seen in the corresponding Arabic story:

Of course, Hezbollah does mean "Party of God" but the champagne bottle makes no sense, especially for an Islamist party. And they never translate Allah as God.

I'm stumped.

Happy Eid al-Hob

I believe that is how "feast of love" would be translated into Arabic, as anti-Valentine's Day fever spreads.

AFP adds more information about the campaigns in the Gulf against the color red:

"We have not been selling red roses for a week and we will not bring in any until Valentine's Day is over," said Alan, a Filipino working at a flower shop in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
He said a member of the religious police, known as Muttawa, visited the shop a week ago and ordered the florists not to display any red roses in the runup to February 14.
At a gift shop in the city, a salesman said the Muttawa had told him to remove from the shelves any red-colour gifts symbolising the feast of love.
"We also removed red gift boxes so as not to expose ourselves to punishment, which could be to close the shop and arrest staff," said Mohammad Hassanein al-Hawari.
The Muttawa, whose formal name is the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, does not stop at just openly inspecting shops. "Agents" in camouflage clothes check to ensure their orders are heeded, he told AFP.

In neighbouring Kuwait, where liberals and Islamists invariably clash over Valentine's Day, Islamists have raised the tone this year.
The head of the Islamic Sharia College at Kuwait University, Mohammad al-Tabtabai, issued a fatwa stipulating that the feast is banned under Islam, and two Islamist MPs demanded that the government ban Valentine's Day celebrations, which they said promote immorality.
But main supermarkets and flower shops in the Gulf emirate are filled with Valentine's Day paraphernalia, while hotels publish adverts tempting couples to a dinner and a one-night stay at discounted rates.
In Bahrain, Islamist protests appear to have been drowned by the increasing popularity of Valentine's Day.
"Last year, we imported 20,000 red roses for Valentine's Day. This year, we increased the quantity to 25,000" due to rising demand, said Varghese Modiyil, manager of one of Manama's flower shops.
"I usually give my wife a bouquet (of red roses) on Valentine's Day ... It's not a celebration in the full sense of the word -- just a gesture to renew our love," confided Nawaf al-Ghanem, a 31-year-old Bahraini bank employee.
Red lingerie and heart-shaped jewellery, cushions and teddy bears, offer a wide choice at one shopping mall in Dubai, the most Western-oriented of the seven emirates making up the United Arab Emirates and where citizens make up only around 20 percent of the population.
Gift shops and jewellers in Qatar were also decked in red, even though the gas-rich Gulf state is not immune to the slanging matches over the occasion.
"It is unfortunate that some shopowners advertise these (Valentine's Day) items and use them to decorate their shops in pursuit of material gain, flouting our norms and violating our religion," a disgruntled Qatari wrote in a letter to the daily Al-Raya.

UPDATE: Palestine Press Agency (Arabic) has no problem with Valentine's Day, and offers tips for romantic meals that increase sexual potency. The autotranslation is hilarious:

Drink "pomegranate juice"

It is a natural sexual activated since it cleans the blood of harmful deposits exceeded the efficiency of the nerves in the transfer of messages and respond to stimuli in addition to appoint a person to remain steadfast and get rid of psychological anxiety and fears that bedevil the process of citizenship.

Comers "shrimp cocktail"

Zinc found in shrimp increase the number of sperm, and enjoyable to the state of ecstasy stronger as a study on fertility and infertility, in addition to containing amino acid, which reduces tension, as well as the hormone serotonin, which stimulates the feeling of happiness, according to the newspaper "Qabas."

Main dish "filleted meat"

Higher protein found in meat increases the production of body Hormone Alnorenjerin dopamine, which increased vigilance and vitality.

Side dish "sweet potato roasted"
They are rich in potassium, which reduces tension and turmoil, but warned that it put a lot of salt because the sodium potassium discouraging effect, and you can take them some kind acid, which is another source of protein catalyst for sexual desire.

Authority "authority spinach"

In addition to the many health benefits, it contains a lot of iron and vitamins, spinach is a rich source of magnesium, which helps to extend vessels and blood flow necessary for the erection, according to a Japanese study.

" Sweet "chocolate with fresh blackberries tourist"

British scientists discovered the serotonin (or what is known Bhrmon happiness) found in chocolate is agitating sexually for women, in addition to the caffeine content of chocolate, which makes you alert.

In this way, make sure that you, my dear husband will spend the night of the "Valentine's Day" will never forget, sans will always behind these things that make you distinctive characteristic on the night will forget.

Hamas' statements crack me up

In reaction to the assassination of Hezbollah uber-terrorist Imad Mughniyya:

For its part, Hamas considered the assassination to be a great loss of a major resistance leader.

