Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Jews planting the 'Tree of Jews'. ALL OVER THE PLACE!

"Jews planting trees. An abomination! How are we ever going to find them?" or a similar thought must have gone through this forum contributor's head when he posted this:

"I would like to show you the trees of the Jews (al-Gharqad) and now they have increased their cultivation in the occupied areas (...)"

He then refers to the following Hadith:

“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews. The Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: ‘Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him;’ but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.”
(Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fitan wa Ashrat as-Sa'ah, Book 41, 6985)

And then he says:

"But few of us know the form of this tree."

Now you also know how the "Tree of the Jews" looks like. Go sit behind it. No need to worry.

Arab oil billionaires criticized in Arabic op-ed

Last month, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet started an initiative where the world's richest people would donate half their fortunes to charity.

They so far signed up some forty super-rich people to join this "Giving Pledge."

Pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds al-Arabi looked at this list and noticed one thing missing: Arabs.

Not only that, but the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, who ridiculed the entire idea, is an Arab - his father was a Maronite Christian.

Here is part of the scathing op-ed:

There is no accurate survey of the number of Arab billionaires and how rich they are, but there are several known names that emerge from time to time in the pages of foreign magazines that care about such things, some of them princes or kings or businessmen, not to mention the tens of thousands of millionaires. But we do know that that most of these are featured in the glossy magazines because their private jets are outfitted with gold faucets or toilets, or their luxury yachts moored in southern France or southern Spain, competing with each other on their length and number of rooms.

Even if they donated some of a few tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, these contributions are always done for PR, in front of an array of cameras that record this great event, and broadcast to dozens of television stations and newspapers that belong to the donor, which were established mostly for this purpose...

There are more wealthy Arabs than rich Americans, yet Westerners set aside a portion of their wealth to charity. Most of the Arab wealth is built up through illegal activities, or they got kickbacks for arms deals of weapons that have never been used...

The vast majority of Arab billionaires made their fortunes because of the massive corruption of the regimes that belong to, and lack of accountability, transparency, and the encroachment of looting public funds, or money laundering, or all of these methods combined.

We hear about the tens of millions were invested in the pornography channels but not about about the establishment or the construction of scientific or humanitarian cultural institutions.

More than half of the Arab world live under the poverty line, on less than two dollars a day, and we saw the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz visited the slums surrounding the city of Riyadh, the capital of the richest oil state in the world, showing misery in the ugliest forms and manifestations, and in a manner can is unbelievable.

If we went to sister Arab countries such as Yemen, which occupies a prominent place on the list of the twenty poorest countries in the world, we find that hunger and disease is the common denominator for the vast majority of citizens, and all they get from their brothers are crumbs.

Meanwhile, foreign billionaires pledge half of their wealth to charity, wealth ways that they earned legitimately as the result of their creativity, and they paid taxes to the coffers of their country, under a strict, transparent accounting system - yet they did not hesitate to commit to helping the needy and the vulnerable not in their country only, but in all around the world, without distinction or discrimination.

Do not begrudge our millionaires, and do not be surprised if we say just the opposite: we feel for them when they live in mansions or yachts or private jets, isolated from humans, in lives of plastic with no taste or smell, surrounded by a group of hypocrites and hangers-on.

We write this essay on the occasion of holy month of Ramadan, the month of mercy and blessing and sacrifice, when we need to help the poor and disadvantaged. We are not preachers, but we are ringing a bell to awaken the public conscience of the sleepers, and remind them of the minimum level of their duties.

Stoning 101 (Slate)

Slate has a helpful article on what exactly is involved when women adulterers are stoned in Iran. Sort of like a "Stoning for Dhimmis."

First, you get buried. Iran's Islamic Penal Code states that men convicted of adultery are to be buried in the ground up to their waists; women, up to their chests. If the conviction is based on the prisoner's confession, the law says, the presiding judge casts the first stone. If the conviction is based on witness testimony, the witnesses throw the first stones, then the judge, then everyone else—generally other court officials and security forces. Stones must be of medium size, according to the penal code: Not so big that one or two could kill the person, but not so small that you would call it a pebble. In other words, about the size of a tangerine. The whole process takes less than an hour.

Something to think about the next time Ahmadinejad declares that Iranians have superior human rights to Westerners.

(h/t Israeligirl)

Nasrallah's "evidence" that Israel murdered Hariri is a joke - but....(UPDATED)

Yesterday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah went on TV for two hours, trying to spin a convoluted case that Israel was behind the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

The most interesting parts of his speech were where he said that Hezbollah had captured an Israeli drone in 1997, and they managed to analyze it in order to capture IDF surveillance footage.

"The secret I want to reveal tonight is that before 1997, Hezbollah was able to catch an Israeli spy plane photographing South Lebanon and sending them to an Israeli operations center," Sayyed Nasrallah went on to say.

"Before 1997, the Resistance managed to capture the transmission of an MK drone and we managed to access this transmission which enabled us of capturing the images transmitted by the drone as the enemy's operation room was receiving them," Hezbollah Secretary General explained.

"The capturing of the MK drone images by the Resistance's operation room led to the foiling of the enemy's amphibious assault on Ansariyeh on September 5, 1997," Hezbollah Secretary General revealed, before showing details of the Ansariyeh operation and explaining how this tactic helped the Resistance fighters foil the Israeli attempt.

He showed what looks like convincing aerial video footage of that failed 1997 assault.

Al Manar has the speech on video here.

Then he goes on to say that Hezbollah continued to capture video from Israeli drones up through at least 2005, and this footage supposedly shows that Israel was surveying the route that Rafik Hariri took when he was killed.

Hezbollah Secretary General then turned to the most sensitive part of the press conference: tangible proof showing the Israeli enemy carefully monitoring the movements of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and his locations.

In this regard, Sayyed Nasrallah unveiled footage intercepted from Israeli surveillance planes of the site of the 2005 murder of ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri prior to his assassination.

"Israeli drones had carefully monitored the movements of Hariri's motorcade in Beirut and on the Farayya-Faqra road," Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out. "Was that a coincidence?" his eminence wondered. "Such footage generally comes as the first leg of the execution of an operation."

Several clips, each minutes long and undated, showed aerial views of the coastline off west Beirut on various days prior to the Hariri assassination. "Are there any Hezbollah offices in these areas monitored by Israel? Why is Israel monitoring these locations?" Sayyed Nasrallah wondered.

The videos are undated, so if Hezbollah did capture drone videos for years then they pretty much have aerial video from the IDF over all of Lebanon. Nasrallah does make a convincing case that certain turns in a specific roads that Hariri supposedly used were videoed from various angles.

Nasrallah also claimed to have evidence of exactly when Israeli planes were over Beirut on the day that Hariri was assassinated, and that an Israeli spy was in the area.

That's pretty much his evidence.

