Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Laugh with Firas!

Here are what I believe are four autotranslated jokes from the Arabic Firas website.

Humor doesn't translate well:

in one jar was pregnant and gas guy on the stairs Chavth his words: Just

She said if: God opened Man ...

-

-- Unit once said to her husband? You what Coltli word Zlzaaaaaaaaaaal concern about me ...
-

3 pupils once they were late on the first portion, and when he arrived the school said they tagged you Kintua Fein?
I said I lost my seal my blog, and the second said I play him, asked third and you go?
I Daes concern about it !!...

-- Entered a doctor in a hospital psychiatric patients in the room and told them anything Kalfshar jumping all patients except one.

Asking the doctor: Why did you jump

He answered saying: I am stuck at the bottom Tngerh
-
-- One mother was killed in the section Zabott Pisalh name any?

.... Told him: Write the best actor ....
I do not like pride

However, they did have one joke I recognized, that would be considered Islamophobic if any non-Muslim would say it (I'm paraphrasing):

George Bush and Tony Blair go out to eat lunch and then they hold a press conference.

One journalist asked them, "What did you speak about during your meeting?"

Bush replied, "We decided to kill 20 million Muslims and one surgeon."

The journalists were perplexed, and finally one asked, "Why do you want to kill one surgeon?"

Bush laughed and turned to Blair: "See, I told you no one would be interested if we killed 20 million Muslims!"

-----------
Many of the commenters didn't seem to get it.

Orgy of anti-semitic cartoons in Arab media lately

The ADL has compiled a list of blatant anti-semitic cartoons from the Arab world in the wake of Reuters' mistranslating Matan Vilnai as threatening a "holocaust."

While the "Zionism=Nazi" imagery is nothing new in the Arab press, they have turned it way up recently, as the ADL report shows.

Of course, Palestinian Arabs don't have to look far for their own, very real, historic connections to Nazis. Nazis wooed Islamists to get them on their side, Nazis armed Arab terrorists in Palestine before World War II, Nazis tried, semi-successfully, to work with them during WWII, the biggest Palestinian Arab leader helped in the genocide of Jews, Arabs drafted Nazis to help fight Jews after WWII, today's Palestinian "moderates" consciously imitate Nazi symbolism, and even today neo-Nazis explicitly support Islamic terror against Israel.

My First Rule of Arab Projection is alive and well.

(h/t Suzanne)

Work accident!

YNet reports:

Palestinian security officials reported Thursday of an explosion at a beachfront facility of the militant Hamas organization. According to an initial report, two people were killed in the incident and one was injured.
Palestinians claimed that the facility was attacked by the IDF, but the Israeli army denied striking in the area.

Palestine Today (Arabic) describes it as a "mysterious explosion" which, ironically, leaves no doubt as to its source.

Ma'an Arabic, which used to be a reasonable source of accurate news, continued its slide towards Hamas propaganda by claiming it was an Israeli airstrike and declaring the dead terrorists "martyrs." Palestine Press Agency reported it more accurately.

The known 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 40.

UPDATE: Tunnel collapse!

A young Palestinian man was killed on Thursday when a tunnel collapsed on top of him in the As-Salam neighborhood of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said.

According to the sources, 23-year-old Ashraf Ataya was dead on arrival at Abu Yousif An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah. Medical checks revealed the man suffocated under the debris when the tunnel collapsed.

41.

The very latest Purim costume in Sderot

You gotta hand it to the kids to be mentally stable enough to joke about the daily threats to their lives.

Of course, AP shows its deep knowledge of the Middle East conflict in its caption:

Israeli children, one dressed as a rocket, participate in Purim celebrations at their school in the town of Sderot, southern Israel, Wednesday, March 19, 2008. Rockets are fired almost daily towards southern Israel by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Israel declared a heightened security alert on Wednesday and barred Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip from entering the country, fearing Hezbollah guerrillas may try to carry out a major attack during Purim celebrations this week. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Hezbollah? I gues it is easier to make a mistake like that than to say:

...fearing Fatah (Tanzim /Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades), Hamas (Izzedine al-Qassam Battalions), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Jerusalem Battalions), The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (The Martyr Abu ‘Ali Mustafa Battalions), The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, or The Popular Resistance Committees (The Salah al-Din Brigades) guerrillas...

Their caption can only be so long, after all.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad sends me a similar picture - of a kid dressed up as a terrorist.

UPDATE 2: Beer7 , an Israeli who lives in Be'er Sheva and blogs in German, links here but adds a psychological definition from Dr. Sanity:

Level 4 Defense Mechanisms are common among most “healthy” adults and are considered the most “mature”. Many of them have their origins in the “immature” level, but have been honed by the individual to optimize his/her success in life and relationships. Use of these defenses gives the user pleasure and feelings of mastery. For the user, these defenses help them to integrate many conflicting emotions and thoughts and still be effective; and for the beholder their use by someone is viewed as a virtue. They include:

(…)

Humor - overt expression of ideas and feelings (especially those that are unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk about) that gives pleasure to others; (humor lets you call a spade a spade, while “wit” is actually a form of displacement)

Pity the poor keffiyeh manufacturers

Even though the keffiyeh has been part of Middle Eastern dress for a while, it is mostly associated with Yasir Arafat who claimed to fold his headgear into a makeshift map of "Palestine." Possibly as a result, the keffiyeh has not been very popular worldwide during the heyday of PLO terror.

One of the consequences of the Palestinian Arabs turning in world public opinion from terrorist to trendy is that the Che-worshipping crowd started to wear keffiyehs as a sort of fashion statement, showing how uber-cool they are to embrace a terrorist symbol.

This increased the keffiyeh market quite a bit, as a number of mail-order houses started marketing them to rich, left-wing defenders of the oppressed to wear in dance clubs and the like.

Naturally, the demand for keffiyehs went up as people jumped on the "oppressed rocket-shooter" bandwagon, and then the hated free-market took over.

Chinese manufacturers started making keffiyehs - cheap.

al-AP goes on from there:

Yasser Herbawi once supplied much of the West Bank and Gaza with black-and-white checkered scarves, the proud emblem of Palestinian identity made famous by the late Yasser Arafat.
But most of his looms now stand idle, his product edged out by cheap imports from the world's newest keffiyeh capital: China.
After a decade of being flooded with Chinese goods, from scarves to toys and bags, the West Bank's largest city is struggling to compete — yet another obstacle to economic independence for Palestinians as they strive for a state of their own.
Two-thirds of Hebron's textile workshops have closed and 6,000 shoe factory workers have lost their jobs in the last eight years, pushing unemployment to 30.5 percent, the highest in the West Bank, according to Hebron's chamber of commerce.
Cheap imports have hit manufacturing towns across the world, but the economic decline of this city of 230,000 is particularly ironic. Hebron long adhered to what is now China's recipe for success: work hard and sell cheap. And Chinese goods are imported to the West Bank by traders from Hebron, the city suffering most.
It's hard to find an upside to globalization here.
The door to China opened for Palestinians in the mid-1990s, after Israel and China forged diplomatic ties. The response among Palestinian business people was especially enthusiastic in Hebron.
Flights from the Middle East to China were soon packed with Hebronites, especially to big trade fairs. China operated a visa office in Hebron for several years, and even street vendors began pooling their cash to send representatives there to shop.
By 2005, Palestinians imported $111 million worth of goods from China annually, compared to $1.8 billion from Israel and $120 million from Turkey, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The value of Chinese imports was up 20 percent from the previous year, compared to 3 percent higher from Turkey and a 7 percent hike from Israel.
Local industry quickly felt the pain.
Herbawi, unable to compete, closed his keffiyeh workshop in 2000 after four decades in operation, switching off 15 looms that used to make about 350 scarves a day. With the support of a dozen loyal customers, he said he reopened last year and rehired one worker who now arrives every day to run four looms for a few hours.
Herbawi wants import restrictions, but these seem unlikely: His son, Izzat, noted that even Arafat's Fatah movement, once a large customer, now buys some keffiyehs from China.