"The assassination indicates the ugliness of terrorism of the Israeli entity which depends on assassinations, killing and physical termination," said Isma'il Radwan, a Hamas spokesperson.

You mean, Israel uses assassinations, killing, and physical termination?

Wow. It may be time for them to scale back to merely assassinations and killing. Doing all three to mass murderers is just cruel.

Adar 7

Two Jews, one old and one young, travel in a train in old Europe.

The young Jew asks the old Jew: -What time is it?

The old Jew does not answer.

After asking him 25 times, the young Jew seem to give up and asks the old Jew: - Tell me, why don't you want to tell me what time it is?

The old Jew answers: - Because then you are going to ask me where I am going to and I will have to answer that I am going to Zlabodka to visit my beautiful daughter Lea and you will certainly ask if she is single and I will have to say that she is single and you will certainly ask to meet her for a Shiduch and the last thing I want in my life is my beautiful Lea to marry someone who does not have money even to buy himself a watch!

The "Zionist Octopus"

We've graduated from being sons of apes and pigs!

"We urge the Muslim and Arab nations to act decisively against the Zionist octopus that threatens the security of Arab and Muslim countries," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said.

And we are a cute octopus, if I may say so myself.

Arab nations ignore UNRWA appeal for Gaza

Arab leaders that talk incessantly about their "brothers in Palestine" consistently refuse to do anything serious to actually help their supposed kin. From IRIN, the UN news agency:

A UN special appeal for the Gaza Strip has managed to bring in only a small percentage of the US$9.8 million needed for urgent food aid and cash assistance for the enclave's most vulnerable refugees.

On 6 February, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, began to distribute food aid in Gaza funded by a $100,000 donation from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Red Crescent Society. The money came in response to the special appeal issued by UNWRA in late January.

The UAE donation will pay for food packages sufficient for three months for 2,700 refugees, deemed "special hardship cases" in four camps in Gaza. UNRWA - the largest distributor of aid in Gaza - said it needed over $5 million for food aid as part of this appeal.

Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwalid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud and the Kingdom Foundation donated another $100,000, which UNRWA said would buy fuel supplies. In the appeal UNRWA said it needed nearly $1 million for fuel costs.

However, this is all the special appeal, which initially targeted Arab donors, has managed to collect, with one UNRWA official noting it was "disappointing".

That means that Arab countries donated 2% of what the UNRWA says it needed.

One possible reason that no one wants to give money to Gazans:

Meanwhile, a Jordanian aid convoy of some 16 trucks with humanitarian goods such as food and medicines was allowed by Israel to enter Gaza on 7 February, with the intention of delivering the items to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). However, police from the Islamic Hamas movement, which has governed Gaza since a takeover last June, impounded the convoy.

A spokesman for the police said Hamas was the authority in the enclave and would determine how the aid would be distributed.

Hamas told a Jordanian newspaper that the seized convoy would be given to the UNRWA for distribution - and, of course, it lied:

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) denied that Hamas handed over Jordanian aid sent to the agency in the Gaza Strip. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri had told al-Arab al-Yawm that Hamas will hand over the supplies that Jordan sent to UNRWA, instead of the Palestinian Red Crescent, to disperse to the needy.

Once again we see that the West cares far more about the well-being of Gaza and Palestinian Arabs than the Arab world does. Using ordinary PalArabs as political pawns is so ingrained in the Arab world that I'm not sure if they even realize it anymore. Their "support" for their Palestinian brethren has always been far more focused on helping them kill Israeli Jews than with getting them jobs or prospects for the future.

Hamas' new glossy magazine

From IHT:

The cover boy gracing Gaza's new glossy magazine wears military khakis and a bullet belt and carries one of the territory's hottest accessories — an assault rifle.

His face is covered with a black mask, as are many of the faces in "Qassamis," the new magazine published by Hamas to show off its Islamic fighters. The 80-page magazine also comes with sleek advertisements and a women's section.

The magazine was delivered to The Associated Press and other news organizations by a Hamas employee on Monday. It was distributed to libraries sympathetic to Hamas, apparently targeting a highbrow readership.

The magazine wants to show "the development of our fighting capabilities and show progress on the ground," he said. Hamas officials would not say how many they printed or whether there would be future editions.

Hamas also won't say how much the magazine cost to publish. It looks expensive, a stark contrast to the environment that produced it — the crumbling, impoverished Gaza Strip.

Inside, the magazine describes Hamas' military wing as an "army."

"It has more than 10,000 fighters with weapons who are a real army under military formations," the magazine claims.

The section aimed at women is illustrated with lilies and hand grenades. One photograph shows women training to use guns while wearing floor-length robes in military khaki.

A chart details Hamas attacks, including 2,252 rockets it said it has fired at Israel. The rockets have killed 12 Israelis since 2001 and have drawn military raids and crippling sanctions that have pushed the territory further into poverty.

