Proctor and Gamble loves Israel

It is not only high-tech companies like Google and Intel who invest heavily in Israel. Proctor and Gamble, the consumer products and pharmaceutical powerhouse, also looks to Israel for innovation. From Forbes:

I visited P&G office in Tel Aviv. Lital Asher-Dotan, who established Procter & Gamble first R&D hub in Israel called “P&G Israel House of Innovation”, explained why P&G calls Israel a “startup nation.”

 Image of P&G office in Tel Aviv by Shannon Reaudeau

In the entry lobby of P&G office, which is 20 minutes away from Google’s office in Tel Aviv, there are a few samples of different products sold by P&G in Israel. Among the usual health and beauty brands (Head & Shoulders, Pantene, Oral B, Gillette, Tampax, Pampers …) and brands of household cleaners (Ariel, Lenor, Swiffer, Tide …) there were also different prizes and trophies P&G Israel has received for the development of innovative products. However, what surprised me the most was that besides all these products and prizes there was a copy of the acclaimed book Startup nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer.

Procter & Gamble takes Research and Development  seriously: it invests $2.8 Billion annually and has 9,300 employees in R&D worldwide. The Israel House of Innovation (IHI) was created five years ago by CEO Bob McDonaldand one of the key goals is to create alliances between P&G and Israeli innovators.

Procter & Gamble’s Israel House of Innovation collaborates with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NASDAQ: TEVA; TASE: TEVA), the largest generic drug manufacturer in the world; the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which carries out more than 1/3 of all academic scientific research in Israel;Powermat, which has only 70 employees and is developing wireless battery rechargers. By the way, Jay-Z participates in the JV with Powermat and P&G  not only as a spokesperson but also as an investment partner.  P&G  has also signed on bilateral agreement with Israeli Chief Scientist providing Israeli start ups that collaborate with P&G favorable access to governmental funding.

Present in over 180 countries and with total revenues of about $80 Billion, P&G is the world’s largest Multinational consumer goods company. Procter & Gamble has promised to deliver 3-6 % of growth per year or about extra $5billion in annual revenue. Open innovation is the key to this growth: the giant established in 1837 aims to have 50% of all innovation (not only on new products but also on internal systems) having elements from outside of the company. Jeff Weedman, P&G Vice President, External BD:

            Our JV with TEVA represents the lessons learned that we need better access to Innovation and global abilities while we can provide the in-depth consumer knowhow.”

Read the whole thing.

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French news site publishes Arab street theater as IDF abuse

Here is a screenshot from L'Express from last month:

It is captioned "Palestinian prisoner" and appears to show an AFP photo of IDF soldiers abusing a Palestinian Arab.

However, it was no such thing.

As the French IDF blog notes, the "soldiers" were not wearing standard IDF uniforms or helmets.

In fact, this photo was taken at a demonstration on Land Day in Lebanon! The actual caption from AFP read:

Palestinian refugees pose as Israeli soldiers arresting and beating a Palestinian activist during celebrations of Prisoners' Day at the refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh near the coastal Lebanese city of Sidon on April 17, 2012.

L'Express silently removed the photo with the offending caption from its website without an apology.

Par for the course.

More here.

(h/t Rudi)

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More intra-Arab fighting gets downplayed

From Al Arabiya:

One person was killed and five were wounded on Thursday in fresh clashes between pro- and anti-Syrian regime districts in the north Lebanon port city of Tripoli, a security official said.

“Sporadic clashes involving the use of rockets and machineguns began at around 4:00 am (0100 GMT) between the neighborhoods of Bab al-Tebanneh and Jabal Mohsen,” said the official, who requested anonymity.

Battles first erupted on Saturday between residents of the rival neighborhoods after security forces arrested Shadi al-Mawlawi, an Islamist, on alleged charges of belonging to a terrorist organization.

Mawlawi’s supporters say he was targeted because of his help for Syrian refugees fleeing to Lebanon.

Some 500 of them blocked a main road leading into Tripoli on Monday and said they would leave only after Mawlawi was released.