Not only does this show the unintended consequences of these trendy terror-supporting morons ending up making their idols lose jobs, but it also shows, yet again, how little regard Fatah has for actual working Palestinian Arabs.

(h/t jusa)

Today's Gaza edition of "biting the hand that feeds you"

Ma'an (Arabic) mentions that, today, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the PFLP has shot mortars both at the Sufa crossing and the Kerem Shalom crossings into Gaza.

Of course, these crossings are the major ways for humanitarian aid and food to enter Gaza, and even Egypt has been sending aid recently (sent from Algeria) through Kerem Shalom.

The world media consistently ignores the almost-daily rocket and mortar attacks on the very crossings that are the lifeline for Gazans.

Once again, the Palestinian Arabs are not expected to take any responsibility for their actions.

Gaza factory cemetery - who killed the jobs?

Gazans have come up with another PR gimmick to blame Israel for their problems, the Cemetery for Factories:

As Reuters, which willingly goes along with any anti-Israel act, writes:

Palestinians inaugurated a symbolic graveyard on Tuesday for factories forced to close by an Israeli blockade that they say is killing jobs.

"The Main Gaza Cemetery for Factories" contains some 40 graves covered with the Palestinian flags and flowers.

"The Plastic Tools factory, 190 workers became jobless," the inscription on one headstone reads. "The Print House, 150 workers lost their source of living," reads another.

What Reuters of course doesn't mention is that even in the early years of the Intifada there was the Erez Industrial Zone between Gaza and Israel that employed thousands of Palestinian Arabs. As the terrorism increased, Erez became a favored place to attack random Israelis; at least 11 were murdered. Finally, Israel closed down the zone altogether - after over three years of attacks by Palestinians from Gaza.

And if they every wanted to re-open the factories, they had a funny way of showing it, because the number of attacks towards Erez didn't decrease. Here's a list:

On January 4, 2005, an Israeli civilian was lightly wounded from two mortar shells that were fired at the Erez industrial zone.
On January 2, 2005, an Israeli civilian was seriously wounded from a mortar shell that was fired towards the Erez industrial zone.
On August 31, 2004, a Palestinian terrorist wearing explosive underwear was arrested at the Erez crossing.
On April 17, 2004, a suicide bomber killed a Border Policeman when he detonated himself at the workers' crossing terminal into the industrial zone.
On March 6, 2004, four terrorists traveling in three vehicles (two of which were rigged with explosives) attempted to kill Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers at the Erez crossing.
On Feb 26, 2004, an IDF reserve soldier was killed when two gunmen infiltrated the Erez industrial zone through a tunnel.
On Jan 14, 2004, a female terrorist carried out a suicide bombing attack in the workers crossing terminal in the Erez industrial zone, where magnetic entering cards are issued. As a result of the attack, one civilian was murdered, in addition to two IDF soldiers and a Border Policeman. The Hamas and Fatah terrorist organizations claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing. It is important to note that this was the first time that Hamas had used a female suicide bomber. The terminal was severely damaged, and needed to be rebuilt. As a result, Palestinians were not able to enter the industrial zone for a few days.
On Dec 4, 2003 a package containing components for making an explosive device was discovered in a truck carrying mail out from the Gaza Strip.
On June 20, 2003, a terrorist attack using a bicycle laden with explosives was thwarted at the Palestinian workers’ crossing near Ganei Tal.
On June 8, 2003 four IDF soldiers were killed and four others injured when three terrorists infiltrated the IDF post Magen 12, in the Erez industrial zone.
On April 15, 2003 two Israeli civilians were murdered when Palestinians infiltrated the Karni terminal.
On Feb 21, 2003 a gunman armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three hand grenades, four magazines, a knife and a fence cutter infiltrated the Erez industrial zone and was killed.
On May 12, 2003, an Israeli civilian was murdered when a Palestinian worker opened fire at him at the Hila crossing.
On April 20, 2002, a Border Police officer was killed when a Palestinian gunman opened fire at an IDF post in Erez.
On April 12, 2004, a Border Police officer was killed when a Palestinian gunman opened fire at the Erez terminal.
On Nov 26, 2001, four IDF soldiers were lightly injured when a suicide bomber blew him self up at the entrance of the Erez terminal.

And that is just to the beginning of 2005.

While a symbolic grave for factories may be a nice gimmick, people shouldn't forget the direct reason why so many Gazans are unemployed - because they had a nasty habit of trying to murder their employers.

Purim Torah

The beautiful and talented DoZ called me this morning asking if I could make up some Purim Torah for her to deliver on motzei Shabbos, with a theme of "rock and roll." I wrote something up quickly but I wanted to ask the collective wisdom of the J-Sphere if they had anything to add.

(For those unfamiliar with the term, Purim Torah pretends to be a scholarly exegesis of Torah topics while actually being nonsense.)

So, here it is:
------------------------------
There are two types of entities in the world, the eternal and the temporary. While there is only one true Eternal, Hashem has given us symbols of tangible objects that also can be considered "permanent" because they last for very long periods of time.

To see what Hashem is designating for us to consider "permanent" we need to see how Hashem Himself is described. And one of the most famous descriptions of Hashem is "Hashem Tzuri v'Goali", Hashem is my Rock and my Redeemer. The reason Hashem is described as a Rock is because rocks are permanent features in our lives; by referring to Hashem as a "Rock" we mean that He is eternal and reliable, just as huge stones are permanent in our lifetimes.

So we see that the concept of a Rock is associated with permanence, with eternity.

What object would be most associated with transience? The Gemara talks about two different kinds of kinyanim, those for things that are immovable - like land (kinyan karka) - and those for things that are portable (kinyan metaltilin).Even very heavy objects would be considered metaltilin, movable, because, in theory, one can place them on wheels and roll them somewhere else. In a sense, the best symbol for something that is not permanently in place would be the wheel. Indeed, in Kabbalistic thought we have the concept of "gilgul neshamos", that our own temporary lives roll from one instance to another as if they are all part of a wheel, a gilgul. Things that are temporary are things that can roll on wheels.

So we have these two concepts: permanence and transience, of the constant and the temporary - of the Rock, and the Roll.

Rock and roll represents the synthesis of these two diametrically opposed concepts; it is the place where the Eternal meets His lowly subjects, and we can only get a glimpse of His power by listening to an electric guitar powered by a thousand-watt amp cranked up to 11. Just as the Bnei Yisrael "saw" the kolot at Har Sinai, the sense of hearing being transformed into the sense of sight, so we can "feel" the sounds from a good rock and roll band, transforming sound into feeling, and giving us an experience as similar as possibly to Maamad Har Sinai.

And rock and roll artists understand their role in this synthesis. For example, when The Who proclaims "Long Live Rock" notice how they are only talking about the permanent part of the equation, the Rock, and not the temporary Roll, which would be nonsensical. But it makes perfect sense for Joan Jett to declare "I Love Rock and Roll" as she is proclaiming her love of all of Creation as well as the Creator.

Perhaps the best proof of this dialectic (a perfect word that I've never used in my life before!) is in the halachos of Purim itself.

We all know that we celebrate Purim on the 14th of Adar - except in walled cities, when we celebrate it on the 15th. The walls of the walled cities symbolize the permanence of the Rock - indeed, the walls were constructed out of rocks - while the Purim of everyone else is the Purim of galus, or temporary existence, of the Roll from one place to another. Shushan Purim is mainly celebrated in Yerushalayim nowadays, which houses the Even Shesiyah - the Foundation Stone, the Rock of all rocks. Together, Shushan Purim and Purim are the Rock and the Roll.

But there is a hidden aspect of this concept that both proves it and makes us understand it better.

