Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Iranians in Thailand accused of targeting Israeli diplomats

Thai authorities charged two Iranians on Wednesday over an alleged bomb plot against Israeli diplomats, officials said, piling pressure on Teheran over accusations of a terror campaign against the Jewish state.

Authorities said they had laid criminal charges against two Iranian suspects accused of involvement in the three blasts in central Bangkok yesterday.

"These three Iranian men are an assassination team and their targets were Israeli diplomats including the ambassador," a senior Thai intelligence official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Their plan was to attach bombs to diplomats' cars."

Explosives and magnets were later found inside the partially destroyed house where the first explosion occurred, police said.

From The Telegraph:

Thai investigators believe they have found a link between this week's bomb blasts in Bangkok and New Delhi, a senior security official said on Wednesday, two of three botched attacks Israel has blamed on Iran.

Asked whether the explosives used in India and Thailand were the same, a senior Thai security official said they both had the same "magnetic sheets".

"The individual was in possession of the same magnets and we are currently examining the source of the magnet," National Security Council Secretary Wichian Podphosri said.

AP adds:

When police searched the house, the bomb squad found and defused two explosives, each made of three or four pounds of C-4 explosives inside a pair of radios. National Police Chief Gen. Prewpan Damapong said the bombs were "magnetic" and could be stuck on vehicles.

"From the investigation, we found the type of explosives indicated that the prepared targets were individuals," Wichean said. "Based on the equipment and materials we found, they were aimed at individuals and the destruction capacity was not intended for large crowds or big buildings."

Israel's Channel 10 TV quoted unidentified Thai authorities as saying the captured Iranians confessed to targeting Israeli interests.

And here's an interesting detail from the Telegraph story:

Two other men shared the rented house with him. One was arrested at Bangkok's international airport on Tuesday but he has not yet been charged. A third man slipped past security at the airport and had fled to Malaysia.

Earlier this week, the Malaysian Home Minister defended his country deporting a suspected Saudi "apostate" tweeter back to the kingdom by saying, "I will not allow Malaysia to be seen as a safe country for terrorists and those who are wanted by their countries of origin, and also be seen as a transit county."

Will Malaysia provide safe haven for this Iranian terrorist?

(h/t Yoel)

Media missing the real story on Gaza blackouts

From Reuters:

The Gaza Strip’s only power station, which supplies the Palestinian enclave with up to two-thirds of its energy needs, was shut down on Tuesday because of a shortage of fuel smuggled in from neighbouring Egypt.

The closure led to widespread blackouts for Gaza’s 1.7 million inhabitants. The local power company warned that households would receive only six hours of electricity a day until the problem was resolved.

“We are sorry to announce that we are unable to provide hospitals, education premises, water pumps and waste water facilities and all other fields of life with the enough quantities of electricity,” said Abu Al-Amrain, information director at the Energy Authority.

He urged Egypt to allow more fuel into Gaza, but did not explain what had caused the sudden drop in the flows.

The reason, as I have reported, is that Egypt cracked down on fuel smuggling from the Sinai to Gaza, as it is suffering its own fuel shortages.

Locals said in normal circumstances a fleet of trucks arrived at the Egyptian side of the border and pumped fuel through pipes in the smuggling tunnel that led into Gaza.

Israel provides the Mediterranean territory with at least 35 percent of its energy needs, but closed off its own fuel pipeline into the enclave in January 2010.

Israel closed the Nahal Oz pipeline in January 2010 - but it kept the Kerem Shalom pipeline, and even built a new one there with double the capacity.

Abu Al-Amrain said Israel bore overall responsibility for the ongoing crisis, but Mustafa Ibrahim, a human rights researcher and writer, said Hamas’s administration had failed to provide the territory with an energy safety net.

“[The Energy Authority] made everything depend on fuel smuggled through the tunnels, without having any guarantees that this flow could continue. The current severe crisis is evidence that this was the wrong approach,” he said.

The webpage for the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Authority indeed blames Israel for the problem - and this is a baldfaced lie.

The only reason Israel isn't sending fuel to Gaza is because in January 2011, Hamas requested that the shipments stop as the Gaza power plant engineers figured out a way to run the plant on smuggled fuel from Egypt, rather than the industrial grade diesel that it had used before.

As I reported exclusively yesterday, the IDF answered my query

The decision to buy heavy-duty diesel from Egypt and not Israel was made by Hamas. Over the last year, the government in Gaza has gradually stopped buying diesel from Israel and increased its purchases from Egypt. This is also the source of the recent power problems in the Strip, including the local power plant shutting down.

There is no Israeli decision to purposefully stop selling diesel to Gaza; the decision came from the Hamas, and again, the situation isn't black and white--if you look at previous reports from the last months, there are still small amounts of diesel entering Gaza from Israel. If and when the demand returns, Israel is fully willing to supply, as it did in the past.

This is an artificial problem. Gaza can get fuel for the power plant today. Hamas refuses to accept fuel from Israel for whatever reason (it still accepts tons of aid coming from Israeli crossings every day.) As a result, Hamas is purposefully endangering its own people.

This is the story that the media is missing, including AFP.

Norman Finkelstein slams BDS, ISM movements

Norman Finkelstein is a legendarily anti-Israel professor. He has made a name for himself by disparaging what he calls the "Holocaust industry" and his research methods for his anti-Israel writings are sloppy and often deceptive. Benny Morris describes him "a notorious distorter of facts and of my work, not a serious or honest historian." I showed some of his own dishonesty in an essay that helped make him famous.

In other words, Finkelstein is no poster child for truth and fairness about Israel.

But in this remarkable video, Finkelstein rips apart the people to his left - the BDS and "Palestine Solidatity" movements. He exposes their obvious goal of destroying Israel as they try to pretend that they are only fighting for "rights;" he accurately accuses them of belonging to a "cult" whose arguments cannot possibly survive the real world; he shows that they are not nearly as influential as they pretend to be; and he effectively tells them that they are a big waste of time that accomplish nothing towards their stated goals of providing any justice or peace for Palestinian Arabs. These groups play games to hide their goals, Finkelstein wants no part of it.

Finkelstein is completely wrong about international law and about Israel, quoting General Assembly resolutions and an advisory opinion of the ICJ as if they are international law. But it is worthwhile to watch him expose the pure hate and deceptiveness of those who are even more extreme than he is. The interviewer - a BDS proponent and hardcore hater of Israel - cringes under Finkelstein's assault as he tries to defend the indefensible.

If only Finkelstein had said this at PennBDS, where every attendee and speaker had bought into the myth of their own importance, a few hundred people would have actually learned something about their own movement.

The video is a half-hour long but worth watching. Finkelstein is relentless in attacking the BDS and "solidarity" movements.

(h/t HuffPo Monitor & Zach N)
(This is a shortened version of the original video' full video can be seen here)

PA music video longs for day when there is no Israel

From Palestinian Media Watch:

I wish I could enter my country with no borders...
I will go about in Bethlehem and in Al-Aqsa [Mosque], which is held captive
I will eat lunch in Nazareth and eat dinner in Beit Sahour...
I do not forget Jenin nor Nablus, and the Galilee
I do not forget you, Jaffa, your long sea [shore]
I will never forget the olives of the Galilee
Even if our path has grown long, one day we will return:
To Jerusalem, to Gaza, to Acre, to Haifa, oh Lord.
To Jerusalem, to Ramle, to Acre, to Haifa, oh Lord...
I wish I could enter my country with no borders."
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 30 and Feb. 9, 2012]

This doesn't exactly sound like a two-state solution, does it?

(Note also the subtle dig at Hamas, by saying he wants to freely enter Gaza as well.)