A total of ten people, including a soldier hit by sniper fire, died in the port city and dozens were wounded in the fighting.

When you think about the Middle Eastern countries where the most Arabs are being killed, Israel is pretty far down the list. Just ask people from Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and Bahrain, as well as Lebanon, all of where Arabs have been killed over the past month by government forces.

But according to PCHR, not a single Palestinian Arab was killed by the IDF in the same time period.

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"Israel among countries with most negative global influence"

The BBC published a new Globescan poll and, as usual, most news media are misunderstanding it.

Ha'aretz gets it almost right but is still not quite there:

Israel has been ranked in the top four countries that most negatively influence the word, according to a global public opinion poll conducted by the BBC.

The poll, which surveyed citizens from 22 countries around the world, places Iran in first place, with 55 percent of those surveyed rating it as a negative country. Pakistan ranked second with 51 percent, and in joint third place were Israel and North Korea, with 50 percent of respondents negatively evaluating both countries.

The broad international survey was an initiative of the BBC World Service, and carried out by GlobeScan, in collaboration with the the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland – Program on International Policy Attitudes. Over 24,000 people from 22 countries took part in the poll, which was conducted from December 2011 to February 2012.

The survey’s findings on global attitudes toward Israel are worrying indeed. Last year’s survey already that attitudes toward Israel were negative, but the situation has become more serious this year: Some 47 percent of participants in the 2011 survey had negative views of Israel’s influence on the world, but this year the number has gone up to 50 percent.

The problem with the articles about this is that they don't notice the countries that are not in the survey.

Only 16 countries, plus the EU, were subjects of the survey. No Arab countries were asked about. Neither was Turkey.

Only two Muslim countries were in the questionnaire - and both of them were at the bottom (Iran and Pakistan.)

Also, the poll found:

Fifty per cent of Americans have a favourable view of Israel in 2012, and this proportion has increased by seven points. At the same time, the proportion of negative ratings has gone down six points to 35 per cent and, as a result, the US has gone from being divided in 2011 to leaning positive in 2012. These are the most positive views on Israel’s influence expressed in the US since tracking began in 2005. Apart from the US, the most favourable views of Israel are found in Nigeria and Kenya, where views have also shifted since 2011. A majority of 54 per cent of Nigerians (up 23 points) rates Israel positively, and the country has moved from being divided to leaning positive in 2012 (54% positive vs 29% negative). In Kenya, negative ratings have fallen ten points (to 31%), while positive views have risen by 16 points (to 45%), shifting the country from leaning negative in 2011 to leaning positive in 2012.

At least YNet didn't repeat last year's mistake when reporting on this poll.

This is not to say that the poll isn't worrying. It generally reflects the media bias against Israel in the same countries surveyed, and that disproportionately negative coverage is the engine driving these results. People's  attitudes reflect their exposure to information, and if the information is bad, their opinions would follow suit.

Here are the main results for countries' attitudes towards Israel's influence in graphical format.

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Oh, by the way, Iran's leader said he wants to destroy Israel

And defeat the US, too.

From Israel HaYom:

Israel has, for years, cautioned against Iran's intentions and the dangers of its nuclear ambitions, but on Wednesday former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar gave the world yet another reason to heed those warnings. Aznar, speaking to a crowd in Jerusalem, recalled a meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he expressed his intention to destroy Israel.

"In a private discussion we held in Tehran in October of 2000, Ali Khamenei told me that Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth," Aznar told the audience. The former Spanish prime minister went on to say that Iran's spiritual leader also said that "Iran's war against the United States and Israel is inevitable."

Aznar was in Israel as a guest of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, currently headed by former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dr. Dore Gold.

Gold asked him, "When Khamenei was talking about wiping Israel off the map, was he referring to a gradual historical process involving the collapse of the Zionist state, or rather its physical-military termination?"

Aznar answered, "He meant physical termination through military force." The former Spanish leader also told the crowd that Khamenei described Israel as "an historical cancer, an anomaly," and said that he was "working toward Iran defeating the United States and Israel in an inevitable war against them."