So far, we have discussed the "Rock" and the "Roll" of "Rock and Roll." But we have ignored the "and", the small word that connects the two, In fact, that "and" is terrifically important in understanding the synthesis of the Rock and the Roll.

This year, Purim and Shushan Purim are not next to each other, but we have a Purim MeShulash here in Eretz Yisroel, a three-day Purim that is separated by Shabbos. Just as Rock and Roll are connected by the "and", so is the triple Purim of this year connected by the Shabbos. And this hidden aspect of the "and" - the hester astir - shows us the importance of the Shabbos.

Shabbos has aspects both of the permanent Rock - it is eternal and always there - and the transient Roll - it only rolls around once a week. Indeed, in Olam Haboh, it will be "yom shekulo Shabbos u'menuchah" - it will be truly permanent. But in this world it only gives us a taste of permanence, but it is not permanent itself. Yet is is certainly also not temporary.

So Shabbos is the bridge between the eternal and the temporary, between the Purim and the Shushan Purim, between the Rock and the Roll.

But this still leaves a major question: if Purim precedes Shushan Purim, then why is it called Rock and Roll, and not Roll and Rock?

The answer is simple. In Hebrew, "and" is not a word, but a mere letter - the letter vav. And, in this case, specifically on the day that is v'nehepach hu, it is a vav hamehapeches, a vav that turns Roll and Rock into the proper Rock and Roll.

May we always learn from Purim Hameshulash, and from Rock and Roll how to run our very temporary lives with a constant awareness of the Eternal.

A truly encyclopedic work

I just saw a link to a webpage trying to list everything that offends Muslims.

It doesn't look like it has been updated in a long time but it is still a nice list, even if it is doomed to always be hopelessly incomplete.

Clan clash!

Ma'an reports:

A Palestinian man was killed by unidentified gunmen in the Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, seemingly as a result of a family dispute on Wednesday morning.

Palestinian medical sources named the victim as Salamah Al-Agha whose corpse was taken to Ash-Shifa hospital in Gaza City for forensic medical investigation. The sources said he had been shot in the head.

Immediately after the killing, members of Al-Agha family attacked a house belonging to Kalakh family and set fire to the house.

Al-Agha was in his thirties.

The number of Palestinian Arab self-deaths for 2008 is now 37, which would be considered a "holocaust" in current PalArab nomenclature if Israel was behind them.

UPDATE: Palestine Today says that a 60-year old "collaborator" was executed in Qalqiya yesterday. 38.

84% of Palestinian Arabs support massacring children

Yesterday I reported on a poll done by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research that showed increasing support for Hamas. The raw numbers were not available on their website yet, so I wrote the posting based on their press release.

I prefer to look at the entire poll because then I can draw my own conclusions and not be force-fed only the results that the pollster wants to highlight. And this time, the pollster held back a doozy.

The New York Times got a hold of another poll result from PCPSR that, to most people, would be considered a bit more important than parity in the polls between Haniyeh and Abbas:

A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.

Notice the NYT spin to minimize the results, making them sound only temporary. And it waits until paragraph 7 to write the real results:

According to the poll, conducted last week with 1,270 Palestinians in face-to-face interviews, 84 percent supported the March 6 attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, one of Israel’s most prominent centers of religious Zionism and ideological wellspring of the settler movement in the West Bank. Mr. Shikaki said that this is the single highest support for an act of violence in his 15 years of polling here. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The NYT again does everything it can to justify the numbers of Palestinian Arabs who blatantly support terror against kids by positioning the school as being some sort of extremist organization.

The PCPSR is somewhat disingenuous as well. The last time that they even asked in a poll if the respondents supported attacks against Israeli civilians inside the Green Line was September, 2006, when 57% supported and 40% opposed. So while the number that supported this specific attack is higher, that could just as easily mean that while the people polled are against terror in the abstract but support it in reality. Either way, a convincing majority of Palestinian Arabs have consistently supported terror against civilians, over decades. For the pollster to say that he hasn't seen such support for a specific terror attack before indicates more that he hasn't asked.

In 2001 and 2002, between 52% and 58% supported terror attacks against civilians inside the Green Line and over 90% supported terror attacks against civilians in the territories. Even before the intifada, 52% supported terror attacks versus 43% opposed.

These are the real facts, that the NYT is downplaying and the PCPRS is willingly ignoring: the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs want to see Jews killed, on both sides of the Green Line, and they have always felt that way.

Methodist storybook indoctrinates children against Israel

From the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle (h/t Solomonia)

The book, “From Palestine to Seattle: Becoming Neighbors and Friends,” is billed as a “storybook on Israel and Palestine” for children 6 through 12. This is no benign Sunday school text, however. It is a well-crafted bit of propaganda that portrays Israeli security checkpoints as the cause, not the result, of Palestinian violence. This message is underscored by the teacher’s manual marketed along with the storybook.

The storybook describes adventures of two children from Seattle -- Allison and Matthew -- whose father, a Protestant minister, has just returned from a visit to Bethlehem.

...When Allison and Matthew see a checkpoint for themselves as they travel to Bethlehem, they are “shocked to see a barricade across the road, with sandbags and barrels lining the street. Looking up they saw a soldier with a gun sitting in a watchtower!”

The image accompanying this part of the story shows five soldiers standing around the van in which Allison and Matt are riding and a sixth soldier standing in a guard tower nearby. The image of barbed wire, guard shacks, sandbags and menacing armed soldiers surrounding a brightly-colored van filled with innocent children is reminiscent concentration camps in Eastern Europe in the 1940s.

...The lesson then ends with this coda [in the teacher's guide]: “Remind the children that when people are denied things that they believe everyone should have, they feel bad and sometimes become angry, too. Invite the remaining children to get juice and grapes from the refreshment table.”

The implication is undeniable. Suicide bombings -- which are not described anywhere in the either the storybook or the teacher’s manual -- are the consequence of Israeli checkpoints, which deny the Palestinians “the things that they believe everyone should have” and in turn make “people feel bad and sometimes become angry.” The impression the children are left with is that if the Israelis took down the checkpoints, Miriam, the young Israeli would no longer be frightened of bombs going off in her neighborhood.

FrontPage Magazine described the same book last month and it is even worse than described here:

The Arab boy, Tarek, has never been to McDonald's because the closest one is in Jerusalem, and travel there requires a pass by the Israelis. Naturally, the American children are disturbed. In an ongoing pen pal exchange, Tarek asks the American children why their country thinks all Palestinians are terrorists. The Americans are embarrassed. They summon up the nerve to ask Tarek why passes are needed to travel to Jerusalem.

Tarek responds that Israeli soldiers require passes, and that Palestinians without them are turned away, whether they are going to their jobs, or to hospitals. “How can people be so unfair?” the American children ask their pastor father. The father is unsure how to answer. But he helps them begin another correspondence with a little Israeli girl, who recounts that her cousin, an Israeli soldier, has been imprisoned for refusing to guard the “checkpoints” because “they were wrong and they were hurting people.”

Apparently, there is only one side to the story according to the Methodists, and it is identical to the side of the people who hand out candies when Jews are blown up.

Freedom of the press, Hamas-style

Hafez Barghouti is the editor of the Fatah daily Al Hayat al-Jadida newspaper. He has printed things that were critical of Hamas in the past year, and Hamas has revoked the credentials of Al-Hayat to work in Gaza.

Now, Hamas is bringing it to another level - they are suing Barghouti for libel!

From Ma'an (Arabic):

al-Hayat al-Jadida editor Hafez al-Barghouthi received a lawsuit via fax yesterday from the [Gaza] Strip Magistrate's Court inviting him to appear before it on Monday the twenty-fourth of this March to be tried on charges of libel violation of Article 204, 203 and in 1936 for disseminating Publications offensive to the members of the Palestinian government .

For its part the [Palestinian Arab] Journalists Union condemned the case and considered it against press freedom and against Palestinian journalists.

