Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 02, 2012

Corrupt Egyptian army sells pasta and rents wedding halls

Jadaliyya last week had an utterly fascinating article about the profit-making enterprises of the Egyptian army, and the corruption that comes from it.

Should the production of pasta, mineral water, butane gas cylinders, and gas station services qualify as classified military secrets? And does discussing these enterprises in public pass as a crime of high treason? The leaders of the Egyptian Armed Forces believe the answer is “yes.”

Until this very day, the role of the military establishment in the economy remains one of the major taboos in Egyptian politics. Over the past thirty years, the army has insisted on concealing information about its enormous interests in the economy and thereby keeping them out of reach of public transparency and accountability. The Egyptian Armed Forces owns a massive segment of Egypt’s economy—twenty-five to forty percent, according to some estimates. In charge of managing these enterprises are the army’s generals and colonels, notwithstanding the fact that they lack the relevant experience, training, or qualifications for this task.

The military’s economic interests encompass a diverse range of revenue-generating activities, including the selling and buying of real estate on behalf of the government, domestic cleaning services, running cafeterias, managing gas stations, farming livestock, producing food products, and manufacturing plastic table covers. All this information is readily available on the websites of relevant companies and factories, which publicly and proudly disclose that they belong to the army. Yet for some reason the military establishment insists on outlawing any public mention of these activities.

Why is the budget of the Egyptian army above public transparency and accountability? Is it because it is exclusively concerned with national defense and thus must remain classified? Not really.

....The part of the military’s budget that is kept secret has little to do with national defense and more with the huge profits the army accrues from the production of non-military goods and services. In other words, these budgetary items have to do with: how many bags of pasta and bottled water were sold last month; how much money “Wataniyya”, the military’s gas station, generated last year; how many houses “Queen”, the military’s cleaning services company, attended to this month and how many nurseries the same company is in charge of running; how many truckloads of fresh beef have the military’s high-tech slaughterhouses in East Uwaynat sold this year; how many cabins they managed to rent out in the north coast Sidi Crir resort last summer; and how many apartments they sold in Kuliyyat al-Banat residential buildings and at what price? All these items together make up the “classified” part of the army’s budget, which the military establishment insistently keeps off the public record and out of the reach of parliamentary and public deliberation as well as oversight. Attempting to discuss the army’s so-called classified activities in public could result in military prosecution and trial, because these are, supposedly, “national security secrets” that Egypt’s rivals—like Israel—must not find out about.

...Of greater concern is how many of the army’s leaders have entered into networks of corruption and unlawful partnerships with private capital.

...As the managers of a state-owned economic empire built on corruption and oppression of working classes, military leaders have become decisively complicit in repressing labor and violating their rights.

Being an army general, a member of the National Democratic Party (NDP), and a Member of Parliament for ten years almost guarantees that one is part of a corruption network. General Sayed Mishaal perfectly fits this profile. Before becoming Minister of Military Production, Mishaal was a director of the National Service Projects Organization (NSPO). During that time, he was also a member of the NDP, and as an MP for Cairo’s district of Helwan for three consecutive terms from 2000 to 2011. He used to proudly brag about managing to name the military-produced bottled mineral water Safi after his daughter. Mishaal was removed from his post after the revolution as a result of referrals to the General Prosecutor accusing him of wasteful spending of the ministry’s funds. Mishaal’s victory in parliamentary elections in Helwan was made easy by the fact that he could mobilize the votes of tens of thousands of individuals who work at “Military Factory 99,” located in the district. Mishaal used to show up at the factory to celebrate and make merry with the workers during election campaign events, only to disappear and hardly return after his victory.

The name “Military Factory 99” has also become associated with the repression of workers, especially that labor-employer relations in the factory are not subject to traditional union or government regulations. In August of 2010, Factory 99’s workers broke out into intense protests after one of their colleagues died as a result of an explosion. The director of the factory, who was also a general, had brought in a number of gas cylinders in order to test them out, even though the workers were not trained to use them. When several cylinders exploded, he told the workers that it would not matter if one or two of them died. Then, when one of them did in fact die, they stormed his office, gave him a beating, and then staged a sit-in. Subsequently, the workers’ leaders were tried in military courts for charges of revealing “war secrets” on account that they spoke publicly about butane gas cylinders.

There's lots more in this well-researched article.

One of the commenters pointed to this article in Al Masry al Youm that alleges that army-owned chemical companies are creating an environmental disaster, killing animals and destroying nearby farms.

The army is the most stable institution in Egypt - and it is rotten to the core. Even without the prospect of the Islamist takeover, this does not bode well for the country.

(h/t Arthur)

Ilan Grapel writes about his incarceration in Egypt

From the Washington Post:

When I went to Egypt to spend the summer working at a nongovernmental organization that provides legal assistance to asylum seekers from Sudan and Iraq, I was no stranger to the Middle East. I had studied Arabic in Cairo and spent more than two years in the Israel Defense Forces. I hoped that my summer would prove that my Zionist ideals could coexist with support for the right of human migration and sanctuary. I also hoped to convince the Arabs I met that my Zionism did not have to be antithetical to their interests and that we could work together for peace.

But in post-revolutionary Egypt, my attempts to educate and interact with the local population led to my arrest, to solitary confinement and eventually to the threat of five simultaneous life imprisonments for “espionage” and “incitement.”

On previous visits, the friendships I developed overpowered the omnipresent anti-Israel propaganda of the Arab world. Some former adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood actually wished me luck when I left to do reserve duty in Israel. Most Egyptians I met and chatted with over coffee ended our conversations by admitting to holding misconceptions about Israelis. This reinforced my hopes for common ground.

So during the summer I emphasized my Israeli background, even when I entered Egypt as an American. I identified as a Zionist Israeli to all of my Egyptian friends, taught them Hebrew and showed them Israeli movies. In return, I received lessons in Arabic, Islam and Egyptian culture.

Some who do not know me considered my actions peculiar or harmful. But that condemnation only underscores a particular abyss into which the Middle East conflict has descended since once-influential Zionists and Egyptians considered cooperation to be beneficial, as did the early Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and Dawood Barakat, the former editor of the Egyptian daily al-Ahram.

On June 12, two dozen state security officials barged into my hostel room, handcuffed and blindfolded me, and transported me to their general prosecutor.

People ask, “Were you scared?” I was terrified and confused. Over time I also became angry and lonely. The initial 14 days were the “best” part of my imprisonment because there was at least human interaction. The prosecutor and I bantered about politics, religion and the Middle East conflict. The conversations were jovial, mostly innocuous, save for some random accusations: “Security reports inform us that you were smuggling weapons from Libyan revolutionaries into Egypt,” or my favorite — but perhaps irrelevant — charge: “Ilan, you used your seductive powers to recruit Egyptian women and that is a crime.”