This is only surprising to Juan Cole's acolytes, who won't believe it anyway.

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Abbas targets corruption - but only of his enemies

Ma'an reports:

A former adviser to late President Yasser Arafat is accused of embezzling tens of millions of dollars, the head of the PA anti-corruption commission said Wednesday.

Rafiq Natsheh told Ma'an his commission sought an international arrest warrant for Muhammad Rashid after he failed to respond to earlier summons by the foreign and justice ministers.

Rashid, who was an economic adviser to Arafat, is accused of embezzling money from the Palestinian Investment Fund by setting up front companies.

Corruption in the Palestine Investment Fund? That rings a bell:

[T]he Palestine Investment Fund [is] a sovereign wealth fund that Abbas controls through a board he handpicked and whose by-laws he rewrote. Since 2006, the PIF has awarded contracts exclusively to Abbas’s cronies, including his sons, Yasser and Tareq. The PIF-backed Wataniya cellular phone company, which drew on international-donor funding, inked a lucrative advertising contract with Tareq, while his brother Yasser sat on its board.

The Abbas family is now said to be worth millions, with lavish property holdings and investments throughout the Middle East.

Moreover, the Abbas machine quietly enriches Hamas as it enriches itself. According to a former Palestinian Authority adviser, Yasser Abbas staffed the Karni Crossing cargo terminal in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with the stated purpose of ensuring that goods and aid reached Gaza without reaching Hamas. But the customs and border unit at the crossing is not on the Palestinian Authority payroll, and it abuses its monopoly on Gaza’s only cargo terminal to pocket fees and kick them back to Hamas.

The pieces all fit together when you read Challah Hu Akbar's great reporting of the issue:

In February I reported that the Palestinian Authority was targeting Mohammad Rashid, a former advisor to Yasir Arafat. At the time Rashid was being targeted for his alleged ties to InLightPress, a website critical of the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas, which the Palestinian Authority blocked access to along with a number of other websites.

However, the targeting of Rachid has been ongoing for a number of years.

Mohammed Rashid is an Iraqi Kurd, who was Yasir Arafat’s senior economic adviser. He was formerly the head of the Palestine Investment Fund, however, he resigned in October 2004.  In March 2008, Ahmad Al-Mughani, the Attorney General of the Palestinian Authority, began an investigation into Rashid’s finances.

It isn't that the PA is rooting out corruption. They are only going after people who are already on their enemy list and using corruption as an excuse. (Not that Rashid isn't corrupt - he probably is. But so is Abbas.)

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Latest nonsense from Shlomo Sand - "The Land of Israel is a myth"

Shlomo Sand, the academic with no background in history who wrote an absurdly ridiculous book  "The Invention of the Jewish People" to much acclaim by anti-semites, has now come out with a new piece of fiction masquerading as scholarship.

And the anti-Zionists are lapping it up.

I don't have the book, titled "The Invention of the Land of Israel," but Yossi Gurwitz's worshipful  review at 972mag shows enough to prove that this book is as absurd as Sand's previous work (and that Gurwitz is as much of a fraud as Sand is.)

As with the previous book, when Sand makes a blanket statement as fact, all one needs to do is provide a single counterexample to prove that he is a fraud. And as with his previous work, it is trivial to do exactly that.

The heart of Sand’s thesis is the intentional confusion in Zionism between the Halachic – Jewish law – concept of Eretz Israel (“The Land of Israel”, EI) and the concept of a place which is under Jewish sovereignty, and yearning for such a place. “Eretz Israel” is, originally, a Talmudic concept – not a biblical one – which delineates it as a territory that imposes extra religious obligations on Jews living in it, which Jews living outside of it are unburdened of.

Really? There was no concept of Eretz Yisrael in the Bible? It originated in the Talmud?

Tell that to Ezekiel, who quoted God as using that exact term when delineating the borders of the Land in Ezekiel 47.

The term is also used in Ezekiel 40:2, in 1 Samuel 13:19, and in 2 Chronicles 34:7.