Reuters' biased headline of the day

Palestinian stabs rabbi in Arab East Jerusalem

The incident happened in the Old City of Jerusalem, which from roughly 1870-1948 had a majority Jewish population. The Muslim Quarter, where this incident occurred, used to be called the "Mixed Quarter" because Jews, Muslims and Christians all lived there, until the 1929 pogroms against the Jews.

While there are parts of East Jerusalem that are predominantly Arab, to categorize all of East Jerusalem as "Arab" is an editorial comment, not a statement of fact. To say that the Old City is "Arab East Jerusalem" is pretty dishonest, even if there are more Arabs living there now than others. It is effectively enshrining Jordan's illegal annexation and ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem for 19 years as being legitimate, and the existence of Jewish-owned lands in East Jerusalem as illusory. It is also meant to make the existence of a yeshiva in the Old City's "Muslim" quarter look as if it is a recent "settlement," when in fact the yeshiva is occupying the building of the only Jewish school or synagogue that was not destroyed by Jordan in 1948 (Torat Chaim, est. 1886.) All additional buildings that Ateret Cohanim own were purchased legally.

East Jerusalem is much larger than the Old City, of course, and using the term "Arab East Jerusalem" to describe something that happened in the Old City would be like saying that the Upper East Side crane accident over the weekend occurred in "New York State." It appears that Reuters is specifically choosing this terminology in order to render Israeli building in other parts of East Jerusalem, such as in Har Homa, as being illegitimate, since Reuters considers it "Arab" land - notwithstanding that most of Har Homa was also owned by Jews in 1948.

New Saudi Miss Camel to be crowned

Loyal readers will remember the horrible news last January when a Saudi beauty contest winner died and was mourned by many.

Well, it is time for her replacement to be named. (Warning: Camel pron ahead)

Camel breeders are open about their admiration for the physical attributes of the animals as they gather at this spring's camel markets.

"It's just like judging a beautiful girl," said Fowzan al-Madr, a camel breeder. "You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck."

Public displays of affection between men and women are rigidly policed by the feared officials of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice but in the camel bazaars anything goes.

"Camels are just like humans," breeder Haza al-Shammari told the International Herald Tribune. "They love and hate just like humans. That's why you have to bring them up very gently."

Mr Shammari grabbed his favourite camel's neck and kissed the beast on the mouth.

"She isn't married yet, this one," he said. "She's still a virgin. Look at the black eyes, the soft fur. The fur is trimmed so it's short and clean, just like a girl going to a party.

"When you get to know the camels, you feel love for them. My camels are like my children, my family."

British author Robert Lacey, a resident of Saudi Arabia, said ownership of a troupe of camels was central to an elite lifestyle that revolves around desert entertainment.

"They let you stroke them and pet them," he said.

"You can go out for the day, two or three hours out of Riyadh, have lunch, play with the camels, have tea, say the sunset prayer in the desert. Camels are a gentleman's pastime and this is how a gentleman entertains his friends.

"In a way, you're also re-enacting the pageant of your ancestors."

With camels changing hands for as much as 17 million Saudi Riyals (£2.2 million), camel owners are keenly awaiting the emergence of a new reigning champion.

The previous top camel, Mashoufan, died in January. Four of its offspring are seen as favourites to claim the crown.

The organiser of the pageant said it was drawing as much interest as a human competition would elsewhere in the Middle East.

"In Lebanon they have Miss Lebanon," said the man who has the username Walid on a competition's website. "Here we have Miss Camel."

Another half-ton of explosives found in the Sinai

Palestine Press Agency reports(Arabic):

An Egyptian security source says that 500 kilograms of explosives and 40 mines had been uncovered during the last two days near the border with the Gaza Strip.

As quoted by the French news agency, the Egyptian source said that the explosive materials and mines found in two locations near the border with the Gaza Strip were intended for smuggling into the (Gaza) sector."

I have not seen this yet at AFP or any other news source yet, but PalPress has been pretty reliable over the past on topics like these.

PalArabs counterfeiting Girl Scout badges

Forget counterfeiting currency - now the Palestinian Arabs are going after more serious stuff. From Ma'an (Arabic):

The Palestinian Girl Scouts and Girl Guides Association accused merchants of Scout uniforms in the Palestinian cities of printing any insignia does not depend from Scouts and Girl Guides Association of Palestine.

The Assembly, through its warning, said that is the printing and marketing such decals beyond the instruction was contrary to the traditions of the Palestinian Scout uniforms, and will be working on pursuing legal claims against them.

But why should Girl Scouts have to work hard and act responsibly to achieve their goals when their parents haven't learned that lesson either?

75-year old man shot and killed in Qalqiya

Ma'an Arabic reports that three masked men, apparently in a stolen Israeli car, drove past and shot to death 75-year old Saleh Omar.

Our 2008 PalArab self-death count is at 36.

Moving - and staying

Yesterday, US Ambassador to Israel Richard H. Jones, upon seeing the overcrowded haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem, said that he was aware of the shortage of housing, but added: "Sometimes people do have to move to a different location. They cannot always stay close to their families." He was clearly talking about Israel building new houses and apartments in Jerusalem.

Many in the JBlogosphere correctly slammed these comments.

Sultan Knish says:

After 2000 years of Jews being told where they could and could not live, walled into Ghettos, given designated Jewish areas, the State of Israel was founded in order to create a place where Jews could live freely, only to have the US Ambassador stride into its capitol, which the US continues to refuse to recognize, sniff around and proclaims that Jews cannot live in their own capitol city.

Boker Tov Boulder, a bit less diplomatically:

Remember how Dhimmedia told us time and time again, prior to the disengagement, how OVERCROWDED Gaza was? Funny, it's always the Jews who have to move. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think that's getting old already. How 'bout Jews live wherever they damn well please?

Atlas, even less diplomatically (as is her style):

What nerve. Tell it to the Gazans. Tell it to the Arabs with all their ginormous land. The nerve on this antisemite.

I wouldn't go so far as to call him an anti-semite, but the comment does betray an immense double-standard that has become quite acceptable even among Israel's friends.

Why is no one telling the Arab world to "move" their Palestinian Arab brethren elsewhere? Why is their claim to a piece of land that they pretty much turned into a wasteland when they lived there more powerful than that of a people who have lived there, died there and cried to return there continuously for 3000 years, and whose entire belief system is in no small part dependent on that land? In Arab history, Palestine was always a subdistrict of Syria (including much of today's Jordan), and Arabs freely moved between all Arab lands, while the Land of Israel was always the only place that Jews are commanded to live - so why do the Jews always have to move?

The reason is that, as always, Jews are regarded as being more "reasonable" and malleable, more open to reason, more likely to compromise. So why bother making a big demand on people who may just turn around and bomb you in response when it is so much easier to ask the more reasonable Israelis to do all the compromising?

Treppenwitz answers the ambassador brilliantly:

Although not specifically stated in the article, such a tour should have caused any reasonably intelligent observer to reach the conclusion that 'natural growth' in and around Israel's capitol city is an internal issue and not something open to international debate. Yet the conclusion that the U.S. Ambassador reached was exactly the opposite; that rather than allow the natural urban sprawl, such as surrounds nearly every major city in the world, Israel - so as not to cause offense - must instead relocate its growing population to unspecified remote locales, rather than build new neighborhoods just down the block.
Well I have a few news flashes for His Excellency, Mr. Jones:

We've done enough moving thankyouverymuch. We've spent the last two millenia moving from one place to another, all the time trying not to give offense to our hosts and neighbors. Yet despite being an industrious, peaceful people that has enriched our hosts far beyond all proportion to our modest numbers, we have been systematically victimized, caged, enslaved, slaughtered, disenfranchised, outlawed and expelled more than any single people in recorded history. And ... though we are (very) occasionally tolerated for short periods of time by progressive people like yourself... these periods of relative quiet are inevitably followed by more victimization.