...Was my trip reckless or “wrong”? No. Despite the peril, the U.S. government sends Peace Corps volunteers to volatile regions because of the benefit of grass-roots diplomacy. Hasbara, the Hebrew term that refers to efforts to explain the Israeli viewpoint, has much to gain from such a strategy, given the pernicious myths about Israel and Jews prevalent in much of the Arab world.

My hasbara provided a viewpoint that changed the mentalities of former Muslim Brotherhood members, the prosecutor and my guards, whose last words were “Shalom, we hope you forgive us.” Israelis and Arabs can continue to maintain the status quo of mutual avoidance or they can dare to coexist. To those who wrongly held me, I say simply, I forgive you.

It looks like my early impression of Grapel was right on the money. He's dangerously naive.

Of course most Arabs are friendly on an individual basis. That doesn't mean that every Israeli or Jew in an Arab country is safe!

It is one thing to work for coexistence in an official capacity, where you know that you are backed by an organization or government that provides some level of protection. But for a Jew - and former IDF soldier - to go into a country where anti-semitism and Israel hatred is off the charts, in your own personal capacity, is simply stupid.

Not only that, but Grapel did not even address the circumstances of his release. He was traded for 25 Egyptian prisoners in Israeli jails. Even though none of them were said to be security prisoners, Grapel has established a precedent where hostile countries (or cold peace partners) can arrest any Israeli citizen under any pretext, and expect to get something concrete in return.

Also, besides the released prisoners, Grapel's reckless decisions reportedly has netted Egypt with F-16 fighter jets.

Starry-eyed peaceniks can endanger many people with their idealism.

And Grapel is clueless as to why this might be a problem.

New Year's open thread

I'm working on other projects today and maybe tomorrow, so here's an open thread so I don't feel so guilty about not blogging quite as much as usual.

Israeli Druse singer banned from Ramallah

From JPost:

The Palestinian Authority banned a well-know Israeli Druse singer from appearing at a New Year’s Eve party in Ramallah.

The decision to ban Mike Sharif, known as “The Druse Boy,” was taken following strong protests and threats by many Palestinians who oppose “normalization” with Israelis.

Sharif was raised in a village in the North and is one of the popular singers not only among Israeli Arabs but throughout the Arab world. He started his career as a singer at the age of seven.

The Palestinians were angered by the fact that Sharif was presented as an Israeli and that some of his songs were in Hebrew. Some said it was unacceptable that Israeli songs would be sung in Ramallah on the third anniversary of Operation Cast Lead. Others said they didn’t like the fact that a member of the Druse community, whose sons serve in the IDF, would appear at a party in Ramallah.

PA policemen raided the hall where the party was supposed to take place and ordered the owners to cancel Sharif’s appearance, eyewitnesses said.

The organizers of the event were forced to replace the Druse singer with another performer.

This is not a private institution that decides not to hire the singer - this is the Palestinian Authority stepping in to ban a singer, after he has already been hired, because he is Israeli!

Ramallah is looking a lot more like Gaza City lately, isn't it?

Here is Sharif singing an Arabic/Mizrahi-style song, in Hebrew, when he was younger:

(h/t DF, OnionTearsNews, Eliahou)

Third anniversary of Nizar Rayyan's death

On January 1, 2009, Israel warned Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan to leave his home with his family before the IDF would bomb the weapons cache underneath his apartment building.

He refused, attempting to use his wives and children as human shields to protect Hamas weaponry.

The IDF saw a large number of people leave the apartment building and concluded that the buildings were empty before bombing it:

During this episode, which was widely reported by NGOs, Ri‘an and members of his family were killed in an aerial strike that hit their home. Ri‘an was a senior Hamas operative, but he was not the target of the attack, although the IDF legitimately could have treated him as a military target due to his central role in planning and executing terrorist attacks. Instead, the operational goal of the strike was to destroy Hamas‘ central compound in the Jabaliya refugee camp. The compound included several buildings that served as storage sites for large quantity of sophisticated weapons. The IDF limited the planned attack to the weapons storage site and did not seek to injure or harm Ri‘an or, of course, any members of his family.

In an effort to ensure that it destroyed only the storage facilities, and did not harm civilians residing in the buildings, the IDF issued several warnings before the attack. These included not only general leaflets and telephone calls, alerting civilians to avoid facilities serving Hamas and other terrorist groups, but specific phone calls to the residents of the targeted buildings, notifying them of the planned strike and warning them to evacuate the premises. The IDF also fired two separate rounds of preliminary warning shots with light weapons, 13 minutes and 9 minutes before the strike, providing sufficient time for residents to evacuate. The residents evidently understood these early warnings, as a group of them did leave the building, a fact confirmed by IDF surveillance before proceeding with the strike. The IDF observed this group evacuation and drew the reasonable conclusion that the buildings (including Ri‘an‘s house) were empty. Only then did the IDF launch the strike.

Following the strike, secondary explosions were visible. This confirmed that Hamas used the buildings for weapons storage, and therefore it was a legitimate military objective according to the Law of Armed Conflict. Only later was it discovered that, Ri‘an and his family chose to remain in the building after others had evacuated, leading to their death.

The deaths of the Ri‘an family members were tragic. Even so, it must be underscored that the IDF took appropriate steps to tailor its military strike to a proper military objective (the weapons storage site) under the cover of a civilian residence, and to extricate civilians from possible harm. To that end, the forces complied with international norms by giving effective advance warnings to at-risk civilians. That some civilians heeded these warnings, while the Ri‘an family apparently did not, does not render the IDF‘s action unlawful.

At the time of the strike, Reuters described Rayyan as "a 49-year-old cleric regarded as one of Hamas's most hardline political leaders."

Rayyan is listed as a "civilian" in the PCHR list of people killed in Gaza during the war.

The Al Qassam Brigades website is celebrating the third anniversary of his death, and illustrates this "civilian" with this photo:

His 16-year old son, Ghassan, killed with him, was described as an "al-Qassam shahid" by terrorist websites. And Rayyan had already sent one of his sons to his death on a suicide mission that killed two Israelis in 2001. That son was 16 as well.

A month after Rayyan was killed, NYT reporter James Bennet wrote in The Atlantic about an interview he had of Rayyan a few years earlier, showing his twisted and hateful worldview. But as I wrote at the time, Bennet never seemed to have published the details of that interview while Rayyan was alive.

Could it be because the New York Times wanted to keep the fiction alive that there was a difference between Hamas terrorists and its "political" wing?

Jeffrey Goldberg had interviewed Rayyan as well in 2006 and published details after his death (I don't know if he had printed this at the time):

Periodically, advocates of negotiation suggest that the hostility toward Jews expressed by Hamas is somehow mutable. But in years of listening, I haven’t heard much to suggest that its anti-Semitism is insincere. Like Hezbollah, Hamas believes that God is opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine. Both groups are rhetorically pitiless, though, again, Hamas sometimes appears to follow the lead of Hezbollah.

