Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Object lesson in Hamas duplicity

Hamas has accepted Israel's right to exist and would be prepared to nullify its charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, Aziz Dwaik, Hamas's most senior representative in the West Bank, said on Wednesday.

Dwaik's remarks are seen in the context of Hamas's attempts to win recognition from the international community.

Dwaik is the elected speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was released a few months ago after spending nearly three years in an Israeli prison.

Naturally, this news has caused a stir in Gaza. Luckily, another hamas leader, Dr. Salah al Bardawil, has clarified Dwaik's position.

You see, Hamas' charter never called for the destruction of Israel! So there is no need for it to be nullified.

Hamas' charter does quote the Muslim Brotherhood's founder as saying "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" . But that's just the prologue. And it says obliterate," not "destroy." Big difference!

Also, it says:

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Muslim generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Muslim generations till Judgement Day?

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations till the Day of Judgement.

Now, if Hamas-bashers want to interpret that as if it means that Hamas wants to destroy Israel, that's their problem.

And this part is equally irrelevant:

The day that enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instill the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters.

Nowhere does that paragraph say "destroy Israel"! Amazing!

Double-talk is a wonderful Palestinian Arab tool, because they know that there will always be stupid Westerners who cannot believe that they are being lied to.

Terrorists love Akiva Eldar

Akiva Eldar is one of Ha'aretz' go-to analysts with a consistent agenda of demonizing his nation.

A couple of days ago he tried to pour cold water on Israel's work in Haiti by saying how poorly Israel treats Gaza. For example:

The disaster in Haiti is a natural one; the one in Gaza is the unproud handiwork of man. Our handiwork. The IDF does not send cargo planes stuffed with medicines and medical equipment to Gaza....

I was not aware that Haiti was shooting rockets at Israel.

And apparently Eldar feels his message of unremitting Israeli hate towards Gaza would be diluted if he mentions the medical clinic that Israel did set up for Gazans after the war - that Hamas barred Gazans from going to. Eldar cannot be bothered to mention the 4000 Gazans who did manage to get medical attention in Israeli hospitals in 2009. No, to Eldar, Israel is an evil nation who goes to Haiti for PR but callously ignores the people in pain in Gaza.

Not surprisingly, his op-ed has been featured all over the world in Arab and far left websites. And now, even the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades website has reprinted his article.

I wonder if they paid him?

Al Qassam Brigades leader dies in UAE

In two separate incidents in 1989, Hamas kidnapped and murdered two Israeli soldiers, Sgt. Avi Sasportas and Cpl. Ilan Saadon.

The terrorist responsible for these murders, Mahmoud Al-Mabhuh, was one of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades co-founders. Some time later he ran away from Gaza and went off to live in the UAE.

He just died of cancer in a hospital there.

Great BBC video on Gaza

BBC 2 sent a real soldier, Iraq war veteran Col. Tim Collins, to look at Sderot and Gaza. He saw the evidence of secondary mosque explosions that Goldstone didn't. He interviews Gaza rocket makers and gets chased out of Rafah where the weapons smugglers work. He honestly looks at one of the bigger accidents of the war, where the Gaza doctor's daughters were killed, and shows how difficult it would be for Israelis to have distinguished the civilians.

Wish I could embed it.

(h/t t34zakat)
UPDATE: Here's the article about the video that includes most of the text, from Conflictzones.tv: (h/t Gaia)

Inside the Gaza Strip – subjected to a short but bloody war against Israeli forces that ended in January 2009, and under the control of the Islamist militant movement Hamas - Colonel Tim Collins drove up to a massive roadside poster.

“It shows the Legoland town of Sderot [southern Israel] being bombarded by unguided weapons,” said the Colonel. “[Responding to] this is what the Israelis say the attack was all about. But this poster wasn’t produced by an Israeli PR company. It was paid for by Hamas, and they’ve got their badge on it – showing a war crime by any standard.”

The main target for the rocket fire depicted in the Hamas roadside billboard had indeed been the small Israeli border town of Sderot.

In the town, British-born Tottenham-supporting police officer Micky Rosenfeld showed the Colonel gaily-painted bomb-shelters into which the town’s 30-thousand citizens would flee for relative safety every time they heard a piercing “Red Alert” siren. The Colonel noted that fragments [of metal ball-bearings stuffed into rocket-heads] had ripped holes even into the thick metal walls that surround the bomb-shelters. “That’s vicious,” Colonel Collins said. “If that hits your flesh it would tear you up.”

Thousands of rockets and mortars had fallen during the eight years before Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip at the end of 2008, Colonel Collins was told.

“Growing up in Belfast during The Troubles, I can sympathise with them. It’s no way to live … These were by and large people who had decamped from an Islamic society in north Africa and found themselves living on the front-line,” Colonel Collins said, [referring to Jews from Arab north Africa who had come to Israel in the 1950s and had often settled in small towns in the country’s under-developed south.]

Behind the town’s police station was a collection of the remnants of rockets that had struck the town. Colonel Collins picked up a rusting rocket casing. “It can’t be accurate, because it’s heavy and imprecise – so this is an indiscriminate weapon,” said Colonel Collins. Police Chief Inspector Rosenfeld told him how he believed the rocket-firers sometimes managed to target their missiles -- by listening to Israeli radio which revealed where the first rocket or rockets had hit, and then adjusting their sights to make the next ones more lethal.

Rosenfeld also showed him the remnants of more advanced Grad rockets, which he said had been smuggled to the armed Palestinian groups via a number of countries through tunnels under the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt. Twenty of these had hit cities far further up the coast or far further inland during three days at the start of the Gaza-Israel war, he said. Israel feared that if it failed to act, Palestinian militants in Gaza would over time be able to smuggle in or develop rocketry that could hit further and further away until missiles reached the main Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

Late at night, the Colonel managed to rendezvous inside the Gaza Strip with men who fired rockets across the border into Israel. The Colonel was being driven by Abu Haroon, a beaded fighter from a sub-group of Fatah called the Abu Rish Brigade. At the rocket men’s makeshift base inside a refugee camp, Abu Haroon and his men produced a rocket and started dismantling it. “TNT [a high explosive] was spilling out of the back of it,” recalls the Colonel, “and I was particularly nervous when they put a badly-constructed home-made fuse on top of the device, making it a live weapon, then brandished a detonator.”

Abu Haroon made it clear that these rockets were “simple” devices that could not be accurately targeted. “We don’t know where these drop,” he told the Colonel. “Because there are no electronics here. Not big shooting rocket like Israel says about it.” Expressing the hope that conflict will end and that “the children can grow up without ever having known the war that Abu Haroon and his men have known, God willing,” Colonel Collins left and was driven back to his hotel in Gaza City.

Later, in Bet Hanun, northern Gaza Strip, the Colonel examined the remains of a deserted and destroyed mosque -- one of several that had been smashed during the Gaza-Israel war. Inside the now deserted mosque, Colonel Collins looked up at a gaping hole left by an air strike. “The allegation was that this was used as a storage facility for weapons,” said the Colonel as he tramped about the ruined structure. “I have to say that what was commonplace in Iraq was also seemed to be evident in Gaza as well. Down in the cellar of the mosque there was clear evidence of secondary explosions. It’s my opinion that the only thing that could have caused this was that explosives were stored here.”

The Colonel also went to the scene of possibly the most well-publicised tragedy of the war. A tank had fired two rounds into an apartment block. The shells struck a bedroom and killed three daughters and a niece of a local doctor, Ezzedeen Abualaish. Colonel Collins found the scene “heart-rending”, but when he painstakingly found the exact spot from which the tank, perched on a hillside overlooking Gaza City, had fired two rounds, he was able to work out what the Israeli tank-gunner would have been able to see.

“The civilians had been evacuated into Gaza…. I have to say that it would be difficult from this range, even through optic sights, to make out clear targets. So you would only see shadows.” However the Colonel said firing a main armaments round without actually identifying the target was “questionable”. [An Israeli military investigation in 2009 stated that the gunner had believed there were Palestinian fighters moving around in what he and his commander thought was an abandoned building. The doctor had been telephoned by an Israeli military officer days before advising him and his family and all inhabitants to leave the building, the report stated.]