Of course, for much of the times of the Prophets, it was divided into two kingdoms - Israel and Judah. The latter phrase is used another half dozen times in the Bible. Moreover, the phrase "Kingdom of Israel" was used a number of times, as it was more specific designation than "Land of Israel."

Is that enough to show that Sand is just making stuff up? Well, there's more:

The rabbis came up with the Three Vows, which forbade Jews from massively emigrating to Eretz Israel, forbade them from rebelling against the nations of the world (it’s worth noting the rabbis, servitors of the emperors, gave divine sanction to their rule), and the third vow is directed at the nations: “That they should not enslave Israel too much.” Rabbinical Judaism left Eretz Israel behind. Sand quotes some later rabbis who opposed emigrating to EI since the Halachic demands on those living in it are very high, and failure to meet them would make the land impure.

The Three Oaths are based on a Midrash and it is far from clear that they are legally binding. But even here Sand is being deceptive, because the relevant oath was not against Jews "massively emigrating to Eretz Israel" but against "storming the wall." What that exactly means is not clear but it probably means forcibly returning to Israel by war.

The Talmudic discussion about this Midrash was referring to the desire of a single rabbi to move to Israel, not a "massive emigration."

It was clearly not forbidden for Jews to move to Israel, because many of these rabbis who Sand say ignored the Land did in fact make aliyah. Encyclopedia Judaica gives details:

During the time of the Second Temple there were many immigrants to Ereẓ Israel. A famous example is the aliyah of Hillel, who went from Babylonia (Pes. 66a) poor and without means, and later became the head of the Sanhedrin (Suk. 20a), founding a long line of nesi'im (see *nasi). One of the high priests appointed by Herod was Hananel ha-Bavli, i.e., of Babylonia. Aliyah, mainly from Babylonia, did not cease after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 c.e.). Sources cite many immigrant scholars who achieved a prominent place in the Jewish community of Ereẓ Israel. In the third generation of tannaim after the destruction of the Temple (110–135 c.e.), Hanan ha-Miẓri ("of Egypt"; Yoma 63b) and Yose b. Dormaskos, who went from Damascus (Sif. Deut. 1), are mentioned. The next generation (135–170 c.e.) included R. Johanan ha-Sandelar of Alexandria (tj, Ḥag. 3:1, 78d) and R. Nathan ha-Bavli, who was the son of the exilarch in Babylonia. Among the fifth generation of tannaim are (170–200) R. Ḥiyya the Great, the disciple and colleague of Judah ha-Nasi (Er. 73a), and Issi b. Judah (Pes. 113b), both of whom emigrated from Babylonia, and Menahem the Gaul (i.e., France; tj, Ber. 4:4, 8b).

Aliyah from Babylonia did not cease in the amoraic period, despite the fact that the great centers of Jewish scholarship were located there. Of the first generation of amoraim (220–250), R. Ḥanina b. Ḥama, a disciple of Judah ha-Nasi and one of the greatest amoraim in Ereẓ Israel, emigrated from Babylonia (tj, Pe'ah 7:4, 20a). In the second generation (250–290), Eleazar b. Pedat, rosh yeshivah in Tiberias (Ḥul. 111b), R. Zakkai (tj, Shab. 7:1, 9a) and R. Ḥiyya b. Joseph (Ḥul. 54a), who emigrated from Babylonia, and Ḥinena Kartigna'ah (of Carthage; tj, Shab. 16:2, 15c) are mentioned. The latter attests emigration from Africa. Two amoraim called Rav Kahana also emigrated from Babylonia (Zev. 59a). There was a particularly large aliyah among the third generation of amoraim (290–320), some of the immigrants forming the leadership of the Jewish community in Ereẓ Israel. Prominent among them were: R. Abba (Ket. 112a); R. Avina (tj, Shev. 4:2, 35a); R. Oshaiah and his brother Hananiah (Sanh. 14a); R. Assi, the colleague of R. Ammi, who was rosh yeshivah of Tiberias (mk 25a); R. Zera, a central figure of both Talmuds (Ket. 112a); R. Ḥiyya b. Abba (Shab. 105b); and R. Ḥelbo (Yev. 64b; tj, Ta'an. 2:1, 65a); R. Yudan of Gaul (Lev. R. 20:4); R. Jeremiah, who later became rosh yeshivah at Tiberias (Ket. 75a); R. Samuel b. Isaac (tj, Ber. 3:5, 6d); R. Samuel of Cappadocia in Asia Minor (Ḥul. 27b); R. Simlai (tj, Pes. 5:3, 32a); and others. In the fourth generation (320–350) the well-known immigrants included: Ray Huna b. R. Avin (tj, rh 2:2, 59a), R. Haggai (mk, 25a), R. Yudan of Cappadocia (tj, Ber. 3:1, 6a), and R. Kahana (tj, rh 2:6, 59b).