Gaza blackouts intensify - so they blame Israel

From Egypt Independent:

The Gaza Strip’s sole electricity station has become inoperative because Egypt has begun to crack down on fuel smuggling activities through their shared border, a Palestinian energy official in Gaza said Tuesday.

Gaza Energy Authority official Ahmed Abul Amreen said in a press conference that the authority cannot meet electricity demands for hospitals, educational facilities, and water and sewage stations. He said the amount of electricity Gaza receives from an Israeli company fulfills only 35 percent of the population’s needs.

Palestinian news agency Maan quoted Abul Amreen as saying that the power plant’s inactivity has brought the strip's primary electricity source to a halt, noting that Gaza already suffers a great shortage in wattage supplies.

The official held Israel responsible for the crisis. He also called upon the Egyptian Parliament to back Palestinians and continue to support them with the necessary fuel supplies.

For nearly two weeks, Gaza has been undergoing a worsening fuel crisis caused by a halt in supplies smuggled through underground tunnels traversing its border with Egypt. The conundrum has rendered 90 percent of local oil stations idle.

Israel supplies Gaza with about 120 megawatts of electricity a day, while the strip’s only power plant produces 60 megawatts. But since Gaza needs at least 270 megawatts, the strip suffers daily blackouts that can last for eight hours.

Ma'an adds:

While limited amounts of gas, mainly used by individual households, are purchased from Israeli suppliers and permitted to enter the besieged strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing, most of Gaza's energy is brought unofficially from Egypt using underground tunnels.

Egyptian supplies are cheaper than the Israeli companies, which themselves purchase gas from Egypt, a Ma'an correspondent said.

But with Egypt beset by continuing domestic unrest after throwing out Hosni Mubarak a year ago, agreement has yet to be reached on stable fuel deliveries to Gaza, he added.

Here is what the latest weekly COGAT report, on goods that transverse the crossings, has to say:

Israel is providing exactly the same amount of electricity to Gaza it always has. As we see above, "Palestinians" instructed the Israelis not to provide the Strip with heavy-duty diesel because they could get the fuel - reportedly cheaper - from Egypt.

But as far as I can tell, not a single official - from the PA, the electric utility or from Hamas - has explicitly called for Gaza to resume purchasing fuel from Israel to alleviate this crisis, something that COGAT seems more than willing to facilitate.

Assuming that the money for the fuel could be found, the question that must be asked is - why no calls to buy fuel from Israeli suppliers? Why are people's lives being put at risk unnecessarily? Why are we seeing headlines about a energy crisis in Gaza when the solution is so simple?

I asked the IDF asking them who made the decision not to accept Israeli fuel, Hamas or the PA? Here is what they answered:

The decision to buy heavy-duty diesel from Egypt and not Israel was made by Hamas. Over the last year, the government in Gaza has gradually stopped buying diesel from Israel and increased its purchases from Egypt. This is also the source of the recent power problems in the Strip, including the local power plant shutting down.

There is no Israeli decision to purposefully stop selling diesel to Gaza; the decision came from the Hamas, and again, the situation isn't black and white--if you look at previous reports from the last months, there are still small amounts of diesel entering Gaza from Israel. If and when the demand returns, Israel is fully willing to supply, as it did in the past.

Is Hamas' refusal to buy the needed fuel from Israel a matter of principle, pride - or propaganda?

Hamas breaks up anti-Assad rally in Gaza

This didn't get much coverage even in the Arab press:

Hamas police on Sunday prevented dozens of activists from demonstrating in solidarity with Syrian people in the Gaza Strip, witnesses said.

The policemen peacefully stopped the protest shortly after it started in front of the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City. The demonstrators, numbering about 30, waved Palestinian and Syrian flags, with banners supporting the Syrian antigovernment protesters.

While lots of blowhards pretend that a "Palestinian Spring" threatens Israel, we can see who is really threatened by even the hint of protests.

(h/t Ian)

Springtime! Libya goes on homophobic rant at UNHRC

From UN Watch:

Gays threaten the continuation of the human race, Libya’s delegate told a planning meeting of the UN Human Rights Council today, reported the Geneva-based UN Watch monitoring group. It was the first appearance in the 47-nation body by the post-Gaddafi government, whose membership was restored in November following Libya’s suspension in March.

Protesting the council’s first panel discussion on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation, scheduled for March 7th, Libya’s representative told the gathering of ambassadors today that LGBT topics “affect religion and the continuation and reproduction of the human race.” He added that, were it not for their suspension, Libya would have opposed the council’s June 2011 resolution on the topic.

In response, council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre said that “the Human Rights Council is here to defend human rights and prevent discrimination.”

The Libyan outburst prompted questions by human rights activists about Libya’s reinstatement on the council.

“We were happy to see the Gaddafi regime finally suspended last year,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, which in 2010 led a campaign of 70 human rights groups to expel the Libyan dictator.

“Yet today’s shocking homophobic outburst by the new Libyan government, together with the routine abuse of prisoners, underscores the serious questions we have about whether the new regime is genuinely committed to improving on the dark record of its predecessor, or to pandering to some of the hardline Islamists amidst its ranks,” said Neuer.

Libya's new draft constitution says that Sharia is the principle source for legislation. It also says that "the State shall also protect and encourage marriage."

More evidence of Iran being behind embassy attacks

From The Times of India:

Investigators got a crucial clue to the assailant in the footage from two CCTV cameras installed at industrialist Analjit Singh's 15, Aurangzeb Road residence. The bomber, in brown jacket on a motor cycle, is seen tailing the embassy car at 3.10 pm at a distance of 2-3 seconds. The cameras could not capture the registration number of the bike.

...Speaking on the condition of anonymity, Indian intelligence sources suspected an Iranian connection to the magnetic bomb attack which they feel could be a retaliation against the covert attempts to thwart the Shiite regime's relentless pursuit of a nuclear programme which the West as well as Sunni Muslim countries are convinced is meant to equip the theocracy with nuclear weapons.

Sources also said Israel had recently confided in Indians their fears of Israeli targets coming under attack from Iranian sympathizers. Sources in Delhi Police did not rule out the possibility of Iranian sympathizers enlisting the modules of Lashkar, who despite their loathing of Shias, are unremitting in their animosity towards Israel.

From Al Arabiya:

Officials investigating the bomb that shattered an Israeli embassy car in India on Monday have found that the explosive was the first of its kind in the country and could have been made by “foreign experts,” a senior police official said.

“The bomb was perfectly made and we have never seen such a bomb in Delhi. Maybe, it was made by foreign experts,” the official told the Times of India.

Israeli missions worldwide are on alert and coordinating with Indian security forces, IBN Live reported, as a forensic lab report detailing the exact nature of the explosives used in the blasts is expected within the next 24 to 48 hours.

“A sophisticated incendiary device was used in the blast, a first in its kind for a terror attack in India. This has been giving officials cause for concern,” the news channel reported.

Sources say the Home Ministry is expecting a detailed report from Delhi Police on its preliminary investigations by Tuesday evening.

From YNet:

A man thought to be Iranian was seriously wounded in Bangkok on Tuesday when a bomb he was carrying exploded and blew one of his legs off, police and a government spokeswoman said.

Police said at least five people including a foreigner were injured in three series blasts in the Thai capital Bangkok.

"There were three explosions, but no dead," Police Major General Wichai Sungprapai told AFP.

Several Thai television stations reported the wounded man was carrying explosives at the time. They said an identification card found in a satchel nearby indicated he may be of Iranian descent.

Other Thai media fill in the details:

Foreign Ministry is assigned to talk to Iran as a suspect seriously injured in the blast was believed to be an Iranian.

Pol Maj Gen Wichai Sangprapai, deputy metropolitan commissioner was quoted as saying the suspect and two other Iranians rented a house in Soi Pridi Panomyong 31 for months.