The evidence was far from convincing for at least some in Lebanon:

Commenting on the evidence that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah presented during his 2 + hours press conference Elias Zoghbi told “BBC:” What has Nasrallah presented was a political case . This is not the kind of concrete and convincing evidence that we expected from him that will prove Israel was behind Hariri’s murder. Nasrallah ’s presentation was interesting …. he acted like a news anchor ”

What I have not yet seen from Israel is any confirmation or denial that, for what may be years, Hezbollah was able to intercept Israeli drone transmissions. Clearly what Nasrallah showed indicated that Hezbollah captured video from multiple drones over a period of time. Some of the footage was in color.

This would be an outrageous security failure on the part of the IDF. It is not difficult to encrypt transmissions in such a way that they would be virtually unbreakable. If the IDF didn't change their methods of transmission or their encryption after the 1997 drone capture, someone should be fired.

UPDATE: See the comments. Apparently Israel radio is speaking about this; one IDF general says that Nasrallah's claims might be true, others seem to be denying it.

UPDATE 2: Apparently, you can intercept sensitive stuff yourself for $26 plus your satellite dish. Again, if this was known since the 1990s, why would transmissions remain unencrypted? (h/t Pesach)

The popular Tunisian singer Saleem Bakkoush has been forced to cancel a concert at the annual Carthage festival, after a video surfaced showing him performing at a synagogue.

Mr Bakkoush accused his rivals of publishing the tape to tarnish his reputation.

Tunisia is one of only two Arab states with a sizeable Jewish community.

But pro-Palestinian sentiments remain strong and the country has no diplomatic ties with Israel.

It's merely anti-zionism of course... nothing to do with anti-Semitism.... right?

Anti-Israeli sentiment in Tunisia - especially in cultural and artistic circles - was already running high following the emergence of another remarkable tape.

It showed another popular singer, Mohsen El Sharif, performing at the wedding of a Jewish couple of Tunisian origin in Israel.

What angered people most in Tunisia was Mr El Sharif's readiness to please the Israeli public by shouting "Long Live Netanyahu", referring to the Israeli prime minister.

He later tried to defend his action by saying that he thought that was the bridegroom's name.

The Other Side, part 3

The video series of Jews from Judea and Samaria continues.

This one interviews people familiar to the Jewish and Zionist blogosphere: Yisrael Medad of My Right Word, and his wife Batya of Shiloh Musings fame. They're not quite "typical" revenants, as Yisrael likes to refer to Jews of the area, but they speak English well and are articulate.

The project now has a website: http://www.theothersidevideo.com/

Latest Latma

I liked this one.

New video of Gazan suffering, starvation and prison-like conditions

Middle East News Watch captured an Israeli Channel 10 report on both the Crazy Water Park that we mentioned last week and the Al Mat-haf Museum and Restaurant we blogged about in late July.

Both of these torture chambers are in the prison camp known as Gaza.

I know it is hard to watch all these videos. I understand how many people want to turn away and pretend that these unspeakable places don't exist. But the world must be forced to see the suffering of the Gazans for themselves; the screams of the children frantically sliding down the long, cramped tube into the Waters of Hell will haunt you forever.

Brace yourself. It's ugly.

ITIC releases report on Lebanon incident

The ITIC released a report on the incident last week, with a little new information, some good background and some new analysis, including confirmation of my source's map showing the location of the IDF crane and where the officers were shot.

(h/t Joel)

PalArabs: "Frozen in time, addicted to pity"

An astonishingly good piece in the National Post (Canada):

Refugees? Canadians, even if their families have lived here for centuries, know something about refugees. We know Hungarians, we know Vietnamese, we know many others. We admire their energy and their accomplishments. Observing them can be a bracing lesson in human tenacity under adverse circumstances.

But that pattern doesn't cover Palestinian refugees. They are a special case. For many reasons, various populations across the planet are displaced; only the Palestinians cling to their "refugee" status decade after decade. They present themselves as helpless victims of Israeli aggression. They await rescue-- as they have been awaiting it for three generations, since Israel was founded in 1948. Members of other history-battered groups choose to live by an urgent ethic: Get up, get going, make a new life. Palestinians have a different approach: Sit down, wait, stay angry till the world provides for you.

Andrew Roberts, a much-admired British historian, raised the issue of Palestinian refugees in a speech excerpted in the National Post on Tuesday. He argued, correctly, that Arab governments "are rich enough to have economically solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago." The 5,000 or so members of the Saudi royal family could probably handle it by themselves.

Why haven't they done so? They much prefer to let Palestinians remain poor. Every wretched, ill-fed and ill-housed Palestinian can be used as a living rebuke to Israel.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Israel Matzav)

Der Spiegel notices Hamas infighting. Then it calls some of them "peaceful."

Der Spiegel (German only) has an interesting article about Hamas infighting. It starts off with some interesting facts, but then turns into a joke.

A young man whose body was found in a Rafah tunnel last year - it may have been this one - seems to have been murdered by Hamas and dumped there. The man was a whistleblower of Hamas corruption, but his problem with Hamas was that they had abandoned their Islamist roots, not that they were too extreme:

But his death is only one of many unsolved cases in which Hamas is accused of having executed dissidents from their own ranks. Human rights activists in the Gaza Strip, who wish to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the subject, speak of dozens of incidents in which such allegations are raised: "It is almost impossible to prove it, because Hamas covered up these cases."

The rulers of the Gaza Strip seem to purge people in their own ranks and prominent members are not spared. Munir [the man mentioned above], for example, was a major arms purchaser for the organization - a fact that his father admits with pride, but also with additional rage. "It is for them he traveled all over the world; he went for them to Iran, Syria, Ireland. And because he wanted to ensure that the pure doctrine of Hamas is not distorted, they have killed him."

There is a reason why Hamas seems to employ brutal violence to silence critics within its own ranks: Three years after coming to power, many radical Islamists in the Gaza Strip are turning away from their support in droves. Both the moderate and the extreme members of the organization are disappointed, and discontent is spreading on both the right and the left.

YNet also reports on these developments:

News stories about bodies found at sea are occasionally published by Gaza newspapers. The number of such bodies isn't huge, yet not all those drowning victims chose to go swimming voluntarily. The Gazans who found their death at sea include mid-level officials at sensitive government ministries, the Interior Ministry for example, alongside police and security officers.

Some of them were shot in the head before being sent on their swim.

There is a common denominator to these deaths: All of the victims were designated as traitors by the secret service of Hamas' military wing in charge of counter-espionage and executed as collaborators.

And these are not just simple collaborators, but rather, people who penetrated deep into Hamas' government; so deep that Hamas leaders are embarrassed to expose the failure and prefer to make these people disappear, with or without a brief court-martial.

Gaza's streets are teeming with rumors. Stories of people who disappeared at sea or elsewhere stay on the agenda. The whole of Gaza, as if amok-stricken, takes part in the hunt. Posters urging a war on collaborators hang in the streets; the issue is discussed on the radio and during sermons at mosques. In the upcoming school year, the topic will be added to the curriculum, with Gaza children learning about the dangers inherent in collaborators. Teachers will be asked to explain what good, suspicious children do: Turn in their parents.