So far from Sand's thesis that the rabbis abandoned Israel and discouraged aliyah, many prominent members of their ranks actually moved to Israel themselves. If the Land of Israel was unimportant in Talmudic times, why would they do that?

Oh well, Sand is proven a liar again. And his selective quoting of "some later rabbis" discouraging aliyah is shown to be more of an anomaly than a mainstream view, and proves that he is using sources selectively.

As the article goes on to say, it was Christian persecution of Jews in Israel that slowed aliyah down dramatically after this, not any supposed "oath" based on a non-halachic midrash. Indeed, Maimonides himself - who counseled the Jews of Yemen not to rebel against their rulers based on his interpretation of the three oaths - moved to Israel himself, and Nachmanides declared moving to Israel to be obligatory.

All of this of course predated Zionism by the better part of a millennium.

So Sand is again shown to be an academic fraud, cherry picking sources that he pretends proves his point and even taking them out of context when it suits him.

The only people who take him seriously are those who desperately want to believe him, because they have already made up their minds that Zionism is the world's biggest evil.

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Israel's space program (Scientific American)

Pretty cool:

The Israeli space program is a minuscule operation compared to NASA or the European Space Agency—not surprising for a nation with about the land area and population of New Jersey. “The Israeli Space Agency does not have its own industries,” Hershkowitz says. “It’s just a very small body that coordinates in the activities of the other industries, and also coordinates between the civilian and the military applications.” To do that, he says, the agency has an annual budget of about $50 million. Israel’s presence in space is defined primarily by a network of Earth observation, communication and reconnaissance satellites. But Hershkowitz notes that his nation takes the overall enterprise of scientific research quite seriously. Israel leads the world in terms of percentage of GDP spent on research and development, and he notes that by some criteria its space program is fairly advanced:

"In fact, nowadays Israel belongs to the very exclusive club of about 10 countries in the world that have all capabilities in space. When we say all, I mean producing satellites, both the bus and the payload, launching them and communicating with them. There are only about 10 such states in the world, and Israel belongs to that exclusive club."

Hershkowitz estimates that “close to half of what we invest nowadays in space has to do with scientific applications and civilian applications,” such as monitoring water pollution and soil conditions for agriculture. But he acknowledges that Middle East turmoil will ensure that reconnaissance remains a top priority:

"I think that Israel will continue to be in a leading position in observation satellites, and that’s because of our strategic needs. With observation satellites, of course I would focus on the TecSAR satellites, which are based on radar. This is today the cutting-edge technology; Israel is very much in a leading position. Some of the abilities are still even secret, because you don’t want to reveal the ability of what you can see through."

This is about Israel's official space program. It doesn't even cover the Israeli entry for the Google Lunar X Prize competition. Here's their webpage, although I don't see any recent updates.

(h/t Brian at Israellycool)

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Iranian physicist sentenced to prison for spying with no evidence

From Nature:

Omid Kokabee, an Iranian graduate student who has been imprisoned in Tehran for the past 15 months, was sentenced to 10 years on Sunday for allegedly conspiring with foreign countries against Iran.

