Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 18, 2011

Christian Biblical ethicists claim God didn't promise Israel to Jews (updated)

In September, David P. Gushee and Glen H. Stassen, two Christian ethicists, wrote "An Open Letter to America's Christian Zionists." The main point of this letter was to dispute the biblical idea that God gave Israel to Jews alone:

Not to put too fine a point on it, we wish to claim here that the prevailing version of American Christian Zionism—that is, your belief system—underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppression of Palestinian people, helps create the conditions for an explosion of violence, and pushes US policy in a destructive direction that violates our nation’s commitment to universal human rights. In all of these, American Christian Zionism as it currently stands is sinful and produces sin. We write as evangelical Christians committed lifelong to Israel's security, and we are seriously worried about your support for policies that violate biblical warnings about injustice and may lead to the outcome you most fear—serious harm to or even destruction of Israel.

We write as evangelicals to you, our fellow evangelicals. On the shared basis of biblical authority, we ask you to reconsider your interpretation of Scripture, for the sake of God, humanity, the United States, and, yes, Israel itself, the Land and People we both love.

We acknowledge that your evangelical-fundamentalist American Christian Zionism (henceforth simply “Christian Zionism”) is a product of a Christian community that loves and reads the Bible. This is on its face a good thing--for there appear to be fewer and fewer American Christians whose love of the Bible and whose devotion to reading it can be taken for granted. We commend your love for the scriptures.

Both now and in the past, whenever Christian Zionism emerges its essential origin is simply Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament. Our love of the Bible takes Christians into the pages of the Old Testament; there we cannot help but discover the centrality of a Promised Land for the Jewish people. The trajectory of the canonical Old Testament moves inexorably toward and away from the Promised Land—the patriarchal narratives in which a people and land are promised despite humble origins; enslavement in Egypt; the miraculous Exodus and grim wilderness wanderings under Moses; the conquest of the Promised Land; the establishment, split, and eventual conquest of Israel as a political entity; the Babylonian exile and dispersion of the Jewish people; and a partial return to the land, at which point the OT historical narrative ends.
...

We suggest to you that contemporary Christian Zionism is well-intentioned but needs correction at some very important points. This requires some careful biblical and theological work—from within the basic framework of evangelical Christianity. This means that the relevant scriptural texts need to be studied in detail, and that Christian theology needs to do its proper work with those texts.

For example, we suggest that Christian Zionists who move from a generalized love of Israel to a specific claim that the contemporary state of Israel has divine title to the entire Holy Land, need to take more seriously the complexity of what the Bible actually says about God’s promises to Abraham.

Genesis 15:18 reads: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” The next verse goes on to name the various peoples to whom the land belonged at the time.

The territory denoted by the space between these two rivers includes modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, half of Iraq, half of Egypt, parts of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the modern state of Israel, as well as the occupied Palestinian territories.

A literal reading of the text that assumes that the descendants of Abram are only the Jewish people faces a problem here. Either God is not very good at keeping his promises, or God’s plan is for contemporary Israel ultimately to conquer all of these other countries and occupy their land. That would result in an Israel ruled by its 90% majority Arabs, or an Israel attempting to subjugate that 90% by force.

But the promise looks very different if we take seriously all of the offspring of Abraham. Genesis 15:4-5 has God taking Abram outside and telling him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. Genesis 17:4, probably the pivotal text, has God saying to Abraham: “This is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Many nations, a multitude of nations; many offspring, many kings—read Genesis 17 again and see the plural nouns here.

Close readers of Scripture will know that in fact Abraham did become the father of many nations. With Sarah he became the father of Isaac and the ancestor of all in his line, via Jacob and Esau. With Hagar he became the father of Ishmael and all in his line. And with the long-forgotten Keturah (Gen. 25:1) he became the father of Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. The Old Testament clearly positions Abraham as the father/ancestor of not only the Jewish people but of a vast number of other peoples, all scattered through the territories promised in Genesis 15. Abraham becomes the father of dozens of peoples, exactly as the Bible says! It is certainly true that the Old Testament primarily tells the story of the line of Isaac and therefore of what became the Jewish people, but that cannot cancel the significance of the promises to Abraham and the many peoples credited to him in Genesis.

...Perhaps you will respond by saying that God promises the land of Canaan specifically to the Jewish people. You might cite here Genesis 17:8: “I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding.” This interpretation would require restricting the “offspring” in question to Abraham’s offspring through Sarah via Isaac and then on to Jacob and excluding Esau. But the promise to possess the land includes the offspring of Isaac, and the offspring of Isaac includes Esau, with his five Edomite sons and their offspring, as Genesis 36 states, and that includes multitudes of Canaanites, not only Jews. It would also require the assumption that we know what Gen. 17 means territorially with the term “Canaan” and that it corresponds with the Zionist’s version of the proper boundaries of the modern state of Israel.

In a later letter, published November 12, the same two wrote:

The responses that disagreed did not discuss the biblical passages, but shifted the topic to the politics of the present government of Israel and the West Bank, and Hamas, and whether Israel forced Palestinians out of their homes or not.

These are important topics, but we are hoping for biblical discussion.

What we are asking is whether our readers see Genesis 15 and 17 saying that Abraham is the father of many nations, with descendants as many as the stars of the universe. And whether the territory includes all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates, which of course includes many nations, most all Arab. We believe ours is the plain, literal reading. No one has explained a different reading in response.

I have no idea why no Christian Zionist took it upon themselves to answer this letter within the worldview of Christian theology. Honestly, if it is true, it is a bit disappointing.

So, even though I am not a Christian nor a Jewish Biblical scholar by any means, I would like to make a point.

It seems strange that the authors' arguments that God's promises apply to all of Abraham's descendants do not take into account later declarations by God.

For example, God explicitly told Jacob in Genesis 28:13 that "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed."

This happened at Bet El (Bethel). One can argue about the size of the land promised by God at that point, but one cannot argue that the promise was made to anyone but the Jewish people. And Bet El is on the "wrong" side of the Green Line. Would the authors admit that, Biblically, this must remain a part of Israel?

More explicitly, in Exodus 23, God tells the Israelites:

But if thou shalt indeed hearken unto his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For Mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; and I will cut them off. ...And I will set thy border from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the River; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.

And in Deuteronomy chapter 1:

The LORD our God spoke unto us in Horeb, saying: 'Ye have dwelt long enough in this mountain; turn you, and take your journey, and go to the hill-country of the Amorites and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the Arabah, in the hill-country, and in the Lowland, and in the South, and by the sea-shore; the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.'

The straight translations of these passages are somewhat contradictory and without further study I imagine it is difficult for Christians to know how to reconcile them. But it is extraordinarily dishonest to interpret only one of God's promises to Abraham and his children in a vacuum without even considering the more explicit promises He made later to Jacob, Moses and the children of Israel. Is it not the same God who made all of these promises? Are not all of them of equal weight? If so, then the issue is not interpreting one of them, but reconciling and interpreting all of them together.

Beyond that, it seems to me that the entire Biblical narrative would be problematic if most of the peoples who were God's covenental partners simply disappeared from the story or played only bit parts. If the children of Israel were not the main intended recipients of God's promises, then why would the Bible spend so much time only dealing with them and all but ignoring the Ishmaelites and the Edomites?

The writers make other arguments about whether today's Jews should still be considered to be within the same covenant, but that is a much bigger topic. And before I spend time on that, I would love to know how they interpret and reconcile the many other Biblical verses tying the Land of Israel with, specifically, the Jews.