On his way out of the Gaza Strip, Colonel Collins passed alongside a plethora of roadside pictures and billboards plastered with the faces of young men killed in years of conflict with Israel, each shown in a heroic pose wielding a weapon. “Some call them ‘legitimate targets’, others call them ‘martyrs’. They’ve certainly been ‘martyred’ to suit someone’s agenda. In my view, like in Ireland, it’s a waste of young lives.”

As Colonel Collins walked towards a heavily fortified checkpoint to exit Gaza, he reflected on his visit. “The real victims here are the people of Gaza, and the people of Sderot, who’ve been used like cattle,” he said. “In my view that’s the real crime.”

More on Arabs and Haiti.

According to the UN, so far, the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia have contributed nothing towards Haiti earthquake relief. Neither have Egypt, Jordan*, or Syria.

On the other hand, (possibly because of the bad press,) the Organization of the Islamic Conference has asked Muslim nations to help the victims.

The Al-Arabiya article about this call to help is interesting in the reactions by the readers.

The first one said:

My Heart Dances Of Joice Just Thinking About It
May The Biggest Catastrophe in Human History,since the creation of this planet wipe USA from the face of the Earth.Deep inside me i feel it happening but i ask THE ALMIGHTY to make me live to witness it with my own eyes..Amen Amen Amen

The third addresses the issue of aiding Haiti a little more directly:

To donate money for an alcoholic is prohibited (haram),so how about the devil's worshipper?
Why didn't/don't these so-called "Islamic" organizations urge Muslims,to help Muslims in Afghanistan,Pakistan,Gaza,Yemen,Somalia,Chechneya,..Anywhere?! How do you call for outside Cleansing while inside is full of $h*t? They and the apostate traitors are Muslims' real turmoil,so..?! Deaf,Blind and Dumb

*UPDATE: This Muslim website says that Jordan sent a field hospital, medics and supplies pretty early on. The Iranian contribution it claims was through its Red Crescent, not the government.

George Mitchell dooms any chance of peace

The US envoy to the Middle East just doomed any remote chance there might have ever been for a peaceful two-state solution.

Palestine Press Agency quotes Mitchell as having told his Lebanese hosts that the US "does not support the resettlement of the Palestinians" in Lebanon. The US Embassy website in Lebanon said "As the Special Envoy, Mitchell confirmed to Prime Minister Hariri in their meeting last evening the U.S. will not support the forced naturalization of Palestinians in Lebanon."

As we've mentioned numerous times before, the definition of "Palestinian refugee" is unique among all world refugees. The UNRWA created an entirely news class of refugees where the descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees are considered refugees themselves. Using this bizarre definition, the number of Palestinian Arab "refugees" is fated to grow, forever. It is simply impossible to imagine that they will all ever "return" to "Palestine." They are now at about 10,000,000 and counting.

As far back as the 1950s, the world realized that there was no solution for the (then) hundreds of thousands of refugees that did not include their eventual resettlement in Arab countries. Yet the Arab League, in an astonishing display of bigotry against their fellow Arabs that persists to this day, ruled that no Palestinian Arabs can become naturalized citizens of Arab countries - while all other Arabs can.

This is, in sum, the major reason why millions of Arabs are stateless today. Even if you want to blame Israel for expelling every one of the 600,000 Arabs in 1948 (which is clearly not true,) the only people responsible for their continued suffering over the past 61 years are the Arab leaders who pretend to support them while refusing to take in their "brethren" and give them full rights.

Even for the Palestinian Arabs who left the UNRWA camps and attempted to build their lives in the Gulf states, in many ways helping to build those very countries, their children and grandchildren remain stateless.

It is not as if Palestinian Arabs would refuse the offer to become citizens of other Arab countries because of their supposed nationalism. In the 1950s, Lebanon offered citizenship to many Christian Palestinians as well as Muslims who could prove Lebanese ancestry, and some 50,000 people jumped at the offer. A loophole that opened up in 1994 that offered citizenship was equally pounced upon and tens of thousands more became Lebanese citizens - many even falsifying papers - before that loophole was closed.

So today we have millions of people, falsely labeled as "refugees," who never stepped foot in British Mandate Palestine and who, if they were any other group of people, would have become citizens of the nations they were born in. The reason is purely because of Arab bigotry and intransigence.

There is no realistic solution to the "Palestinian" problem as long as this naked bigotry is allowed to continue. Millions of Palestinian Arabs are not going to stream into a nation of "Palestine." The only solution must include treating this population exactly the same way as other refugee populations are treated.

The US should be in the forefront of insisting that the "moderate" Arab nations and allies step up and take their share of responsibility for decades of Palestinian Arab suffering.

Instead, George Mitchell (who has Lebanese ancestry) has now officially stated that the US supports this institutionalized discrimination by Arab leaders. A golden opportunity to point out embedded Arab bigotry and to publicize and shame Arabs into taking responsibility for their treatment of Palestinian Arabs is now lost.

Lost with it is any chance for a reasonable peace plan. The Arab nations keep the fake "refugee" issue alive specifically in the hopes that there will be world pressure for Israel to take in millions of Palestinian Arabs and become another Arab state. Israel will never agree to this. The losers, as always, are the actual Arabs of Palestinian Arab ancestry who are kept in limbo by the very people who are claiming to care the most about them.

Shame on the US for blowing this one chance to help millions of people.

When "resistance" passes its expiration date

An interesting op-ed in Asharq Al-Awsat, in response to the "resistance" convention in Beirut over the weekend:

The word resistance has become obsolete with time and as a result of misuse, and so this word has lost its sanctity. How can someone respect the resistance in Iraq when witnessing thousands of innocent victims killed as a result of the deliberate targeting of schools, markets, residential areas, and civilian and governmental areas? How can the resistance be sacred in Palestine when on the one hand the Palestinians are fighting against one another, whilst at the same time [one Palestinian faction] is guarding the Israeli borer against infiltration by other resistance elements? Why is it that today in Lebanon, the resistance is not playing this role, but is ruling the people of Lebanon by force, and this is almost nine years after Israeli troops withdrew from the country?
This is the state of the resistance today. This is the state of any type of resistance that passes its expiry date, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon whose resistance became an internal problem after the movement was practically transformed into a local militia [following the Israeli withdrawal]. The resistance is just a title, and it seems that its real job is to dominate the internal situation through force of arms and by silencing the opposition in the name of confronting the enemy. In Palestine, where there is occupation and an armed enemy, some resistance factions have become foreign tools.
They now seem to epitomize retired war generals in their military uniform and with their medals. Those active in the resistance know that this word lost its sanctity after it lost its job. In fact the meaning of this word had reversed and now has bad connotations when it is purposefully imposed as is the case with Hezbollah today which has become a movement that signifies sectarianism, or the Senior Council of Islamic Scholars, which is not a Council and has no scholars, but in fact is a façade to justify violence in Iraq.

This is a very good observation. The word "resistance" is used by Arab thugs to win and maintain power over their own people.

NGO Monitor suing EU over funding pro-terror NGOs

From NGO Monitor:

NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog group, announced at a press conference today that it has brought suit against the European Commission (EC) for failing to fulfill EU transparency obligations regarding the distribution of funding to non-government organizations (NGOs).

NGO Monitor President Professor Gerald Steinberg said that his group resorted to legal recourse after 13 months of attempts to secure documents detailing non-governmental agency funding by the EC, the executive branch of the European Union. Under the European Freedom of Information law, such funding details must be made available upon request. However, the EC cited “public security,” “privacy,” and “commercial interests” in denying NGO Monitor’s information request.

NGO Monitor legal counsel, Trevor Asserson of Asserson Law Offices, dismissed these reasons as “absurd” and “essentially unsupportable.” He described the EU activity as “typical of the types of obfuscation that one gets when someone does not want to do what they are meant to do.”