This huge manhunt is not a sign of strength, says a senior Israeli security official – the opposite is true. These are clear signs of distress for Hamas' regime.

While YNet gives a decent analysis, the Der Spiegel article then descends into farce:

"The party split into hawks and doves," said Sajed Abu Musameh, one of the seven founders of Hamas and one if the more moderate critics of the movement. Many men of his generation had grown up with Jews, says the 63-year-old, who is still a member of the party leadership. Many of these elders believed in peaceful coexistence, not to the power of rockets and suicide attacks. "But the party is now influenced by the young radicals, they represent the majority of the members, our leaders say what they want to hear."

This is patently absurd. The early leaders of Hamas were not moderate by any measure - they gained prominence in direct proportion to the grisliness of their attacks on Jews. They are the ones who drafted the anti-semitic and genocidal Hamas Charter. Now we are hearing that they believe in peaceful co-existence?

The truth is that the Hamas leadership now has something to lose, and their newfound "moderation" is a direct consequence of them not wanting to lose power. Their suppressing of rocket fire is a function of fear, not moderation. That the younger generation, raised on a diet of calls to jihad, notices the hypocrisy is understandable - but it does not mean that the elders are any less extreme, just that they are somewhat wiser and more patient in how to achieve their goals.

To put the words "peaceful co-existence" and "Hamas" in the same sentence shows how far Western journalists have fallen. The only Israelis who would have that same sentence applied to them by the media would be the extreme Left, and the implicit equalization of the two is a major problem in the media. The fact is that "Hamas moderation" is an oxymoron, and using relative terms as absolute terms for both sides is one of the biggest distortions of truth that the world has been exposed to for many years.

Any unbiased look at the situation would show that the most extreme Israelis are more moderate in their goals than the most "moderate" Hamas members. The fact that this is not self-evident to the majority of the world audience shows the huge gap between what journalists report and reality.

(h/t Silke)

Ahmadinejad is a 9/11 "Truther." What a surprise.

From the JC:

The Iranian president has accused “Zionists” of knowing about the September 11 terror attacks in advance and reiterated his denial of the Holocaust.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a conference in Tehran that no “Zionists” were killed in the World Trade Center, because "one day earlier they were told not to go to their workplace".

Five Israelis were killed when the two planes were flown into the Twin Towers in 2001.

Mr Ahmadinejad also claimed that there were no reports that revealed the names of the around 3,000 victims.

He also said that in the aftermath of September 11 the United States and the media “created and prepared public opinion so that everyone considered an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq as [their] right.”

Nah, he's just a harmless crackpot. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The Onion on how to reduce stress

The Onion takes a darkly satiric stab at closet haters of a certain kind:

Overcome Stress By Visualizing It As A Greedy, Hook-Nosed Race Of Creatures

In the discussion group I saw this on, some thought that it was too offensive and that viewer wouldn't get it. But as a fan of The Onion, I'm pretty convinced that this is spot-on.

(h/t YM)

The mystery of Adaisseh, Lebanon

Last week's ambush of Israeli soldiers happened outside the village of Adaisseh, Lebanon.

It just so happens that I have seen that village once.

Last December, I went on a blogger's tour of the northern border of Israel sponsored by the IDF. I mentioned then that the Lebanese village we saw just across the border was being observed by the IDF day and night.

And what they didn't observe was more interesting than what they did see.

In a normal town, one would see children, cars, school buses, playgrounds and other indications of family life.

Yet in this village, there was none of that. The vast majority of vehicles in this village were trucks, entering and exiting.

The IDF told us that what we were seeing was, essentially, a giant weapons storehouse pretending to be a Lebanese village.

I hadn't realized until now that the village was Adaisseh (thanks to Israel Matzav for reminding me.)

Is is a coincidence that the place that the Lebanese army decided to attack Israel from was a fake Hezbollah village?

UPDATE: Here is a video of either Adaisseh or a similar Hezbollah village without people:

There was a brief kerfuffle as some UNIFIL troops from Indonedia abandoned their posts as soon as shooting started, and ran away to a nearby village. This was captured on video:

According to a story in an Indonesian newspaper quoting Al Manar, they took a taxi to this town.

It sure doesn't look like they went to Adaisseh, which would be the logical place to go (and was easily within walking distance.) This seems to indicate that the UNIFIL troops know very well what Adaisseh is all about, and they act as impotently as these Indonesian UNIFIL soldiers did.

For those who want to continue to analyze the event, this footage from a different Indonesian source seems to be different from what we had already seen before. Of course, the snipers who shot first were not with the UNIFIL troops or the camera operators.

Abbas wants a Judenrein Palestine

From the excellent Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, writing in YNet last week:

The Palestinians intend to demand the implementation of the UN resolution regarding refugees, from a Palestinian perspective, which gives the 5.5 million refugees and their descendants the right of return and to settle in the State of Israel. In his briefing to the Egyptian media, Abbas presented this strategy and denied the Jewish character of Israel. He maintains that Israel should, in fact, become a bi-national state, but on the other hand that Palestine must become a state “clean” of Jews.

The term “Israeli” used by Abbas means “Jew,” as the PA sees Israeli Arabs, Muslims and Christians alike as an integral part of the Palestinian people. The future State of Palestine, according Abbas, must resist any Jewish presence in its territory. In other words, the PA embraces a racist policy – Palestinian apartheid – directed at Jews, based on denial of Jewish history and the cultural and religious linkage of the Jewish people to the land.

The anti-Semitism embodied in Abbas’ words refers also to his position towards the NATO observers’ force that may be deployed in the West Bank to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement with Israel. He is opposed to Jews being included in this force; meaning, he will ask Germany and all other partner countries in NATO to use their own forces in the West Bank, in an effort to the exclude any Jewish soldiers.

He didn’t explain how these countries would determine who is a Jew, whether according to orthodox Jewish laws or just if one of the parents or grandparents was a Jew. But even Saudi Arabia didn’t dare oppose the deployment of American Jewish soldiers on its land during operation Desert Storm (1990-1), and no one in Israel ever demanded to disqualify Muslim soldiers from serving in the international observers’ forces in Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Sinai.

The racist language used by Abbas is particularly despicable as it doubts the loyalty of the Jews to their country. It is for this reason that his comments call for a firm Israeli and European response.

Note: Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency published on July 28 its version of Abbas’ briefing to the Egyptian media, quoting him as saying: “I'm willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as NATO forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the NATO forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land”. This version was reprinted by Palestinian newspapers al-Quds and al-Hayat al-Jadida on July 30 and by other Arab newspapers.

A few days later Wafa published a new version of Abbas’ interview to the Egyptian media, where he was quoted as saying: “We have no objection to the presence of a third party after the (Palestinian) state is established, and we don’t oppose that the third party will be NATO or any other force. However, I will not agree that an Israeli, even if he is a Muslim, will be present on my land, but I’ll agree only (to the presence) of a third party. The reason for that is stemmed in the fact that the Israeli is the heir of the occupation, while the presence of the third party is temporary as are the Multinational Forces in your country (Egypt) and UNIFIL in Lebanon.”