The house was suspected to where the bombs were made. However the explosives went off this morning in the house, sending to the three to flee.

Two of them managed to escape while the suspect followed them.

A taxi refused to pick up the suspect who was covered with blood from the blast, so he threw a bomb at the driver, damaging the vehicle. The suspect then walked away and threw the bomb at a police officer who tried to stop him.

However the bomb fell to the ground and went off, mutilating his legs.

Police are now hunting for the fleeing two Iranians.

He said three foreigners were living at the house but two had fled.

I don't know if it was luck or a poorly-made bomb that stopped the New Delhi bomb from exploding the gas tank. My guess is that it was home-built according to Iranian specifications, as it is probably easier to build a rudimentary magnetic bomb than to smuggle one in from Iran.

It would be interesting to see the types of bombs that the suspects in the Thai blasts were building.

(h/t Philtheman)

From Saudi Gazette:

A Hai’a security inspector has been fined SR3,000, six weeks in prison and 120 lashes for marrying more than four women and breaking residency laws.

The Hai’a is the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

He married three Saudi women, who are on his identity card, two non-Saudi women who don’t have Iqamas [Saudi residency cards - EoZ] and a non-Saudi who has an Iqama, reported Al-Madina Arabic daily on Monday.

It is against Islamic law for a Muslim man to have more than four wives at one time.

The Control and Investigation Board (CIB) accused the Hai’a employee of unethical behavior and abusing his position. The Administrative Court at the Jizan Board of Grievances in Uhud Al-Masariha gave him 120 lashes for marrying more than four wives.

The Administrative Committee at Jizan Passport Administration fined the Hai’a employee SR3,000 and sentenced him to six weeks in prison for covering up for two women who didn’t have Iqamas.

Hasn't he been punished enough?

The case of the employee was discovered three years ago. He was arrested by the police and the Hai’a at a furnished apartment.

He was also ordered to memorize certain chapters of the Holy Qur’an and study their interpretation. He was also banned from traveling abroad for five years, delivering a speech in the mosque and leading prayers in the mosque.

Iran's Internet blocking experiment ends for now

Last Friday I noted that Iran was blocking all SSL (secure encrypted) Internet connections to the outside world.

It appears that the experiment has run its course - for now:

Most computer users in Iran were blocked from accessing email, social networking and other services in recent days, US-based internet experts said on Monday, raising fears the government is extending the reach of its surveillance to ordinary citizens.

Internet service providers presumed to be acting at the Iranian government's behest began blocking the most common form of secure connections on Friday, according to the outside experts and Iranian bloggers. Traffic rebounded to normal levels on Monday.

The cutoff apparently affected all encrypted international websites outside of Iran that depend on the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which display addresses beginning with https, according to Earl Zmijewski of Renesys, a US company that tracks internet traffic worldwide.

Google, which uses SSL for its Gmail service, reported that traffic from Iran to its email system fell precipitously.

Gmail use, which typically drops by about 80 percent at night, dropped by roughly 95 percent Friday and remained that low during daylight hours through the weekend before recovering Monday, according to Google's publicly posted access statistics.

Tor, a system for hiding the location of internet users, saw a similar falloff first in the Iranian capital of Tehran and then throughout the country, said Tor Executive Director Andrew Lewman.

Though other countries, including Belarus and Myanmar, have blocked SSL access before, Iran is the largest country to have tried it, Lewman said. Egypt turned off the internet completely a year ago during the uprising there, and China has done that in some regions.

It was unclear why the blocking stopped. Some Iranian politicians complained and businesses might have objected, but most tracking the situation said it was likely that the experiment had run its course.

"The government is testing different tools," said Hamed Behravan, who reports on Iranian technology issues for the US government-funded Voice of America. "They might have wanted to see the public reaction."

Behravan said Iranian sites using SSL remained available, including banking sites.

Tor has been developing a version of its program that is encrypted but does not need an SSL connection, and it distributed that over the weekend to people inside Iran who reported that it worked well, Lewman said.

Iranian officials have said they do not intend to block all connections to the outside world from a new national system they are developing. But direct links could be made to run very slowly, Behravan said.

The new network could help Iran ward off spying or attacks from other countries and keep a closer eye on domestic activities.

The country already has built up one of the most sophisticated infrastructures for monitoring and controlling internet content, with the ability to dig deep into communications and change various protocols.

During political protests in the past, Iran reduced bandwidth so that posting videos took hours.

With the SSL shutoff and recent remarks by officials, Behravan said the new network could launch within a month.

"I will not be surprised if it happens tomorrow," said Iranian computer scientist Arash Abadpour of Toronto, who blogs under the name Kamangir.

Blocking SSL is not a good way to stop cyber-attacks, so this seems to be done purely to stop Iranians from getting to the Web and using social networking sites. In the wake of the events in the Middle East over the past year, it seems to reveal far more about Iran's fear of an internal revolution than anything else.

Technology and freedom have a way of winning these battles. Just as Tor was able to get around the SSL restrictions within a day, it should be possible to write programs to consolidate a dozen or so "slow" connections to create a fast one for critical communications like video uploads (which have been key in Syria's revolution.) It would essentially be a reverse BitTorrent where videos are uploaded in pieces from different client PCs at once.

Any data can be transmitted through any protocol, and any data can be encrypted. (Being 100% anonymous while doing this is a little harder, unfortunately, but one can make it difficult to be found.) As long as there are any Internet connections from Iran to the rest of the world it will be possible to get critical information out.

Gaza tomatoes exported to Jordan, Saudi Arabia

Last week, for the first time since 2007, tomatoes were exported from Gaza to Jordan - and to Saudi Arabia.

31 tons of tomatoes went to Jordan via the Allenby Bridge on Sunday, and 15 more tons went through the same crossing on Thursday to be delivered to Saudi Arabia.

Keep in mind that the BDS movement is against buying any agricultural goods from Gaza. Which means that the BDS movement hates Israel more than Saudi Arabia does.

Oh, and Juan Cole has still not corrected his November lie saying that Israel does not allow any exports from Gaza.

Israeli invention allows blind people to "see" using other senses

From JPost:

Can the blind “see” with their ears? Hebrew University of Jerusalem brain scientists have tapped onto the visual cortex of people suffering from congenital blindness by using sensory substitution devices (SSDs) – making it possible for them in effect to “see” and even describe objects.

SSDs are non-invasive sensory aids that provide visual information to the blind via their existing senses. For example, using a visual-to-auditory SSD in a clinical or everyday setting, users wear a miniature video camera connected to a small computer (or smartphone) and stereo headphones. The images are converted into “soundscapes,” using a predictable algorithm, allowing the user to listen to and then interpret the visual information coming from the camera.

Surprisingly, proficient users who have had special training in a short time as part of a research protocol in the lab of Dr. Amir Amedi are able to use SSDs to identify complex everyday objects, locate people and their postures and read letters and words.

Amazingly, this seems to work even on people who have been blind from birth.

Here's another product to be shunned by those ever-so-moral advocates of boycotting Israel.

Haniyeh: "The gun is our only response to the Zionist regime"

From Iran's ISNA:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said gun is Palestine's only response to the Zionist regime.

Rejecting any compromise with Zionist regime, Haniya said, "Gun is our only response to Zionist regime. In time, we have come to understand that we can obtain our goals only through fighting and armed resistance and no compromise should be made with the enemy."

Also regarding Fatah-Hamas compromise, he said resistance is one of the basic principles of Palestinian nation.

Palestinian Prime Minister speaking in Iranian state TV, said, "Path of resistance continues and if we make any compromise, it is for resistance and obtaining Palestinians' rights."