Lather rinse repeat.

So guess what... now that we've finally managed to regain ownership of the only patch of land to which even your own family Bible gives us undisputed ownership, we're done moving. Go sell your plan elsewhere.

To the east of us is a spanking new country called Jordan that was created out of whole cloth by the British Mandatory power (at our expense). Not only is more than three-quarters of that country's population ethnically 'Palestinian', but there are huge, unused tracts of land east of the Jordan river that nobody is even looking at, much less fighting over. If you feel the burning need to find some suitable contiguous land to offer the poor Palestinians, why not start there?

But wait... I'm not done yet, there's more!

To the west of us is a vast empty chunk of land called the Sinai peninsula that is nominally administered by Egypt, but is for all intents and purposes abandoned. While the interior of Sinai is largely un-arable desert, the long fertile Mediterranean coastline, up to and including the Gaza strip, is nearly unparalleled in potential to provide a crowded, downtrodden people with a spacious (and contiguous) future paradise. Why not try that?

Why is it that you are demanding that Israel eviscerate herself to make room in her soft underbelly for a Palestinian state that will have no natural resources, little potential for development and above all, no chance for contiguity (at least so long as Israel remains stubbornly extant)?

Could it be because you know perfectly well that Jordan and Egypt won't consider having a real or defacto Palestinian terror state stirring up discord and unrest in their midst? Could it be that it is much easier to bully little Israel into slitting open its belly and allowing an openly antagonistic and parasitic entity to metastasize inside her than to ask Jordan or Egypt to tolerate a restive and radical Palestinian entity on their flank?

Read the whole thing.

Saudi Vice, episode 12: Flying sorcerors

It was a busy day for our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

First, they managed to chase a young couple into the path of an oncoming truck.

But there was another, more nefarious evil happening, unbelievably, in the holy Kingdom itself:

Sorcery.

Two Yemenis and a Sudanese man were practicing the black arts in Dhamad, Jizan. They had books and formulas showing how to cast spells, ready to do the most horrible things to innocent Muslims who stumble across their paths.

Luckily, our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice found out about these criminals and arrested them.

As the Saudi Gazette reports:

The three are charged with “malicious activities” to break up marriages and inflict harm on people for money. They reportedly slaughtered black sheep as part of their sorcery rituals.

And once the Muttawa were done with them, the three confessed to these heinous crimes.

The newspaper explains the crime of practicing "malicious magic":

As per Shariah law, Saudi Arabia prohibits sorcery. “Malicious magic” is perceived to have the power to influence the mind, body or possessions and cause disease, sickness in animals, bad luck, sudden death, impotence and other such misfortunes.

Truly, how fortunate the Saudi people are that they have people who put their own manhood at risk in order to save the rest of the Saudi males from magical impotence.

Another stellar day for our heroes, and now Saudi men can sleep better at night knowing that they are safe from black magic.

A young man and woman in Saudi Arabia decided to do the ultimate act of evil: to take a drive together in the man's Toyota Camry.

Of course, a man and woman being alone together - even in a car - is known as "khulwa" as can be punished with many lashes and a prison sentence.

Our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice got tipped off about this flagrant violation of human decency and started to go after the criminals.

The suspects, knowing that the SUV coming after them had the distinctive style of our Muttawa heroes, decided to try to avoid being detained.

Saudi law states that the Muttawa should never engage in a car chase, but should call police to arrest the criminals. Our heroes, though, knew that the police were not as efficient nor as single-minded about stamping out serious crimes like these as the members of the Commission, and it is an insult to think that the Muttawa cannot chase cars as well as any police officer.

On the Madina-Tabuk Road, in the Tabuk area, the chase ended when the Camry rammed head-on into a truck and burst into flames.

The man’s body was totally charred. The woman’s body was ripped into two by the force of the impact. They were too disfigured for immediate identification.

But most importantly, our heroes managed to stop a flagrant act of khulwa, and, especially, any unspeakable acts that might have followed.

Another fine day for our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice!

Saudi marries off his daughter, 15, to a murderer

An unbelievably sick story out of Saudi Arabia, reported impassively by Arab News:

RIYADH, 18 March 2008 — Muhammad Al-Zahrani, a convicted murderer, was executed at the end of February in Taif. Al-Zahrani’s execution, which was postponed for four years, took place after the victims’ family refused to pardon him.
However, what makes Al-Zahrani’s case interesting is that the convicted murderer had married his daughter to another convicted murderer on death row in the same prison, Awad Al-Harbi.
The newly married groom now lives in the hope that he may be saved by the generosity of his victim’s family.
Reaction in society to the prison marriage was mixed. Some saw the father’s decision as a good thing, a way to give a friend and fellow prisoner a second chance in life. Others condemned the step and described it as being unfair to one’s daughter.
The marriage fulfills all legal conditions under Saudi law, according to Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, a member of the Council of Senior Scholars.
Al-Obaikan said should a woman accept a man on death row after knowing about his situation there is no reason why the marriage should be stopped from happening. When Arab News questioned Al-Obaikan on the girl’s sound judgment considering she is only 15, he said she is considered an adult and therefore eligible to marry.
Al-Obaikan said that a woman could get married and see her husband die soon after, which would be God’s will, and in Al-Awad’s case it would also be God’s will to keep him alive should the victim’s family pardons him.
As for the idea of marriage in Islam being a form of asylum and haven, and whether this condition applies while one of the spouses is in captivity, Al-Obaikan said that if it is a woman’s choice then no one should object.
Ahmad Al-Hariri, a Ph.D. in forensic psychology, said, “In other countries, a 15-year-old is considered a child and cannot be considered an adult until she turns 18.”
He added that even if such a marriage is legal then it is still considered an assault on her humanity and wellbeing.
Al-Hariri said this could not be accepted both socially and psychologically. “After choosing a suitable spouse, starting a family and having children are the natural outcome of marriage and in this case there is no guarantee for such a family to exist and thrive,” said Al-Hariri.
“The overwhelming possibility of the success of this marriage is bleak, and what we see for the future is a widow with orphans,” he added.
“Even if this marriage is legal, it is totally unacceptable on a humanitarian level as it will harm the girl’s interests. Should the Reconciliation Committee’s efforts fail she will loose a husband after having lost her father,” Al-Hariri said.

Even the liberal Saudi expert who is against the marriage doesn't state the obvious - that it is the worst form of child abuse to force your daughter to marry a convicted murderer! And yet, according to Sharia, this is perfectly acceptable.

The New York Times Magazine last Sunday had a lengthy article by Noah Feldman that talks about sharia and how it really isn't so bad, how the West isn't looking at it with enough nuance and how much better it was than English common law - in the 18th century. Perhaps he can defend this action better than the Arab News managed to.

The Shin-Bet starts a blog

The BBC reports:

The Israeli secret service has launched a new venture: it has started to carry an internet diary, or blog, written by four of its agents.
The agents discuss how they were recruited, and what sort of work they perform; they also answer questions sent in by members of the public.
The tone of the blog is chatty, at times even facetious.
The agents from Israel's internal security service, the Shin Bet, are shown in silhouette.
Agent Chet is the sole woman among them. She works in hi-tech.
She says she went to the agency because it offered her a better "work-life balance" than her previous job in the private sector.
There are parts of her job, she says, which she can't discuss even with her husband - but then again, at home, they don't much like talking about work.
Recruitment drive
Agent Aleph, dubbed "the expert" on the blog, attempts to debunk a few myths.
"We don't work in a basement," he says. "We don't spend the day wearing earpieces."
"And we don't get to have flashing blue lights for our cars. We have to sit in traffic jams like everyone else."
The blogs are intended to draw members of the public into other areas of the Shin Bet website - in particular the recruitment section.
Some of the positions are advertised with a red star and the slogan "hot job".
There is the opportunity to work on what are described as "irregular missions"; to work on one's own; and to acquire a variety of "special skills".
A Shin Bet official told the BBC that the idea was to inform the public that the agency offers work beyond just stopping Palestinian paramilitary attacks.
The official said that the agency had been cheered by the feedback from members of the Israeli public - keen to find out more about the jobs within Shin Bet, the pay and even the food.