I could not find the original WAFA piece - neither their archive nor their search functions work.

The earliest place I could find the earlier, racist quote was July 29's Palestinian Media Center, quoting WAFA. My interpretation of the autotranslation is:

I am willing to accept the existence of a third party after the solution, such as forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and will not accept that Jews be a part of NATO troops, and I will not accept one Israeli to live among us in the Palestinian territory.

Egypt's Al Ahram had identical wording on July 30th, although it is not clear if they were at the briefing of Egyptian journalists or not.

UPDATE: Abbas, not surprisingly, denies these reports through a spokesman who says that it was only the American media that reported his anti-semitic diatribe. Well, as I have shown, it was reported widely in the Arabic media, and no one seemed to be too upset about it. (h/t Suzanne)

Follow-up on Arabs visiting Jerusalem

When I posted yesterday about the resistance in the Muslim world to visiting Jerusalem, I had missed a central conflict on that issue.

My post update showed that an Egyptian minister of religious endowments Zaqzouq is indeed asking Muslims to visit Jerusalem to strengthen ties to the city. What I didn't realize is that this is part of a month-long dispute between Zaqzouq and influential Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, who reacted to Zaqzouq's similar call last month with an explicit fatwa against any such visits. Here is a reproduction of an Al Quds al Arabi editorial about the issue last month:

Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, has constantly espoused a position opposed to the pro-sultan preachers, defending resistance and sacrifice of life for the sake of the nation's causes, faith, and rights, consistently guided by the Holy Koran, Prophet Muhammad's tradition, and the life of the Prophet's companions.

The other day, Dr Al-Qaradawi issued a firm fatwa condemning the calls sanctioning visits to Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem under occupation, regarding such calls as disgrace, proscribed by the Islamic shari'ah, and legitimize the occupation forces. This fatwa came in response to a statement by the Egyptian Awqaf Minister, Hamdi Zaquq, in which he said that he is interested in getting a visa to visit occupied Jerusalem and that his visit constitutes "a great support for the Palestinian cause and people."

The Egyptian awqaf minister represents a ruling regime that has established close ties with Israel on all political, economic, and diplomatic levels. This regime exports gas to the Hebraic State at a very cheap price and imposes an oppressive blockade on two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in cooperation with the Israeli government. As such, it is only natural that he should see nothing wrong in travel to occupied Jerusalem and to put on record a precedent encouraging others to follow suit.

Regrettably, Dr Zaqzuq sticks to his position, desperately defending it and not hesitating to announce that he will visit occupied Jerusalem upon getting the necessary visa from the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. He denies that his step is within the framework of normalization of ties with Israel. This insistence on normalization of ties by the Egyptian awqaf minister comes at a time when the Coptic Pope, Shanudah, refuses to permit his church parishioners to visit occupied Jerusalem despite the enormous pressure on him by the Egyptian government, which reached the point of supporting calls to rebel against him and foment divisions among the followers of his church.

We in Al-Quds al-Arabi back Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi's fatwa which incriminates all calls for and all forms of normalization of ties with Israel as long as the territories remain under occupation and face continued grabbing by the successive Israeli governments, which reject peace and continue to commit war crimes in the Gaza Strip and in south Lebanon.

Visits to the occupied territories by Muslim religious clerics and senior officials will only serve to legitimize the Israeli occupation and give a misleading picture to the world about Israel's tolerance towards other religions at a time when it Judiazes Arab mosques and churches in the holy city, undermines the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and implements plans to partition it, if not, in fact, it is seeking to demolish it by the excavations under its foundations.

So in fact Zuqzouq is way outside the mainstream of the Muslim world when he says that Muslims should visit Jerusalem. Qaradawi has a huge following.

Of course, the irony is that the leader of the Palestinian Arab Waqf also wants Muslims to visit Jerusalem. PA waqf minister Mahmoud Habash just released a statement saying that Qaradawi's fatwa plays into the hands of the "occupation."

Here is yet one more example where the Arab world will actively oppose doing what Palestinian Arabs want them to do - and they say they are doing it to help Palestinian Arabs! This fatwa helps isolate the PalArabs from their supposed brethren and it is meant to perpetuate the status-quo of millions of Palestinian Arabs in misery.

It reminds one of the Arab League's first act, to declare a boycott against Palestinian Jews back in 1946, a move bitterly opposed by the Palestinian Arabs of the day - yet the ones who broke the boycott ended up getting targeted themselves, many fatally. But it was all done in "solidarity" with the people who bear the brunt of that decision.

The Western world still cannot wrap their heads around the fact that Arabs have been the ones treating Palestinian Arabs like dirt for over six decades. The intra-Arab hate gets lost in the blinding brightness of their loathing of Jews/Zionists, so clueless Westerners think that Arab nations really stand in solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs.

In fact, they are the ones who are the architects of Palestinian Arab misery, and they have been for a long, long time.

A small example of self-censorship in Gaza

The Palestinian Arab Ma'an website has a short article:

Relations between Hamas and Islamic Jihad are "not tense at all," a Hamas spokesman said Monday.

Sami Abu Zuhri told journalists that the relationship between the two Islamist movements "is strategic. We believe there are stable relations with Islamic Jihad at the highest levels."

The spokesman said his movement consults Islamic Jihad on matters related to "the Palestinian people's interest, and there is field coordination between the movements as efforts to develop better relations are ongoing."

The Hamas official's comments follow a dispute between combatants affiliated to both movements.

The supposed news site, which Western journalists rely on, never had an article describing what the dispute between the movements was to begin with.

In reality, as I mentioned yesterday, there was a short but significant gunbattle between the two last Thursday as well as other recent incidents.

But Ma'an is loathe to report on anything that might anger Hamas, and has been since the Hamas coup when their offices were "visited" by the terror group in charge. Since then, the only time you can see any stories like this are when Hamas officially comments on the story - which they were forced to do because pro-Fatah Arabic newspapers, based out of the West Bank, did not face the same fear and reported about the incidents.

One can assume that Western reporters in Gaza share the same fear that Ma'an does, and would not report anything that makes Hamas look bad.

I've seen this scenario happen often, where the first time various stories get reported is when Hamas issues a statement.

In the end, Hamas ends up having nearly full control over the story. Westerners remain clueless of the real situation in Gaza, instead relying on "eyewitnesses" who are given guided tours of parts of Gaza by people with their own agendas and who spout off statistics that may or may not be accurate, but are invariably believed.

The irony is that Hamas will respond to media reports, as this story illustrates. But since Western reporters are too scared and lazy to challenge Hamas in any way, Hamas gets a free pass in English. In short, the Western media - which should be a watchdog and hold leaders accountable for their actions - is happy to ignore totalitarian leaders in cases such as these, in order to protect themselves and in order to keep their own false memes of Gaza alive.