Judge Abolghasem Salavati of Branch 15 of Tehran's Revolution Court — who is famous for his harsh sentences — tried 10 to 15 people in the same trial, under the collective charge of collaborating with Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

Kokabee, a graduate student who previously worked on the physics of optics at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain, and more recently at the University of Texas in Austin, was arrested in Tehran in February 2011 on charges of “communicating with a hostile government” and “illegal earnings” (see 'A year in jail without trial for Iranian student accused of spying').

Close contacts of Kokabee in Iran have lamented the fact that no proof was presented at the trial to justify the sentence. Whereas other prisoners in the group declared themselves guilty in a television broadcast on the evening before the trial, the physics student has consistently denied all charges and refused to speak in court. (Faces are obscured in the broadcast, but Kokabee may be the person who appears at 24 seconds in a blue shirt.) He plans to appeal the sentence, according to his contacts.

International concern

Since Nature first highlighted Kokabee's case (see ‘Missing physicist may have been jailed in Iran’), various organizations have written to the Iranian authorities asserting his innocence and asking for a fair trial — including the Committee of Concerned Scientists, a human-rights group based in New York; the American Physical Society in College Park, Maryland; and a group of four international optics organizations. His case has been included as a cause for concern in the report of Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran.


In an open letter written while in prison, Kokabee claimed that the authorities were trying to obtain his “collaboration” through threats to him and his family; in another, he insisted that he was not a political activist, something that his friends confirm. Kokabee’s friends speculate that his frequent trips to Iran — totalling four or five in 2010 — may have aroused the suspicions of the Iranian authorities.

“This will send chills through the Iranian higher-education system, particularly scholars and students who seek to enhance and expand their horizons abroad,” says Hadi Ghaemi, a physicist previously at City University in New York and director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an association that has recently promoted an initiative for imprisoned students.

Maybe he should try a hunger strike. I'm sure that would be effective in an enlightened government like Iran's.

(h/t L. King)

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Former PA Mufti says Jerusalem not holy to Jews

From Al Arabiya via MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an interview with former PA Mufti Sheik Ikrima Sabri, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on May 11, 2012:

Interviewer: Do you agree that in Jerusalem, there are places that are holy to the Muslims, the Jews and the Christians?

Ikrima Sabri: No, not to the Jews. I didn't say to the Jews. Omar Ibn Al-Khattab didn't find any synagogues of the Jews. There weren't any.

Interviewer: So in your opinion, today there are no places whatsoever in Jerusalem that are holy to the Jews?

Ikrima Sabri: No, none. They build new synagogues, but there are no archaeological remains [pertaining to the Jews]. For many years, they have been digging for archaeological remains, but they haven't found anything. How can we acknowledge something when they themselves admit that they have found nothing?

Except for this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this....

And that's only from the past couple of years.

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Why peace is impossible, reason #6350

Two articles in the mainstream Arabic press about yesterday's "Nakba Day" prove that as long as Israel exists in any form, Arabs will not accept it. No matter what.

The first comes from the popular pan-Arab Al Quds al Arabi site. The title is all you need to know: "The 64-Year Occupation of Palestine." If the "occupation" is 64 years old, that means that even if Israel accedes to all the current PLO demands, there will still not be peace.

The second comes from Jordan's Addastour site, which is titled "Palestine Nakba is a dagger in the side of the Arab nation." It goes through a ridiculous history lesson (did you know that one reason Arabs fled Palestine is because the Jews stole their water?) but the main point is that Israel is a dagger that must be removed for the Arab people to be healed.

This is a critical point that Westerners cannot quite grasp. The conflict is not solvable. The Arab masses, brought up on generations of hate, are not going to accept Israel peacefully. The best anyone can hope for is a series of tactical truces and long term management of the conflict. And it is Israeli strength, not Israeli concessions, that is a prerequisite to having the Arab nations (including the PLO) grudgingly accept that Israel cannot be defeated and learn to deal with it.

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Gaza export totals this season

From Israel's COGAT:

During the current season, more than 600 tons of strawberries, 250 tons of tomatoes, 50 tons of pepper and approximately 10,000,000 flowers, were exported thus far.