...Nizar Rayyan expressed much the same sentiment the night we spoke in 2006. We had been discussing a passage of the Koran that suggests that God turns a group of impious Jews into apes and pigs. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, among others, has deployed this passage in his speeches. Once, at a rally in Beirut, he said: “We shout in the face of the killers of prophets and the descendants of the apes and pigs: We hope we will not see you next year. The shout remains, ‘Death to Israel!’”

Mr. Rayyan said that, technically, Mr. Nasrallah was mistaken. “Allah changed disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, it is true, but he specifically said these apes and pigs did not have the ability to reproduce,” Mr. Rayyan said. “So it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people.”

I asked him the question I always ask of Hamas leaders: Could you agree to anything more than a tactical cease-fire with Israel? I felt slightly ridiculous asking: A man who believes that God every now and again transforms Jews into pigs and apes might not be the most obvious candidate for peace talks at Camp David. Mr. Rayyan answered the question as I thought he would, saying that a long-term cease-fire would be unnecessary, because it will not take long for the forces of Islam to eradicate Israel.

Potentially huge geniza find in Afghanistan

From JPost:

Screenshot from Channel 2 report (unclear if this is actual or illustrative)

The Jewish scholarly world is abuzz over the discovery of ancient Jewish scrolls in a cave in Afghanistan’s Samangan province, Channel 2 reported on Friday.

According to Arab Affairs correspondent Ehud Yeari, if validated the scrolls may be the most significant historical finding in the Jewish world since that of the Cairo Geniza in the 19th century.

“We know today about a couple of findings,” Haggai Ben-Shammai, Professor Emeritus of Arabic Language and Literature at Hebrew University was quoted as saying. “In all, in my opinion, there are about 150 fragments. It may be the tip of the iceberg.”

The scrolls, which were part of a geniza, a burial site for sacred Jewish texts, date from around 1,000 years ago and are in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and ancient Persian.

One scroll, whose replica was shown to the cameras, is apparently a dirge written for an important person whose identity has not been determined.

Other texts said to be found include an unknown history of the ancient kingdom of Judea, passages from the book of Isaiah and some of the works of Rabbi Saadia Gaon, a medieval sage.

In addition, rings with Jewish names like Shmuel Bar Yosef inscribed in Hebrew on them have surfaced.

The area in which the findings were discovered is on the so-called Silk Road, a trade route that connected Eastern Asia with the Middle East and Europe which Jewish merchants often traveled.

Yeari quoted sources as saying the scrolls were first moved to Peshawar province in Pakistan and from there had been sold to antiquities dealers around the world in Geneva, London, Dubai and Jerusalem.

He said the Prime Minister’s Office and several Jewish businessmen had expressed an interest in buying the scrolls from dealers and collectors but that the process was in its early stages.

The Cairo Geniza, which the said discovery was been compared with, has produced 280,000 texts providing a wealth of information on almost every aspect of Jewish history.

The last couple of paragraphs make it sound like the actual site of the findings is not under any sort of control, which could make it much harder to research properly. It might require some Indiana Jones-style archaeologists to properly deal with this!

(h/t Yoel)

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt insists it will never recognize Israel

From Al Masry al Youm:

Dr. Rashad Bayoumi, deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, told the newspaper Al Hayat of London in an interview published Sunday: "Is there a requirement that the government recognize Israel? .. This is not an option at all, whatever the circumstances, we will not recognize Israel at all, they are an usurping criminal enemy occupier entity."

He stressed that the Brotherhood "will not recognize the state of Israel under any circumstances," suggesting that the group "would put a peace treaty with Israel to a referendum."

Bayoumi stressed that "none of the members of the group will ever sit in the future with Israelis," adding: "I will not allow myself to sit down with a criminal .. We will not deal with Israel in any way."

And on the peace treaty, Bayoumi said: "We will take legal procedures against the peace treaty, it does not oblige us at all."

He explained: "The Brotherhood respects international conventions, but we will take legal action against the peace treaty with the Zionist entity ... It is the right of any party to reconsider the treaty."

If this is how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will behave when it becomes part of the government, then is there any question how Hamas would behave even if it joins the PLO?

The Islamic winter is upon us.

Egypt Muslims burn Copt homes after Mohammed drawing posted

From Al Masry al Youm:

The prosecutor’s office in the Upper Egyptian Governorate of Assiut has ordered the detention of Gamal Abdallah Masoud, a Coptic high-school student accused of posting images on his Facebook account that Muslim residents described as “offensive” to Prophet Mohamed.

Masoud denies posting the images, claiming that they were shared on his Facebook account without his permission.

As news of the images spread on Friday afternoon, angry Muslim residents from four villages in Assiut gathered to pelt security forces with stones after fire-bombing Masoud’s house. The house was empty at the time and the attackers failed to break into it due to tight security measures.

Masoud was taken by security forces to an unknown location to be interrogated over the alleged incident.

In Salam village in Damaira, a group of angry residents also set the homes of two Coptic families on fire. However, no injuries were reported as security forces and fire fighters arrived on the scene in time to put out the flames. The protesters attempted to set a third home on fire, but security forces intervened and secured the homes of Copts in the villages of Adr and Salam.

Clashes erupted again in the afternoon between security forces and the residents of the villages of Adr and Baheeg, with hundreds gathering to call for the Coptic man’s removal from the village. They bombarded security with stones and set fire to the agricultural waste around his home, forcing security forces to use tear gas to disperse them.

Last October, an Egyptian court sentenced a young Coptic man to three years in prison for posting opinions on his Facebook account that were thought to be offensive to Islam and Prophet Mohamed.

According to some accounts, the drawing showed four women asking Mohammed's hand in marriage.

If someone finds the cartoon, please send it to me.

Avi Issacharoff's analysis of Hamas

One of the better political analysts in Israel, Avi Issacharoff, wrote an intriguing analysis in Ha'aretz yesterday about whether Hamas has really changed

Using information that is not readily available, the dynamics of the split between Hamas leadership in Damascus and Gaza, a topic I wrote about a few days ago:

The announcement of the new mode of struggle sparked a series of angry reactions by senior figures in Hamas' political wing in Gaza; they, who had been considered more pragmatic, perhaps even moderate in their approach, endorsed a much tougher approach than Meshal's. However, this was not a case of a conservative ideology flying in the face of the new line articulated by Meshal: What really irked the Gaza officials, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Interior Minister Fathi Hamad, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar and others, was that they were not consulted before the announcement of the new policy was made.

This also explains Egypt's invitation to Haniyeh to visit Cairo, where he hasn't set foot for five years (because the Egyptians forbade it ). Egyptian intelligence, which initiated the intra-Palestinian reconciliation and is close to achieving that goal, wants to avoid last-minute obstacles and surprises.