The Other Side: The Jews of Judea and Samaria, part 2

Part 2 of this new series has just gone up. This one is interesting because the woman being interviewed is nothing like the stereotype of the "typical settler" - she is Israeli, she is secular, and yet her love of the land and her ties to her people are no less strong than for religious Jews.

Let's look at some real humanitarian catastrophes (Zvi)

From Zvi:

Iraqi civilians murdered in 2010:
* Jun 2010: 353
* May 2010: 370
* Apr 2010: 376

* first 6 months of 2010: 1965
* 2009: 4645
* 2008: 9221
* 2007: 24599
* 2006: 27767
...

Remember that as the UN investigates Israel for having soldiers who are not willing to be beaten to death by jihadi paramilitaries disguised as "peace activists." There has never been a UN investigation of the brutal terrorist slaughter of literally thousands civilians in Iraq by terrorists trained in Syria and armed by Iran. Why not? A former Iraqi defense minister referred to the Syrian border as the Gate of Darkness. But who cares about thousands of dead Iraqis? The UN needs to spend its time conducting MULTIPLE investigations of Israel, because a bunch of paramilitaries attacked Israeli soldiers.

In a similar vein, 4.3 million southern Sudanese need food aid, according to the UN. The World Food Program needs 500 million dollars, it says, to feed starving Sudanese.

Remember that the next time you read about someone making massive efforts to send wholly unnecessary supplies to Gaza.

"One Mean Jewish Settler"

Silke, in a comment to my last post about the real life of so-called "settlers," linked to an excellent post from a new blog called West Bank to West End.

Here's a small part:

The paradox is that some people only seem to like you once you become mean. A good case in point is the groups of German journalists, politicians and lecturers who are brought to Israel by their government and after having met a wide range of Israeli leaders and experts, come to Maale Adumim to meet settler Judah Ben-Yosef.

I began working for the German government (occasionally) about four years ago. I had no illusions that after two weeks of careful brain-washing by Arab spokesmen and far worse the Israeli Left wing, my two hours wouldn’t go a long way towards changing many minds. I am a chess player, so I defined for myself what I considered to be three realistic, realizable goals:

To physically show them the size of a 40,000 man strong city. I hoped this would go some way to denting the stereotype of the two tents, a goat and a flag Jewish settlement.

To demonstrate that historically Maale Adumim has never been part of any kind of Palestinian or Arab state, that nobody besides us and a few 13th century monks have ever lived here and that geographically there are plenty of other barren mountaintops.

To demonstrate that we are not all religious Right-wing fanatics (like me) but that the population of Maale Adumim contains a cross-section of Israeli citizens Religious, Secular and others; new immigrants and old-timers, Right, Center and even some Left-wingers.

My main objective is to try to dent stereotypes. I believe that when an intelligent person realizes that many of the stereotypes he’s been sold are incorrect, he or she may begin to question them all. This might lead to researching the subject more thoroughly, which in turn even affect some change in opinions.

In many ways it’s the first few minutes that will determine to what extent the tour influences each person. They all look out the windows and see a picturesque, peaceful, modern, well-run Western city. This sight is invariably the exact antithesis of everything they’ve been taught to expect. When stereotyping clashes with reality there is an immediate state of shock, or even crises. In very broad terms one can talk about three characteristic responses:

Some choose to look in the directions of the surrounding mountains rather than at the city. They will henceforth prefer to focus on the “bigger picture” having understood that they know precious little about the “details”

There are those who honestly seem to believe that Maale Adumim is some kind of clever scam that the Israeli government is running to trick visitors like themselves. “Everything here looks fine, but what about the real settlers? Why aren’t you all carrying guns? Is that a Bible?”

Occasionally I come across intellectually honest individuals who absorb what they are being told and ask questions not to try to catch me out, but because they really want to know. Surprisingly, two groups that stand out in this category are journalists from former East Germany and a group of German, Moslem journalists and lecturers.

Read the whole thing.

The Other Side: The Jews of Judea and Samaria

Israel Matzav links to a video that appears to be the beginning of an entire series about the "settlers," the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria. The video series is meant to show how these people really live and think, in contrast with how they are portrayed in the media.

Here is part 1, interviewing a grandmother who lives in Bet El who doesn't quite fit the profile of a wild-eyed, gun-toting, Arab-hating settler living on a caravan on a mountaintop that we are so used to seeing:

Libya imposing restrictions on local Palestinians

Libya has implemented a program of taxing all of its Palestinian Arab residents.

According to Al Jazeera (Arabic), Palestinian Arabs in Libya are now forced to pay an annual fee of up to $1550, and they have to endure a host of new humiliations as well.

PalArabs have been banned from working in various jobs, including education. Relatives cannot visit them. Those who own cars are being taxed for more money than their monthly salaries. Travel documents are expiring and not being renewed, yet the Arab League does not allow Palestinian Arabs from obtaining passports from the countries they have lived in all their lives.

Residents note bitterly that all this is happening while Libya made a big show of sending a ship of aid to Gaza.

All of this is in contradiction with Libyan Law #10 of 1998 which was supposed to grant somewhat equal rights to Palestinian Arabs in that country.

(h/t Ali for help with translation)

Gaza power plant shuts down - again, not because of Israel

Once again, Gazans are forced to suffer:

A day after Gaza's sole power plant shut down, the Palestinian Authority said it would deduct 25 percent from salaries to cover rising electricity bills.

Palestinian media Sunday reported the Palestinian Ministry of Finance would reassess the situation in September.

On Saturday, power plant officials in Gaza said the shutdown was due to a fuel shortage caused by the Palestinian Authority's refusal to ship sufficient fuel into the coastal enclave for the latest crisis.

Palestinian media said the latest shutdown is the third since January.

A Gaza Power Authority statement said it held Ramallah's finance ministry accountable, because "the government in Ramallah has not paid for industrial diesel, as agreed with the delegation of independent figures who visited Gaza recently," Maan reported.

AP adds:

Gaza's rulers, the militant Islamic group Hamas, are meant to collect utility bills and send the cash to their rivals, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which use it to buy the fuel.

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib says Hamas isn't sending enough money, and on average, they were receiving only $1.3 million a month from the distribution company, while they were paying $9 million for the fuel.

"We need some transparency here. There has to be some kind of audit," Khatib said.

Yet reporters never seem to blame the Palestinian Arab leadership for Gaza's woes. That seems to be exclusively Israel's fault.

Hating Israel more important to Arabs than Jerusalem is (updated)

How important is Jerusalem to Arabs?

While we are bombarded with propaganda about how central Jerusalem is to Muslims and Arabs, one of the striking ironies of the Middle East is that the Arabs who have an opportunity to visit Jerusalem are actively discouraged from doing so.

A few months ago, the Egyptian head of Al Azhar University stated that even though there is no political obstacle stopping Egyptians from visiting Jerusalem, he refuses to do so.