The lawsuit, filed yesterday at the European Court of Justice, seeks “to obligate the European Union, which claims to be a law-abiding institution and committed to looking out for the interests of world peace and security, to act according to its mandate and reveal these documents and the full extent of their funding.”

NGO Monitor disclosed that its researchers identified 177 million shekels provided by the EC since June 2005 to NGOs active in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Many of these organizations are active in the strategy of demonization which seeks to isolate Israel, using lawfare and boycott campaigns. The organization alleges that EC allocations are made without full public disclosure of its decision-making processes or evaluation procedures.

“We therefore argue that absent appropriate documentation, European citizens are in the dark as to how their taxpayer funds are being used,” Steinberg said. “If the European Union were to actually comply with its regulations, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Short takes

AFP noticed that there are some exports from Gaza lately. The strawberries are being marketed to Europe by Israel's Agrexco under the brand name Coral.

Palestine Today calls the recent floods in Gaza a "realization of Rabin's and Netanyahu's dreams."

A Jordanian geologist is warning that Israel is purposefully creating man-made earthquakes to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque.

A Seattle nutcase called "T. West" made a YouTube video claiming that Israel is stealing organs from Haitians. Naturally, Iran's PressTV picks up on the story. (h/t Zvi)

A 17th century synagogue in Crete was firebombed for the second time this month. Here is its webpage.

A new Zionism

From the Jewish Journal of LA:

If I ever decide to make aliyah and move to Israel, I can blame it on Micah Goodman. On a chilly and wet Sunday night last week at The Mark — a reception hall on Pico Boulevard that used to house Mamash restaurant — Goodman spoke on “The Crash of Old Paradigms: Why the Left and the Right No Longer Exist in Israel.” Professor Goodman, who was hosted by the Israeli Consulate as part of their new speaker series for young professionals, is part of a new generation of young and bright Israelis who are seeking nothing less than a renewal of the Zionist idea.
Goodman, who’s only 33, studied in a variety of yeshivas over the years and got a doctorate of philosophy from Hebrew University. He teaches, among other places, at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, has his own weekly television show and runs a “leadership academy” called Ein Prat, which he founded. On the invitation for his Sunday night talk, Ein Prat was described as follows: “Seeking to lead a sea change in behavior and culture, we hope to awaken Israeli society from its slumber.”

I can tell you that he woke about a hundred young professionals in Los Angeles from their slumber, yours truly included.
He did it by laying out a dramatic and depressing problem — what he calls a “crisis of ideas” for Zionism — and then fearlessly taking it on with an equally dramatic and positive vision.

He began by discussing the two original strands of Zionism: the Zionism of Peace and the Zionism of Land, explaining why both are failing and need an injection of new thinking.

The Zionism of Peace is the classic view of Israel as a safe haven for Jews. Its champion, Theodore Herzl, had seen the failure of emancipation to ward off anti-Semitism, epitomized by the anti-Semitic rage exposed in the Dreyfus affair. By enabling Jews to join the brotherhood of nations, this view went, Zionism would not only protect Jews from persecution but might even help vanquish anti-Semitism.

The Zionism of Land, as championed by Rav Kook, was not about fighting a negative, but about celebrating a positive: the return to the mystical land of our forefathers.

From 1948 to 1967, neither Zionism won the day. The state was too close to hostile neighbors to be a Zionism of Peace, and too distant from biblical Israel to be a Zionism of Land.

The Six-Day War of 1967 changed all that. Followers of both Zionisms saw an opening to fulfill their own dreams. The Peace camp finally had something (land) it could trade for peace and acceptance, and the Land camp, after 2,000 years, could finally return to the land of their patriarchs.

The ensuing 40 years saw both dreams unravel. Land couldn’t buy the Zionism of Peace, and love couldn’t buy the Zionism of Land. Today, when Goodman looks at the physical threats to Israel and the success of Jewish emancipation in America, he laments: “Jews are haunted in their haven, and accepted in the Diaspora. This is an earthquake to the Zionist idea.”

The original justifications for Zionism — both pragmatic and ideological — are under such attack that the crisis of ideas has become a crisis of legitimacy, where Jews must now answer this vexing question: Why Zionism? This crisis is compounded by the fact that, as Goodman says, Israelis are the “Olympic champions of not loving themselves.”

Yet it was Goodman’s deep love for Zionism and his people, as much as his scholarly analysis, that woke us from our slumber. Here was a man who quoted the great philosophers, but who just as easily quoted the soldiers who were under his command during the recent wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

When he critiqued his homeland, he did it with a heavy heart. But when he talked about the outbursts of solidarity in Israeli society — thousands of homes opening up to refugees of bomb attacks, 100 percent of Army reservists responding to the call of duty, scores of volunteers helping out in bomb shelters, etc. — it was with a sense of genuine wonder.

It is this sense of wonder at the possibilities of the Zionist experiment that Goodman and his ilk are hoping to rekindle in Israeli society. He calls it a Zionism of Solidarity — creating an exemplary and decent society that worries less about what the world thinks of us and more about what we think of ourselves.

It is the renewal of Zionism from the inside out. It calls for, among other things, better treatment of all citizens (including migrant workers) and a greater separation of synagogue and state, where Judaism and its values are part of education rather than legislation.

Ha'aretz looked at Ein Prat once.

The website for the group includes this fascinating video made by the students that shows the excitement that the project is creating:

The site also has a couple of videos of Micah Goodman speaking in English. This one seems similar to the talk in LA, where he unflinchingly looks at problems in Israeli society and Zionism in the wake of the Lebanon war and talks about what can (or must) be done to re-invent Zionism.

Anti-Zionists would look at this video and see evidence of Israeli weakness. It is in fact the opposite.

Hundreds attend terrorist conference in Beirut

Over the weekend, Beirut proudly hosted a large gathering of the world's most notorious terror leaders and their supporters.

The Hezbollah news site describes the scene:

Friday, January 15, 2010, the Arab International Forum for the Support of the Resistance held its opening ceremony in the UNESCO Palace in presence of hundreds of participants from all over the world. Representatives from the Arab world were present, in addition to some representatives from Europe, the United States, and many other countries, who came to express their support of the resistance.

Hizbullah Secretary General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, gave a speech showing his support for the forum, stating the importance of the resistance world wide- whether the Lebanese, Palestinian, or Iraqi - as well as representing the historical roleof the resistance and what it has done.

As for Hamas' Khaled Meshaal, he stated his total support for the resistance, and thanked Iran for the support it has been giving.

Iraqi representative Hareth Al Dari, talked about the current situation of the Iraqi resistance, stating the importance of the resistance by all its means in order to get rid of the enemy invading the different countries.

Many speeches from representatives from all over the world were made, more than thirty speeches, all having the same objective as to achieve what the forum aims at and to lead the resistance worldwide into a better and safer place.

[On Saturday] the Lebanese National Movement spoke about the need to face Zionism, and that it was time to take into consideration the resistance and its needs all over the world.
The spokesman also saluted Hizbullah and all the resistance movements in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, stressing that they don't believe in a settlement with "Israel" that would lead to their surrender, stating the importance of the Palestinian reconciliation between the Palestinian forces.