The new-old power struggles in the top ranks of Hamas between those who are "inside" and those who are "outside" Palestine signify the second, dramatic metamorphosis the organization has undergone in the past few months. The Hamas leadership abroad - those who are described as being ensconced in Damascus and Tehran - has lost some of its status (and also some of its assets ) in the wake of the palpable crisis it finds itself in vis-a-vis the Syrian and Iranian regimes. Politically, Meshal, his deputy Mousa Abu Marzook, senior official Izzat Rishak and their colleagues have been weakened, as compared to the weight of the Gaza group. The "outside" leaders are currently trying to find new premises to rent across the Arab world, after the organization decided to leave Syria (which in turn led to a decision by Iran to cut its aid to Hamas ); within just a few weeks, they lost their political, military and financial mainstays.

Still, Meshal remains the organization's "big boss." He did not hesitate this week to emphasize that the decision to switch to popular resistance was approved by all the senior officials of the organization, not by him alone. For those seeking clarifications of Haniyeh's reactions, Meshal's close aides have explained that the prime minister is above all apprehensive about losing his position. Haniyeh's anger probably intensified when he learned that for now, at least, Hamas does not intend to run a candidate in the Palestinian presidential elections next May.

The historical decision to modify the character of the Palestinian struggle - alongside Hamas' agreement to join the Palestine Liberation Organization (and in large measure to accept the written agreements with Israel ) - does not necessarily attest to a strategic shift in terms of goals. It's possible that Meshal and his aides realize that for now they need to forgo terrorist attacks in favor of new and more effective ways of achieving their goals: Indeed, Meshal and his colleagues admit that they have not completely abandoned the armed struggle and that they reserve the right to resist the Israeli occupation "using all means." Meshal also emphasized that Hamas does not intend to disarm or to stop the organization's huge arms buildup in Gaza.

Other fascinating findings, some of which we knew and some we didn't:

Indeed, Hamas' financial situation in recent months has become increasingly dire: Tehran has slashed cash payments to Gaza, and revenues from smuggling activity via the Strip's tunnels have fallen off, due to the lifting of the Israeli siege of Gaza. The changed economic situation compelled Hamas to take a number of drastic steps, such as firing several hundred members of the organization's security apparatus in Gaza. (The official Hamas version states that 150 members of the security forces were dismissed on account of "moral problems." ) In addition, Hamas forces seized control of several bank branches (of the Palestine Bank and the Palestinian Islamic Bank ) in Gaza and "withdrew" money from them by force. The third step being taken to keep the Hamas coffers full is to raise taxes.

Hamas' ostensibly "clean" image is also not what it used to be: More and more senior figures in the movement have become entangled in corruption scandals, though these are rarely reported in the media. The most prominent person involved is Ayman Taha, one of the leaders of Hamas in the Strip, who was exiled to Cairo because of his involvement in one scandal, and continues to operate from there.

Of late, a few less-senior figures in Hamas - some of whom were suspected of corruption, and others of whom tried to report such affairs - have undergone peculiar accidents. For example, Ahmed al-Mamluk was killed two weeks ago, according to Hamas, "while carrying out a jihad mission." His family says he was supposed to be meeting with a senior Hamas official to discuss a number of corruption cases. A similar "accident" befell Ali Nayef al-Haj, who was killed in an "internal explosion" in November; Mohammed Zaki al-Hams, who died in a road accident in early November; Mohammed al-Mahamoum, who died last June from electrocution in a Hamas outpost; and Ashraf Faraj Abu Hana, who drowned in a swimming pool last March. Hamas says this is a chance series of accidents, but the families have radically different versions.

Another challenge faced by Hamas in recent months is the activity of Islamic Jihad. The fact that Hamas has been observing a cease-fire on the Israeli front has sparked considerable domestic criticism in Gaza, and many activists have recently left and joined Islamic Jihad. Amazingly, Jihad is able to spot the "rebels" and recruit them even from Hamas-controlled mosques. It seems safe to say that Hamas' new policy will only heighten such challenges and further weaken its ability to exercise full control over events in Gaza.

Issacharoff thinks that unity between Gaza and Fatah is likely, even as he acknowledges that security forces in each territory are arresting members of the other party and apparently trying to sabotage the process.

I think that Fatah will move at least as much towards Hamas and the other way around. In fact, on Saturday, Tayseer Khaled, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that in the coming year the PLO will effect a gradual reduction of the level of relations with Israel, leading to cutting ties altogether.

Hamas, meanwhile, continues its hardline rhetoric, with Haniyeh emphasizing that Hamas "will never recognize Israel at all" and calling for every Arab nation to build a "Jerusalem Army" to help fight for the Jewish capital.

So if they are going to unify - something I still think is unlikely - it will be because Fatah is more interested peace with Hamas than with Israel. And the possibility that Hamas will engineer a takeover of the PLO is not something to be dismissed lightly.

Should Israel Get Some Credit?

Guest post by Challah Hu Akbar aka CHA

On January 26, 2011, Treasury designated Ayman Joumaa, as well as nine individuals and 19 entities as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers. According to Treasury, Joumaa’s network “used LCB [Lebanese Canadian Bank] to launder narcotics proceeds.” In addition, Treasury said that “Hizballah derived financial support from the criminal activities of Joumaa’s network.”

When Treasury designated the Lebanese Canadian Bank, on February 10, 2011, “as a financial institution of primary money laundering concern” it said that “Joumaa's organization uses, among other things, Hizballah couriers to transport and launder narcotics proceeds. Joumaa's organization pays fees to Hizballah to facilitate the transportation and laundering of narcotics proceeds.” According to Treasury, the investigation’s findings “exposes the terrorist organization Hizballah’s links to LCB and the international narcotics trafficking and money laundering network.”

The New York Times recently reported on the connection between the Lebanese Canadian Bank and Hezbollah and on December 15, a complaint was filed by the US government, which stated that “some of the funds move to LCB’s U.S. correspondent accounts via suspiciously structured electronic wire transfers to multiple U.S.-based used car dealerships—some of which are operated by individuals who have been separately identified in drug-related investigations.”

While much of the focus has since been on the 30 car dealerships reportedly tied to the Hezbollah scheme, one minor detail has been lost from the NY Times report.

For the United States, taking down the bank was part of a long-running strategy of deploying financial weapons to fight terrorism. This account of the serpentine, six-year inquiry and what has since been revealed is based on interviews with government, law enforcement and banking officials across three continents, as well as intelligence reports and police and corporate records.

So, what happened in February 2005, six years prior to the LCB's designation?