At about the same time, the Egyptian Olympic soccer team announced plans to play a friendly match with a Palestinian Arab team near Jerusalem - and then were forced to cancel that trip, under heavy criticism from Egypt for even considering doing something like this - even to help Palestinian Arab morale.

Soon thereafter, a popular Saudi TV preacher announced that he would broadcast a show from Jerusalem - and then he also quickly changed his mind under withering criticism from his colleagues.

Now, a Jordanian trade union has announced that Jordanians should not visit Jerusalem, even for religious purposes. Such visits, they say, fall under unacceptable "normalization" and should be fought against.

All of these proposed trips were to either be pilgrimages to Muslim holy places, or to help out Palestinian Arabs who feel isolated from even the Arab world. Yet the hatred of Israel is so acute that nothing can trump it.

While Jews will jump through hoops to visit holy places in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, Arabs are ostracized for considering doing the same for their supposedly third-holiest spot.

In fact, the one group of Arabs whose love of Jerusalem is enough for them to ignore this pressure aren't Muslims at all, but Christian Arabs who will travel from Egypt and Jordan to be in Jerusalem during Easter - even at the price of being punished back home by their employers and neighbors.

The greatest irony is that Palestinian Arabs would welcome any visit from their erstwhile "brethren." So it is not only that hating Israel is more important than the holiness of Jerusalem, but it is more important than helping Palestinian Arabs as well.

UPDATE: The Islamonazism blog points out that an Egyptian minister is indeed calling on all Muslims to visit Jerusalem - but to make Israel look bad:

Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq called on Muslims worldwide to visit Jerusalem and assert its Islamic identity.

In an interview with the Arab daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, Zaqzouq attacked the traditional Arab policy of tourism boycott against the Jewish state. He warned Israel’s building in the city could smother Islamic sites.

"I say to those who insist on not visiting [Jerusalem] before its liberation: my worst fear is that you will have nothing to visit after Israel realizes its plans in Jerusalem and elsewhere,” Zaqzouq was quoted as saying.

Zaqzouq said his tactic of urging a worldwide conversion on Jerusalem could be used to expose any subsequent Israeli hypocrisy, should the Israeli government refuse to grant them entry permits. He said Muslims could then turn to the international community claiming religious discrimination.

"This would produce powerful leverage, in lieu of the current negative Islamic boycott," Zaqzouq said. "We are wrong to define Jerusalem as a Palestinian issue. Rather, it is a purely Islamic issue concerning 1.5 billion Muslims."

According to official data issued by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, only 1,870 Egyptians entered Israel in the first six months of this year. In comparison, some 77,000 Israeli traveled to Egypt during the same period.

"There are two sources of pressure preventing Egyptians from traveling to Israel," Sobhy Essaila, a researcher at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies told The Media Line. "The first is social and peer pressure placed on any individual wishing to travel to Israel. The second is the notion that the Egyptian security keeps a record of anyone traveling there."

Essaila denied that the Egyptian security apparatus outwardly pressured Egyptians not to travel to Israel, but the simple fact that they were being monitored put people off any visit. He added that traveling to Israel was regarded as a form of normalization which was widely rejected by the average Egyptian.

Recent clashes between Hamas and Islamic Jihad

Palestine Press Agency reports on a number of recent incidents showing increasing friction between Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement, its largest rival in Gaza, as well as other Islamist movements.

While they usually cooperate, Islamic Jihad is more extreme than Hamas and has sworn to continue shooting rockets at Israel.

Last Thursday there was an armed confrontation between Hamas and Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades. Apparently, members of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades were mocking Islamic Jihad members and they retaliated by shooting. Hamas struck back, and someone ended up in the hospital after being shot in the legs.

Both groups are downplaying the incident.

Even people with academic robes can lie.

In an article at European Voice, entitled "The Gaza Prison,"current Oxford chancellor( also the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former European commissioner for external affairs) Chris Patten parrots lies about Israel and Gaza. Here's just one paragraph:

When I was in Gaza before the Second Intifada, there were many examples of entrepreneurial activity – factories and farms. Most of that has been stamped out. As the assault on Gaza ended in 2009, Israeli military bulldozers flattened factories. The imposition of a border zone has gobbled up 29% of the strip's agricultural land.

This single paragraph illustrates everything wrong about how Gaza is portrayed by purportedly well-meaning, educated people. It contains not only Palestinian Arab lies that Patten swallows whole, but also a lie that he himself wants to push.

Patten waxes eloquent about Gaza's economy before the second intifada (that he helpfully capitalizes, indicating perhaps a bit of approval for that spree of terror.) Then he states how bad it is now - implying that it is because of Israeli actions in 2009.

This is a lie.

The Gazan economy went south as a direct result of the intifada, not because of Israeli actions. There are two major reasons that 34% of Gazans are unemployed today. One is because Israeli companies pulled out of Gaza in the wake of the wave of terror that came out of Gaza starting in 2001 - including many attacks on the factories themselves. The Erez Industrial Zone limped along for a couple of years but finally had to shut down.

The other is that Hamas violently took over Gaza in 2007.

A chart of unemployment in Gaza from 1999-2006 shows clearly the effects of the first:

	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Unemployment in Gaza	17	19.5	34.1	38.1	29.2	35.4	30.3	34.8

I don't have the detailed breakdown of unemployment since then, but between 2006 and today the rate had increased to over 40% - around the time of Hamas' takeover of Gaza - and is now back down to 34%, the same level it was at the start of the intifada.

In other words, the blame for Gaza's economic woes should go to the terrorist organiations that operate out of, and now run, Gaza. And the implication that Israel purposefully "stamped out" Gaza's industries is not only a lie, but a calumny.

Where did Patten get the information that Israel viciously and wantonly "flattened factories" at the end of Operation Cast Lead? While Goldstone claimed that there was no military purpose for Israel's damaging the Al Badr flour mill and the Sawfeary chicken farms, the IDF disputes both those accounts - and even Goldstone didn't claim that Israel worked to flatten factories after the fighting was largely over. The idea that Israel maliciously flattened factories in Gaza is a lie. This is a product of a fevered imagination, not what one would expect from a leader of an institution of higher learning who should know the difference between facts and propaganda he was fed during his visit to Gaza.

Finally, the supposed "fact" that Israel's buffer zone in Gaza - one whose purpose Patten is mysteriously silent about - takes up 29% of Gaza's agricultural land is also an easily proven lie.

What could cause a respected British academic and former diplomat believe - and propagate - lies about Israel? How much is his own willingness to believe those who lie to him, and how much is his desire to spread his own versions of these easily debunked lies? Perhaps most importantly, why is Patten silent on any possible reason that Israel might have to treat the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as a less-than-friendly territory?

Putting these questions together indicates that Patten is not just clueless, but malicious. It is more than sickening that a person in such a position of prestige has no qualms about writing such a shoddy and transparent piece of anti-Israel propaganda.