Layla Khaled, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that the political resistance is a necessary security measure. She added that the resistance should be supported in Palestine, for although it is surrounded by the Arab countries that supported it from the beginning, yet they backed out of where they stood.
"This world needs a bomb explosion so the people could listen", she added, referring to the operations done by the Palestinian resistance confronting the Zionist enemy, which says that the Resistance are the terrorists, which in reality, "Israel" is terrorism its self.
The resistance of the 1948 occupied lands [to destroy Israel] also took part in a speech, in addition to the Iraqi resistance, whose spokespersons stated some recommendations for the congregation to take into consideration for the final statement, including forming committees to take care of the national and international rights of the resistance in all its forms.
One of the most significant participants of the forum was the Jewish American attorney, Stanley Cohen, who spoke in this workshop about the legal aspect of the resistance, stressing on the American law which lacks the presence of a law concerning the resistance, although "America is proud of its laws" as he said.
He also added that if he is at his home in New York, and someone came and invaded his home and killed his children, it is thus his duty to resist the invaders and that is what the resistance in Palestine is doing.
[On Sunday] Jewish American Stanley Cohen ended the decelerating process, when he said that: "It is always with great pain and great shame as a Jew and as an American to come to this land which has suffered so long by my people. Every time I come, I walk away with hope, for the resistance will be the road to victory". He added that the resistance could be found by many forms; by guns, words, and prayers, but together resistance is the most powerful on earth, adding that it can't be stopped and it won't be stopped. His final words in his statement were: "Inshalla, next year we meet in Al Quds."

Some of the speeches from the Friday sessions are reproduced at the Syrian News Agency site.

The attendees included

vice-president of Islamic Iran Mohammed Reza Mir Tajeddini, regional leader of Ba’ath Party Shahinaz Fakoush, former Lebanese prime minister Salim al-Hos, founder of International Action Center (IAC) former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and head of the International Council of Scholars Sheikh Dr. Yusuf Qaradawi. Messages of support from the President of Islamic Republic of Iran Dr. ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – supporting a unified resistance against the Israeli and American imperialism in the region.

(The UNESCO Palace appears to be a Lebanese government building, not a UN building.)

I wonder if there was a concurrent vendor exhibition showing off the latest in suicide bomb belt technology, and maybe a gala dinner where terrorists could network with their adoring politician fans.

Talk about a target-rich environment! Apparently, even Nasrallah thought so, as he didn't attend a conference in his own back yard but only spoke by videoconference.

Goldstone takedown by Richard Landes

For a lengthy and excellent criticism of the Goldstone Report, see Richard Landes' two-part article in the Meria Journal. Part one goes into detail about the report itself, and part two about how NGOs and journalists created the false memes that Goldstone happily repeated.

Some small excerpts from part one:

It is difficult to specify what is wrong with the Goldstone Report since its failures are so pervasive. This article will highlight four fundamental errors of this report, all of which compounded each other and literally inverted the understanding of its readers as to what happened during Operation Cast Lead.[12] These include:

1) Failure to investigate Hamas’s use of civilian shields

2) Credulity of Palestinian sources

3) Systematic attribution of malevolent intention to Israeli forces and studied agnosticism about Palestinian intentions

4) Exceptionally judgmental conclusions for admittedly inadequate evidence.

The first and most critical failure of the Goldstone Report comes from what it did not do: investigate Hamas. Despite Goldstone’s insistence that he investigated both sides, where Hamas is concerned, he focused on two fairly obvious issues and ignored the most problematic and consequential.

In other words, if Hamas used human shields as a central strategy, then by ignoring this aspect of the conflict, Goldstone’s mission played directly into the hands of a militia that actually targeted their own civilians.[16] Far from protecting innocent Palestinian civilians then, the mission may have confirmed the tactics of those who deliberately sacrificed them for the sake of a public relations victory against their enemy, a PR victory that the mission then inscribed in law.[17]

Although the mission members ran across repeated hints that such activity went on,[18] they did not investigate it directly and in more than a dozen passages, pointedly insisted that they found “no evidence” of such activity.

The significance of the mission’s avoidance of this issue, of course, becomes particularly acute when it is a question of judging whether or not Israel targeted civilians. If Hamas fired from their midst, if they tried to draw Israeli fire to kill their own civilians in order to accuse them of war crimes, then the mission is in a double bind: 1) How can they judge Israeli actions without knowing what IDF soldiers were aiming at when they fired their weapons, and 2) how can they avoid becoming the dupes of this strategy of waging war intended to maximize one’s civilian casualties for the public relations victory?

I am honored to be quoted twice in the footnotes, and I provided Dr. Landes with some other sources as well, such as Palestine Today's article detailing how Hamas hid among civilians.

Another IDF accomplishment in Haiti - a communications center

From Friends of the IDF:

As part of the IDF delegation to Haiti , Communications Corps personnel have established a fully functioning communications center in the field hospital- to be used by the IDF delegation, reporters in the area, and even the local population. Cpt. (res.) Barak Tzarom is the commander of the communications center in the field.

The communications staff was the first to arrive in Haiti , as an exploratory force. The force traversed the area and checked topographical conditions for the establishment of a communications center. Satellites and antennas were placed on the roofs of local buildings that had survived the earthquake. The staff worked with such skill and proficiency that in just three and a half hours, the communications center was complete and ready.

The remainder of the delegation arrived with the medical staff and Home Front Command personnel, who settled next to the communications center. Telephone lines were ready for use even before the first treatment was administered in the field hospital.

There is no doubt as to the importance of the communications center: it constitutes the main communication link between the IDF forces in Haiti and IDF commanders in Israel . The demand for the communication center’s services continues to be very high, for both operational and media-sharing needs.

Civilians are also using the communication tools of the center, which is currently the only supplier of internet in the area. Tzarom says: “All media from the writers and reporters in the fields, all information, is being transferred using our command center. Because the communications tools here are not sufficiently prepared to transfer information from the field we are assisting them by enabling them to do all of that from Haiti , in the best conditions possible.”

Every time there is a natural disaster, nations are quick to offer aid but the biggest problems are often the logistics. Communications is key, and the Israelis are doing their part.

The best counterproof to charges of Israeli discrimination

From YNet:

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Tuesday expressed confidence Israel would join the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] this year even though certain corruption issues have yet to be resolved.

"It is important for us to join the OECD, the most prestigious organization from an economic point of view, but also because of our international status," he said.

However the move met with opposition. MK Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al) called on the OECD not to accept Israel as a member during a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian journalists at the Knesset.
Tibi claimed that Israel does not meet the organization's regulations of equality in respect to its treatment of Arab citizens.

So we have a member of Knesset who is actively trying to hurt the nation he ostensibly serves. He's not just criticizing - he is telling an outside entity that his own country is rotten and should be punished.

Not only that, but he claims that the horrible crime that his country is guilty of is discrimination against its Arab citizens.

And he is an Arab member of Knesset!

Unreal.

In other discrimination news, the number of Bedouin who have joined the IDF has increased by more than 200% in the past two years, and the bigoted Israeli government is working hard to make sure that these Arab soldiers get jobs after their discharge.

Israel blamed for flooding Gaza

From YNet:

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip accused Israel on Monday of being responsible for making flooding worse. According to their claims, the IDF opened a dam between the city of Gaza and the central Gaza Strip, which caused flooding in dozens of houses.

In the Eshkol regional council, which borders the Strip, the claims were dismissed. The council said it knew nothing of such a dam.

Well, the Israelis should ask the Palestine Telegraph, which knows all about this dam!

Many Palestinian houses were under water in Central Gaza after Israel opened a closed dam on Tuesday.

Israeli authorities opened the "Al-Wadi" dam without prior notice after heavy rainfall on the area.

Or ask Iran's PressTV, which gives it a different name:

The locals say Israel intentionally caused the floods, the Press TV correspondent said.

The waters from the dam, called the Valley of Gaza, flooded houses in Johr al-Deek village, which is southeast of Gaza City, and Nusirat in the eastern part of the territory, where the Al-Nusirat refugee camp is also located.

I'm just having a hard time finding any mention of the "Al Wadi" ("Wadi" means "valley") dam on the Internet before yesterday. The Gaza Wadi is along the Mediterranean coast.

It's curious that Israel controls a dam fully in Gaza between Gaza City and the central Strip. I suppose that Israelis must retain an electronic connection to this dam just so they can torture Palestinian Arab civilians, which is of course their hobby.

(h/t sshender)

March 13th is Palestine Culture Day!

The PA weekly cabinet meeting declared March 13th to be Palestine Culture Day, where they can celebrate the many examples of historical Palestinian Arab culture that come to mind.

For example....um.....