Israeli National Security Council Counterterrorism Director General Danny Arditi met with Treasury U/S Stuart Levey and his delegation on February 14 in Ramat Hasharon, near Tel Aviv…During his briefing for the USDEL, Brigadier General Danny Arditi was joined by his Deputy for International Coordination Amnon Zehavi, Advisor for Terrorism Finance Lt. Col. Udi Levi, Advisor for Intelligence Uzi Shaya, NSA Legal Advisor Roy Dick, Israeli Embassy officer Eynat Shlien, Advisor for Intelligence Lt. Col. Amon Prodik, and a military staffer. Treasury U/S for Enforcement and Head of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey was accompanied by Senior Advisor Adam Szubin, DAS Daniel Glaser, Senior Advisor Anne Wallwork, Public Affairs Specialist Molly Millerwise, IRS Senior Analyst Mark Weber, USSS Agent Jacqueline Marengo, USSS Agent Scott Salo, and Embassy notetaker.

…Levi charged that at least two banks (the Lebanese-Canadian Bank and the Societe Generale de Banque au Liban) are "connected directly to the financial infrastructure of Hizballah." In addition, he said, a Bank of America branch in the tri-border area of South America is handling Hizballah funds. Shaya added that the Chavez government is allowing Hizballah to operate in Venezuela. Levi claimed that several NGOs in the United States are also supporting Hizballah and asked for them to be included on the USG lists of organizations that finance terrorism. He agreed to provide further details on the banks and NGOs during the next terrorism finance meeting in Washington.

Should Israel get some credit?

Hamas cracks down on fortune tellers and mannequins

From Ma'an:

The Hamas-run government has launched a series of campaigns targeting fortune-tellers, mannequins and cigarette vendors in the Gaza Strip.

Police sources told Ma'an that 142 fortune tellers were forced to sign an agreement at the Ministry of Interior pledging that they would not practice their craft.

As well as predicting the future, fortune tellers sell amulets for protection and are sometimes called on to solve personal or family problems.

Another campaign targets boutiques displaying lingerie on mannequins. Police officials told Ma'an that security forces inspected clothes shops across the Gaza Strip and warned owners not to display naked mannequins, lingerie or "indecent advertisements."

The question is - if I place pictures like this on my site, is it more likely repel Hamas readers - or attract them??

Unknown terror group claims responsibility for murder of scientist in Tel Aviv (updated)

From JPost last Wednesday:

The man murdered in his Tel Aviv apartment on Wednesday has been named as 70-year-old French chemistry expert Dr. Eli Laluz.

Laluz was found with stab wounds in a burned out home on Dizengofff Street by emergency responders. He stated in the apartment during periodic visits to Israel.

Laluz earned his doctorate from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. The murder investigation continues under a gag order.

A group called "the Brigades of the Martyr General Hassan Tahrani Moqqadam" said that it killed Laluz last Monday, December 26th . "One of our operatives entered the home of a Professor in Dizengoff street in Tel Aviv, and killed him with a knife, then he burnt the house in a complex way. The mujahideen returned to their bases in peace...The operation comes as a first response to the assassination of Marty Hassan Tahrani Moqaddam, who is an Iranian brigadier general killed in a Mossad bombing in Tehran".

Moqqadam was an architect of the Iranian Missile program who was killed in a massive explosion in November at a missile site.

Lolav had French nationality; he stayed in that Tel Aviv apartment when he visited Israel but it is unclear if he had Israeli citizenship.

The group that claimed responsibility styles itself as an Iranian group, but its logo shows a map of British Mandate Palestine with two rifles. Here is their letter claiming responsibility:

I'm skeptical, but the Tel Aviv police would know if the detail in the letter that they killed him at 3:40 AM on Monday is realistic.

I haven't noticed any coverage of this in the French press.

(h/t CHA)

UPDATE: The murder has been solved and it had nothing to do with any Arab terror group.

The Museum of Palestinian Propaganda

In 2008, there was a stone-laying ceremony in Bethlehem for a new museum called the Palestinian Riwaya Museum.

Riwaya means "narrative."

It is funded and supported by Norway and UNESCO.

The curator of the museum, Samar Martha, was interviewed recently, and her words make it appear that this cultural institution is really more interested in propaganda than in truth.

Are their specific historical aspects that you wish to emphasize?

We have only just begun work on the concept. But one important topic will certainly be that of the Palestinian refugees since 1948, because that has very much characterized our self-image. One idea is to ask people who fled from the territory of modern Israel in 1948 and today live in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip or overseas to tell their stories in video interviews. Yet I also wish to illuminate more recent historical events, such as the Intifada and the conflict between Fatah and Hamas in recent years.

Aren’t these topics quite disputed among Palestinians?

They are. And that is why all decision-making politicians must be involved in the concept from the very beginning. It is, of course, an important issue who decides about the stories that will be told. We set up a number of discussion groups to deal with these questions. Also, UNESCO, which supports the project, must be convinced of our concept as well as the Peace Center, whose building we are using.

Why did you come up with the idea of this museum?

For a simple reason: because we’ve never had such a museum. Internationally, the perspective of Palestinian culture and history is very marked by the Israeli perspective. We would like to counter that with a museum that takes up a Palestinian perspective. ...

Do you plan to also involve Israeli artists or academics in the conception of the museum?

If they deal with Israeli history is a self-critical way, then yes.

In the conflict between Palestinians and Israel, violence has not only come from the Israeli side. Will the issue of Palestinian violence also be broached?

We will make an effort to show many sides. But every national museum has a specific, limited perspective. That is the case all over the world, perhaps with the exception of Germany, where the museums deal very critically with their own history. But for us, the main priority is to portray something like a Palestinian identity.

A museum where politicians must approve the exhibits?

And notice it isn't called the Palestinian Cultural Museum, or History Museum, or even the Palestinian National Museum - but the Palestinian Narrative Museum. The entire point, as the curator shows, is not to portray the truth but to portray a story - and avoid other viewpoints.

Granted, national museums do tend to give the official perspective, but this is not called a national museum. It is specifically located next to the Church of the Nativity to attract tourists to swim in the propaganda it provides.

Interestingly, the Arabic word Riwaya also means "novel" or "fiction."

(h/t Silke)

Unity! Hamas continues to arrest Fatah members in Gaza

As we've been reporting every day this week, Hamas continues to harass Fatah members in Gaza.

Today, they arrested 16 more prominent Fatah members.

According to Palestine Press Agency, the urgency of the recent arrests is to stop Fatah members from putting on any demonstration to celebrate the 47th anniversary of the PLO on Sunday. Hamas has also been ripping down signs and posters that show support for Fatah.

MB holds rallies all over Jordan

Heads up....

Thousands of Islamist opposition supporters demonstrated Friday in Amman to demand reform, a week after the movement's offices in a northern city were torched during clashes with loyalists.

Chanting "enough is enough," around 7,000 people, including Islamists, youths and tribesmen, marched from Al-Husseini mosque in central Amman to the nearby city hall, an AFP correspondent said.

Carrying a large national flag, they called for "reforming the regime" and fighting corruption, rejecting "intimidation and bullying."