The blog can be found here. Unfortunately, it is only in Hebrew.

The Elder breaks a story

Israel Today picked up on a story I did last week, linking to me.

Cool!

Latest Peaceful PalArab Poll

From The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research:

If new presidential elections were to take place today, Mahmud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh would receive almost equal number of votes, 46% for Abbas and 47% for Haniyeh. Haniyeh’s popularity today is the highest ever registered since Hamas’s electoral victory in January 2006.

The gap between the standing of Fateh compared to the standing of Hamas decreases significantly in three months from 18 percentage points to 7. If new parliamentary elections were to take place today, Hamas would receive 35%, Fateh 42%, other electoral lists combined 12%, and 11% remain undecided. This represents a significant increase in Hamas’s popularity compared to December 2007 when it received 31% compared to 49% to Fateh, 10% to other lists and 11% undecided.

49% say Haniyeh should stay in office as Prime Minister while 45% say he should not. Last September only 40% said Haniyeh should stay as prime minister. By contrast, today only 38% say Fayyad’s government should stay in office and 55% say it should not.

One of the elephants in the room is that the West Bank is not nearly as "moderate" as wishful-thinking Secretaries of State might believe. Even in the earlier municipal elections, Hamas beat Fatah in many major West Bank towns, and Fatah's hold seems to be pretty much Ramallah alone.

If the majority of Palestinian Arabs freely support terrorism, how much are they responsible for the actions of the terror government they support?

The Jewish St. Patty's connection

I heard on a TV show yesterday, and a number of websites confirm, that the idea of corned beef and cabbage as an Irish food is a purely American invention, unknown in Ireland.

Apparently, the Irish immigrants who settled in the Lower East Side wanted to make boiled bacon and cabbage, which is the traditional Irish dish. But they had no real choice but to frequent the many kosher butchers and delis that were owned by Jewish immigrants.

Obviously there was no bacon available at these shops, so they substituted corned beef from the kosher delis, and the rest is history.

UK journalist shows her "objectivity"

A reporter named Louisa Waugh from the Sunday Herald managed to get into Gaza to report on the situation there, and she makes it very clear what her stories will be like:

Gaza is being dragged to its knees in the face of shameful silence from the international community, including the EU. I have no doubt that before I leave Gaza in a few weeks, there will be more power cuts, more pointless civilian deaths, and more deafening international silence.

This story doesn't even mention the word "rockets" - except when referring to Israeli rockets. It is as if jackbooted Israel just decided to enslave a population for no reason except, of course, Jewish racism. She admits that she can only speak to people that are being pre-arranged to speak to her - something any real journalist will chafe under - but since she knows that her stories will be in sync with what she is being fed, she can pretend to be brave by parroting Palestinian Arab talking points.

Even so, interesting facts emerge, despite her spin:

One of my PCHR colleagues estimates that only 3000-4000 Gazans are allowed by Israel to travel outside the Strip. This is around 3% of the population; the remaining 97% cannot get travel permits, so cannot go anywhere.

So thousands of Gazans can travel outside and return? That doesn't sound like a "siege" to me.

Waugh does manage in another story to speak to a rocket manufacturer, and she paints him in a very sympathetic light - and gives useful advice to terrorists:

THE POPULAR Resistance Committees is a close ally of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. "Abed", a 28-year-old father of two, is one of the PRC's senior artificers, responsible for devising mines and designing and building rockets and mortars. It was with some surprise, therefore, that he started receiving phone calls from an Israeli spy.
"I was home two weeks ago, getting ready for evening prayers, sitting with my wife and child, and suddenly my mobile starting ringing. He said, I'm Rami, I'm from Shabak the Israeli security agency Shin Bet and I'm responsible for your area. What are you doing? I guess you're with your wife and your two children?' I said no, and he said Yes, your two children are with you, but now you've just moved out of the room'. I said, what do you want? He said If you don't stop your rockets it's only a matter of time before you are targeted'."

Anyone who has ever seen a modern spy movie knows what you're supposed to do next: hurl the phone as far as you can and then dive from the building before it or the telephone explodes. Next, go underground, and never use a phone or a computer again. Abed, on the other hand, merely hung up the phone. Half an hour later he was again nonplussed when Rami called back to continue the chat. "He threatened me again that we have our own ways to reach you, but the rockets we will use to assassinate you will be stronger than before.'"

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Other members of the Popular Resistance Committee reported receiving threatening phone calls - an interesting insight into Israel's capacity to use mobile telephone networks to monitor and, in this case, harass its enemies. But the reaction of Abed and his comrades to their calls from Shin Bet illustrates another aspect of the conflict: the remarkable operational naivety which is often displayed by Palestinian militants, even after scores have already been assassinated by Israel.

"After that I realised that when talking on the phone that someone was listening to me," muses Abed.

"I changed the SIM card, but it seems like they were following the sound of my voice, because even after changing the SIM card I could hear someone was listening. My brother borrowed my mobile, and when he was talking to his friend someone else was talking to him on the same line."

It seems that Abed and his fellow militants do not know that when a mobile phone is connected to a network it identifies itself not only by its SIM card but also with the handset's own unique code. To foil detection it is necessary to change both SIM and telephone, not the SIM card alone.

Isn't it interesting that Israel knows where the rocket manufacturers live - and yet they don't kill them outright? Waugh "knows" that "Abed" should have jumped out of the house when the phone rang, because her knowledge of what Israel is likely to do comes from spy movies. But Abed knows quite well that he is safe as long as he is with his family, a fact that escapes Waugh.

She can't even get basic facts right:

Since the present uprising began more than seven years ago around 4000 Palestinian missiles, mostly Qassams and home-made mortars, have been fired into Israel or its former Gaza settlements and military bases, part of a cycle of bombardment, blockade and invasion which has proved far more injurious to Gaza than to Israel.

Actually, the number of Qassams and mortars to the Negev alone is more than double that number.

Such is the quality of UK journalism - advocating for terrorists and providing them with a willing platform.

HH CLVIII

Haveil Havalim- The Almost Purim Edition is up at Jack's Shack. I am honored to have had two postings chosen for this weekly roundup. Check it out!

In honor of it almost being Purim, I will post the probable lyrics to part of an old Saturday Night Live sketch that is seemingly impossible to find online (from season 5):

Listen to the story about a man named Abdul
Poor Bedouin trying to keep his family full
Then one day he was shooting at some Jews
Up from the ground comes a bubbling ooze
Saudi soda
Persian Perrier
Kuwait Kool-aid

Next thing you know old Abdul's a billionaire
Kin folks say "Abdul move away from there"
Said "California is the place to set your lair"
So they got up and they moved to Bel Air
Next to Beverly Hills that is
Swimming Pools
Movie Stars
Jews

The Bel-Airabs!

They had two episodes, one of which made fun of Abscam (remember that?)

Terrorist life insurance

YNet reports:

The family of Muhammad Shahade, the Fatah and Islamic Jihad man killed by the IDF along with three other Palestinians in Bethlehem Wednesday evening, received a phone call from Hassan Nasrallah's office Friday evening, Palestinian sources reported.

Hizbullah representatives reportedly spoke with Shahade's widow and informed her that Nasrallah decided to designate her husband as a Hizbullah martyr, therefore entitling his family to a "martyr allowance."

"We do not alienate ourselves from our people and we will assume the financial burden involved in this," Hizbullah told the widow.