To be fair, various cities in Palestine did create their own cultural niches before the 20th century.

Hebron is known for glass blowing. Bethlehem is known for olive wood carving. Nablus is known for soap. Different towns were known for their distinctive clothing.

But none of these examples are "Palestinian," rather they were local arts that are now labeled "Palestinian" because historically there was no Arab idea of Palestine as a distinct nation. Today's Palestinian Arabs, very aware that they have no distinct cultural history as a people, work very hard to brand any local cultural variations as "Palestinian" even though the word was all but meaningless to local Arabs a mere hundred years ago. They certainly didn't consider themselves "Palestinian."

This is why the PA must keep pushing such festivals. They are trying to retroactively create a people, and to be a people you must have a culture.

American doctors in Haiti jealous of Israeli field hospital

From CNN (h/t Jameel):

At a U.S. medical facility, doctors were asking why they didn't have critical equipment or the ability to perform surgeries, while a field hospital set up by Israel did.

"The disaster was the quake. This is the disaster that's following in its wake," said Dr. Jennifer Furin of Harvard Medical School, referring to the lack of better medical care on the ground. Medical operations were under way off the coast on a U.S. ship for some patients who could be flown there.

Families were "with their loved ones who they were so excited to see alive, only now to watch them die a slow, painful death from their rotting flesh because the infections are out of control and they need surgery," Furin said.

"I've been here since Thursday. No one except the Israeli hospital has taken any of our patients," she told CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

Cohen visited the Israeli hospital and said it was "like another world," with imaging equipment and other machinery. "They have actual operating rooms, and it's just amazing."

Freedom of the Press, Hamas-style

From Ma'an:

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) condemned on Tuesday the raiding of Al-Aqsa TV cameraman and news producer Ammar Yasir Altilawy’s home on Thursday.

Altilawy’s home was stormed in the evening by an armed person, working for the National security forces for the de facto Ministry of Interior, a statement issued by MADA said.

"My house was raided in Thursday evening by an armed and military uniformed person who is working in the National Security Forces affiliated to the Ministry of Interior in Gaza under the pretext that he wanted to take pictures of military operation carried out by someone before his martyrdom, so he stole my laptop and he left a message that if he did not find the pictures on the laptop, he will kidnap me by force,” Altilawy told MADA.

"After that I went to the police headquarters and I reported the incident and the testimony of a witness, and they told me that they cannot do anything for because the aggressor is working in the National Security, and that I have to come back to their office later.”

Following which Altilawy went with his father to the police office on Saturday to follow up on his complaint, expressing fear that the aggressors may return to kidnap him. According to his testimony given to MADA, the officer he met with was a sibling of the first officer, who, upon Altilawy’s request for assistance told officers to beat him.

“When I almost finished the sentence, the officer said to his soldiers:" hit him", so they beat me severely with sticks and [their] feet, they were about ten soldiers, and when my father (50 years old) tried to keep them away from me, they also beat him. After that they took me to a room, then the officer came to me after they put me on the wall and raised my hands on it, he severely beat and slapped me, and then ordered the soldiers to put me in the jail. They also confiscated my property and my mobile. After an hour, somebody from the police interfered and tried to convince me to apologize to the officer to release me but I refused because I didn't do anything wrong to him, after that they release me with a pledge.”

Hamas openly threatens the media, and this is the reason why the world doesn't see the true picture from Gaza.

The Second Islamic Solidarity Games competition, meant to be held in Tehran and already postponed once, was canceled.

The reason?

Because Iran insists on using the term "Persian Gulf" while Arab countries, especially the Saudis who organize the competition, insist on calling it the "Arabian Gulf."

The Games were originally scheduled for October and were postponed partially over this very issue.

Isn't Islamic solidarity great?

Canada cuts funding to anti-Israel groups

I had missed this story (h/t jhrhv):

The Canadian government has recently decided to cut back or entirely withdraw the funding to organizations that encourage a boycott of Israel or Israeli products, including pro-Palestinian and Christian groups.

One such organization is the Kairos welfare agency, which lost $7 million – half of its annual budget. Kairos is a social apparatus serving 11 Catholic and Protestant groups and churches promoting the "liberation theology" within the Canadian legal and educational establishments.

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said that the agency's budget was cut back in light of its anti-Semitic positions, adding the group preaches for recognition of such terror organizations as Hamas and Hezbollah while rejecting the Jewish people's right for a state.

Kairos denied Kenney's claims and charged that the Canadian government's decision was motivated by political considerations. It further argued that criticism of Israel should not be regarded as anti-Semitism.

Another organization whose funds were cut back was the Canadian-Arab Federation, which provides aid for immigrants from Muslim countries. The claim against the group was that it promoted hatred and extremism. The Federation claimed in response that by withdrawing funds from its budget, the Canadian government is shunning Arab immigrants.

The Palestine House Educational (PHE), which has enjoyed $750,000 a budget in the last two years, has also been targeted by Canadian authorities.

Between this story and the last one, Canada is cool!

Canada moves money away from UNRWA

From the Philadelphia Bulletin:

A senior Canadian government official has briefed officials in Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the news of Canada’s decision to defund the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) which administers 59 refugee camps for Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents who left their homes in the wake of the 1948 war.

UNRWA maintains Palestinian Arab refugees in their facilities under the premise and promise of return to homes and villages from 1948 that no longer exist.

All other U.N. refugee camps around the world ascribe to the principles of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which mandates that a refugee has a right to be resettled in new conditions.

The Canadian government official who announced that Canada would now defund UNRWA cited a report commissioned by the European parliament, which documented that Hamas terrorists have been chosen by the UNRWA labor union to actually administer UNRWA facilities. The official said that this report played a role in Canada’s new policy towards UNRWA.

Canada heads the “Refugee Working Group (RWG),” a subgroup of the Middle East negotiation process which was established in the wake of the Madrid Middle East Summit in October 1991, to oversee Palestinian refugee policy for the 38 nations that contribute to UNRWA.

The fact that Canada has used its position as the head of the RWG to defund UNRWA will most likely not go unnoticed by the 38 countries that contribute to the half a billion-dollar UNRWA budget.

JTA adds:

Canada is not reducing the amount of money it gives to the Palestinian Authority, "but it is now being redirected in accordance with Canadian values," Toews said. The move "will ensure accountability and foster democracy in the PA."

In the past, Canadian aid earmarked for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, went into a general operating fund in the PA's treasury. The U.N. agency runs 59 Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

In a meeting in Ramallah, Toews refused a request by the PA's minister of planning and administrative development, Ali al-Jarbawi, for aid to be given "directly" to the PA treasury, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Among the projects receiving the redirected aid are those training prosecutors, judges and police, and shoring up the Palestinian judicial sector by building courthouses.

"If we train people properly, we will have the emergence of proper institutions necessary for a state," the Post quoted Toews as saying. "It is obviously more difficult to monitor the use of money sent into general funds than specific projects."

A statement from Toews' office said Canada is "on track" to deliver on its pledge of $300 million over five years to the PA.

Toews said Ottawa needed "to ensure that [the Palestinian Authority] has less wide discretion."

I'm not certain how funds that went straight to the PA made it to UNRWA anyway.

Either way, it is refreshing to see Western nations insist on accountability from the recipients of billions of dollars.

Which newspaper was hacked again?

The London-based Jewish Chronicle was hacked by a group that called itself "Palestinian Mujaheeds" over the weekend. The hackers left anti-semitic and anti-Zionist messages. Some called Jews the "killer of children" and called Jews "racists."

Note that the newspaper is not called the "Zionist Chronicle."

How many Gaza civilians were killed by Hamas rockets?

Palestine Press Agency reports that the house of Ibrahim Naji Sumairi was damaged by a Qassam rocket that fell short in the southern Gaza town of Qarara, and that his family was saved from a "certain death" by sheer luck. The rocket sprayed shrapnel all around the home.