"The Muslim Brotherhood will not give up demands for reforms. We will not give in to the corrupt and those who are against reform," Rheil Gharaibeh, the movement's spokesman, told the crowds.

Last Friday, opposition Islamist demonstrators and government loyalists clashed in the northern city of Mafraq, where dozens, including police, were wounded and shops were destroyed.

The government has said it was investigating the clashes, during which the offices of the Islamic Action Front, the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, were torched.

The Islamists have called for arresting the attackers, accusing security services of backing them.

Pro-reform demonstrations were also held in other Jordanian cities, including Irbid and Salt in the north as well as Karak in the south.

Islamists, youth groups and other parties have been protesting since January, demanding political and economic change and an end to corruption.

Today's protests are getting lots of attention in Jordanian media.

Nice shooting

Two communiques from the IDF this morning:

A short while ago, IAF aircraft targeted a terrorist squad that was identified moments before firing rockets at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip. A hit was confirmed, thwarting the rocket fire attempt.

The aforementioned squad is responsible for the firing of rockets at Israel in the past number of days.

The terrorist who was targeted is Muaman Abu-daf, a senior operative in the Global Jihad terror movement. He orchestrated and executed numerous and varied terror attacks against Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers including laying explosive devices in the area adjacent to the security fence and was involved in different firing incidents. Furthermore, Abu-daf was actively involved in the preparations of the attempted terror attack on the Israel-Egypt border that was thwarted this week.

Ma'an confirms the story and adds:

That appeared to refer to Israel's killing on Tuesday of another Salafi fighter, Abdallah Telbani, who the military said had been plotting strikes in which gunmen would circumvent the fortified Gaza border by attacking south Israel from the Sinai.

"We shoot when we're being shot at," one Israeli security official said after Friday's air strike in Gaza. "It's clear that Hamas does not have an interest in fanning the flames at this time, but it's not dousing them either."

Once again, a terrorist killed - and no one else.

(h/t Silke)

Israel, better than ever (Yaacov Lozowick)

Yaacov writes one of his now-rare posts, and as always, it is a good one:

Economics: While the European economy enters recession if not worse, and the American economy is in a protracted funk, the Israeli economy continutes to boom. Here, check it out at the Economist website, which tells that GDP is growing higher in Israel than in any European country, the US, and lots of other places too. Unemployment, you might be interested to hear, at 5.6%, is not only lower than in most countries, it's at its lowest in Israel for decades and by some estiamtes, the lowest ever. If things stay this way until the next elections there will be no need to speculate on how crazy the Israeli voters have become to re-elect that supposedly universally hated government: any government running for re-election with an economy like this would stand a fine chance of re-election.

The BDS campaign to destroy Israel is not obviously working, apparently.

Culture: is Jewish culture thriving, stagnating or declining in Israel? This is a rhetorical question. There's no measure I can think of by which to claim there's any stagnation or decline. It has been thousands of years since the Jews have had such a broad-based cultural creativity, which isn't surprising if you remind yourself that fo rthe first time in millennia there are millions of Jews living in their language in their own society (and their own land).

How does cultural creativity fit into disappearing freedom of thought, you ask? It doesn't. The disappearing freedom and democracy exist only in the minds of a certain section of Israeli society and the multitudes of ignorant foreign reporters and politicians who avidly agree with them whenever they criticise Israel. Apart from them, it's not happening. There's a racuous debate about all sorts of things, of course, but in other countries that would be called democracy, not facism.

Demography: here the question is simple: are the more Jews in Israel today than a year ago. Of course there are. In an aside, the are growing indications that the demographic pendulum has peaked and is swinging back in favor of the Jews over Palestinians, whose birthrate is either declining or tumbling, depending on the data-sets one uses. (Here, for example).

Terrorism is mostly dormant, by Israeli standards. 2011 was one of the most peaceful years Israel has had since 1947. (The Palestinians had a rather peaceful year, too, since there's some correlation between the two).
...

Yes, there are lots of folks out there who dislike us, bt that's always been so. These days we don't have to give them too much attention. Seen historically, 2011 was probably one of the best years in millennia of Jewish history.

Read the whole thing.

Weirdest fatwas of 2011

I'm glad that Al Arabiya published these, because if anyone else did it would be considered Islamophobic (and might get one's website taken down.)

One of the weirdest and most controversial fatwas in 2011 was one issued by an Islamist preacher who lives in Europe. According to this preacher, women are prohibited from eating phallic-shaped fruits and vegetables like cucumbers, bananas, and carrots. Touching or consuming those, he argued, are bound to turn women on and make them engage in sinful fantasies.

In Morocco, the head of the Moroccan Association for Jurisprudence Research stirred both outrage and controversy when he issued a fatwa allowing Muslim men to have sex with their just-deceased wives under the pretext that nothing in Islam prohibits sex with corpses. This fatwa followed a series of sex-related ones issued by the same cleric.

In Somalia, the ultraconservative al-Shabaab al-Mujahedin Movement issued a fatwa during the holy month of Ramadan prohibiting the consumption of sambousak, a triangular pastry stuffed with meat, cheese, or vegetables. The popular snack, they explained, is a symbol of the Trinity in Christianity and is therefore not to be consumed by Muslims.

In Egypt, religious edicts were in most cases mixed with politics. Sheikh Amr Sotouhi, head of the Islamic Preaching Committee at al-Azhar, issued in November a fatwa prohibiting fathers from marrying their daughters to members of the formerly ruling National Democratic Party owing to their “corruption.”

A similar fatwa was issued by the late Sheikh Emad Effat, shot this month during recent clashes between Egyptian protestors and the army. Effat’s fatwa prohibited Muslims from voting for members of the same disbanded party and cited the same reason: corruption.

Mohamed Abdel Hadi, deputy chairman of the Salafi al-Nour Party in the governorate of Dakahliya went as far as saying that the results of the parliamentary elections, in which the party scored an unexpected victory, were mentioned in the holy Quran.

The most outrageous fatwa in Egypt was one that came out last June and in which Egyptian preacher Mohamed al-Zoghbi said eating the meat of the jinn is permissible in Islam and left everyone wondering how anyone can get hold of them in the first place, let alone eat their meat.

Why, you can buy jinn meat at your neighborhood grocery store!

Israel to demand compensation from Arab countries

From Arutz-7:

The government has decided to tackle head-on the alleged “Arab refugees” issue by renewing efforts for compensation for Jewish victims of Arab pogroms.

Estimates of property losses range from $16 billion to $300 billion in Arab countries where Arab leaders seized their property or took it over after Jews were expelled or forced to flee because of anti-Jewish violence and harassment.

Dr. Avi Bitzur, director-general of the Pensioners' Affairs Ministry, told Voice of Israel government radio it has created a new department to try to collect claims for more than 850,000 Jews from Iran and Arab countries. Approximately 80 percent of them moved to Israel.