He asserted Islamic Awakening developments which took place in the Arab World shows the genuineness of the way as adding resistance strategy still continues and, "we have not changed the strategy."

Palestinian Prime Minister said, "Presence of Zionist regime inside Palestine is the root of all regional problems and this presence poses a threat not only to Palestine but also to the whole region."

He added now 6,000,000 Palestinians are living beyond Palestine's borders which should return to the country and their return is possible only through resistance.

You have to understand, he's talking about peaceful guns, and peaceful fighting, and peaceful armed resistance.

I mean, how else can you understand this? It can't mean violence, because so many experts have been telling us that Hamas is pragmatic and has abandoned violence.

So "guns" must be a keyword that means "flowers" in Hamas-talk. "Fighting" must mean "hugs" and "armed resistance" means "intense lovemaking."

Groovy, man.

It's official: Everything is Israel's fault, including the Arab Spring

From Egypt Independent:

During Monday’s session of former President Mubarak’s ongoing trial, Mohamed al-Gendy, one of former Cairo Security Director Ismail al-Shaer’s defense lawyers, suggested that third parties, including Israel, helped fuel the revolution, the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) has reported.

"It’s unimaginable that those in the cage are murderers, and that the countries proven to have been funding organizations in Egypt did not participate in the events,” said Gendy. "It is unimaginable that Israel, which was spying on the mobile networks, had nothing to do with fueling the events."

Mubarak, former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly and six of Adly's assistants are charged with killing protesters during the 25 January revolution, while Mubarak, his sons Alaa and Gamal and businessman Hussein Salem are being tried on corruption charges. Adly was convicted of money laundering and fraud in May 2011.

Israel has now been accused of being pro- and anti-Egypt Revolution; pro-Fatah and pro-Hamas, pro-Assad and pro-Syrian opposition, anti-American and pro-American.

I guess when you control the world, it really all ends up being your responsibility.

(h/t Dan)

"Saudi 'apostate' faces certain execution"

From Free Malaysia Today News:

The blood of deported Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari is on Malaysia’s hands.

According to Human Rights Watch Asia deputy director Phil Robertson, Malaysia did not give Kashgari access to his lawyers or to the United Nations refugee agency, and speedily sent him on a plane back to Saudi Arabia.

Because of this, Kashgari would most likely face an almost certain death at the hands of his government.

“Malaysia’s action to deport Kashgari to Saudi Arabia sets all new lows in the Malaysian government’s failure to respect human rights standards, and if he faces execution back in Saudi Arabia, the Malaysian government will have blood on its hands,” he said in a press statement.

He added that the Malaysian government did not allow Kashgari access to his lawyers for days, and prevented the United Nations from meeting him.

“But on Sunday, the police told those lawyers that Kashgari was still being held after he already had been forced on a plane,” he said.

The lawyers then fought to get a court injunction to prevent Kashgari’s deportation, but were too late. The Saudi journalist was already on his way home.

This was despite the claim that Malaysia did not have a formal extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia.

“By its actions, the Home Ministry once again showed that it believes rule of law is whatever it says and that it is more than willing to be totally opaque in its operations to maintain its flexibility to do what it wants when it wants,” he said.

Many called for his head after he supposedly insulted the Prophet Muhammad; which is considered blasphemous in Islam. It is also a crime punishable by death.

Kashgari had been planning to fly to New Zealand, intending to seek asylum there. He was in transit from Jordan when he was detained here.

According to Robertson, Malaysia appeared to be hypocritical in its human rights stance, especially where the UN was concerned.

“When seeking a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, the Malaysian government pledged that it would abide by international human rights treaties.”

“But from the day Malaysia took it’s seat, Malaysian government leaders have walked away from that pledge,” he said.

Malaysia defended its actions:

The Malaysian Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said the deportation to Saudi Arabia was legal and that Malaysia cannot be seen as a safe haven, said the BBC.

Mr Hussein was quoted by the AP news agency as saying: "I will not allow Malaysia to be seen as a safe country for terrorists and those who are wanted by their countries of origin, and also be seen as a transit county."

Egyptian presidential candidate would make hijab mandatory

From Al Arabiya:

An ultra-conservative Egyptian presidential hopeful has said that if he is elected as head of state he would force women to wear the hijab (veil) or “change creed,” adding that Islam provides no guarantees of personal freedom.

“If you claim that Allah considers it your personal freedom, show me your reference. Nobody has ever said that - except for people who have no understanding of the Shariah,” Hazem Saleh Abu Ismail, a long-time supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, said in a recent interview with the Egypt’s Tahrir TV.

He said that if he is elected president he would enforce the hijab on women and that if they do not want to wear it, they have to change their “creed.”

He did not elaborate on what he meant by changing their “creed” and whether this meant changing their religion, knowing that such a move is strictly forbidden under the Shariah law and could result in capital punishment.

Ismail said that following the Shariah (Islamic law) is like being in the military, where a person has to follow a strict code of conduct.

He said that the Islamic saying of “no compulsion in religion” is comparable to “no compulsion in the military, meaning that if someone wants to enter the military, he can enter and if he does not want to, he does not have to enter.”

But once a person enters the military, that person has to respect its rules, the cleric said.

“If you join, then you are obliged to wear their uniform, to attend their classes, to attend the training with them and to obey their leader,” Ismail said.

In August 2011, Ismail appeared in an online video praising Osama bin Laden and describing him as a martyr. He said the late al-Qaeda leader spoke “the word of truth on power” and went to the “front lines to work in the path of Allah.”

Ismail said he has “some minor differences” with the Muslim Brotherhood, a group he left before expressing intentions to run for president.

The Muslim Brotherhood doesn't have any official candidates for president, so given their huge victory in the parliamentary elections, this guy really could be the next president of Egypt.

Morning links

Honest Reporting: You Can’t March In Step With Suicide Bombers and Lecture About What’s Mainstream discusses an Australian journalist who loves to contextualize suicide bombings making declarations about what most Australians think. (Here he is about 9/11; doesn't sound "mainstream" to me.)

Honest Reporting also debunks a rumor that CNN had let go of all its Jewish staff in Israel. (People had sent me that story for a few days but I am not going to report on something that incendiary without a lot more proof. I had written to some of the reporters who were let go but they didn't respond.)

Magen David Adom's first Muslim ambulance driver is a woman:

"At first it was difficult working with a team comprised mostly by men, but I've gotten used to that already. They're nice. At the station I am friends with the Jewish girls. I teach them Arabic and learn Hebrew from them. In the meantime I use the advantage of my language in east Jerusalem."

A review of "A Convenient Hatred" - a book about anti-semitism, at Stonegate Institute.

Also at Stonegate, a look at radicalization of young British Muslims.

Iran reported preparing "suicide bomb boats" at the Straits of Hormuz.

Isi Liebler of the Jerusalem Post is interviewed about a possible military strike on Iran:

(h/t Daphne Anson)

Attacks on Israel embassies in India, Georgia

From NYT:

JERUSALEM - Unidentified bombers attacked staff at Israeli embassies far apart in India and Georgia on Monday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, and images from New Delhi showed what appeared to be a minivan consumed by flames.

"There was one attempted attack, and one successful, as it were," Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, was quoted by Reuters as saying. "In both cases, the people concerned worked with the Israeli embassies."

He also confirmed that a bomb had been found in a car belonging to a staffer at the embassy in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, which was defused by local police.

Indian police said at least one person had been injured in New Delhi but there was no immediate word on fatalities.

Shota Utiashvili, a spokesman for the Georgian Interior Ministry, confirmed that a bomb was discovered affixed to the car of an employee of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi.