(Parenthetically, I think it is not clear at all that you can consider Esau's progeny to be "Canaanites." While Gen. 38 says they lived in Canaan, the Canaanites were presumably the descendants of Canaan, Noah's grandson through Ham. Which means, ironically, that Canaanites are not Semites, but rather "Hamites." So don't accuse me of anti-Semitism :) )

I am afraid that this might turn into a very big theological thread, and I am not really comfortable with that here; Christian theology is not a topic that belongs on this blog. Hopefully it will spark discussion among Christians that will take place elsewhere.

UPDATE: My Right Word dug a bit deeper here.

I looked a little more at this today, and saw that even the source text in Genesis 15 that the authors find so problematic makes it very clear that God is only speaking about the Children of Israel!

Genesis 15:4, which they even quote, says:

And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying: 'This man shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.'

Indeed, the Hebrew shows that God is speaking only in the singular, meaning only one of Abraham's children would be considered his heir.

But even more so, look at Genesis 15:13-14, where God says:

Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

This is an obvious reference only to the children of Israel in Egypt, using the same word as the subject "thy seed: זַרְעֲךָ " that is used throughout the entire promise!

It seems highly unlikely that Stassen and Gushee did not notice this text. This makes their entire essay seem, to put it charitably, very suspect as to their motivation.

Muslim Brotherhood going public in Libya

From Al Arabiya:

Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood, repressed under the regime of fallen strongman Muammar Qaddafi, has opened its first public congress inside the country for almost 25 years.

“This is a historic day for us and for the Libyan people,” its leader Suleiman Abdelkader told AFP at the opening late Thursday of the three-day congress in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Brotherhood officials said it was their first public meeting inside Libya in almost quarter of a century, although it met underground during Qaddafi’s rule for fear of reprisals or held their congress abroad.

The meeting of about 700 people was at a wedding hall in Benghazi, the eastern city where the revolt against Qaddafi began.

Officials of Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council, including Islamic Affairs Minister Salem el-Sheikli and Defense Minister Jalal al-Degheili, attended the opening in Benghazi.

The congress was due to elect a leader and discuss strategy, notably whether to form a political party, said Abdelkader.

The Brotherhood supports the idea of a “civil” state but founded on Islamic values, he said. “This country belongs to all its people and everybody must participate in its construction.”

As Libya emerges from a bloody civil war, many observers believe the next elections could pit religious political groups against secular parties, with better-organized Islamists such as the Brotherhood having a tactical advantage.

After so many years of secrecy, they said they were eager to show the Libyan public that there was nothing sinister about their group ̶ an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, that country's most popular and organized political force.

“There’s nothing secret. We’re not planning to destroy the country,” said Abdou Majid Saleh Musbah, 56, an engineer from Tripoli who joined the movement in 1979.

Just to make it Islamist.

City of David, then and now

Dan tweeted me with this wonderful photographic comparison of how the City of David looked in 1915 and how it looks today (actually 2005), from the BiblePlaces.com site:

View from Southwest, ca. 1915
Photo from the Jerusalem volume of the American Colony and Eric Matson Collection/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-matpc-05424.

View from Southwest, August 23, 2005

The Matson Collection has tens of thousands of beautiful old photos of the Land of Israel, some of them with astonishing clarity. It would be a wonderful project for any Israelis who are reading this to match the photos, duplicating the vantage point as was done here. I'd happily publish them.

Honestly, it would make a great coffee-table book!

UPDATE: For those who want to see photographs Silwan when the only people who lived there were Jews, go here.

USS Liberty tapes released by Israel's Channel 2

From Egypt's Al Masry al Youm:

Forty-four years after Israeli pilots bombed the American ship USS Liberty during the 1967 War, an Israeli news outlet Wednesday evening revealed purported evidence that the bombing was accidental.

According to the report, the pilots carried out the attack, killing 34 American seamen and injuring dozens more, because they mistook the American ship for an Egyptian vessel.

Although both Israeli and American reports previously concluded that the attack was an accident, some speculation persists that the bombing was deliberate.

The incident, widely remembered as the greatest crisis ever to have occurred between Israel and its long-time ally America, happened on the third day of the war, while Israel was fighting Egypt in the Sinai and Jordan in the West Bank.

Israel’s Channel 2 aired an audio tape purportedly proving that an Israeli pilot involved in the attack, as well as someone working in the squadron’s control tower, believed that the ship was Egyptian.

The control tower is recorded as directing a pilot to bomb the “Egyptian” target, but the pilot reports back shortly after the bombing that he thinks he saw an American flag on the ship’s staff. The control tower repeatedly directs him to circle back and confirm what he saw. Another clip has the control tower giving rescuers instructions about what to do with the sailors – depending on whether they turn out to speak English or Arabic.

“Within a short time, the sense intensified that the attack was a tragic mistake against Israel’s greatest friend, where Israeli pilots attacked an American supply ship,” the channel’s news caster reports.

According to the station, the tapes come from an American spy plane that happened to be circling above at the time, recording the conversation as it took place between the pilot and the control tower. However, the report does not explain how the news network got their hands on the tapes, nor does it seek to explain why the tapes are emerging only now, 44 years after the incident occurred.

Following the bombing, the damaged boat made its way to an American naval base in Malta, and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol apologized to American President Johnson. Israel agreed to compensate the injured and the families of those killed to the tune of several million dollars, even though it declined to take responsibility for the incident – a fact which the report says “contributed to the proliferation of conspiracy theories regarding the affair.”

“The tapes decisively reveal that the incident was an accident,” it concludes.

The NSA released three tapes showing the same facts - and their English translations - years ago.

However, I do not believe that there was any indication earlier that any Israeli pilot thought he had seen the US flag, so this looks like it is indeed a new tape.

(h/t Yoel)

Pro-PalArab writer tacitly admits the UN is corrupt

The Sydney Morning Herald has an amazing op-ed by Richard Woolcott, former Australian ambassador to the UN.

Our national interest requires a rethink on the Middle East.

The importance of Australia's candidature for election next October as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term (2013-14) should be better understood and supported by our politicians and the Australian public.

Unfortunately, our prospects have been undermined by our recent vote against Palestine's admission to the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

...Putting it bluntly, I consider that if we again vote against Palestinian ''statehood'' when it comes to the General Assembly, we are most unlikely to be elected to the council. At worst we should abstain.

...We can and should win a seat on the Security Council. But I fear we will be defeated again, as we were in 1996, if we continue to vote against upgrading Palestinian representation, especially when it comes before the General Assembly. This will be a matter for regret and it will not be in our national interest.

Woolcott is saying that the UN decides on UNSC membership based in no small part on their anti-Israel attitude!

This year, Lebanon is the head of the UNSC. A state that is effectively ruled by a terror group whose very raison d'etre is the destruction of another UN member state has no problem obtaining a leadership position at the Security Council. But Western states who support a liberal democracy in the Middle East and who are reticent about unilaterally strengthening a corrupt entity that has no defined borders or population (part of the very definition of a state to begin with) must toe the anti-Israel line in order to get ahead at the UN.

We must thank Woolcott, a UN insider, for exposing how deeply corrupt and systemically anti-Israel the UN is.

(Mark Leibler answers Woolcott here.)

(h/t Ian)

My mail is down

For some reason my main Yahoo mail account is not working and has not been working since yesterday evening. If you need to send me something, or you did send something since last night, please resend to elderofziyon -at- gmail.com .

On the good side...it's Friday.