Hamas has used the closure to whip up anger in the Arab world, painting a picture of poverty and hunger in Gaza. But that hasn't prevented the Islamists from building up a costly media machine.

Last year it launched a daily newspaper, which frequently publishes exclusive interviews with Hamas leaders. The group also runs several internet Web sites, a radio station and a satellite television station that broadcasts news and children's shows.

Hamas is less tolerant of independent media. It has harassed reporters and media outlets it sees as hostile, and a Hamas-dominated court last week ordered the closure of al-Ayyam, a paper associated with its moderate Fatah rivals, because it published a caricature of a senior Hamas official.

The PDF of the magazine is available on the Hamas website; I copied it here. The pictures in this posting come from the magazine.

It appears that they keep their masks on even when faxing!

This must have been the sports section, where Hamas claimed the top two prizes in the Terror Olympics.

I wonder what the poor Gazans think when they see this slick, expensive publication.

Bakeries closing - Arabs running out of bread!

A shocking story of food shortages - in oil-rich Saudi Arabia:

Many Jeddah bakeries closed their doors to customers because of ever increasing high flour prices.
Bakery owners waiting for flour from flour distributors said they were like beggars waiting outside a mosque.
"I have closed one of my bakeries that has been in operation for 40 years, after tomorrow I will close the others," said Abu Ahmad who owns several bakeries in Jeddah.
Ahmad said that outside the Grain Silos and Flour Mills Organization (GSFMO) the atmosphere is more closely related to a mafia rather than a government flour distributor.

"There are a lot of people who sell the flour at unreasonable prices - they bought it from the government for SR22 then they sold it on the black market for more than SR80," Ahmad said.

Ahmad said that when he reported the high prices to the GSFMO about the illegal practices of the grain dealers, they responded by saying that was none of their business.

Flour sellers like Jadal Haq Hosein said he cannot provide customers with flour in sufficient quantities because he himself does not get enough from the distributors.

"Flour shops do not sell more than five kilograms per customer for two reasons: the first being we want to satisfy all our customers and secondly the distributors of flour don't supply shops with enough quantity," Hosein said.

Some customers spend up to three hours looking for bread. Many have asked the government for help. Adnan Kutubkhana, a Saudi customer said that bakeries cannot meet the demand of their customers in the conditions as they are.

"At these rates, after three days, the supermarkets and bakeries will be out of bread," Kutubkhana said.

"I looked for bread in more than 10 supermarkets, when I found it the bread vendor refused to give me more than two riyals' worth."
Many bakeries in Makkah, nearby villages and Taif have also closed due to the shortage of flour.

When Gaza bakeries close because of an artificial flour shortage, it makes world headlines. But the equally starving Saudis just can't catch a break.

Interfaith dialogue, Islamic-style (revisited)

I've had a few posts on how, when Muslims call for "dialogue" with other religions, they are really calling for a new means to proselytize.

I just came across this Islam Q&A site where the question is raised: can a Muslim participate in interfaith dialogue if there is no way that they can use it as a platform for gaining converts?

Question: Here in America we are trying as best we can to call people to Allaah according to the way of the Pious Predecessors (al-salaf al-saalih). Recently there has emerged a very serious matter, which is the spread of committees to bring together the three heavenly religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – whereby each group sends a representative to try to bridge the gaps between these three religions and bring them closer together. They meet in churches and synagogues, and even pray together, as happened following the massacre in al-Khaleel (“Hebron”) in Palestine. These meetings are attended by a not insignificant number of followers from these three religions.

Our question is: the Muslims are represented by scholars – or by people who are counted as being scholars – and there has arisen among us an argument as to the ruling on attending meetings such as these, where Muslim scholars shake hands with and embrace priests and monks. There is no opportunity for da’wah in these meetings; they are held in the name of bringing these three religion closer together. Is it permissible for a Muslim who believes in Allaah and the Last Day to attend such meetings, to enter churches and synagogues and to greet and embrace a priest or monk? For your information, this phenomenon has spread across America, and we hope that you can send us the solution, because we have agreed to accept your ruling between us to suppress this fitnah that exists at the national level. Wa’l-salaamu ‘alaykum wa rahmat-Allaahi wa barakaatuhu.

After a very long answer, disparaging all religions besides Islam as being worthless and false, the Imam finally gets to the point:

On the basis of the above, it is clear that the basic foundation of the laws and religions that Allaah has prescribed for His slaves is one and there is no need to bring them close to one another. It is obvious that the Jews and Christians have distorted and twisted that which was revealed to them from their Lord, to the point that their religions have become falsehood, kufr and misguidance.