But that's not the only windfall for the Shahade family, who (the YNet article goes on to say) very possibly was the mastermind of the Mercaz HaRav massacre with Hezbullah help. Our moderate friends from the PA is also paying life insurance to the terrorist's family: (from Palestine lPress, autotranslated):

The Minister of National Economy Kamal Hassouneh on Saturday visited the mourning tent Bethlehem Nativity built in the Bethlehem Nativity Plaza. Hassouna said.. that he had issued instructions to the Ministry to direct crews from tomorrow rebuilding the house of martyr Mohammed Shehadeh destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces last month.

So what exactly is the difference between Hizbollah and the PA again?

Even PalArabs believe that Western aid increases corruption

From Ma'an:

Two out of three Palestinians believe that financial assistance from the West fosters corruption and foments the conflict between Fatah and Hamas.

This is one of the findings of a new report by Fafo, the Norwegian research institute that hosted secret talks between the PLO and Israel in Olso 1993 that later led to historic peace negotiations and the inception of limited self-rule in Palestine.

Fafo's researchers interviewed 4,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, between 22 February and 4 March, about the political and economic situation in the occupied territories. Most of those surveyed to not believe that aid from the West has improved conditions.

According to the study, 63% think the aid encourages corruption and that the aid does little or nothing to fight poverty. 69% percent believe financial support aggravates the conflict between Fatah and Hamas.

One out of five Palestinian households includes a person who wants to leave, 20% to the West. The remaining 80% of those who want to move wish to settle elsewhere in Palestine or in other Arab countries. Only 42% believe they will get the chance to move.

...Just 44% support Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, down from 77% in December 2006.

Poor Arabs, being ruled by apes and pigs

I had missed this lovely speech given by an elected member of the PA parliament, Hamas member Fathi Hammad, on Al-Aqsa TV last January. It just has so much good stuff that it deserves a wider audience:

The wounded men have sacrificed themselves in defense of the honor of the Arab and Islamic nation, and in defense of the holy places. They have sacrificed parts of their bodies in order to stop the advance of the Jews, who want to uproot you. As you know, the Israeli flag has a star between two blue lines. They want to establish the state of Israel between the Euphrates and the Nile. The Jews want to invade Egypt and Iraq, to destroy Saudi Arabia, and to return to Khaybar.

This is a perfect example of Muslim projection. Muslims believe that every land they ever ruled must remain Muslim forever and that they will come back to conquer it. Since Khaybar was once a Jewish province in what is now Saudi Arabia, it is logical that Arabs think that Jews are pining to avenge their loss of that land to Mohammed in 628 - exactly like many Muslims ache to return to Andalusia, Spain.

Where is your valor? Stop being such cowards. The time has come for you to awaken from this deep slumber. The time has come for your honor, dignity, and valor to awaken. Where are you, Muslims? Are you monotheistic, or not? Are you Muslims, or not? Do you love Allah, or not? Do you love the Prophet, or not? As a sign of your love for Allah and the Prophet, you should sweep away the borders, which were created by imperialism.

Notice again that Hamas is consistent in not desiring a Palestinian Arab state but a pan-Islamic 'ummah.

We are in need of weapons, we are in need of food, we are in need of moral support, as well as support by the media, economic support, medical aid, and support in weapons.

Notice the priorities! And it seems he mentioned one of those priorities twice, just to get the point across.

Therefore, oh Arabs, who number 300 million, you cannot allow yourselves to be ruled by four million brothers of apes and pigs. Where is your nobility? Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Where are you, oh Muslims, who number one and a half billion, yet you are ruled by four million brothers of apes and pigs?

The hilarious part is that he is describing himself as being ruled by the hated, despised and weak Jews, giving the Jews far more real power than they have ever sought themselves.

Where is your manliness? Where is your nobility? You stand there like women and do not lift a finger. What is the meaning of this apathy? What is the meaning of this cowardice? What is the meaning of this fear?[...]Your armies have become like women, who hide and cannot lift a finger. Your armies, tanks, and planes have become rusty.

The consistent posturing of masculinity is also funny. By putting the conflict in terms of manliness, he is admitting that Israel has made the Arabs look like women in comparison. This is of course a major source of their anger - their emasculation by the hated Jews - but for all of their bluster, they themselves admit it unwittingly in speeches like these. By trying to arouse an animal-like instinctive reaction from his listeners, he is actually insulting them and strengthening the case that they are in fact inferior. Rather than frame the fiery speech in terms of how good Arab culture and the Islamic nation are, he instead unwittingly tells his audience that they are failures, lower in the evolutionary scale than apes and pigs.

This is really a great speech. Watch it to see his frothing anger as he accidentally admits that he and his people cannot compete in today's world.

Freedom of the Press, Moderate Palestinian Arab-style

PCHR says:

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 12:00 on Wednesday, 12 March 2008, armed members of the PSS, accompanied by 3 officers in civilian clothes, stormed the headquarters of Ramattan Press Agency in al-Wehaidi Building in al-Masyoun neighborhood in Ramallah. They requested Nawaf Ibrahim al-‘Aamer, 48, an editor, to accompany them. However, he asked them to show an arrest warrant, and they showed a warrant issued by the Attorney General’s office allowing entering the headquarters and arresting him. Members of the PSS confiscated all belongings of al-‘Aamer and a computer set. They also broke into the dormitory of the agency’s staff and confiscated all documents in the room where al-‘Aamer lives. They then arrested him.

In his testimony to PCHR, journalist Nawaf al-‘Aamer stated:

They took me in a military vehicle to the headquarters of the PSS in Ramallah. They took my personal data and photographed me. They then moved me to the headquarters of the PSS in Bitounia town. They interrogated me in 6 sessions. They asked me about my e-mail and wanted to have my password. They wanted to check my e-mail claiming that there are materials related to Palestinian security. I refused to open my e-mail without the presence of my director or the President of the Union of Journalists, but they insisted. At approximately 23:00, I agreed to open my e-mail on a private computer. They allowed a relative of mine to come and bring a laptop. I opened my e-mail, and the interrogators downloaded all messages. At approximately 04:00 on Thursday, 13 March 22008, they released me after Ramattan Press Agency and other people had mediated. However, they requested me to come to the headquarters of the PSS at 14:00 to continue the interrogation.”

And Ramattan is not particularly extremist, compared to many other media outlets there.

Tehran graffiti: "Death to Israel"

Picture from an Iranian blogger, who writes:

In Iran, if there is inflation, if teachers’ salary is not paid or if bus drivers protest their low payment, if we don’t have good ties with other countries, if blah blah blah there is only one culprit according to statesmen: International Zionism. Correspondingly, most of the hard-liners view multinational corporations as agents of Zionism and Israel. Adidas, Nestle, Timberland, Benetton, Royal Dutch Shell etc. are supposedly supporters of Israel.

Of course this doesn’t mean that I deny Jewish lobby’s influence (even Shah –the close ally of Israel- defended this theory- and today I was reading an interesting report about the Rothschild family and their unbelievable influence across Western Europe) and I admit that naturally they act against Iran’s interests, but for me ascribing every single blunder to the Zionist lobby is really ridiculous.

Nestle billboard in Baharestan metro stations has become a target for some believers in this doctrine. Again I apologize if my photos don’t enjoy the minimum of quality. Of course Blogger (beside international Zionism ;-) ) are also to be blamed for this.

Clockwise from left: Star of David, Star of David plus a scratch on the billboard, “Death to Israel” slogan, star of David, Nescafe sachet.

PalArabs hoping that Qassams kill more Jews than reported

A telling article in Palestine Today (autotranslated, cleaned up):

The Hebrew media stated that three people were killed in three car accidents on the northern entrance of the Negev desert, claimed assistant police chief Cohen, yesterday, Thursday.

The Hebrew radio said that the public traffic accidents that occurred on the streets of the Jewish state during the last week claimed the lives of ten people, and resulted in serious injuries of nine others.

Palestinians, especially the resistance factions, cast doubt on the validity of whether the large number of deaths in the Jewish state were really due to traffic accidents.