A small example of muddled anti-Zionist thinking

Just in case anyone thinks that the "Russell Tribunal" that I mentioned yesterday has any objectivity whatsoever, here is a paragraph from their London final report:

Israeli corporations are world leaders (with significant turnovers) in developing weapons technology, which is used during military operations against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, such as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) developed by Elbit Systems. A significant number of foreign states, including EU and western states, procure Israeli weapons technology, such as the UAVs (for instance Australia, France, Canada, UK, Sweden and USA). Recent evidence suggests that drone attacks may involve high civilian deaths in military operations. For instance, a 2009 report published by the Brookings Institution, suggested that it was difficult to confirm civilian deaths in drone attacks, but that reports suggest that for every one military target killed it results in approximately 10 civilian deaths.

Israel is a leader in drone technology. Other countries buy Israeli drones. Other countries may accidentally kill many civilians with drones - Israeli or otherwise.

Therefore, the tribunal broadly implies, Israel is responsible for the deaths of everyone killed by every drone worldwide! Otherwise what is the relevance of mentioning the Brookings report?

And if you look at the Brookings report itself, you see that they were talking only about targeted drone killings by the US in Pakistan. And the author concludes that the reason for the poor record is not because targeted killings by drones are inherently problematic:

To reduce casualties, superb intelligence is necessary. Operators must know not only where the terrorists are, but also who is with them and who might be within the blast radius. This level of surveillance may often be lacking, and terrorists' deliberate use of children and other civilians as shields make civilian deaths even more likely.

Now, since the escalation in rocket attacks at the end of October Israel has killed some 16 terrorists in Gaza with targeted drone attacks - and not one civilian. And while their record is not always perfect, at the time this report was written it was well documented that it was far better than a 10:1 ratio of civilian to terrorist deaths.

Moreover,if you accept the logic of the report, any country that manufactures drones should share the blame for every civilian death, since there is no indication in the Brookings report that Israeli drones were used in Pakistan.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce the latest attack drone - from the United Arab Emirates:

Emirati group Adcom Systems introduced an armed drone at the Dubai Airshow on Thursday, developed at a time when many military powers continue to import the unmanned aircraft increasingly used in warfare.

The MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) plane should begin testing in early December and be available to customers in February, Ali al-Dhaheri, the president of the Abu Dhabi-based company, told AFP.

The device, known as United 40, can carry eight 60-kilometre (37-miles) range “Nemrod” missiles in its fuselage. Those are also developed by Adcom and are to be tested in January.

Adcom Systems, a conglomerate of 37 companies, mainly manufactures drones used for air force training.

Dhaheri stressed that the technology for the United 40 was developed by his company.

“All systems are ours. We are a leading innovator in aerodynamics,” he said.

My, my. What would the "tribunal" say to this?

This tiny example shows how deeply anti-Zionist hate affects people. You can be sure that the "tribunal" tried very hard to make their report seem as unbiased as possible, carefully choosing their words to forestall any accusations of them having an agenda. Yet they are so blinded by their seething hate for the Jewish state that they wouldn't even notice how untenable their words are.

And last night a book based on the London joke of a tribunal was released at an event that was filled with people who share that hate.

Israelis mapping every grave in Mount of Olives

From AP:

A Jewish group in Jerusalem is using 21st-century technology to map every tombstone in the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, a sprawling, politically sensitive necropolis of 150,000 graves stretching back three millennia.

The goal is to photograph every grave, map it digitally, record every name, and make the information available online. That is supposed to allow visitors to find their way in the cemetery, long a bewildering jumble of crumbling gravestones and rubble surrounded by Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Beset for many years by neglect, it is among the oldest cemeteries in continuous use in the world.

Around 40,000 graves have been mapped so far by the team, which began work in 2008. They expect to finish recording all of the intact gravestones -- an estimated 100,000 in total -- by the end of next year. The rest are either so old they are unrecognizable or lie underneath later layers of burial.

Mappers look at aerial photographs, consult handwritten burial records dating back to the mid-1800s, walk along the rows of graves and dig through piles of dislocated tombstones, noting names and dates.

"This place has been used for burial since there have been signs of life in Jerusalem," said Moti Shamis, a member of the mapping team. "The cemetery is a mirror of the city -- in wartime, we see more graves. When new groups of Jews reach the city, the names on the graves change."

Like so much in Jerusalem, this project is linked to the city's fraught politics. The mappers are from an organization called Elad, affiliated with the settlement movement, which also works to move Jews into east Jerusalem in an attempt to prevent the city's division in any future peace deal.

Elad has made it its business to develop sites of Jewish importance in east Jerusalem, reinforcing the Israeli presence in the part of the city the Palestinians want as their capital.

Jews began burying their dead on the hill that later became known as the Mount of Olives about three millennia ago. It was a convenient site a short walk from the city walls. Over the centuries, burial here became linked to a prophecy in the Book of Zecharia according to which the Messiah would approach Jerusalem from the mount, splitting it in two. Those interred on the hill, this belief posited, would be the first to be resurrected.

The mount became, and remains, a sought-after place to be buried for Jews in Israel and abroad.

"As a place of burial it differs from almost every other on earth, in being, as no other is, a witness to a faith that is firm, decided and uncompromising until death," wrote Norman Macleod, a missionary, after a visit in 1864. "It is not therefore the vast multitude who sleep here, but the faith which they held in regard to their Messiah, that makes this spectacle so impressive."

The project is mapping only the Jewish cemetery, which includes several burial monuments from the time of the second Jewish Temple, about 2,000 years ago. Among the oldest graves that still bear names is one of a medieval scholar, Ovadia of Bartenura, an Italian who came to Jerusalem and died here around 1500.

The work of the mappers has solved several mysteries, one of them that of the missing grave of Shmuel Ben-Bassat.

Ben-Bassat was a soldier who died in combat in the war that surrounded Israel's creation in 1948. He was buried on Jan. 14 of that year, before Jewish forces lost the cemetery, along with the rest of east Jerusalem, to the Jordanian army.

For the next 19 years Jordan controlled the cemetery, paving over part of it to build a road, using gravestones to pave paths in a nearby military camp and abandoning the rest to disrepair. When Israel recaptured the Mount of Olives in 1967, the soldier's family could find no trace of him.

Going through old burial records as part of the new project, the mapping team discovered a note saying he had been interred "next to Gader Gurjis and in front of Deborah, the widow of Reuven Mirabi." Those graves still existed. Ben-Bassat now has a military gravestone.
...
Elsewhere in the cemetery lies Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the man responsible more than any other for reviving Hebrew as a spoken language, and a national hero in Israel. He was buried here in 1922. Nearby is Menahem Begin, buried in 1992 in a modest grave that makes no mention of the fact that he was Israel's prime minister.

Begin requested burial here, rather than in the country's national cemetery alongside other Israeli leaders, because he wanted to be close to two fighting comrades who killed themselves with grenades moments before they were to be hanged by the British in a Jerusalem prison in 1947.

AP fails to mention that Arabs continue to vandalize Jewish graves at Har HaZeitim today. The most recent incident was on November 6 with at least five tombstones smashed. This website has photos and videos documenting the destruction of graves happening now (including Arabic graffiti.) Much of the recent desecration is documented in this video created by an organization dedicated to protecting the ancient holy site:

The Mount of Olives - Har HaZeitim - is one of those areas on the east side of the Green Line that must remain under Jewish control. We saw how Jordan desecrated it during the 19 anomalous years that part of Jerusalem was Judenrein, and we see how Arabs will go out of their way to desecrate it today, with the tacit encouragement of the PA.

The project to map the graves is very important. The project to protect it from Arab vandals is even more vital. But most important of all is to ensure that this hallowed ground where so many luminaries are buried remains, forever, in Jewish hands.