"The car of a Georgian national working for the Israeli embassy was mined," he said. "The embassy employee noticed a suspicious object and he called the police, and the police successfully defused it before it went off."

He said the car was not parked close to the embassy at the time. He said this was the first attempted attack on an employee of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi. Police have not yet identified any suspects, he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of the apparently coordinated attacks.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the attackers were known to Israeli officials, though he did not immediately name any group. "We know exactly who is responsible for the attack and who planned it and we're not going to take it lying down," the daily Haaretz quoted him as saying.

In New Delhi, Indian officials said a driver and the wife of an Israeli diplomat were injured in the late afternoon blast close to the Israeli Embassy, The Associated Press reported.

"They are in the hospital and being tended to," an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Syed Akbaruddin, told The A.P.

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Imad Mugniyeh.

The Egyptian Parliament yesterday threatened to cancel the peace accords with Israel if the US stops aid to Egypt.

Essam el-Erian, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Egyptian parliament, said that if the United States decided to cut off economic aid for Egypt, it would endanger the Camp David agreement.

He said that part of the Camp David accords was for continued US aid to Egypt, and that if the US would pressure Egypt it would end up hurting Israel.

He said that Egypt is impervious to pressure and that it now makes all of its own decisions.

The US started sending about $1.5 billion in military aid to Egypt after Camp David, but it is not part of the signed agreements. Other US aid to Egypt is not even implicitly tied to Camp David as far as I can tell.

Gaza blackout update

Israel's Channel 10 reported about the impending power outages in Gaza City as a result of there being no fuel to run the power plant. It included some video of the darkened streets (around 20:15 on the link):

But it appears that this footage is from the normal daily scheduled outages, not from the power plant going offline. According to Palestine Times, that will happen "at any moment" as supplies coming from Egypt are sporadic and relatively small.

That is not the only problem, though.

Egypt has been cracking down on ordinary diesel and fuel smuggling to Gaza, which residents have been relying on for their cars and personal generators. Because of the fuel shortages in the northern Sinai, Egyptian authorities have been stopping the shipments to Gaza to keep their own people from rioting.

Yet in public forums, at least one Gaza official still blames Israel, according to Ma'an:

Walid Saad Sayil manages Gaza's only electricity plant, and said the lack of fuel deliveries leaves three options to stave off blackouts, speaking at the Gaza-based forum PalThink for Strategic Studies on Wednesday.

Sayil says the best and most feasible solution is to bring natural gas from Egypt instead of the current diesel which is purchased from Israeli suppliers. It would take six to eight months to arrange, but would save the Palestinian Authority about 60 percent of its budget on fuel, he told the forum.

Another option is an emergency injection of fuel and electricity, Sayil added, without specifying possible sources.

The Gaza Strip could also connect to a joint electricity grid current shared by eight Arab states. The energy authority recently visited Egypt to discuss this possibility, but he warned that such a connection would take more than a year.

A prerequisite to each option it the upgrading of Gaza's electricity network to handle the new wattage, he said.

Gaza has been refusing power plant fuel deliveries from Israel for over a year, so I think this might be a mistake on Ma'an's part. Because when Sayil says he might want an "emergency injection of fuel" he might be referring to purchasing it from Israel as they used to - but he is apparently too scared to say that out loud in Gaza.

Sayil indicated the major cause of the current energy crisis is the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority's delay in payments for fuel.

The PA is currently working to plug a $1.1 billion deficit in the public budget, but has been criticized before by Gaza officials for failing to deliver critical payments to the blockaded coastal strip.

The power plant director said the energy authority and company in Gaza also bear some responsibility for the crisis, and it worsened over the winter as electricity needs shot up.

In 2003, a proposal was developed to build a new power station in Gaza, but supporters have failed to commit to their pledges, he said, adding that neither government in the West Bank or Gaza Strip have implemented the project.

Again, Sayil is trying to appease his Hamas leaders, because while it is true that the PA has been slow in paying fuel bills, the Gaza utility company has been very bad at collecting money owed by residents who routinely ignore their electric bills.

Egypt said it would be interested in hooking Gaza up to its electric grid.

As far as delivering Egyptian natural gas to Gaza - do you think that will stop the saboteurs in the Sinai from attacking the gas lines that also go to Israel (and Jordan)?

(h/t Yoel for video link)

Fatah insulted by Khamenei's saying Arafat abandoned resistance

During Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh's visit to Iran, he met with the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television quoted Khamenei as saying to Haniyeh that Hamas must continue its resistance against Israel, pointing out that the late Palestinian leader "Yasser Arafat lost his popularity because he distanced himself from the resistance."

The Iranian leader added that Iran "always stands to the side of the Palestinian resistance."

Fatah is not happy with this characterization of their founder.

Ahmed Assaf, Fatah spokesman, lashed out at Khamenei. He said, The status of the martyr leader Yasser Arafat is immortalized in the consciences of the Palestinian people and Arab and Islamic nations and the free world, and does not require the false testimony of Khamenei of Iran."

Assaf added, "The Israeli occupation assassinated the commander of the Palestinian people because of his steadfastness on the rights of our people and adherence to legitimate resistance to occupation and settlement, so he became a martyr after a siege in his headquarters in the home for three years. "

Assaf continued, "We deplore the Haniyeh's consistent abuse of the history of the Palestinian people in exchange for for a bunch of money," calling on Iran to stop interfering in Palestinian and Arabic affairs.

(h/t Eliyahud)

Syrian defector: "After we defeat Assad we will be stronger to face the Jews"

Israel's Mako has an interesting interview with a Syrian army defector.

Until six weeks ago Hassan was a lieutenant in armored division 5 of the Syrian army. Since March 2011 he fought as a soldier in the Assad's army in suppressing riots, until he decided he could do it no longer.

With the help of an organized network that runs the Free Syria Army, Hassan managed to defect together with another officer and a soldier.

For most of the interview he describes how the Free Syria Army is fighting and his observations of what he is calling a civil war.

But at the end of the interview:

Lt. Hassan will continue to fight the Syrian army and spread the messages of the Free Syria Army over the Internet. During our conversation there is one message he felt is important to him to clarify in no uncertain terms: "Zionists, do not think that after the government is replaced we would give up the sword. The Golan Heights and the Zionist state is still defined as 'Dar al Harb' (Muslim area of war). After we release Syria from the corrupt regime, we will be stronger to face the Jews."

Lovely.

(h/t Yoel)

Now Twitter helps fuel hateful Arab incitement

From The Warped Mirror blog in JPost:

Friday night, I discovered that on his Electronic Intifada blog, Ali Abunimah had put up a post claiming that Likud leaders were planning to go to Al-Aqsa early Sunday morning and that they were calling for “cleansing” Jerusalem and building a Jewish temple instead of the mosque. At the bottom of the post, Abunimah added an update that half-heartedly acknowledged that there was no basis to the story, but he nevertheless concluded by claiming:

"There’s certainly no doubt that whoever published this flyer […] is tapping into a history of calls and growing support for destroying Al-Aqsa. Feiglin’s supporters too are clear about their desire to take over the Temple Mount."

In response, I wrote a post pointing out that spurious claims about Jewish threats to the Al-Aqsa mosque had been used by Arab agitators for almost a hundred years: it was the notorious mufti Haj Amin al Husseini who first used this libel in the 1920s. In the almost 100 years that have passed since then, it was of course only sites sacred to Jews that were desecrated and destroyed in Jerusalem.