(h/t Paula from Philosémitisme Blog)

UPDATE: R-MEW has some background on Patten:

The ICG is led by former EU Commissioner for External Relations and current Oxford University Chancellor, Chris Patten, along with former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour. Patten you may recall, rejected an inquiry in 2003 into the diversion of European taxpayer funds to finance Palestinian suicide bombers because he "needed an investigation like a hole in the head". In recent years, Patten's Oxford has been the recipient of over $300 million in donations from the Saudis. Arbour is famous for having originally endorsed the wildly antisemitic and oxymoronic Arab Charter of Human Rights while with the UN.

But I thought that "settlers" stole all the water!

From Ma'an:

Palestinian Authority police have dispersed two fights in the southern West Bank city of Hebron and the nearby Nuba village, detaining 15 suspected of involvement.

Police said a fight broke out at a public swimming pool, where suspects used clubs and pelted one another with stones. Five sustained various injuries, and five others were detained.

You mean, Hebron - the town of 70,000 Arabs held hostage by a few hundred Jews - has a swimming pool? But I thought that the settlers stole all the water of the West Bank for their own wasteful swimming pools and the poor Palestinian Arabs had none to drink, let alone swim in!

Here's a photo of a pool in Hebron that I somehow managed to find last year when the BBC had written a story about how Palestinian Arab water was all taken by evil Israelis.

And that is hardly the only swimming pool in the territories.

Recalibrating the "humanitarian crisis in Gaza" meme

For literally decades, we have been hearing about how Gaza was suffering from a "humanitarian crisis." Back in December 2007, a full year before the Gaza war, I enumerated how this "crisis" had been spoken about since at least 1993!

No one is saying that Gaza is a paradise. However, it not nearly as bad as it has been portrayed, and years of skewed and misleading coverage from NGOs and reporters with an agenda have succeeded in giving the world a very inaccurate picture of Gaza. As a result, Gaza has gotten much more attention, and much more money, than the tens of millions of people who really need it and who really are ignored.

In the wake of bloggers noticing Gaza's gourmet restaurants, spas, luxury hotels, the new mall, water parks and other resorts, the media has finally started to give a more nuanced view of Gaza. In this unintentionally funny piece in Slate, a clueless reporter is shocked that Gaza really isn't like sub-Saharan Africa:

GAZA CITY—Aid officials in Gaza all recite the same statistics: "44 percent unemployment [actually, 34%, we cannot expect a Slate reporter to actually check the facts, can we? -EoZ], 80 percent food-aid dependent, and 60 percent living on less than $2 a day." It sounds like a script they've grown tired of delivering to passing journalists.

After multiple rounds of similar briefings, I'm staring at Kamla Joudah's parlor in Nuseirat refugee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. The warm beige tones of the furniture reflect the heat, and the walls gleam. The frequently cut power is on today, so the fan whirls. Tea and coffee are brought out on a small tray.

Kamla catches me appraising her home. "What are you looking at?" she asks, with some pique.
"Your house," I reply, "It's very nice."

She looks at me quizzically, "This is not Darfur," she snaps. The family members in the room burst out laughing as I blush.

The oft-recited statistics paint a bleak picture of life in the territory. But Gaza is a lot more complicated than the numbers suggest.

Comments like Kamla's are common here; everyone I speak to insists the coastal enclave is nothing like Somalia, Bangladesh, or the Democratic Republic of Congo. And people are indignant that I suggested it might be in the same league as those places.

Notice that the reporter went to what should be the worst place in Gaza - a refugee camp. Many Gazans live in their own houses, outside the camps. Her astonishment was at how good the worst part of Gaza was.

Yet journalists do not want to admit their part in this massive deception. Instead, they move the goalposts so that the "humanitarian crisis" is redefined to be a lot less crisis-like:

"There is food in Gaza. It's not a humanitarian crisis. There is no hunger, there is no starvation, but there is a crisis of another nature," says Mahmoud Daher, a World Health Organization official in Gaza, who was expressing his personal views, not those of his organization.

As Daher explains, the blockade has dramatically altered the standard of living for Palestinians in the territory. In three years, he assesses, Gazans have lost 20 years of economic development. And in that decline lies the root of the crisis in Gaza as he sees it.

"Inability to access quality care is a crisis, inability for people to produce and have access to jobs is a crisis, inability of people to get the quality of education that they are used to is a crisis, and above all [it is] a crisis of dignity—a crisis of humanity," Daher tells me.

Um, not exactly the same as starvation, is it? No flies buzzing around kids with distended stomachs and vacant stares. Instead, Gaza has to worry about the next 20,000 laptops that UNRWA is distributing to their kids.

The reporter doesn't ask about how Hamas is getting its money, or what restrictions on movement are from the Gaza de facto government. She doesn't ask about the flotillas bringing expired medicines to garner headlines. She doesn't ask about why the blockade exists to begin with. No, for her, Gaza seems to have sprung into existence in January 2009, and while she is shocked that her journalist colleagues have misled her since then, she needs to write an article about how bad things are, and that's what she'll do.

But she will not ask the basic questions: if Gaza is not so bad off, then shouldn't the billions it is receiving be better spent elsewhere? Shouldn't more of the burden for Gaza fall to their fellow oil-rich Arabs, rather than Westerners who should be putting their money in places like Bangladesh and the Congo? Why are the "human rights" activists so fixated on a territory whose poorest citizens are the envy not only of many Africans but even of poor Arabs in other countries?

(h/t Silke, who gave me a very nice compliment over at CiFWatch. Thanks!)

More on Arab sexual harassment of female "peace activists"

A few weeks ago I blogged about an attempted rape of an American "peace activist" in the territories, and the pressure to hush it up.

JoeSettler at The Muqata has uncovered more facts - including that this has been a known phenomenon among the anti-Israel community for a while, to the point that they even held a workshop about it on how women activists should deal with the apparently inevitable fact of their being harassed or attacked while being hosted by their Arab friends.

The cognitive dissonance of these supposedly progressive activists working to help a very regressive society somehow doesn't seem to take hold.

Just another week in the 62-year old siege of the Jewish state

It is worthwhile to step back and notice the events of the week:

A rocket was fired into Israel from Gaza, hitting a rehabilitation center. (Another attempted firing of a rocket exploded prematurely.)

Five or six rockets were fired from the Sinai towards Israel, killing a Jordanian.

And snipers from the Lebanese Army killed an Israeli officer and wounded another.

All of these attacks were unprovoked. All of them were intended to kill Israelis.

In other words, here was just another week when Israel was fired upon from all directions. Not a terribly atypical week, either.

With all of the insults that are hurled at the State of Israel every hour of every day permeating the media, it is easy to forget that Israel really is a nation surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who want to see it disappear; and some of them are motivated to actually do something to help that process along.

The question isn't how can Israel act as bad as people say it does - the question is how come it doesn't! How can a tiny nation, literally surrounded by enemies, manage to keep its collective sanity and morality? How come there isn't martial law? How come Egypt has been in an official state of emergency for almost the entire time since 1967, and Israel isn't? How can Israel remain an oasis of Western values and of liberal standards when in such a constant state of alert against attacks from all directions?