Saudi religious police may force women to cover their sexy eyes

Bikya Masr reports:

Women with sexy eyes in Saudi Arabia may be forced to cover them up, according to the spokesperson of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) in the conservative Gulf kingdom.

Spokesman of the Ha’eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet said the committee has the right to stop a women whose eyes seem “tempting” and order her to cover them immediately.

Saudi women are already forced to wear a loose black dress and to cover their hair and in some areas, their face, while in public or face fines or sometimes worse, including public lashings.

The announcement came days after the Saudi newspaper al-Watan reported that a Saudi man was admitted to a hospital after a fight with a member of the committee when he ordered his wife to cover her eyes. The husband was then stabbed twice in the hand.

Wouldn't it be more efficient to just gouge their eyes out when they are born? It's not like they'll ever have to drive or anything....

Israel's (formerly) secret electronic war plans

Eli Lake at the Daily Beast reports on Israel's ability to wage cyberwar and attack infrastructure electronically.

It's very interesting, but do we really want Iran to know this stuff?

For much of the last decade, as Iran methodically built its nuclear program, Israel has been assembling a multibillion-dollar array of high-tech weapons that would allow it to jam, blind, and deafen Tehran's defenses in the case of a pre-emptive aerial strike.

A U.S. intelligence assessment this summer, described to The Daily Beast by current and former U.S. intelligence officials, concluded that any Israeli attack on hardened nuclear sites in Iran would go far beyond airstrikes from F-15 and F-16 fighter planes and likely include electronic warfare against Iran’s electric grid, Internet, cellphone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers.

For example, Israel has developed a weapon capable of mimicking a maintenance cellphone signal that commands a cell network to “sleep,” effectively stopping transmissions, officials confirmed. The Israelis also have jammers capable of creating interference within Iran’s emergency frequencies for first responders.

In a 2007 attack on a suspected nuclear site at al-Kibar, the Syrian military got a taste of this warfare when Israeli planes “spoofed” the country’s air-defense radars, at first making it appear that no jets were in the sky and then in an instant making the radar believe the sky was filled with hundreds of planes.

Israel also likely would exploit a vulnerability that U.S. officials detected two years ago in Iran's big-city electric grids, which are not “air-gapped”—meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack—officials say.

A highly secretive research lab attached to the U.S. joint staff and combatant commands, known as the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), discovered the weakness in Iran’s electrical grid in 2009, according to one retired senior military intelligence officer. This source also said the Israelis have the capability to bring a denial-of-service attack to nodes of Iran’s command and control system that rely on the Internet.

Tony Decarbo, the executive officer for JWAC, declined comment for this story. The likely delivery method for the electronic elements of this attack would be an unmanned aerial vehicle the size of a jumbo jet. An earlier version of the bird was called the Heron, the latest version is known as the Eitan. According to the Israeli press, the Eitan can fly for 20 straight hours and carry a payload of one ton. Another version of the drone, however, can fly up to 45 straight hours, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

Unmanned drones have been an integral part of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, gathering intelligence and firing missiles at suspected insurgents. But Israel's fleet has been specially fitted for electronic warfare, according to officials.

The Eitans and Herons would also likely be working with a special Israeli air force unit known as the Sky Crows, which focuses only on electronic warfare. A 2010 piece in The Jerusalem Post quoted the commander of the electronic warfare unit as saying, “Our objective is to activate our systems and to disrupt and neutralize the enemy’s systems.”

Palestinian Arab welfare, 1958

From AP, July 31, 1958:

This reporter only interviewed those in refugee camps.

There were actually tens of thousands who did get jobs in Iraq, Kuwait and other Gulf states, and have lived there for decades. But their Arab host countries refuse to give them citizenship even if they were born there and will die there.

Hundreds of thousands were expelled from Kuwait after the first Gulf War and tens of thousands were chased out of Iraq after the second.

And over a million more were stripped of their Jordanian citizenship in 1988.

Because they are so useful as pawns against Israel, you can be sure that the intractable refugee problem of 1958 will never be solved as long as Arab nations refuse to grant the Arabs of Palestinian origin the same rights of naturalization they grant every other Arab. This apartheid system is part of the legal codes of these countries and no one is bothered by it because it serves the political purposes of Arab leaders.

The only people being screwed are the Palestinian Arabs themselves, and who cares about them? Certainly not their so-called leaders. Certainly not any of the NGOs that pretend to love them so much. Certainly not Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Certainly not the UN, and (at least since 1960) certainly not UNRWA.

After all, only one nation welcomed their Palestinian Arab refugees as full citizens after 1948, and as we all know, that country is guilty of apartheid.

PA jails man for "cursing God" (corrected)

Ma'an Arabic reports that a man was arrested for "cursing God" during an argument with his father in Qalqilya.

According to Article (273) of the Jordanian Penal Code No. 16 of 1960 that the West Bank uses as the basis for its laws, this offense is punishable for 1 to 3 years in prison.

The entire code is interesting - it is the same one that is lenient for honor killings that was supposedly modified by Abbas.

Other laws:

Breaking the fast during Ramadan - up to one month in prison.
Desecrating or destroying any place of worship with intent to insult that religious group (not only Islamic) - between one month and two years in prison.
Publishing something that insults religion - up to three months in prison.
Publicly insulting religion in speech - 1-6 months in prison.

Any lawyers want to go after the many insults to Judaism and Christianity we've seen there over the years?

(CORRECTION: I originally made a mistake and reported this as happening in Gaza. h/t StamEhad.)

A little anti-semitism from Belgium

The secretary-general of the Belgian teacher's union wrote an interesting letter to the editor of the Jewish News:

The Palestinian people have just stirred. A small minority thought it could not. Fortunately [they became] a member of UNESCO. [In response, Israel] suddenly decided to expand the settlements.

If this is their response, I will be happy as a union leader ACOD to put the situation of Jewish schools in Antwerp under the spotlight. I fear you are going to be scared.

Hugo Deckers,
General Secretary ACOD

This prompted the Jewish News to remind Belgians that teachers in Jewish schools have nothing to do with Israeli policy and that they have the right to hold opinions that may be contrary to those of Mr. Deckers.

A Jewish organization in Belgium gave a sarcastic response:

Let us say immediately that in our view, Mr. Deckers certainly has nothing against the Jewish students. But, given his duties, what else could he do? Had he been in charge of agriculture he would have attacked the Jewish farmers. Nothing personal!

...If he was aware of wrongdoing [the Jewish schools] have committed, is he not guilty of waiting for Israel to increase its colonies before denouncing them?

The union distanced themselves from his comments and Decker ended up apologizing.

It seems a shame, though, that I did not see any comment from the Belgian Jewish community actually defending the right of Israel to build in its capital city. Both articles took pains to distance the Belgian Jews from Israeli actions, with the subtext being that the actions themselves are indeed embarrassing and problematic.

While this might indeed be the opinion of the Jewish leaders in Belgium, this could be a manifestation of a deeper fear that Belgian and other European Jews have in expressing their political opinions publicly. They know that they would be subject to anti-semitic attacks if they were too forthright in supporting Israel.

More recently, Belgium's Pax Christi called for the boycott of Israeli goods like Osem snacks - specifically in Jewish neighborhoods.

(h/t Rudi)

The wonderful UN (video)

The Land of Israel group has produced another entertaining video.

(h/t Mike)

From Fox NY:

A vandal altered a sign at a subway station in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn to make it read "Avenue Jew," according to Assemblyman Dov Hikind. A subway rider saw the graffiti, photographed it, and contacted Hikind's office.