Most of the refugees fled or were expelled after the violent Arab reaction to the re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, six months after it was recognized by the United Nations under the Partition Plan that the Arab world rejected.

"Israel has talked about this on and off for 60 years. Now we're going to deal with it as we should have all along," said Bitzur.

He added that the Cabinet is scheduled to decide in the next two weeks to raise the issue of Jewish refugees whenever the Palestinian Authority brings up the “right of return.”

Bitzur added, “We should know the history of the pogrom in Baghdad in 1941, of the Libyan Jews who ended up in Bergen Belsen. It's time for people to know that there was this part of the Jewish people and its history was brought to an end."

"The UN has dealt at least 700 times with Arab refugees and their property, but not once with the issue of Jewish property.”

This all makes sense.

This story has been picked up in the Arabic press, but with a bizarre addition.

There is a second part of the law where the Israeli Foreign Ministry demands Saudi Arabia pay compensation of more than a hundred billion dollars for Jewish property in the kingdom since the time of the Prophet peace be upon him, a project which is currently being analyzed by top experts in international law, history and geography in the Bar-Ilan, Beer Sheva, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa universities , with special funding set at U.S. $ 100 million carved from the budget of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in 2012.

Israel is spending $100 million to make a claim against Saudi Arabia for the actions of Mohammed? Ummmm...I don't think so.

Sounds like an Israeli official made a joke that they took seriously.

Max Blumenthal is not a journalist by any definition

Max Blumenthal is a self-described journalist who has written op-ed pieces in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and elsewhere. He is considered respectable.

And a single tweet by him shows how he is anything but respectable, and anything but a journalist.

He first retweeted a link to an article from the pro-Hamas Middle East Monitor, quoting (but not linking to) a PLO document that claims that Israel killed 180 Palestinian Arabs in 2011.

But then he tweeted a "correction":

Update/correction via @occpal: 239 Palestinians killed by Israelis/Israeli forces in 2011http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/irememberthevictims/

He didn't check the link for accuracy. He was sent a message that the real number of dead Arabs is much higher, and based only on that information he issued a "correction."

A quick look at the Occupied Palestine webpage shows that they list all people they consider "martyrs," but they are not claiming that Israel killed them all. This distinction is lost on Max, of course, who stated flatly that Israelis killed "239 Palestinians" in 2011. He didn't simply retweet - he added his own "facts."

So the ersatz journalist Blumenthal believes that the following people were killed by Israel:

Hamas member Nabil Frahan Az-Zaygh, 41, who drowned while on vacation.
Hamas member Ahmed Abdullah Al Mamlouk, who died in a "work accident."
Ahmed Irbai, who died in a tunnel collapse. Plus many others who were killed in smuggling tunnels from suffocation, electrocution or explosions.
Juliano Mer Khamis, who was murdered by masked Palestinian Arab terrorists in Jenin.
Vittorio Arrigoni, who was kidnapped and murdered by Arab terrorists in Gaza.

Blumenthal didn't check this out - even though the links to most of the "martyrs" are right there on the website. No, he reflexively believes that whatever number is higher must be the true one. If a random person would have tweeted that the real number was 372, he would have believed it without hesitation.

By the way, the Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights counts 91 people killed by Israel in 2011. OCHA counts 115 up until December 20th.

The IDF number is somewhere in between, saying that about 100 were killed in military operations this year. And that only nine of them were civilians.

Which one is true? That would require research and skepticism. Only a journalist would bother to do all that work. And Blumenthal is no journalist.

He's a hack who will repeat whatever comes his way, as long as it conforms to his pre-existing hate of Israel.

Here come the (unofficial) religious police of Egypt

From Al Masry al Youm:

Saudi religious police

The ultra-conservative Salafi Nour Party is funding a sort of religious police, known as the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Authority, according to the authority’s founders. The party has denied involvement in its formation.

The authority takes after the Saudi model of “mutaween,” a sort of religious police composed of volunteers that enforce Islamic Sharia law. Armed with thin wooden canes, the groups roam the streets enforcing dress codes, separation between the sexes, prayer, and other behavior believed to be commanded by Islam. The Taliban in Afghanistan are also known to have used the system.

The authority was launched on Facebook by Nour Party members. According to the founders, the Salafi party gave them check of LE2600 as a preliminary installment to help them launch the initiative and mobilize Salafi volunteers.

In a statement on Wednesday, the authority said it was formed upon directives from the party’s leadership, and that the party’s members unanimously approved the idea.

The founders threatened to resign from the party and manage the authority on their own if the party continued to deny its affiliation with it.

In a separate statement, the authority said it held its first meeting on Tuesday to determine the tasks and geographical jurisdictions of the first volunteers, who would monitor people’s behavior in the street and assess whether it contradicted the God’s laws.

The statement also said that the volunteers would wear white cloaks and hold bamboo canes to beat violators. Later, they would be provided with electric taser guns.

Why don't they just go straight to scimitars? I mean, if you are going to chop someone's hands off, a taser isn't going to do the trick.

(h/t Arthur)

The Sting (updated)

I don't usually spend much time on the anti-Israel blogosphere, but most readers here are probably familiar with wrong-headed, thin-skinned, and notoriously unreliable blogger Richard Silverstein.

Since last year the Seattle-based blogger has made a career of publishing news items that were censored by the Israeli military. He has made a name of himself more recently by taking unsourced allegations from people who email him and publishing them as scoops from highly-placed sources in the Mossad.Yet no matter how bizarre his claims, he was getting coverage from lazy newspaper reporters for his increasingly fantastical "scoops" (for example, that Israel sent a booby-trapped drone into Lebanon with the sure knowledge that Hezbollah would carry the drone to a highly sensitive indoor spot where the IDF could blow it up.)

Aussie Dave of Israellycool performed a classic sting on Dickie. In one fell swoop, he proved that:

Silverstein will publish anything that he hopes to be true, with no fact checking whatsoever.
Silverstein has no moral compunctions about revealing private details of people he hates.
Silverstein knows nothing about Israeli culture, even though he claims to.
Silverstein will come up with fanciful conjectures out of thin air - and post them.
Silverstein is a liar.

Read Aussie Dave's post explaining the sting. It is a thing of beauty.

And given that it is many hours later and Silverstein still hasn't deleted his post (his usual method when he's been made into a fool) nor admitted he was scammed, so we have also learned that he cannot bring himself to admit he was wrong.

In my experience, those who cannot admit mistakes are the ones who are the least reliable of all. Hubris and truth do not intersect.

Maybe he thinks it is Purim.

UPDATE: Silverstein finally admitted he was scammed, and is showing righteous indignation - because Aussie Dave used a fake Facebook account. Richard the Moral reported him. After all, it is a violation of Facebook rules! It's OK to defend Hamas, but creating a fake FB account to prove an idiot blogger has no clothes - well, that's going over the line!

You can't make this stuff up.