When I wrote this post last night, I noted that Abunimah’s post had about 100 tweets and some 150 Facebook endorsements. Some 24 hours later, it had 381 tweets and 523 Facebook “likes”, and there were the beginnings of a Twitter intifada: word of the evil designs of the wicked Likudniks had reached the popular Egyptian-American writer Mona Eltahawy, who send out a tweet about it – and she has more than 100 000 followers…

Luckily, by that time, Anne-Marie Slaughter, former Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department and professor at Princeton, had also gotten word of the story and found out that it was a hoax. Realizing that it was a very dangerous hoax, she sent out multiple tweets to alert her more than 20 000 followers.

Mona Eltahawy quickly deleted her original tweet and also helped to get out the message that it was a hoax, but by that time, the Al-Aqsa libel was already spreading like wildfire. As one tweet by a professor of sociology put it: “Scared of all the fake rumors about Al #Aqsa. First rule of sociology is if enough people believe something, it will have real consequences.”

Maybe Ali Abunimah will be pleased by the thought that just like with his #IsraelHates- campaign, he once again managed to cause a stir in the Twittersphere – and this time around, there was even the specter of going beyond a merely verbal “Electronic Intifada” to a real intifada of senseless violence and bloodshed.

The Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation and various Muslim firebrands are well-known for creating false rumors about supposed Israeli designs on the Temple Mount. They do it practically every week on their website, and many of those make it into the mainstream Palestinian Arab press. Here are just a few I have documented over the years:

November 2008: Israel Antiquities Authority drawing up plans to build the Third Temple
April 2009: Israel is building a subway to the Temple Mount
June 2009: Netanyahu is planning to build the Third Temple
September 2009: Israel will give exclusive access to Jews to the Al Aqsa Mosque for 50 days a year
February 2010: Cracks on the Temple Mount is from Israeli construction and plans to destroy it
March 2010: Israel will start construction of the Third Temple on March 16, 2010

Now we have Twitter and inciters like Abiminah who are willing to help these rumors spread even faster. And it would be funny if it wasn't true that sometimes rumors like these lead to deadly results.

Surprise! Tourism to Egypt plummeting

Osama el Ashry, Egypt's undersecretary of tourism, says that bookings have gone down 20% since the recent kidnappings of tourists.

He said "the kidnapping of the Koreans, and before that the Americans, led to a decline in hotel occupancy, which was already suffering from a crisis from the security situation."

Meanwhile, civil aviation officials said that the number of air travelers to Egypt has declined by 60% since the revolution.

Egypt's tourism industry was worth about $11.6 billion in 2009,and it employs some 12% of the workforce.

Electricity crisis in Gaza gets worse

Egypt apparently sent small amounts of fuel to Gaza's power plant on Friday night, but only about a half-day's worth, according to the chief engineer of Gaza's electric plant Canaan Obeid.

On Thursday he had warned that there was only enough fuel for the power plant to run for 72 hours.

He charged the PA with pressuring Egypt not to send any diesel to Gaza, saying that Mahmoud Abbas insists that the fuel only go through Israeli crossings.

As I reported on Thursday, Hamas has been refusing to receive power plant fuel from Israel since January 2011. And it appears that Hamas has been getting its fuel through smuggling tunnels under Rafah, meaning that it never had a steady supply and it is especially bad now that Egypt is suffering from its own fuel problems and is cracking down on fuel smuggling.

Obeid says, seemingly accurately, that the electricity crisis is "highly political." Just he only blames the PA, when in fact Hamas is at least as guilty by placing its citizens at risk rather than accept fuel from Israel.

We'll see if Gaza goes dark tomorrow.

More indications of a split within Hamas

From YNet:

Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar has publicly expressed his opposition to a reconciliation agreement signed this week by the Islamist group's politburo chief, Khaled Mashaal, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Zahar told a Gaza-based news agency that the agreement, under which Abbas would head an interim unity government of politically independent technocrats whose main task would be to prepare for presidential and parliament elections, was finalized without consulting other Hamas leaders.

"Handing the reins of government to Abbas is completely unacceptable," Zahar said. "It's a strategically erroneous plan."

The Hamas leader added that Hamas leaders in Gaza and abroad will convene in the coming days to discuss the terror group's official position on the agreement.

In the interview, Zahar said that the Doha declaration of unity was effectively Meshal recognizing Israel and that it causes a "major threat" to the future of Hamas.

He denied that there was a rift, and said that political decisions in Hamas must not be done unilaterally but must instead go through its Shura council.

Meanwhile, Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh is in Iran, and Al Arabiya sees that as another indication of a split:

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah’s trip to the Iranian capital of Tehran highlighted the disagreement between the movement’s leaders at home and abroad, particularly his relationship with Damascus-based politburo chief Khaled Mashaal.

Haniyah’s acceptance of an invitation by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to participate in the celebration of the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, demonstrates the disagreements between Hamas leaders inside and outside the Gaza Strip, said political analyst Mekhimar Abu Saada.

“This division started becoming clear after the reconciliation agreement signed in Cairo between Fatah and Hamas,” he said.

At the time, he explained, Mashaal surprised Hamas by granting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas a one-year grace period to conduct negotiations with Israel.

However, Abu Saada added, divisions inside Hamas were made clear when the resistance movement was required to take a stance as far as the Syrian crisis is concerned and the general inclination was to reject Iran’s demand that Hamas support Bashar al-Assad’s regime like Lebanon’s Hezbollah did.

“Mashaal was in the camp that favored distancing itself from Iran and Syria and getting closer to the Sunni axis represented by Turkey, Qatar, and the Palestinian president.”

That is why, he pointed out, this visit seems to have been an explicit rejection of Mashaal’s stance and that of the majority of Hamas leaders.

“This move by Haniyah and any similar moves likely to take place by Hamas leaders at home can be attributed to financial factors.”

Abu Saada explained that Hamas in Gaza is more in need of financial aid from external powers and that is why it is in its best interest not to contradict Iran.

“This, in addition to Haniyah’s objection to the rapprochement between Mashaal and Abbas, is expected to encourage the prime minister to maintain strong relations with Iran even though it supports the Syrian regime unlike Hamas’s initial stance.”

According to sources, Hamas leaders abroad as well as several Gulf nations advised Haniyah not to accept the Iranian invitation.

For his part, Haniyeh told a crowd in Iran that Hamas will never recognize Israel and will actively seek its destruction:

Hamas “will never recognize Israel,” its Gaza prime minister said Saturday in a speech in Iran that is likely to complicate Palestinian efforts to form a unity government in the teeth of opposition from the Jewish state.

“They want us to recognize the Israeli occupation and cease resistance but, as the representative of the Palestinian people and in the name of all the world’s freedom seekers, I am announcing from Azadi Square in Tehran that we will never recognize Israel,” Ismail Haniyeh said.

“The resistance will continue until all Palestinian land, including al-Quds (Jerusalem), has been liberated and all the refugees have returned,” he said.

Haniyeh’s reiteration of Hamas’s long-held stance was made on the occasion of Iran’s commemoration of its 1979 Islamic revolution. The Gaza leader spoke to an estimated crowd of 30,000 from a stage alongside Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Did Interpol help nab Saudi "apostate"?

From The Guardian:

Interpol has been accused of abusing its powers after Saudi Arabia used the organisation's red notice system to get a journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport "following a request made to us by Interpol" the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

Jago Russell, the chief executive of the British charity Fair Trials International, which has campaigned against the blanket enforcement of Interpol red notices, said: "Interpol should be playing no part in Saudi Arabia's pursuit of Hamza Kashgari, however unwise his comments on Twitter.

"If an Interpol red notice is the reason for his arrest and detention it would be a serious abuse of this powerful international body that is supposed to respect basic human rights (including to peaceful free speech) and to be barred from any involvement in religious or political cases."

He called on Interpol to stand by its obligations to fundamental human rights and "to comply with its obligation not to play any part in this case, which is clearly of a religious nature".