This is besides the 2000 sweaters exported yesterday to England and the furniture exports earlier this year.

If you are famous fact-challenged academic Juan Cole, this adds up to "zero."

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Sorry, BDSers, but Israel's economy continues to grow

From Globes:

The Israeli economy grew by 3% on an annualized basis in the first quarter of 2012, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported today. The growth rate was above the 2.5% growth predicted in a "Bloomberg" poll of analysts, GDP growth in the first quarter was nevertheless less than in the two preceding quarters: 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2011 and 3.3% in the third quarter.

The Central Bureau of Statistics said that GDP growth in the first quarter was due to higher exports and imports of goods and services, and higher private consumption, investment in fixed assets, and modest growth in public spending.

The GDP growth report includes some worrying data, however. Business product growth fell to 2.8% in the first quarter from 3.5% in the preceding quarter and 4.5% in the third quarter of 2011. The figure highlights the slowdown in the business sector, the economy's growth engine.

The good news is that, despite the worsening crisis in Europe, exports of goods and services rose by an annualized 14.2% in the first quarter, after falling by 0.2% in the preceding quarter. Exports of services rose by an annualized 45% in the first quarter (9.7% on a quarterly basis), and industrial exports, excluding diamonds, rose by 4.8%. Agricultural exports rose by an annualized 18.9% in the first quarter.

Sorry, haters, but it does not appear that BDS is making a dent in Israel's economy.

In fact, on a daily basis, individual Israeli companies seem to be making deals that are worth more than the entire loss to Israel's economy from BDS in a decade of loud posturing and next to zero accomplishments.

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"Muslim Brotherhood sent convoy of doctors to mutilate girls"

From Bikya Masr:

A number of Egyptian human rights groups have submitted a communication to the Attorney General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud against the Muslim Brotherhood`s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) to investigate the complaints of people in the village of Abu Aziz in the Minya governorate, south of Cairo, over the existence of a large medical convoy organized by the party that wanders streets and does medical examination on people, including female circumcision, or female genital mutilation, in violation of Egyptian law, conventions and treaties signed by Egypt.

In Egypt’s legal code, Female Genital Mutilation is criminalized, as well as the inciting by doctors to convince families of the young girls of the need to agree to circumcise their daughters, “as a matter of preserving chastity.”

The communication demanded Mervat Tallawy, the head of the National Council for Women (NCW) and Major General Seraj EL Din El Rouby, the Governor of Minya, and Nasr El Sayed , Assistant Minister for primary health care, and preventive medicine, and family planning, to intervene to stop what it called “a farce propaganda for free circumcision, which was organized by one of the political parties, in Minya governorate to promote circumcision.”

The communication came after reports were circulated on news websites and social networking websites, including Facebook and Twitter about a convoy organized by the FJP to promote circumcision among girls in Minya.

It is unclear whether the story is true. The FJP denies it:

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Minya Secretary Dr. Diaa El-Maghazy said, "This report is completely false. The newspaper has republished it, although the FJP and Minya province health officials did refute the claims when first published by other papers and certain websites, three weeks ago".

El-Maghazy affirmed that the medical convoy in question was absolutely innocent, pointing out that it was organized and run under the supervision of Ministry of Health officials, and included the local Health Office Manager, the Vice President of the city's board of trustees and a member of the local health unit.

Al Arabiya reports on the Egyptian media claims about the convoy.

Recently, an FJP member of Parliament voiced support for female genital mutilation so it is plausible that this medical convoy was doing things that are a bit unsavory; perhaps when asked, or perhaps volunteering. As the above story illustrates there seem to be many doctors in Egypt who recommend FGM for their patients.

In the Arab world where rumors spread quickly, it is hard to know the truth and even respected newspapers are susceptible to printing unsubstantiated facts.