The Salafists who stole Christmas

From AP:

An ultraconservative Egyptian Islamist group says sending Christmas greetings to Christians is “against our beliefs.”

Nadar Bakar, spokesman of the hard-line Al-Nour party, told The Associated Press Wednesday that Muslims should only give greetings to Christians on “personal occasions,” not religious ones.

Al-Nour represents the ultraconservative Salafi movement, which wants to strictly impose Islamic law in Egypt. Al-Nour has won a surprisingly strong 20 percent of the vote so far in Egypt’s staggered parliamentary elections.

The remarks prompted Egypt’s Al Azhar, the most eminent religious institution, to issue a religious edict approving Christmas greetings. The country’s most influential Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, responded by sending “its best Christmas wishes to our brotherly Christians and Muslims as well.”

An estimated 100,000 Christians fled Egypt between March and September.

In case you think the Muslim Brotherhood comes out looking positively liberal in this AP article, keep this in mind:

“We'll prohibit alcohol,” said Sobhi Saleh, a leading figure of the Muslim Brotherhood at a Tuesday rally in New Valley, an area west of Cairo.

“Tourism does not mean nudity and drunkenness,” he added. “We Egyptians are the greatest religious people, and we don’t need that.”

Saleh also said the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party will apply Islamic Sharia law. “It was planned since 1928,” he said. “But Islam is the solution.”

He is wearing a suit and has no beard, so you can't call him a fanatic.

UK professor under investigation for bias against Israeli

From TheJC last week:

An Israeli postgraduate student has succeeded in having her dissertation re-marked to a distinction after it was originally supervised and given a poor mark by a professor who campaigns for an academic boycott of Israel.

Smadar Bakovic

Smadar Bakovic repeatedly told Warwick University she was uncomfortable with Nicola Pratt overseeing her master's dissertation on Israeli Arab identity.

Professor Pratt is a vocal anti-Israel campaigner who was refused entry to the West Bank by Israeli authorities in 2009. Following Operation Cast Lead she was one of more than 100 academics who wrote to the Guardian saying "Israel must lose" and calling for the UK to implement a programme of boycotts, divestment and sanctions.

Ms Bakovic, 35, from Harei Yehuda, near Jerusalem, spent a year challenging Warwick's original rejection of her appeal against the decision to allow Professor Pratt to supervise her.

She was told last week that her re-marked dissertation had obtained a distinction, with a score 11 points higher than when it was first marked by Prof Pratt.

Ms Bakovic said: "I knew my work was better than the mark I'd been given. After a year of battling, I'm absolutely delighted. I feel vindicated. I did it for Israel."

A university spokesman said the higher mark could be attributed to the fact the dissertation was "substantially different" when it was re-submitted. But the JC has seen emails between Ms Bakovic and another professor who later supervised her, showing that the work was only "tweaked" with "no major changes".

Ms Bakovic said: "I knew Prof Pratt because whenever there was an anti-Israel event at the university I went along and she was often there. She moderated a Jews for Justice for Palestinians event, so I knew her stance. As soon as I saw her name a red light came on." But Warwick told Ms Bakovic she could not change supervisor.

Ms Bakovic said: "Professor Pratt said that I had taken an Israeli and Zionist perspective without investigating the issue. She said I had taken an Israeli government position, but I did not. I included the views of a number of Israeli Arab writers."

The university's complaints committee investigated Ms Bakovic's subsequent challenge. She convinced the panel to allow her dissertation to be re-marked. After being marked by two other professors at Warwick and an external marker, she was awarded the higher classification.

CiFWatch interviewed Bakovic:

It took me exactly 2 seconds to see exactly what [Pratt] was about – one of the largest supporters of the academic (and other) boycotts of Israel, who signs petitions accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and being an “Apartheid state.” Even she (on her site on the Warwick page) calls herself an activist.

I then knew that I was dealing with a self-defined anti-Israel academic, who really calls to boycott Israeli academia, meaning Jewish Israeli academia, which makes her also an anti-Semite.

If I were Muhammed Jaber but with an Israeli passport, then I am sure Nicola Pratt would not at all object to having me in the university, even if I were to apply from an Israeli institution which she calls to boycott. Additionally, Pratt, in her feedback of my dissertation said that I was pursuing Israeli and Zionist lines and perspectives.

What is a Zionist perspective, or an Israeli one?

Obviously, she doesn’t acknowledge that Israel is a pluralistic, democratic state, so there are MANY different opinions about everything. She also put down anything I wrote which was even slightly from the Israeli perspective and said “surely this is the perspective of the Israeli government.” (And she reduced points for this).

...Her obsession, as is the obsession of many others, is ONLY the “evil” coming out of Israel, the ONLY democracy in the Middle East, where woman and minorities have rights, and where they can vote and participate in all walks of life. The only place in the Middle East where human shields are not used, and where the army has strict guidelines about when they can fire.

This to her and to her like is the only point – Israel represents to her everything that is evil, the cause of everything that is bad in the region.

On my dissertation, she also claimed that my claim that minorities in the Arab Middle East don’t have equal rights is incorrect – that the only aspect in which they are discriminated against is religiously. And she is an “expert” on women in the Middle East. So you see? Nothing is as evil as Israel. And when something is evil…..well, you know what should happen to it.

Now, Professor Pratt is under investigation for her conduct:

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) will consider whether Warwick University's Nicola Pratt breached guidelines on impartiality when marking Israeli student Smadar Bakovic's dissertation.

QAA chief executive Anthony McClaran received a complaint about Professor Pratt last week and confirmed an agency officer would conduct a preliminary investigation.

Smadar is hardly a right-wing fanatic. In fact, she is classically liberal, a person who wants to work with Arabs to bring real peace to the Middle East. Here is a profile of her written at Bates University in the midst of the terror campaign in 2003:

Smadar Bakovic '03, an Israeli army veteran, knows the Middle East conflicts well. After the events of Sept. 11, she and a fellow student, Jordanian native Jamil Zraikat '05, visited a local high school to share their distinct perspectives. But Bakovic's view is not simplistic: She believes mutual understanding is key to a resolution.

An English major, Bakovic will explore Israeli-Arab poetry in her senior thesis. Aspiring to be a journalist, she has produced a newsletter for a Turkish organization that educates poor women migrating to urban areas. This summer she returns to the Israeli Arab coastal village of Arara to continue research for an independent study about Israeli-Arab relations. Bakovic will complete the project at Bates under Israeli native Mishael Caspi, visiting professor of religion.

Bakovic first visited Arara in 2001 to learn more about Israel's non-Jewish cultures with the support of a Phillips Student Fellowship that funds cross-cultural projects. Armed only with video cameras and intensive language training, she sought an Arab perspective on the historic mistrust between Arabs and Jews. She "went into places where Jews do not go and talked with hardworking people who experience everyday life," Bakovic says, -- villagers who told her, "not a lot of people want to hear what we have to say."