Which brings up a question that the PCHR and B'Tselem and Goldstone did not try to answer: How many of the civilians killed in Gaza were actually killed by fire from Palestinian Arab armed groups? In the days before Cast Lead, two girls were killed in Gaza, and others were injured in separate rocket attacks.

These were not isolated incidents. In fact, in the month before Cast Lead began about 6% of the rockets fired landed in Gaza itself. During Cast Lead, some 800 Qassams were fired towards Israel, and the percentage that landed in Gaza itself is unknown, but we can safely assume that the number would have been even greater than 6% as the people launching the rockets were in a greater hurry than usual.

This indicates that between 40 and 50 rockets meant for Israel may have landed in Gaza itself, maybe more.

Every civilian killed by these rockets were counted as casualties of Israeli fire.

This does not include any civilians killed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad bullets, mortars or anti-tank missiles that were meant for the "Zionist enemy." Nor does it include those killed by secondary explosions from weapons caches purposefully placed in civilian areas.

No "human rights" organization cares enough to do the research and find out the details, though. It is much easier just to attribute all of these deaths to Israel and wash their hands of the issue.

This is what happens when truth is less important than furthering an agenda.

Details on Gaza strawberry and carnation exports

Ma'an sheds some light on the recent allowances for strawberry and flower exports from Gaza:

For export, two truckloads of strawberries will leave Gaza under the auspices of a program headed up by the Dutch government. The program supports strawberry and carnation farmers in the Strip, and as of 10 December secured permission from Israeli crossings officials for the regular export of both goods.

According to Consul General for the Netherlands in Jerusalem Jack Twiss Quarles van Ufford, the strawberries are transported to the French port of Marseilles, from where they enter French and German markets via three major grocery chains there.

Carnations, Twiss told Ma'an, are transported from the Tel Aviv to the Shipool Airports in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from where they travel by conveyor belt to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction, the largest flower auction house in the world.

There, Gaza carnations compete with other producer in the world market and are sold globally.

I wonder if the strawberries are labeled in the French and German supermarkets as having come from Gaza?

Iranian gov't buys software from...Israel?

From JPost (h/t Suzanne):

An Israeli IT company has sold an online business management system to the Teheran Chamber of Commerce.

Yehoshua Meiri, a spokesman for the Ramat Gan-based company DaroNet, said his company had sold Teheran's Chamber of Commerce more than 70 licenses providing for the use of DaroNet's signature business Web site management software.

The $1 million deal, signed last month at DaroNet's European headquarters in Belgium, involved a down payment of $200,000, to be followed by 10 payments throughout the year.

"The deal is signed and delivered," Meiri said. "They can't go back on it now."

Both direct and indirect trade between Israel and Iran is illegal in both countries.

Meiri said his company only realized it was selling the system to an Iranian entity when it was asked to translate the system into Farsi. The contract was signed with a European businessman from the Netherlands representing the Teheran Chamber of Commerce.

"Once we realized, we decided to lower our profile a bit on this issue," he said. "I have no idea if they know we are Israeli, but anyway the deal is done and they know now."

"Lots of Israelis do business with Iran," he added. "From cherry tomatoes to high tech, it's a $250m. trade."

Officials at the Teheran Chamber of Commerce denied knowledge of the deal.

"As far as I know, we have not bought anything from this company and our team has developed our own content management system," said Hassan Ramazani, director of the Chamber of Commerce's IT department. "But I must look into this matter and get back to you."

According to Germany's N-TV, which broke the story on Friday, says that many DaroNet employees are "ultra-orthodox" Jews in Elad, including 120 religious women.

The N-TV story also adds the intriguing claim that Tehran recently approached an Israeli firm to obtain detailed plans of Tehran's sewage system that Israel helped build under the Shah, as well as the fact that "plans of many large and public buildings in the Iranian capital are still lying in the archives of Solel Boneh, another Israeli company with international projects" that worked in Iran before the revolution.

According to another story, Daronet already had sales of its software to chambers of commerce in Jordan and Oman.

80 year old Saudi marries 11 year old girl

From Al Arabiya:

News of a Saudi octogenarian marrying an eleven-year-old girl has outraged human rights activists amid calls on the government to regulate the marriage of underage girls, local media reported Saturday.

The Saudi National Human Rights Commission formed a committee to investigate the marriage, which activists consider a flagrant violation of human and children rights, the Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh said.

The father, who took 85,000 riyals (more than $22,000) in dowry, defended his decision to marry off his 11-year-old daughter even though his wife vehemently objected.

"I don't care about her age," he told the paper. "Her health and her body build make her fit for marriage. I also don't care what her mother thinks."

The father added that marriage at such an early age has been a custom in the Saudi society for a very long time and that he saw no reason why it should be a problem now.

"This is a very old custom and there is nothing wrong with it whether religiously or socially."

On the other hand, the groom said that the father, who is also his cousin, was the one who offered him his daughter and that the mother was totally against the marriage.

"He told me 'I have a girl and she will marry no one but you,'" the groom told the paper. "So, we got the witnesses and summoned the registrar. I paid the dowry and we held the ceremony and that was it. "

The groom expressed his surprise at how the media leveled harsh criticism against him and his family for marrying the girl.

"It is very simple. We didn’t do anything wrong. It is a valid contract that meets all the conditions for marriage? What's the point of all this fuss?"

The groom has three other wives, all much younger, and they all have kids.

As for the bride, she just called for help as she burst into tears.

"Save me. I don't want him," she cried.

Israelis helping Haiti; Arabs mostly absent (corrected)

Religious ZAKA volunteers worked through Shabbat to save victims of the Haiti earthquake and managed to save 8 students from a collapsed building.

The IDF arrived in Haiti and managed to save one man after four days in the rubble:

So far, I have seen the following countries give aid to Haiti:

The United States, Canada, Ireland, Britain, France, Spain, Iceland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, Israel, Italy, the EU, China, Denmark, Venezuela, Germany, Mexico, Taiwan, and Cuba. Other reports include Belize, Brazil, Guiana, Japan, Morocco, Russia and Chile.

The only Arab country in that list is Morocco. The oil-rich Gulf states are certainly following the news from Haiti but their newspapers don't go beyond that with any news that I could find about offers to help.

CORRECTION: The YNet article I linked to did mention some people in Haiti from Jordan, Qatar and Egypt. (h/t Womble)

Al-Arabiya details tons of aid en route from Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Lebanon and Iran.

The LA Times blog mentions much aid coming from Arab countries, and notes the conspicuous absence of Saudi Arabia from the list. (h/t Suzanne)

UPDATE: The birth of a baby in Haiti named Israel: (h/t Suzanne again)

Book review: "The Strong Horse"

Lee Smith is a reporter, commentator, author and visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute. Immediately after 9/11, he flew to Egypt to find out "why the Arabs hate us."

His conclusion, after years of living in Cairo and Beirut, is not so much that Arabs hate the West as it is that their own sectarianism is the driving force behind their actions.

The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and the Clash of Arab Civilizations is a combination of memoir and analysis of his time in the Arab world since Al Qaeda's attack. The name of the book is based on a quote by Bin Laden, where he says "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."

Smith's book shows that this is close to the truth in the Arab world. While many Americans tend to support the underdog, Arabs will gravitate - not necessarily like, but gravitate - towards the stronger party.

Smith goes through the history of Arab sectarian violence. He convincingly shows that, to the Arab world, tribalism is still far more important than anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism. The hatred between the many players in the Middle East - Sunnis, Shiites, Salafis, Alawites, Maronites, and many others - is the driving agenda behind most Arab actions. His asides detailing the history of these groups are worth the cost of the book itself.

To Smith, the existence of despotic Arab regimes seems a necessary evil as the Arab world moves into an unknown future, a transition that is still being violently played out. If Syria and Egypt were not so heavy-handed in their treatment of the various Arab groups, the result would be - Lebanon.

It is indeed ironic that the most liberal Arabic-speaking country, the one that the West would think is the closest to a Western-style democracy, is also the most unstable and the possibly most dangerous. Smith believes that the imposition of a strong leadership in most Arab nations not only forces stability from without but also from within, as the Arab people themselves will tend to side with the group - the government - that shows the most power.