....How can any rational person who knows about their persistence in falsehood and their continuing to knowingly follow misguidance out of jealousy and their pursuit of their own desires, hope for a closer relationship between them and the truly believing Muslims?

... The person who thinks of bringing Islam, Judaism and Christianity together, or bringing them closer to one another, is like one who strives to bring together the opposites of truth and falsehood, kufr (disbelief) and eemaan (faith). ....

Moreover, the religion of the Jews and Christians has been abrogated by Allaah when He sent the Messenger Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and Allaah obliged all the people of the earth, Jews Christians and others, to follow him.

If they persist in following their religion, which has been abrogated, then they are adhering to falsehood, not to true religion. So it is not permissible for the Muslims to get close to them, because by getting close to them they are approving of their falsehood on the one hand, and misleading the ignorant, on the other. What Muslims should do is expose their falsehood just as Allaah has exposed them in the Qur’aan. And Allaah knows best.

Someone might say: can there not be a truce among them, or a peace treaty, so as to avoid bloodshed and the tragedies of war, and so that people may go about their business and earn a living, and that the world may be developed so that the call to truth and guidance may be given to all people, and so that justice may be established among all people? If someone were to say this, it is fair enough, and any efforts to achieve this would be valuable, for it is a noble aim, because it is possible and it would have a great impact on people. But this applies only when it is not possible to enforce the jizyah system, because Allaah says in Soorat al-Tawbah (interpretation of the meaning):

“Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allaah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allaah and His Messenger (Muhammad), (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”

[al-Tawbah 9:29]

At the same time, we must also make sure that we are striving to support the truth. This should not be an attempt on the part of the Muslims to appease the mushrikeen or to give up any of the rulings of Allaah, or anything that would entail their compromising their own dignity. The Muslims must retain their pride and their adherence to the Book of their Lord and the Sunnah of their Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him); they must continue to hate their enemies of Allaah and not befriend them, following the guidance of the Qur’aan and of the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).

So the next time CAIR or some similar organization claims to be interested in "dialogue," you know exactly what they mean.

One of the biggest annual challenges that our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice have to face each year is the proliferation of the color red in mid-February. As the Saudi Gazette reports:

Islamic scholars around the Kingdom such as Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari preach that celebrating Valentine's Day and other non-Islamic celebrations is a sin. "As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women," Dossari, a scholar in Islamic Studies and the Shariah, said.

In the face of such a clear and obvious violation of sharia law, it is up to our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice to make sure that young Saudis do not stray - and that means targeting the sources of the scourge:

Agents of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice visited flower and gift shops in the capital Saturday night to instruct them to remove all red items - from red roses and wrapping paper to boxes and teddy bears - from their shelves, shop workers said.
"They visited us last night," said a couple of florists Sunday morning.
"They gave us warnings and this morning we packed up all the red items and displays."
Sunday was the last day people could buy red roses in Riyadh, until Valentine's Day on Feb. 14 passes.

Every year, Commission agents visit flower shops a couple of days before Feb. 14 to issue warnings. On the eve of Valentine's Day, they start their raids and confiscate any red items that are symbols of love, florists here said.

But the sinners are clever, willing to flout the obvious law of Allah to further their capitalist/Zionist goals:

As a result of the ban, there's a black market in red roses.
"A single rose costs around SR5-7 but today the same rose costs SR10 a piece and the price will go up to SR20-30 on Valentine's Day," said a florist who caters to customers on Valentine's Day from his apartment.

Loyal customers place orders with the florist days and sometimes weeks before Feb. 14. "Sometimes we deliver the bouquets in the middle of the night or early morning, to avoid suspicion," said the florist.

Many young hearts are planning to celebrate in their own way, whether in secret, abroad or on the Web.

"I send e-cards to all my special friends online," said Famita Hakeem, a young Saudi university student.

"We are planning on going to Dubai Wednesday night to celebrate Valentine's Day as a couple," said Hannan Radi, a Saudi wife and teacher.

Ms. Radi should have been more circumspect in her comments, as the Muttawa will be waiting upon her return to their territory.

Egyptians find TNT in a Rafah cemetery

M&C reports:

Egyptian security forces found a cache of explosives near the border with the Gaza Strip in the Sinai peninsula, security sources said Tuesday.
The cache, which contained 250 kilos of TNT, was found in a secret depot in Masura in Rafah, three kilometres from Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip.

Palestine Press Agency adds that these explosives were found in a cemetery:

The source said that "explosives were seized inside the cemetery, packed inside seven plastic sacks," and added that security forces received information from confidential sources is the fact that some smugglers conceal explosives inside abandoned graves.

"Abandoned graves" must mean wither their occupants found a better place to stay, or these holy explosives smugglers are discarding bodies to hide their product.