The photo shows the letters "e" and "w" in blue spray paintin at the end of the "J" in the Avenue J sign. The station is located at the intersection of Avenue J and East 16th Street.

Police removed the sign and are investigating it as a possible bias incident, according to a news release from Hikind's office. But the NYPD has not confirmed that information.

"Education and vigilance are our only weapons in fighting against this blatant hatred," the Brooklyn Democrat said in a statement. "We must send a message to those who perpetrate these vile acts that we will not tolerate their behavior. These cowards need to know that we will find them wherever they lurk, and when we do, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law."

The station is in Midwood, the same section of Brooklyn where someone torched several cars and scrawled anti-Semitic and racist graffiti last week.

Midwood has a large Jewish population and is home to several orthodox synagogues.

I don't find this so offensive; actually I think it is kind of funny. The word "Jew" is not an epithet. When people like Dov Hikind (who certainly tirelessly fights for the Jewish community in Brooklyn) start acting as if the word Jew without any context is automatically offensive, that is a much bigger problem to me.

Put it this way: a proud but misguided Jewish kid could have done this, too.

This is not to minimize the recent, horrific anti-semitic attacks in Midwood (attacks that the "progressive Jewish left" like MJ Rosenberg, Max Blumenthal and the 972mag crowd were silent about, as they instead tweeted endlessly about their anarchist heroes at Occupy Wall Street.) There is a definite problem that needs to be addressed.

But this graffito* is not necessarily it.

*Yes, I couldn't resist being pedantic.

(h/t DoZ)

Amnesty support for a kangaroo court

The "Russell Tribunal for Palestine" is a publicity stunt where handpicked anti-Israel "jurists" listen to "testimony" from handpicked anti-Israel "witnesses" to come to foregone conclusions blaming Israel for everything under the sun.

To maximize their ability to promote their Ziophobia, the people behind it just came out with a book called "Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation" based on "evidence" collected at the London session of the "tribunal" last year. Naturally, none of the corporations they decided to slam in this book appeared to testify at this joke of a "tribunal" but that doesn't stop these pursuers of justice, who include anti-Zionist luminaries such as Cynthia McKinney.

The book, put out by the far-left Pluto Press, is being launched tonight in London.

At the Amnesty International Human Rights Center.

One cannot even detect the slightest bit of embarrassment at the unqualified support being given to anti-Israel bigots and their stunts.

Then again - the report of the "tribunal"'s supposed findings was held at the exact same venue. (h/t amie for correction, see comments and his links)

PLO now saying no to "land swaps"

From Gulf News:

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) announced on Monday that it will very soon drop the "land swap" formula, which the it branded as a grave mistake that was included in any agreement with Israel.

Speaking to Gulf News, Tayseer Khalid, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that the formula was only mere talk by Israelis and mediators. "We have never signed an agreement with Israel, which states any shape of land swap formula," he added. "Land swap formula is a heresay [sic] in the track of negotiations," he said.

The Palestinians should have reached agreements on the borders and arranged for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and handled the other core issues before the land swap formula is addressed, he said. "It is time for this mistake to get corrected," he stressed.

As Daled Amos points out, the official PLO position had indeed included land swaps - as recently as June:

The Palestinian Authority passed on four official demands to the Mideast Quartet for discussion in upcoming meetings, PLO official Saeb Erekat told Saudi newspaper Al-Watan on Friday.

Erekat said the demands included a complete halt to all Israeli settlement activity, 1967 borders as the basis for peace negotiations with mutually agreed land swaps, EU support for reconciliation talks "which will strengthen peace opportunities" and EU support for a Palestinian UN statehood bid in September.

How many lies must the PLO utter before the world realizes that they are nothing but a bunch of liars?

This looks like a trial balloon. Abbas and his cronies have been repeatedly emphasizing the 1949 armistice lines lately without any mention of land swaps, pretending that international law supports the entire area seized by Jordan and Egypt at that time as somehow being inherently "Palestinian." The UN stunt can be interpreted minimally as the PLO claiming all of the territories, and plausibly as their claiming the 1947 partition lines.

It seems that the PLO, feeling that they are in a strong political position, is abandoning the pretense of being interested in negotiations and is pushing for the world community to award them everything without any penalty.

This means that the entire negotiations track documented in the Palestine Papers was nothing but a sham - a sop to the Americans and the EU as they pretended that they were interested in peace when in fact they just wanted not to get on the bad side of the West. The goal remains the same as it was in 1974: grab what you can in stages and then position yourself to grab more.

And if that means to pretend to be moderate for a couple of decades, no problem. As we've seen, lying comes easy for Palestinian Arab leaders. And Western leaders can still not wrap their heads around the idea that people would lie directly to their faces.

(h/t David G)

The PA offers a deal that is no deal (updated)

From Ha'aretz:

The Palestinian Authority has offered the United States a deal, saying it would freeze all moves to achieve full membership for "Palestine" in various UN agencies until the end of January, a European diplomat said, while the United States and Israel would resume transferring it funds.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's special envoy Isaac Molho met secretly in London on Tuesday with U.S. administration representatives David Hale and Dennis Ross to discuss the suggestion.

According to a European diplomat whom the PA had updated about the proposal, the PA plans to complete the process of trying to get full UN membership for Palestine recognized by the Security Council. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to ask for a vote by the end of December, although the move is doomed to defeat. Even if the Palestinians muster enough votes, the United States will veto it.

Other than that, however, the Palestinians are prepared to suspend their efforts to achieve full membership in such agencies as the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, the diplomat said. Nor will they ask the General Assembly to upgrade their observer status to non-member observer state.

Though the Palestinians offered to temporarily suspend these UN efforts, if a deal is struck that restores the PA's cash flow, it is thought such moves will be stopped for the foreseeable future.

Israeli sources confirmed that Molho had met with the U.S. officials in London, while a British source said Molcho also met with a senior Arab figure.

While the Americans view the PA proposal positively, it isn't clear whether Israel will agree to it. Israel is still refusing to transfer the approximately $100 million in taxes it collected for the PA in October.

This offer is a great example of how the PA does everything nowadays:

It is a stunt.

Every UN agency like WHO sees very well what happened to UNESCO after the US stopped funding it. They are not nearly as eager to accept the PLO as a member if it means that they lose tens of millions of dollars. I haven't seen any oil-rich Gulf nations step up to offer to make up the shortfall. And since the UNESCO vote, they have been forced to add a big yellow DONATE NOW button on their home page that wasn't there before.

The PLO knows this very well and they know that forcing other UN agencies to choose between their support for the cause that has obsessed the UN for decades and losing the US money that they so desperately need to continue their giant bureaucracy will end up alienating the PLO.

Beyond that, look at the timing being offered - to wait until January before starting a new UN push for membership.

In January, five members of the security council rotate out, and it is possible that the PLO's next attempt to push for full membership would get them the 9 votes they need for a symbolic victory, forcing a US veto. They have already said they would keep trying until they get it.

So they are offering literally nothing in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars. They are not offering to return to negotiations. They are not offering compromises.

The response should properly be that they get zero support until they are ready to act like grownups and stop relying on publicity stunts and political games to avoid making the decisions necessary for peace.

We have heard Israeli leaders from the right and the left all admit that they are willing to make "painful compromises" in order to achieve true peace with the Arabs. We have not heard the Palestinian Arab leaders ever say that phrase. Asking their people to give anything up for peace is utterly foreign to them, so instead we will keep seeing stunts - stunts that prove that the Palestinian Arabs have never been serious about a peace agreement and that today's leadership is just as intransigent as Arafat was.