The Al-Quds Brigades, military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, has flattened yesterday, Thursday, raped the towns of the western Negev with 35 rockets and mortar shells, begging the question : Is it true that the dead yesterday were due to accidents or because of resistance rockets ???!!

It's amazing how Freudian these people are.

The word for missile attack is often translated as "rape."

Palestinian Arabs are evidently hoping that they have managed to kill more innocent civilians than they already do, because murdering women and children make them feel more macho. After all, what makes people feel more impotent than shooting dozens of rockets and not managing to kill anybody? To avoid that shame, there must have been Jewish casualties, hiding as "traffic accidents."

And the projection is striking as well, as these same people will inflate their own numbers of dead from Israeli strikes, counting even people they've killed themselves as "martyrs." Fatah's Firas Press even complained today that Haniyeh considers even Gazans who die at home to be "martyrs." Since they lie about their own deaths, they accuse Israel of doing the same.

Exhausted

Going through the Google auto-translation of Arabic news sites, the name "Tzipi Livni" is often translated as "Tsipi Exhausted." And the word seems apt, as the general impression one gets from Israeli policy is that it is one of exhaustion - "we are sick of the war, sick of fighting, sick of terror, sick of constant pushback from the US and the world community, maybe this concession will give us a little bit of breathing room, if only for a little while."

Living in that pressure bubble can only increase irritability and anxiety. It is all the more remarkable that Israel has managed to build such an outstanding society even with all the pressure.

Others have noticed this as well. A comment this morning on a previous article of mine cross-posted on Israellycool states:

Why doesn’t Israel destroy her enemies and live then in peace? You have the means. Have you really decided to commit collective suicide? Have the leftists and the feminists really succeeded in so emasculating the Israeli society that people don’t want to live anymore? You guys used to be the envy of the world. Now people look at Israel like a dying animal with some pity, maybe, but no respect. What’s the matter with you, guys?

Somewhat more articulately, Shrinkwrapped says:

I have to ask: Have the Israeli people become resigned? Have they given up? Where is their outrage? Where is their will to live?

Despair and depression are horrible states. We feel despair when all hope seems lost. When we feel despair in the absence of a hopeless reality, we call if depression.

But what happens to a people when they are told they have no recourse?

What happens to a people when they are told they must continue to live under constant threat of being attacked and killed by Jew hating monsters solely because they are Jewish?

What happens to a people when the adults, the nations that have the ability to either stop the killing and attacks, or enable the Jews to defend themselves, are either actively supporting the genocidal murderers or passively withholding support from Israel?

What happens to a people who understand that there exists no other country in the world that would be expected and counseled to have restraint in the face of daily attacks?

What happens to a people who have a government that professes over and over again an inability to respond effectively?

What happens to a people when the world's press maintains a constant barrage of anti-personal missives and anti-Semitism becomes increasingly mainstream and unobjectionable?

And what happens to a people when they feel like the world just wants them to disappear and go away and has no concern for the lives of Jewish men, women, and children?

Is there a threshold beyond which the entire population surrenders to despair?

I am very fearful for Israel. It is still a democracy. Yet where are the people? Why are they not marching through the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv in the hundreds of thousands, demanding their government do something to stop the reign of terror that they have been told repeatedly is their inevitable lot?

Why are the Israelis not enraged with their own government's fecklessness?

Israel has the power to destroy their enemies many times over. That is a frightening prospect. Their enemies do not believe that the Israelis, civilized in ways that their enemies are not, would ever take the necessary steps to safe guard their people and stop this war. Yet the Israeli government could win this war with methods far short of total war. It is a question of will.

If the Arabs are correct and Israel has lost the will to live, this war can only end with the destruction of Israel and a second Holocaust where they will, as they often boast, finish the job Hitler started. The Palestinians would be only too happy to administer the coup de grace but it will be the Israelis who have committed collective suicide.

Daniel Gordis thinks it is because Zionism has become too disconnected from the Jews it was meant to protect:

When a country's leadership can't express a single coherent thought about why the Jews need a State, when its Prime Minister can articulate no agenda for the Jewish State beyond the hope that it will be "a fun place to live", you know we're bankrupt. You're bankrupt because Bialik and Alterman were too successful. They were part of a movement that so utterly disconnected the Jews from the discourse that had nurtured them for centuries that now, aside from being a marginally Hebrew-speaking version of some benign and characterless country, we can't remember why we wanted this State to begin with. So we don't defend it, because we don't want to hurt their civilians (even though they openly target ours). We don't want to earn the world's opprobrium, because our Prime Minister loves being welcomed in foreign capitals. We don't defend ourselves because we're no longer sure that it's really worth the casualties on our side that preventing these attacks on our sovereignty would require.

Gordis is speaking about the leadership, Shrinkwrapped is speaking about the people, but I think the two are related. The leaders of any people, to a large extent, drive their people's attitudes. When the leadership no longer seems to have pride in its nation, the people will follow. When the leadership can't defend its actions to the world, and then can't assure their own people that they will defend them, the people have a much harder time keeping it together.

The added ingredient that seems to have worn away the Israeli psyche is the pressure from her friends. Both George Bush and Bill Clinton have strong emotional feelings for Israel but that didn't stop them from adding pressure - indeed, their pressure probably outstripped that of Jimmy Carter or the senior Bush.

Moshe Feiglin traces the downhill slide to Yitzchak Shamir's promise to not retaliate in the First Gulf War:

In the First Gulf War, under intense pressure from Israel's Left, Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir reversed two strategic principles that Israel had carefully preserved until then. The first principle was that only Israeli soldiers would be responsible for Israel's security. The second principle was that the attack of Israel's civilian population is completely unacceptable. When Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on Israel's cities, Israel opted to hide behind the broad shoulders of the American and British soldiers, move U.S. Patriot missiles into strategic locations and of course -- to instruct its citizens to cover all windows with sheets of plastic and masking tape.

Prime Minister Shamir enjoyed the support of the media, academia and Left for a time. No Commission of Inquiry was established to investigate the mistakes made in that strange war. By the grace of our Father in Heaven, there were very few Israeli fatalities and nobody criticized Shamir's strategic turnabout. ...

I claimed then -- and even more so now -- that Shamir's blunder was even greater than Golda's in the Yom Kippur War. In the Yom Kippur War, Israel did not lose its power of deterrence. But by the end of the First Gulf War, Israel found itself facing new rules. (Just ask Sderot mayor Eli Moyal for an explanation). Israel had entrusted its security to foreign armies and it soon had to pay for its mistake in hard currency.

I think that he makes a good point - Israel's dependence on the US for its security means that the US naturally has more say in how Israel defends itself, and Israel now finds itself in a position of not wanting to say no to its main friend. The result is a kind of split personality where Israeli leaders are forced to justify themselves from within a US-driven framework, one that fundamentally ignores much of the reality that Israelis have to live with.

Although other recipients of Western largess seem to have no problem ignoring US wishes as to how to act, Israel feels morally bound to accommodate its friend.

This is not a friendship - it is a dependency that is not healthy for either party. Israel gave up a lot of its own self esteem when it outsourced its security to US promises, and no matter how sincere they may have been it is up to Israel alone to make her own decisions and to defend herself.

UPDATE: Siggy has an optimistic response to Shrinkwrapped.

The Israelis, like the Americans in the Carter era (and some might argue even now) are suffering a kind of malaise. It is not fatal and indeed, like the Americans, they will not allow themselves to be worn down by the likes of the failed and dysfunctional regimes and broken, bigoted, racist and murderous cultures of the people that are attempting to strangle her.

Read it all.

Today's lying AFP headline

"Muslim leaders open summit with calls to end Mideast violence"

No, they opened the summit denouncing Israeli defensive actions. They didn't say a word against Palestinian Arab terror attacks or rocket attacks against civilians.

AFP continues in its long tradition of tilting towards terror.