Interpol, which has 190 member countries, has a series of coloured notice systems that police forces around the world use to pass on requests for help. Contacted at its headquarters in Lyon, France, the organisation did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the Kashgari case.

In response to past criticisms of the red notice system, it has said: "There are safeguards in place. The subject of a red notice can challenge it through an independent body, the commission for the control of Interpol's files (CCF)."

Last year Interpol was accused by Fair Trials International of allowing the system to be abused for political purposes when it issued a red notice for the arrest of the Oxford-based leader of an Asian separatist movement, Benny Wenda, who has been granted asylum and has lived in the UK since 2003.

Interpol has hundreds of people listed in its Red Notice system; over 160 are wanted by Saudi Arabia alone. (It looks like the limits of a database query is 160.) There are plenty of categories to hide a request for apostasy, for example "hooliganism" or simply "at large."

Anyway, it is too late for Kashgari:

Saudi citizen Mohamad Najeeb A. Kashgari, better known as Hamza Kashgari, who allegedly posted blasphemous tweets on Prophet Muhammad's birthday, was deported back to his country hours before his lawyers managed to get a High Court injunction to stop the deportation.

The lawyers, led by R Kesavan, said that they got the injunction at 1.30 pm today only to be told that Kashgari has been put on a private plane sent by the Saudi authorities at 10 am this morning.

The injunction was an order to the police, the Home Ministry, as well as the Subang and Kuala Lumpur International Airport immigration authorities to stop Kashgari's deportation.

"We managed to get the injunction from High Court Judge Datuk Rohana Yusof at her house.

"We are very disappointed that the authorities refused us access to Kashgari and we were given the runaround. We were not told of his whereabouts since he was detained at KLIA last Thursday. As he is now out of the country, there is nothing more we can do," said Kesavan.

Saudi Arabia, where you can get executed for a tweet.

Report: Saudis would buy nukes from Pakistan within weeks of Iranian bomb

There goes the neighborhood:

Saudi Arabia would launch a military nuclear program immediately if Iran successfully developed atomic weapons.

While Riyadh signed an agreement with the US in 2008 stating that it would only pursue nuclear power for civil purposes, the Saudi government is likely to abandon the deal if Tehran had a nuclear bomb, reported The Times.

"There is no intention currently to pursue a unilateral military nuclear program but the dynamics will change immediately if the Iranians develop their own nuclear capability," a senior Saudi source said.

"Politically, it would be completely unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom."

In such an eventuality, Saudi Arabia would start work on a new ballistic missile platform, purchase nuclear warheads from overseas and aim to source uranium to develop weapons-grade material.

Officials in the West believe Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have an understanding in which Islamabad would supply the kingdom with warheads if security in the Gulf was threatened.

A Western official told The Times that Riyadh could have the nuclear warheads in a matter of weeks of approaching Islamabad. Other vendors were also likely to enter into a bidding war if Riyadh indicated that it was seeking nuclear warheads.

Both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have denied the existence of any such agreement.

Like the US and many other countries in the West, Saudi Arabia believes that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons and the kingdom is preparing for a worst-case scenario, the Saudi sources said.

If this is true (The Times has a spotty record in such scoops), it is bad enough that Pakistan is willing to sell nuclear warheads to protect Saudi interests.

And if they are willing to sell to the Saudis, chances are they would do the same for other gulf countries.

And if they do that, the chances that a terror group would end up with nukes skyrockets, especially in the chaos that the "Arab spring" is bringing.

And beyond that, who could the "other vendors" be that are willing to sell nukes to Saudi Arabia? China? Russia?

Notice that no Arab countries felt this threatened by the assumption that Israel has had nukes since the 1960s.

(h/t Yoel)

Saturday night open thread

Haven't done one in a while...

University of PA responds about Amy Kaplan's politicizing of her courses

I asked the chair of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, Nancy Bentley, to comment on my post earlier today about a Q&A at last week's PennBDS conference.

Here was her answer:

I can say I didn't agree with the way the blog characterized Professor Kaplan's comments on the recording. The blog stated the following:

"At the Q&A session, another teacher asked Kaplan how to incorporate the BDS memes of demonizing Israel into college courses, even when the course has nothing to do with "Palestine." And Professor Kaplan answered him. Here we have a professor at an Ivy League university explicitly calling on like-minded educators to shoehorn hate of Israel into every one of their classes."

This characterization is not accurate. Contrary to the claim that Professor Kaplan believes that political views on Israel-Palestine should be forced into college courses that have nothing to do with that subject, Kaplan explicitly said she didn't think that was feasible: "I don't know how you can address the issue if you're not dealing with a course that has no content or relationship to it."

She took the position instead that certain kinds of thematic courses, such as prison literature or prison history, would have an inherent relation to the topic of Israel-Palestine (as one case among others). Prison writing is a well established area in literary studies, as is the history of prisons. Any search of data bases will reveal this neutral fact of academic history. And I fail to see how the case of the Israeli-Palistinian [sic] conflict would be inherently inappropriate as a case study for a thematic course of that sort, just as with courses like war literature or the literature of mourning and violence. If you can explain how this is not the case, I'd be happy to comment.

"For these academics, college is not about teaching but it is merely a platform for them to spout their political views at their captive audience." This assertion on the blog does not seem accurate to me either, since Professor Kaplan expressed the idea that only courses in which Israel and Palestine were relevant to the advertised course theme would be logical candidates for discussing these questions. Such courses (prison writing, war and literature, etc.) are not required of English majors or SAS students, so discussions of the politics of the Israeli-Palestine conflict would never be forced on a "captive audience."

Professor Kaplan didn't say that one shouldn't try to figure out a way to fit one's politics into a course that should have nothing to do with politics - just that she doesn't know exactly how one would do it in a practical way.

The basic issue, which Professor Bentley avoids, is that the university should not be a place where professors a priori craft their classes to push a political viewpoint, as Kaplan says she wants teachers to do and indicates she does herself. If the best example of prison studies includes Palestinian Arab events, or if the best example of poetry includes Darwish, there is nothing wrong with including that in the course. But if a professor specifically includes it for the express purpose of pushing an anti-Israel agenda there is something very wrong with that.

I'm not saying it is inherently inappropriate. I am saying it is inappropriate when the teacher decides to include it for reasons that have nothing to do with academics. Kaplan is not only doing that proudly, but she is telling like-minded people how to do it - to "make courses" that have the desired political content.

That is an problem, and to see Penn sweep it under the rug this way indicates that it is a much bigger problem than just the actions of one professor.

Here again is the Q&A:

AUDIENCE MEMBER (PROFESSOR) ASKS QUESTION:
My question falls on Professor Norton's statement that Boycott may not be the most important part of BDS, and is kind of the closest to where we live as academics and also with Professor Kaplan's call to think about a positive program on BDS, a positive aspect of the Boycott [of Israel]....And that's um about teaching in the classroom about BDS and how, not just in our life as professional producers of knowledge, and scholars, but as teachers, how can that be formed in this pedagogy, especially I guess when the course is not dealing directly with material that has to do with Palestine"

AMY KAPLAN RESPONDS:
Well I don't know how you can, how you can address the issue if you're not dealing with a course that has no content or relationship to it.... But I know that, I mean, you can make courses that have content. I mean, for example, I happen to know that you're interested in prisons, and the literature and culture about, you know, prisons, so you can teach a course on which you included prison as a really, really big thing, not only in the political life of Palestinians, but also in their literature and in their poetry, so that will be kind of an ideal way -- you take a thematic course, and you bring in themes from this issue, and literature is really a great way to teach students about what's going on -- students they think, they know they have an ideological line, a political line, and then they read, you know, they read darwish, they read, you know, The Pennoptimist and it opens up a whole new world -- so that's my answer to that.