(h/t CHA)

UPDATE: The PLO is now denying the story.

Too funny: Lebanese politicians get into fight on TV

From AP:

Two prominent Lebanese politicians debating the unrest in neighboring Syria have exchanged blows on live television, in an indication of the deep divide between Lebanese factions over their relationship with Damascus.

Pro and anti-Syrian regime demonstrations are common in Lebanon, whose politics have long been heavily influenced by Damascus, now facing increasing isolation over its bloody crackdown on protestors.

The fight late Monday night broke out in a debate between anti-Syrian former legislator Mustafa Alloush and the head of the Lebanese branch of Syria's ruling Baath party Fayez Shukur.

The video:

MEMRI has the translated video (not embeddable, unfortunately), where it includes such gems as "My shoe commands more respect than you" and "Your sister..."

Abbas lies again in Wednesday speech

Wafa reports on Mahmoud Abbas' speech Wednesday night.

It's filled with the usual lies. Here's one of them:

He said Israel was established based on UN Resolution 181 of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, on condition that it should accept this resolution and Resolution 194, which calls for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes they had fled from in Palestine.

“This is our right, which does not go away in time,” he said.

As I noted in July when Saeb Erekat said the same lie:

The easiest way to find out is to read the text of the resolution accepting Israel itself:

Having received the report of the Security Council on the application of Israel for membership in the United Nations,

Noting that, in the judgment of the Security Council, Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter,

Noting that the Security Council has recommended to the general Assembly that it admit Israel to membership in the United Nations,

Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it "unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a member of the United Nations,"

Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,

The General Assembly,

Acting in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure,

1. Decides that Israel is a peace loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations;

2. Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations.

While the resolution "recalls" UNGA 181 and 194 there is no conditional language in this resolution at all. The actionable part of the resolution is unambiguous. Beyond that, the preamble explicitly notes that Israel clarified - at length - its interpretation of those resolutions in a number of now obscure UN documents (here and here, among others.)

Abba Eban was, as usual, masterful in explaining Israel's position, and his explanation is referred to in this resolution just as the UNGA resolutions are. The language of the resolution seems to accept Eban's words as being just as important as the texts of the earlier resolutions themselves.

To sum it up: Abbas lied yet again.

And, to top it off, he showed his intransigence once again as well:

He said negotiations with Israel will not resume before it accepts the 1967 lines as the borders of the Palestinian state and stops all settlement activities.

“Without these two conditions, there will be no negotiations,” he said.

Ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homeland is now being positioned as a precondition to "negotiations."

And no one even blinks.

Latest bizarre conspiracy theory: Hafez Assad sold the Golan to Israel

Nuttiness at Albawaba:

Dr. Mahmoud Jame', a close friend to late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has recently raised an interesting issue when he said that Sadat was briefed on the secret that the Golan Heights were actually sold to Israel in ahead of the 1967 War in exchange for US$100 million. Dr. Jame', a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, and author of the book "I Knew Sadat", said that the money was received by Rifaat al-Assad and his brother Hafez Assad, the former Syrian president. The check was deposited in a Swiss bank.

Jame' went on to say that, "one morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan Heights, and I swear by the Almighty God that he put his hand on my shoulder and as we were standing on the Golan Heights, he told me literally: Look Mahmoud. This is the Golan, can any power seize it so easily, even if it is Israel?" And Jame' said, "I said to Sadat this is impossible, he said to me I will tell you a dangerous secret, the Golan Heights were purchased by Israel for $100 million. The check was received by both Hafez and Rifaat al-Assad and deposited in their accounts in a Swiss bank."

The price in return was that Syrian Defense Minister at the time, Hafez Assad, order the Syrian forces to withdraw immediately from the Golan Heights in the June 1967 war without firing a single shot and handing it over to Israel. "This story and my testimony of this event, has been kept secret for many years until 1999, when I alluded in the book "I Knew Sadat" to the incident without revealing the full details. In 2006, when I was hosted by Almihwar channel, I provided the full details frankly, to the extent that even Moataz was stunned," the Egyptian writer said.

"The next day, Almihwar hosted Mr. Amin Gemayel, Lebanon's former president, and the subject was raised with him. He supported my words. Then the Beirut-based Future channel tried to invite me to Beirut to discuss the subject, but I apologized, and refused," he added.

Syrian sources dismiss the Egyptian writer's claims. They claim this "baseless" story is part of a smear campaign against the Assad regime.

So Syria withdrew from the Golan without firing a shot? Who knew?

I wonder how much Damascus would cost.

Administrivia/open thread

I haven't figured out yet how to automatically post there, but I now have a Google Plus page for those interested.

Blogger has added something called "dynamic pages" where you can view the blog in completely different ways. It does not yet have all the features I need - no sidebars or widgets, for example - but for those who have problems reading the blog, you can play with a live version of the Magazine style of the blog. If they add the customization features I need, I will probably redesign the blog around that format.

And stay tuned - it looks like there will be a live presentation of the 2011 Hasby Awards again this year, with some special surprises! More details to come.

Tunisian TV executive to stand trial for showing "offensive" cartoon

From AFP:

The head of a Tunisian television station whose broadcast of “Persepolis” sparked violent protests, said Wednesday he faced trial and up to three years in jail if convicted of offending Islamic values.

Nabil Karoui, the head of Nessma television, told AFP he was being prosecuted for having “violating sacred values, good morals and disturbing public order” by broadcasting the film in October.

If convicted, he faced up to three years in prison, he said.

“I am going to plead not guilty, of course,” he told AFP ahead of the trial opening on Thursday.

Nessma TV’s broadcast of the film on October 7, dubbed into the Tunisian dialect, provoked a wave of protests that included an attack on the station’s offices and violent street protests.

“Persepolis,” a globally acclaimed animated film on Iran’s 1979 revolution, offended many Muslims because of a scene showing a representation of God. All depictions of God are forbidden by Islam.

Karoui quickly apologised for the broadcast, but that did not stop the protests.

After an evening of street clashes on October 14, about 100 men firebombed Karoui’s home. He was not at home but his family had to flee.

Witnesses described the assailants, who were armed with Molotov cocktails, knives and swords, as members of the ultra-conservative Salafist sect.

The film’s showing came less than two weeks before historic polls on October 23 to elect a constituent assembly, the first since January’s overthrow of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Tunisia’s Islamist party Ennahda, which emerged as the largest party after the vote, condemned the violence but also denounced the broadcast of the film as a “provocation”.

Karoui said the case had been brought after a complaint filed by more than 140 lawyers.

“It is scandalous that I should be the one to appear when the people who burned my house down have been released,” he said.

“The new defenders of the moral order in Tunisia want to make an example of me. We are in a moral dictatorship even worse than under Ben Ali. Under the old regime I never had death threats,” he added.

The TV station was attacked at the time of the broadcast as well.

The film itself looks very good; it is an autobiographical coming-of-age story about an Iranian woman who simply does not fit in. it has won a number of awards.

And here's how God looks in the movie:

Another threat from Iran

From FARS agency:

A senior Iranian military commander lashed out at the Zionist regime's officials for their pleasure in the death of a number of Iranian IRGC forces and commander in the Saturday blast at an Islamic Revolution Guards Corps base near Tehran, saying that the reaction of the Zionists signified their arrogant nature.

Addressing a gathering here in Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian Armed Forces Deputy Chief of Staff for Cultural Affairs and Defense Publicity Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri pointed to the recent remarks made by the Israeli officials who hailed the deadly blast in Tehran, and stated, "That they voice satisfaction in the killing of innocent people showed the arrogant nature of these regimes."