Some people don't believe in miracles. But it is hard to look at Israel and think it is anything but.

Three lighter Gulf stories

From Gulf News:

A Saudi groom was slapped by his mother on his wedding night when he tried , in a romantic Cinderella-inspired touch, to put a shoe on his bride’s foot.

“The shocked mother was so infuriated by the sight of her son helping the bride wear her shoe that she slapped him amid the laughter of the women guests,” Okaz daily reported on Thursday.
“The groom had reportedly agreed with his bride that she walks into the reception hall wearing only one shoe and that her sister would carry the second shoe. The plan was that he would later take the shoe and put it on the bride’s foot in front of the guests. His family was not told about the perceived romantic gesture,” the newspaper said.

However, the groom’s mother became so upset that she hit and insulted him on the grounds that he did not behave as “a genuine traditional oriental man.”

The groom eventually left the reception hall in Tabuk in north-western Saudi Arabia and took his bride to the airport to fly to Malaysia for their honeymoon, the paper said.

In a separate incident in the same city, angry wedding guests left the reception hall after the families of the bride and groom screened a short film “that failed to respect privacy.”

According to Okaz, the short clip highlighted the different stages of the lives of both the bride and the groom, from their early years throughout school and adolescence, and ended with the couple hugging and exchanging a kiss.

However, some guests were shocked, charging that the clip was not acceptable and that it was inspired by movies screened on private television channels.

An attempt by a group of Gulf national women to enforce a dress code led a British tourist to strip down to her bikini at Dubai Mall.

A group of Gulf national women recently tried to enforce a dress code morally acceptable to them by distributing leaflets to women they found to be dressed inappropriately, a Dubai Mall official said.

A British tourist who was approached objected to the gesture and stripped down to a bikini she was wearing underneath in defiance.

Who knew Arabs read Mad magazine?

I just saw this cartoon in Al Quds al Arabi, about the many people in Lebanon recently accused of being Israeli spies:

(For those who don't understand my headline, see here.)

Latest Zionist outrage: Destroying fake graves!

Palestine Today reports on an outraged statement by the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation, claiming that on Wednesday night, Israel bulldozed dozens of ancient Islamic graves in the Mamilla cemetery in Jerusalem, calling it a "heinous crime."

Can you imagine? Jews destroying Muslim graves? How low can they go?

However, there seems to be another side to this story. From Arutz-7:

Following the exclusive Arutz Sheva report Wednesday morning that Muslims were enlarging the Mamilla cemetery with fake tombs, authorities removed the tombs by Wednesday evening.

Dozens of false tombs were “planted” just west of the cemetery, on land that is part of Independence Park (Gan HaAtzmaut) at city center. There were no graves beneath the tombs.

The fake tombs were removed by the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israel Lands Authority.

A municipality employee told Arutz Sheva that the faux graves were apparently part of a plan to have the Muslim Waqf submit a demand for the additional land to be placed under Muslim ownership.

The Wednesday report included video of the fake graves.

Here was the statement from the Jerusalem mayor's office:

The Jerusalem Municipality located the illegal activity at the site yesterday. The Municipality has contacted the Israel Lands Authority as the owner of the land to return things to their former state. The Municipality will not allow extremist elements to act illegally to change the status quo.

A new Goldstone critique

Peter Berkowitz, at the Hoover Institution, takes a different tack on criticizing the Goldstone Report in a new article. His concern is much larger - that Goldstone represents a departure from the mores of international law and represents a danger for democratic, liberal nation-states:

Another and more far-reaching issue, which should be of great significance to those who take seriously the claims of international law to govern the conduct of war, has scarcely been noticed. And that pertains to the disregarding of fundamental norms and principles of international law by the United Nations Human Rights Council (hrc), which authorized the Goldstone Mission; by the Mission members, who produced the Goldstone Report; and by the hrc and the United Nations General Assembly (of which the hrc is a subsidiary organ), which endorsed the report’s recommendations. Their conduct combines an exaltation of, and disrespect for, international law. It is driven by an ambition to shift authority over critical judgments about the conduct of war from states to international institutions. Among the most serious political consequences of this shift is the impairment of the ability of liberal democracies to deal lawfully and effectively with the complex and multifarious threats presented by transnational terrorists.

...Authoritative sources in international law assign primary responsibility for judgments about whether war has been conducted in accordance with the law of armed conflict to the judicial and other relevant organs of nation-states. That assignment is rooted in the larger liberal tradition’s teaching that nation-states — particularly those based on the consent of the governed and devoted to securing individual rights — are the best and most legitimate means of securing peace, exercising authority over the individual, and preserving political freedom. That teaching is bound up with the view that states are likely to be more sober in assessing the actions of other states than international organizations because states must bear the burden of any proposed reform or rule. In contrast, the Goldstone Report and its supporters appear to be animated by the conviction that judgments about the lawful conduct of war are best and primarily vindicated by international institutions, because of their superior objectivity, impartiality, and expertise. And they have shown themselves willing to disregard international law as it is in order to remake it as they believe it should be. One reason to prefer the allocation of responsibilities in international law as it currently stands to the Goldstone Report’s efforts to transform it are the report’s stunning defects. They illustrate that those who are responsible for the operation of international institutions are no less subject to the passions and prejudices that thwart the impartial and objective administration of law than the government officials in civilized nations, and in some cases may be more subject to such passions and prejudices.

...There is a danger that the spread of practices among international bodies and an accumulation of precedents concerning international law will weigh down the United States in the struggle that it shares with Israel and others to combat, in accordance with the law of armed conflict, transnational Islamic terrorism. Of course that will only happen if the U.S. recognizes such practices and precedents as authoritative. Encouragement to do so comes from powerful trends in American universities and law schools, where professors for going on a generation have been cultivating in their students the view, which animates the Goldstone Report, that critical judgments about the lawful conduct of war are indeed properly and in the first instance the province of international institutions.

That view is suited to a world in which all nation-states incline to peace and govern themselves in accordance with liberal and democratic principles. Unfortunately, that is not the world in which we live. Nor is it a world we can expect to emerge anytime soon.

The Goldstone report is not only flawed and biased - it is dangerous.

(h/t sshender)

Arabs worried that US will move embassy to Jerusalem

Al Quds al Arabi reports that there is concern among Arab analysts about the sudden US move to symbolically upgrade the status of the PLO mission in Washington.

Their fear is that this was a precursor for the Obama administration moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, a move long favored by Congress and that would give President Obama a big boost among Jews in the US.

Since 1995, every US president has issued a waiver on the Jerusalem Embassy Act of Congress every six months.

I believe that the next time this comes up is in the end of November.

The Obama administration has excised the wording that the Bush administration had inserted in every waiver, which stated "My Administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem."

I don't think that the US would consider moving the embassy unless Israel had already abandoned parts of the city.