Say goodbye to Egypt's tourism industry: 3 more kidnapped in Sinai

From Ma'an:

Armed men kidnapped three Korean tourists and an Egyptian guide in St. Catherine in the southern Sinai on Friday, an Egyptian security official said.

Maj. Gen. Muhammad Najib, director of south Sinai security, said a group of armed Bedouins stopped a bus of Korean tourists and kidnapped three in addition to the guide in Wadi Firan area.

Security sources predicted that the kidnappers may be the same who kidnapped three Americans in order to negotiate releasing Bedouins imprisoned for weapons and drugs violations.

If tourists are in danger on a tour bus, you can kiss the entire industry goodbye.

Egypt does not have a bright future. The Muslim Brotherhood will not be able to fix Egypt's financial woes; the newly powerful Salafists will push their 8th-century morality; and the Egyptian people now have the idea that they can simply protest their problems away.

Whoever is in charge will need a strong security force - whether it is SCAF or a successor - to be able to even do day-to-day governing.

And that force is going to end up killing a lot of people.

"The Jew is Satan in human form"

I linked to it before, but MEMRI just uploaded this video to YouTube, and I have to embed it here.

I mean, what would Satan do?

Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheik Bassam Al-Kayed, head of the Palestinian Islamic Scholars Association in Lebanon, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 1, 2012:

Bassam Al-Kayed: The Jew is a satan in human form. Allah inflicted the Jews upon humanity in its entirety, and especially upon the nation of Islam, including the early prophets and the Prophet Muhammad. The Jew is a satan in human form. We could almost say that the satanic jinn take lessons from them.

What they do is very peculiar. It transgresses all boundaries. They attribute no sanctity to anything that is sacred, to any treaty or agreement. They violate all the international laws, all the human norms, and all the Islamic and man-made laws. They violate all values. They are deterred by nothing but force.

Hey, if Allah put us here, then he must want us here, right? Sounds like Bassam saying that Allah purposefully inflicts pain on Muslims. Either that, or Jews are Allah's chosen people and the Muslims deserve to be punished. How else can we be so powerful?

Strange theology, but I'm OK with it.

OK, gotta go teach some Jinn.

Iran blocking major websites; HTTPS

From TechWeek Europe:

Iran has reportedly begun blocking sites using the HTTPS secure protocol, effectively censoring major bank sites, Google, Gmail, Facebook and many other commercial sites.

According to reports from Kabir News and The Washington Post, Internet providers in Iran began censoring the sites on Thursday, leaving behind a page which says: “According to computer crime regulations, access to this web site is denied”.

Kabir News states that the government will likely continue blocking access until Esfand, the next month in the Persian calendar, and the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

A more sinister suggestion about the downtime is that it could signal the introduction of Iran’s ‘National Internet’.

“The government’s technology officials have announced the construction of a domestic Internet network comparable to an office intranet, which would block many popular sites,” wrote Thomas Erdbrink, The Washington Post’s correspondent in Iran.

“Officials stress that there will still be access to the Web — just not to the “damaging” sites. But Iranian Internet users and activists fear that the activation of the National Internet will cut them off from the rest of the world, and put them under increased surveillance by authorities,” he wrote

Censorship has long been an issue in the country, but for a long time savvy users have been using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass barriers guarded by Iran’s cyberpolice. The Post is reporting that even these means have become unviable due to extremely low speeds.

WaPo adds:

Whenever Maysam, a prominent Iranian blogger, connects to the Internet from his office in the bazaar, he switches on a special connection that for years would bypass the Islamic republic’s increasingly effective firewall.

But recently the software, which allowed him and millions of other Iranians to go online through portals elsewhere in the world, stopped working. When it sporadically returns, speeds are so excruciatingly slow that sites such as Facebook and Balatarin.com – which evaluates unofficial news and rumors in Farsi — become unusable.

“There has been a change,” said Maysam, who spoke on the condition his last name not to be used out of fear of being summoned by Iran’s cyber police. “It seems that the authorities are increasingly getting the upper hand online.”

Having seen social media help power uprisings across the Middle East, Iran’s leaders are trying to get control over what is uploaded, posted and discussed on the Internet. And after a slow start, authorities are becoming more and more successful, Iranian Internet users say.

(h/t CHA)

Saudi faces death after tweeting about Mohammed

From AFP:

A young Saudi journalist is facing calls for his execution after tweeting remarks about the Prophet Mohammed, and the kingdom's top clerics are demanding his trial after denouncing him as an "apostate."

On the occasion of the Muslim prophet's birthday last week, 23-year-old Hamza Kashgari tweeted: "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you."

"I will not pray for you," he added.

[Another reads: “No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice.” - EoZ]

The controversial tweet sparked a frenzy of responses -- some 30,000, according to an online service that tracks tweets in the Arab world.

In one response, Abdullah, a lawyer, said that since Kashgari was "an adult... we should accept nothing but implementing the ruling according to Islamic law" or sharia.

Insulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam, and is a crime punishable by death.

Kashgari quickly apologised for his remarks, but the calls for his execution only multiplied.

A Facebook page entitled "The Saudi people demand Hamza Kashgari's execution" already has nearly 10,000 members.

A recent posting thanks the page's members for their support and calls for even more recruits.

"Our page has almost 10,000 members... but we need you to work harder. The prophet deserves more respect," said one post.

A committee of top clerics in charge of issuing religious edicts in the kingdom issued a statement calling Kashgari "an apostate" and an "infidel," and demanded that he be tried in an Islamic court.

The statement, released late on Wednesday, said: "Muslim scholars everywhere have agreed that those who insult Allah and his prophet or the (Muslim holy book) Koran or anything in religion are infidels and apostates."

It is therefore "the duty of our leaders to judge based on sharia law," which stipulates that an apostate must be sentenced to death, the statement added.

So Kashgari, reasonably, fled Saudi Arabia in fear for his life.

Unfortunately, he went to another Muslim country:

Malaysian authorities Friday said they had detained a young Saudi journalist who fled his country after Twitter comments he made about the Prophet Mohammed triggered calls for his execution.

Hamza Kashgari was taken into custody after flying into Malaysia's main international airport on Thursday, national police spokesman Ramli Yoosuf told AFP.

"Kashgari was detained at the airport upon arrival following a request made to us by Interpol after the Saudi authorities applied for it," he said.

Officials in Interpol's office in Malaysia could not immediately be reached for comment.

The state news agency Bernama said the 23-year-old Kashgari had been detained by Muslim-majority Malaysia "for allegedly insulting Islam and the Prophet Mohammed".

Would Interpol really help to hunt down an "apostate"?

Islamists in Egypt stop filming of TV show for "indecency"

From Egypt Independent:

It's easier to act when the audience can't see your face

Islamist students halted the filming of an Egyptian television series at Cairo's Ain Shams University protesting against the "indecent" clothing of the actresses, the production company said Thursday.

Misr International films had obtained permission from the university's management to film on site, the head of the company, Gaby Khoury, told AFP.

But "when the shooting started, the director of the engineering faculty, Sherif Hammad, came to tell us that some students and teachers were against it, because of the clothing worn by the actresses," he said.

The series, adapted from the novel "Dhat" by Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, takes place in the 1970s, "when women wore short clothing."

Hammad "insisted that the filming should stop and that we would be reimbursed ... explaining that he was not able to guarantee the protection of the materials or the artists," Khoury added.

In a statement on Wednesday evening, the production company said "the student members of the Muslim Brotherhood at Ain Shams University had prevented the film crew from the 'Dhat' TV series from shooting the scenes set at the university."

The students had objected to the "indecent" clothing, it said, and "categorically refused" to let the filming continue unless the costumes were changed.