Jazzayeri is deeply offended that anyone could say anything positive over the deaths of innocents.

How touching! How moral! How peaceful!

And immediately after:

"But, the Zionist regime should worry about the time when the sound of such powerful explosions are heard in Tel Aviv and other parts of the occupied territories (Israel)," Jazzayeri noted.

He seems to be pretty happy at the prospect, doesn't he?

Because, to him and to the Iranian regime, no one in Israel is considered innocent.

And who would be behind such powerful explosions in Tel Aviv, anyway?

USAF gets 30,000 pound "bunker buster"

From Bloomberg:

The U.S. Air Force has taken delivery of a new 30,000-pound bomb from Boeing Co. (BA) that’s capable of penetrating deeply buried enemy targets.

The huge bunker buster, dubbed the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, is built to fit the B-2 stealth bomber. The Air Force Global Strike Command started receiving the bombs in September, Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jack Miller said in a short statement to Bloomberg News.

Mockup of MOP, from great article here.

The deliveries “will meet requirements for the current operational need,” he said.

The Air Force in 2009 said Boeing might build as many as 16 of the munitions. Miller yesterday had no details on how many the Air Force plans to buy. Boeing in August received a $32 million contract that included eight of the munitions.

Command head Lieutenant General James Kowalski told the annual Air Force Association conference in September the command “completed integration” of the bunker-buster bomb with the B- 2, “giving the war-fighter increased capability against hardened and deeply buried targets.”

The bomb is the U.S. military’s largest conventional penetrator. It’s six times bigger than the 5,000-pound bunker buster that the Air Force now uses to attack deeply buried nuclear, biological or chemical sites.

Chicago-based Boeing is manufacturing the bomb, which was successfully demonstrated in March 2007.

The new, 20.5-foot-long bomb carries more than 5,300 pounds of explosives and is guided by Global Positioning System satellites, according to a description on the Web site of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

The specifications:

Length: 20.5 feet (6.2 m) [7]
Diameter: 31.5 inches (0.8 m) [7]
Weight: 30,000 pounds (14 metric tons)
Warhead: 5,300 pounds (2.4 metric tons) high explosive
Penetration:
200 ft (61 m) of 5,000 psi (34 MPa) reinforced concrete
26 ft (7.9 m) of 10,000 psi (69 MPa) reinforced concrete
130 ft (40 m) of moderately hard rock

This is one really big bomb.

Yet it isn't the biggest bomb ever manufactured.

Demonizing Israel through the Bedouin of the Negev

Ha'aretz last month wrote:

Researchers who have spent much of the past several decades studying and documenting the Bedouin Arabs of Israel's Negev Desert claim that a government plan to relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin would be a gross injustice.

Ethnographer Clinton Bailey, who has authored volumes about Bedouin poetry, proverbs and legal traditions, says he is pessimistic about the Prawer Plan, which would effectively extinguish the Bedouin's land claims without adequate compensation.

The Prawer plan, which the government approved on September 11 and is supposed to take effect in three weeks' time, would appropriate land where between 20,000 and 30,000 Bedouin are living in villages that are not recognized by the state and which do not receive government services, such as electric power and other utilities.

Some of those Bedouin will be compensated for their losses, receiving either a cash payout or deed to another piece of real estate elsewhere in the country. But not all of the Bedouin who have land claims are able to produce documentation that meets the requirements laid out in the Prawer plan.

"They're giving the Bedouin much too little, much less than they deserve," says Bailey, who has reported on Bedouin life since the late 1960s. "It doesn't really relate to all the Bedouin population, whereas it should, in terms of reparations for land that's been taken, in land or in money."

Bailey also says that the wording of the government plan is as insulting as its terms. "The language of it is too sharp, as if they're doing the Bedouin a big favor, which the Bedouin will never take," Bailey says. "Generally speaking, most Bedouin are opposed to it."

This is a pretty typical article from the media on this topic which downplays Israel's legal rights and romanticizes the Bedouin as majestic creatures of the desert fighting for their way of life.

The facts are a bit different.

A legal scholar on a mailing list I receive describes it this way (referring to a similar article from a couple of months ago, and I'm putting together portions from several posts):

Like most articles about the phenomenon, this one misleads the reader into thinking that the problem is that Israel is refusing to grant zoning rights and recognition of existing municipalities, and that it is denying Bedouin property rights, when the real problem is that the Bedouin are illegally squatting on state land and stealing water and electricity as well as the land itself. A group of land squatters on state land are land thieves even if they prefer to call themselves an "unrecognized village." The land thieves don't have "traditional property rights" just because they have what the writer considers a quaint lifestyle. Observing that the Bedouins are living on stolen land does not constitute evidence that Israelis are racist.

The state is attempting to resolve the problem of rampant land theft not by enforcing the law but by granting Bedouin free land rights in new and existing villages in exchange for their yielding possession of the land they stole. The Bedouin land claims are from recent unlawful possession of state land, and have no basis in Israeli law, and would not be recognized in Mandatory or Ottoman law either, but the state is nevertheless offering generous compensation for surrendering the claims. And the Bedouin have consistently rejected the deal; they are not interested in any bargain that involves their yielding possession of the stolen land.

The Bedouin do not have land claims that are recognized by law now. The claims are without basis in Israeli law (as they would be under Mandatory and Ottoman law). They have land claims that are recognized by NGO’s because they are asserted against the state of Israel. Fear of adverse publicity has meant that Israel has very rarely undertaken enforcement measures, even after winning judgments in court.

The same situation will prevail after the land giveaways. That, in fact, is what happened after Israel created Rahat, and gave away the land there. Israel has created villages for Bedouin, and given away land to Bedouin in those villages “in exchange” for land claims elsewhere. This has not prevented the tribes who now own land in the villages from also continuing to claim land elsewhere. As long as there are government officials willing to cave in and grant land in exchange for new made-up land claims, there will be Bedouin ready and willing to make up new land claims.

In the 1950’s they didn't have any legal property claims either. The Ottomans introduced land registries. The Bedouins of the Negev decided that the price of legal property rights was taxes and that was too high a price to pay. Their choice. But you can’t now turn around and say that they have inherited legal property rights that were already voluntarily relinquished decades before there was a state of Israel. And, incidentally, most of the Bedouin claims today are “inherited” from persons that were not in Israel in the 1950’s.

Bedouin get the same welfare services as everyone else, and they exploit them to the fullest. What Bedouin don’t get is state subsidies of municipal services to fictitious municipalities on stolen land. Jews don’t either. The state of Israel doesn’t collect garbage in Jewish municipalities either. I would be delighted if the Bedouin would compare their situation to Jews and demand equal treatment. They would receive far less generous treatment from the state. It is crazy to have villages created on stolen state land. It would be yet more crazy for the state to pay the thieves to build schools, water and electricity infrastructure and garbage collection systems.

There is a very good and largely sympathetic article in Jewish Ideas Daily today, by Diana Muir Appelbaum, that shows an analogy between the Bedouin of the Negev with the Irish Travelers (Gypsies) of the UK:

The chronically tense relations between the Israeli government and Bedouins in the Negev—where unrecognized villages are built, razed, and built again—are certain to grow even more tense with the Israeli Cabinet's recent approval of a plan that will recognize about half these villages but demolish the other half, sending their 30,000 residents to existing Bedouin towns.

But if the Bedouins were to vanish, magically replaced in the Negev by the Irish Travelers (Gypsies) who were recently evicted from their unauthorized settlement at Dale Farm in the United Kingdom, Israeli authorities could be forgiven for failing to see any material difference.