Smith tends to blur the differences between Arab thought and Islamism, seeming to put the latter is a specific form of the former, which is not quite true. His organization of the book is a little jumpy as well, and he ignores the Maghreb countries altogether. Nevertheless, his arguments are compelling if not altogether persuasive. For example, he meets with Natan Sharansky at the end of the book, and although much of his argument is that Sharansky is wrong and that the Arab world does not yearn for real democracy, he doesn't attack Sharansky's arguments head-on.

He also touches upon Israel's role as a de-facto strong horse, but doesn't go into much detail on the topic. His final chapter on Israel, meant to be the culmination of his argument, is disappointing.

However, there is no arguing with the fundamental theme of the book. In the days after 9/11, Al Jazeera - representing pan-Arab thought - lionized Bin Laden. As the US and Western allies marginalized went after Al Qaeda, though, Bin Laden's popularity has gone way down. No one is loving the West and they might rail against Western interference in Arab affairs, but their respect for the Western allies has certainly increased.

This attraction to being on the winning side is, in many ways, the real threat from Iran to the Middle East. Whether the US likes it or not, it has become a major player in the Arab world. Its only real counterbalance is Iran, whose leaders are keen on expanding their influence. If the US wavers in its commitment to its Arab allies - and even to Israel - Iran will gain an extraordinary victory.

I am not a big fan of US aid to Israel. I would prefer to see Israel be more economically independent, and freer to act in its own interests. Unfortunately, the truth is that if the US would "punish" Israel by even symbolically withholding aid, the reverberations throughout the Arab world would be far-reaching. If pro-US Arab governments would perceive that the US commitment to Israel's security was not as strong as it has been, they would be extraordinarily nervous about the US commitment to their own security. They would naturally want to look for other patrons to align with - and Iran is the only other game in town (since publicly allying with the Jewish state is unthinkable.)

The Middle East is a mess that many Americans naturally would like to abandon, but the downside of doing so would be catastrophic. Like it or not, America is the "strong horse," and it is not a role to be relinquished without serious thought about its consequences.

This may be the single most important lesson from Lee Smith's thesis.

Sunday Times: Iranian physicist killed by Tehran, not Israel

From the Sunday Times (UK):

An Iranian university professor killed last week by a blast from a remote-controlled bomb strapped to a parked motorcycle may have been the victim of an Arab hitman, according to opposition groups.
The murder of Masoud Ali Mohammadi, 50, a supporter of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition leader, has been blamed by the Tehran regime on “mercenaries” financed by Israel and Washington because of his role as a nuclear physicist.

However, opposition groups who monitor Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese movement, in Tehran, claim that a member of the group, known by his pseudonym “Abu Nasser”, was photographed at the scene of the explosion in Tehran’s affluent Gheytarih suburb.

A German-based opposition group released a photograph of a man of similar appearance who, it alleges, was one of the pro-regime demonstrators who stormed Mousavi’s office in Tehran after disputed presidential elections last June.
The opposition claims the Revolutionary Guard uses Hezbollah operatives for some bloodthirsty tasks because they have a reputation for ruthlessness, and are outsiders and can always be blamed as opposition sympathisers.

Tehran has gone to great lengths to suggest that Mohammadi was killed because he was a nuclear scientist, implying that he was part of Iran’s programme to develop nuclear weapons.

However, Majid Mohammadi, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Global Studies at Stony Brook University, New York, and also a friend, said: “He was not a nuclear physicist. He was just a physicist. I believe the Iranian [official] media highlight this word ‘nuclear’ to imply he was killed by the Israelis or Americans.”

Iran maintains close links with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, which it supplies with weapons and funds. Scores of Hezbollah officials are based in Tehran and, according to the opposition, are frequently used by the regime to crack down on its opponents.

Today's future martyr

Another in my continuing series of photographs of kids sent in to Firas Press by their proud parents....

The comments are universally filled with praise for the smiling future martyr.

Saturday night open thread

Social obligations are taking me away from my desktop, so now is a good time for an open thread. Not to mention to see if I can blog with my new phone.

Lots of bombs in Gaza lately

PCHR reports in a recent wave of bombings in Gaza:

The latest explosion took place at approximately 02:40 on Thursday, 14 January 2010, when unknown persons detonated a bomb near the entrance of a hardware store belonging to Sami Abdul Qader al-‘Ar’ir in al-Shojayea neighborhood in the east of Gaza City. As a result of the explosion, material damages were caused to the entrance of the store and to the glass windows of neighboring houses.

In a separate incident, at approximately 02:30 on Thursday, 14 January 2010, unknown persons detonated a bomb near the entrance of the “Friends Forum” billiard hall that belongs to Rabi’ Saleh Jaber in al-Nasser street in the north of Gaza city. The entrance of the hall was damaged and windows of neighboring houses crushed.

At approximately 20:10 on Wednesday, 13 January 2010, unknown persons detonated a bomb under a police vehicle while parking near al-‘Abbas police station in the west of Gaza City. The vehicle was badly damaged and no casualties were reported.

At approximately 05:00 on Wednesday, 13 January 2009, unknown persons detonated a bomb in a grey Skoda belonging to Mohamed Salam al-Ghussein while parking near his house in al-Daraj neighborhood, east of Gaza city. Heavy damages were caused to the car, but no casualties were reported. Al-Ghussein is a captain in the marine police.

But that's not all!

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 06:00 on Sunday, 10 January 2010, unknown persons detonated a bomb at the Khalil al-Rahman Pharmacy, which belongs to Shadia Farouq Abu Saqer and is located in Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. As a result, the door of the pharmacy and all glass windows inside were destroyed. The police initiated an investigation of the attack.

Earlier, at approximately 01:00 on Saturday, 09 January 2010, unknown persons detonated a bomb in a computer gaming cafe belonging to Hamed Saleem al-Dabbas in the Sheikh Hammouda area of al-Qarara village, northeast of Khan Yunis. The contents of the cafe, including 10 computers and their accessories, were destroyed. The police initiated an investigation into the attack.

In the same context, at approximately 19:15 on Wednesday, 06 January 2010, unknown persons detonated a bomb inside Tal al-Qamar coffee shop, which is located in the al-Maqqousi housing project in the north of Gaza City and belongs to Deeb al-Bal'awi and Rami al-'Ajrami. The coffee shop was damaged; police initiated an investigation into the attack.

Not sure if it is the Salafist or Al Qaeda groups flexign their muscles against people who aren't as Islamic as they are, or if Gazans are just bored and this is the easiest way to kill time.

Muslim logic

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published last Friday reproductions of the Mohammed cartoons by Kurt Westergaard, after a crazed Muslim tried to assassinate him last week.

Tehran's response shows the bizarre Muslim logic of who is to blame for violent behavior. In the words of Iran's Foreign Minister:

"Such blasphemous acts will not contribute to the establishment of world peace. They will only make the Norwegian government liable before the international community for failing to prevent provocative behaviors that are in violation of human rights."

The people who actually kill blasphemers are not responsible for their actions - only the governments have any responsibility, for allowing an excuse for crazed Muslims to exhibit murderous behavior.

Makes perfect sense!

Perhaps the best response comes from Westergaard himself, with this cartoon I had not seen before:

Ahmadinejad calls 9/11 "like a funny show"

From Reuters:

Ahmadinejad accused the West of seeking to dominate the Middle East, saying the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States were used as a pretext to gain dominance over the region.

"The September 11 incident was very suspicious and complex ... One could see it was like a funny show," Ahmadinejad said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Let's hope that there's an even funnier show occurring soon, and simultaneously, at Iran's nuclear facilities.