In the 1980's, the Council of Basildon let a few Travelers pitch caravans at nearby Dale Farm when they were not on the road; but the Council denied permission for further settlement in what is part of England's "Green Belt." Last month, after years of lawsuits, the Council got permission to clear 86 families from Dale Farm—and did so, not without raucous protests, unfavorable media attention, and a mediation offer from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Like Bedouin culture, traditional Traveler culture is itinerant. Both groups regard their way of life as superior to that of farmers and town dwellers. Both hold honor dear and define honor in strikingly similar ways: A husband protects and provides for his women. A wife obeys her husband and does not work outside the home. Girls regularly drop out long before the legal school-leaving age and are often married by sixteen. A man gains status by fathering many children, especially sons, and engaging in traditional occupations like animal breeding. Factory and service jobs are scorned.

Job prospects in the animal-breeding business aren't what they used to be, but modernity has otherwise been surprisingly generous to Travelers and Bedouin. In both the United Kingdom and Israel, government welfare benefits, including monthly payments to parents for every child, provide significant income support. New opportunities, some in what may euphemistically be called the non-regular economy, have also contributed to unprecedented prosperity. And modern medicine means that 10 or 12 children in a family can grow to healthy adulthood. In sum, Travelers and Bedouin have unprecedented resources with which to achieve the large family ideal. In fact, these circumstances have helped make polygamy far more widespread among the Bedouin than it was in Ottoman times, when few men could afford a second wife.

Modern society does not, however, approve of living in caravans or tents pitched wherever the family chooses. In Britain, as in Israel, the government wants traditionally itinerant people to keep their children in school, take jobs in the regular economy, and move into housing that is built to code. For their part, the Travelers, like the Bedouin, prefer to live in rural settings where they can park caravans or pitch tents beside homes that they build themselves and keep livestock near the house. Not only at Dale Farm but across England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, Travelers find that the number of places where itinerants can lawfully camp in this manner is dwindling; and when they form settlements without a permit, the authorities enforce the law.

...These controversies are, in essence, struggles over identity. Such struggles between modern societies and itinerant groups are as inevitable as they are painful and universal.

Read the whole article.

The upshot is that the romanticizing of the Bedouin, as is often the case, has nothing to do with their legal rights and everything to do with using them as yet more ammunition against Israel.

See? He wants peace!

According to the Wafa agency, there were rallies to mark the anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death in Beirut, Berlin and Moscow.

In Beirut a Fatah leader used classic doublespeak by saying that Palestinians in Lebanon are guests, with rights and obligations, and they want civil and human rights to live in dignity until their return, refusing resettlement and displacement. In fact, as I have documented, every time Palestinian Arabs had the chance to become citizens of Lebanon they jumped at the opportunity.

In Berlin the event opened with verses from the Quran, followed by the Palestinian national anthem, and then a film documentary about the milestones in the life of the "martyr Abu Ammar."

In Moscow, the PLO representative there said that the syphilitic killer was "a symbol for all those seeking freedom and justice in this world."

Meanwhile, a 30-episode TV series on the distinguished career of the would-be genocidal mass murderer has been announced to be shown by the TV network of one of those freedom-seeking and justice-pursuing countries that admire Arafat so much - Syria.

Israel working with Kenya against Islamists

From the BBC:

Israel has offered to help Kenya secure its borders as it tackles Somalia's Islamist group, al-Shabab, the Kenyan prime minister's office has said.

It said Kenya got the backing of Israel to "rid its territory of fundamentalist elements" during Prime Minister Raila Odinga's visit to the country.

Last month, Kenya sent troops to neighbouring Somalia to defeat al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda.

It blames the militants for a spate of abductions on its side of the border.

In a statement, Mr Odinga's office quotes Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying that "Kenya's enemies are Israel's enemies".

"We have similar forces planning to bring us down," he is is quoted as saying. "I see it as an opportunity to strengthen ties."

At least 15 people were killed in a suicide bombing on an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan coastal resort of Mombasa in 2002.

Four years earlier, more than 200 people were killed in co-ordinated bomb blasts on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Al-Qaeda carried out the attacks, with some of its senior members operating from Somalia.

Mr Odinga - who is accompanied on the visit by Internal Security Minister George Saitoti - said Israel could help Kenya's police force detect and destroy al-Shabab's networks in Kenya.

Kenya also needed Israel to provide vehicles for border patrols and equipment for sea surveillance to curb piracy off the East African coast, he said.

"We need to be able to convincingly ensure homeland security," Mr Odinga said.

The statement quoted Mr Netanyahu as promising to help build a "coalition against fundamentalism" in East Africa, incorporating Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Tanzania.

Israel's President Shimon Peres had promised to "make everything available" to Kenya to guarantee its security within its borders, the statement said.

"Consistently, Kenya has shown a very positive attitude towards Israel and Israel is ready to help," the statement quotes Mr Peres saying.

Look closely, and you can see the hate dripping from he face of the evil extremist right-wing hawkish racist supremacist Israeli leader.

Or at least some people can.

(h/t Yoel)

PA says Israel building a "Talmudic garden" in Silwan

The official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency says:

The Israeli municipality of Jerusalem Thursday seized a piece of land belonging to a Palestinian Orthodox Monastery in the neighborhood of Al-Thawri, west of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, according to a press release by the committee for the defense of Silwan.

The release said the Israeli municipality seized the 850 square meter piece of land in order to turn it into a Talmudic garden and a parking lot.

The committee expressed fear that the land would be turned into a Talmudic garden under the control of the Israeli nature and parks authority, surrounding the areas of Wadi Hilweh and Al-Bustan in Silwan.

I have no idea what they think a "Talmudic garden" is. Perhaps it looks like this:

The Arabic press often uses the word "Talmudic" to add an extra degree of vitriol to anything that Israeli Jews decide to do.

It is most often used in articles about Jews going to the Temple Mount where they are accused of "performing Talmudic rituals" - by which they mean, prayer.

Their use of the word shows that the real fear the Arabs have is not of "Zionism" but of Judaism. Zionism is regarded as a modern construct whose expected lifespan would not be any greater than that of Communism, but Judaism is far more ancient and lasting than Islam - and that is their real fear.

That's why their cartoons and caricatures always depict Jews as hook-nosed, black-hat wearing religious Jews rather than, say, stereotypical Sabras. They project their fears into illustrations and articles like this because they know that Islam will outlast the political flavor of the decade or century - but it will never outlast the religion from which it was derived.

Interestingly, the phrase "Talmudic garden" was used by rabidly anti-semitic Christian leaders who were behind some of the censorship of the Talmud. One wanted every reference to non-Jews in the Talmud to be excised, saying he wanted "the total uprooting of all such weeds from 'the talmudic garden of Satan, the paradise of Hebrews, revered by them as the gospels of the talmudic Antichrist.' " Modern Islamic use of the term mirrors the use from medieval Christianity.

Ironically, much of the Quran comes from Talmudic stories that are not mentioned explicitly in the Torah.

Finally, a "Talmudic garden" actually was dedicated last month in Bet El, in the courtyard of a school where students would be encouraged to study Talmud outside.

It is also worth reviewing out my previous article on Kfar HaShiloach - what is now called Silwan - showing the Yemenite Jewish village on an otherwise empty hillside in 1891 and how the Jewish community grew until they were ethnically cleansed and turned into refugees by the Arab riots in 1921 and 1929.

The photograph I obtained of the area in 1891, thanks to Robert Avrech of Seraphic Secret, is now featured in the Wikipedia entry on "Silwan," showing a small victory of truth making it into the mainstream.