Islamic Jihad admits it gets money from Iran

Asharq al-Awsat interviewed Abu Ahmed, spokesman for Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades:

Abu Ahmed admitted that getting weapons into the Gaza Strip has become a difficult proposition, accusing some Arabs countries – who he refused to specify – and Israel, of cooperating to prevent the entry of weapons into the Gaza Strip. Abu Ahmed refused to disclose the state of the Islamic Jihad rocket stockpiles; however he did say that money and weapons reach the movement through "loyal sons of the nation."

Abu Ahmed confirmed that the majority of aid coming to the Islamic Jihad movement comes from individuals and organizations abroad, rather than states. He also said that Iran is the country that most aids the Islamic Jihad movement, saying "Our relationship with Iran is a relationship built upon mutual respect, like the rest of our relations with the resistance and opposition forces in all parts of the globe. Iran is the country that most supports the resistance in every place, not just Palestine. This is an honorable position, one that can be attested to by those near and far and that is why we respect and appreciate Iran."

Abu Ahmed described the Iranian support as being "first class financial support and it is directed specifically towards the families of martyrs, prisoners, and the injured and for charity projects."

Abu Ahmed refused to answer a question about whether Hamas gets more aid from Iran [than the Islamic Jihad movement], saying "I do not know [the answer] to this, I do not know how much Iran aids Hamas or other resistance forces."

Islamic Jihad has been described as "the Palestinian organization most loyal to the Iranian revolutionary ideology" even though it is Sunni, not Shiite.

Work accident!

From the English Al Qassam Brigades website:

Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas movement, mourned at dawn on Friday January 15th, 2010, one of its members who was martyred while performing a jihadi task in Deir Al Balah in central Gaza strip.

The Brigades confirmed in a military communiqué issued on Friday the martyrdom of the Mujahed Emad Sameer Al Salqawi (25) during his duty in the center of Gaza strip, noting that the Mujahed was martyred after a long path of jihad and sacrifice for the sake of their beloved Palestine.

As usual, the Arabic versions say that the terrorist was "wed."

There has been an increase in work accidents lately. In the past two months, I count nine terrorists who have been disappointed that there were no virgins for them where they went.

I count 20 deaths from such "work accidents" in 2009; there were 34 in 2008. We are up to 3 of them in 2010 already.

Mahmoud Abbas, drama queen

Mahmoud Abbas is really big on making big, dramatic statements that get headlines but are meaningless.

The most famous recent example was when he claimed he would not run for President again. He said this with the full knowledge that there will be no elections in the near future, and that the president of the PA is subservient to the chairman of the PLO - which just so happens to be Mahmoud Abbas. He has no intention of relinquishing power any time soon, but when he makes threats like these (and he has done it numerous times before) he gets headlines and a modicum of support from the Fatah faithful (for whom he is also the leader.)

Today, he came up with a new one. He told an Egyptian newspaper that it is possible that Israel will assassinate him, just like they assassinated Arafat. He compared himself to Arafat by saying that just like Arafat was a man of peace who signed agreements with Israel, so is he, and just like Israel killed Arafat, so might he be killed by Israel. But he believes in Allah so it's no biggie.

In the interview he also made the claim that 50% of the Jewish towns in the West Bank are empty.

Which brings up another thing he has in common with Arafat: he is a skilled liar.

(The claim that settlements are half empty reminds me of a speech given by the first head of the PLO, Ahmed Shukairy, in 1960 to the UN, where his proposal for peace was based on the idea that "There are now thousands and thousands of Jews who are clamouring to get out from this tyranny and misery which is called Israel, if they are only given an exit visa...When the alien Jews are allowed to quit the country, the situation will go back to normal." He actually claimed that Israel was preventing some half of its Jewish population from from leaving Israel. [And he compared Israel to the Nazis even then.])

Quick review of the Nexus One

Uncharacteristically, I bought the Google Nexus One phone without actually seeing it or waiting to see what problems other people have first. (This is mostly due to my wireless contract coming up and my desire to switch to T-Mobile anyway, where I save a lot of money using the family plan.) So this is my review after having it for a bit less than a day.

I already had an iPod Touch, so that is my main point of comparison.

So far, I think that the iPod has a better interface. Android isn't bad, but I miss multi-touch and sometimes the phone doesn't seem to register that I am touching the screen. The onscreen keyboard is almost as good as Apple's, but I don't seem to be able to type as quickly with it. Google has a much better system for guessing words, though.

I am indeed having the problems that others are complaining about with very spotty 3G coverage and the phone almost always goes to the very slow Edge network instead. I am assuming that Google and T-Mobile will get this squared away. (Junior Elder, who just got an older Android phone, is laughing at me as his is zipping along fine.)

The voice recognition is pretty nifty, but it requires a consistent Internet connection to work.

As I just discovered, I get zero coverage in the restroom at work, which is very frustrating (that is some of my best surfing time.)

Android Market is pretty good, but not nearly as complete as the Apple Store. for example, I couldn't find any free office automation apps.

The screen is gorgeous, but it attracts fingerprints.

Integration with Google applications (although not Google Apps) is pretty seamless. Google Talk, mail, contact lists and calendar work fine. It will automatically take the pictures from your Google contact list, which is cute. I was able to connect to other email sources, like an Exchange server, after a little playing. Yahoo Mail, for some reason, is not supported, but I downloaded a decent Yahoo browser app that makes it work well online. (I imagine Yahoo Mail Plus will work with POP.)

The battery seems to go low pretty quickly; I probably need to turn off some of the services to extend it. You need to be careful - if you keep Twitter on all the time, for example, that can suck out your battery quickly.

I am not a fan of iTunes, but I didn't like the interface to connect the internal MicroSD card to the computer. You have to "mount" the drive first, which seems silly, and I had problems accessing the files while it was plugged in to USB.

It uses a micro-USB cable, which is a bit of a pain.

The media player is competent but nothing spectacular. It can't play AVI files, for example (neither can the iPod, but I was hoping for better.) On the iPod I can change the size of the video display, but couldn't on the Nexus.

I love the form factor - it is only a little thicker than the iPod Touch and thinner than the iPhone. Don't have a good clip-on case for it, yet.

I still haven't gotten the GPS to pinpoint where I am, let alone get the supposed voice directions to work.

Still looking for a Siddur and the other Jewish texts I had on the iPod.

In short, it is not a bad phone, but not worth the amount I paid for it. Should have waited for the Nexus Two.

Israelis have 16,805 patents. Arabs have 836.

A Palestinian Arab researcher has written a study showing in stark terms Israel's technological edge over the combined Arab world.

Firas Press (Arabic) reports that Dr. Khalid Said, a Palestinian researcher from the Center for Informatics Research in Arab-American University in the West Bank, wrote a study comparing the scientific research and patents between Israel and all Arab countries.

Some of his findings:

[Research has] confirmed beyond reasonable doubt Israeli superiority in the field of science and technology to all Arab countries. Israeli universities have been centers are advanced at the global level by international classifications, especially the Hebrew University, which ranked 64 in the world, while no mention of any of the universities of the Arab League in the first five hundred.

There are nine Israeli scientists that have won Nobel Prizes, while the Arabs won 6 Nobels, three of them for political (not scientific) reasons.

Israel will spend on scientific research twice as much as the entire Arab world. The total amount spent in Israel on non-military scientific research is about 9 billion dollars, according to 2008 data.

Israel is spending 4.7% of its national output on research, and this represents the highest proportion of spending in the world, while Arab countries are spending 0.2% of their national income on research and the Arab States in Asia spend only 0.1% of their GDP on scientific research.

As for patents, the statistics are even more lopsided between the Arabs and Israel. Israel has recorded 16805 patents, while the Arabs as a whole have about 836 patents total, only 5% of the number of patents registered in Israel.

Just in 2008, Israel registered 1166 patents, more than all Arab states have done in history. [Arab nations had 71 patents in 2008. Luxembourg has more patents in history than the combined Arab nations.]

The article says that the number of research papers published between Israel and Arab nations is roughly equal, about 140,000 papers. However, the Israeli research is of a higher quality as judged by the number of times such research is cited by others, 1.7 million times versus Arab research being quoted 600,000 times.