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Different prisoner agreement lessons between Arabic and English

From Ma'an, by Ali Sawafta of Reuters:

Standing up to Israel through non-violent resistance can produce encouraging results, Palestinians said Tuesday, after a prisoner hunger strike produced some Israeli concessions.

The deal under which thousands of prisoners agreed Monday to end a month-long fast against Israel's prison policy was struck on the eve of Nakba (catastrophe) Day that marks Israel's founding in a 1948 war when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out of their homes.

To some, the hunger strike proved the value of "popular resistance" as favored by President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. But his rivals in Hamas said their own confrontational attitude had paid dividends.

Some Palestinians said Israel was used to meeting violence with violence, but less adept at countering non-violent tactics.

"The prime lesson here is that resistance, unity and solidarity can bear fruit for the political movement," said West Bank political analyst Hani al-Masri. "Resistance, unity and determination can bring about results."

There are a few two problems with this thesis.

One is that the hunger strikes were accompanied with threats from all parts of Palestinian Arab leadership, from Abbas through Hamas, saying that if any hunger strikers die there will be a huge breakout of violence against Israel (and the Red Cross and UN.)

Another is that this "non-violent" lesson does not seem to be what Palestinian Arab media in Arabic is writing. I could not find this Reuters story in any Palestinian Arab newspaper, only this Egyptian one.

And at the same time that this story was published, Hamas threatened to kidnap more soldiers for more prisoner swaps. I guess they didn't get the memo that "nonviolent resistance" is the way to go.

Moreover, Islamic Jihad took a much different lesson from the episode of the hunger strikers: that Israel is fragile and easily defeated.

Spokesman for al-Quds Brigades, Abu Ahmed, said in that prisoners are the fuel of the confrontation and the leaders of each stage, pointing out that the victory was a new quantum leap, and proved again that the occupying entity is fragile and defeated.

"We have proved the prisoners are able to defeat their enemy, who boasts of his power yet his army is defeated in front of the whole world," he said.

He added: "The issue of prisoners will remain at the top of the priorities of the resistance forces at the top of Al-Quds Brigades," noting that they will spare no effort in order to ensure their freedom by force and that the enemy does not understand the other language."

Here is another case where the Palestinian Arabs seem to give one message to eager Westerners anxious to pretend that the culture of non-violence is widespread throughout the territories, and a different language altogether to their own people.

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What Happened to Israel's Reputation? (Oren) (updated)

Nice piece in WSJ by Michael Oren. Since it will be paywalled soon, I'm posting the entire article.

This year Israel is celebrating . . . a series of accomplishments that have surely exceeded the expectations of its most visionary founders. It is one of the most powerful small nations in history. . . . [It] has tamed an arid wilderness [and] welcomed 1.25 million immigrants. . . . The Israelis themselves did the fighting, the struggling, the sacrificing in order to perform the greatest feat of all—forging a new society . . . in which pride and confidence have replaced the despair engendered by age-long suffering and persecution.


So Life magazine described Israel on the occasion of its 25th birthday in May 1973. In a 92-page special issue, "The Spirit of Israel," the magazine extolled the Jewish state as enlightened, robustly democratic and hip, a land of "astonishing achievement" that dared "to dream the dream and make that dream come alive."

Life told the story of Israel's birth from the Bible through the Holocaust and the battle for independence. "The Arabs' bloodthirsty threats," the editors wrote, "lend a deadly seriousness to the vow: Never Again." Four pages documented "Arab terrorist attacks" and the three paragraphs on the West Bank commended Israeli administrators for respecting "Arab community leaders" and hiring "tens of thousands of Arabs." The word "Palestinian" scarcely appeared.

There was a panoramic portrayal of Jerusalem, described as "the focus of Jewish prayers for 2,000 years" and the nucleus of new Jewish neighborhoods. Life emphasized that in its pre-1967 borders, Israel was "a tiny, parched, scarcely defensible toe-hold." The edition's opening photo shows a father embracing his Israeli-born daughter on an early "settlement," a testament to Israel's birthright to the land.

Would a mainstream magazine depict the Jewish state like this today, during the week of its 64th birthday?

Unlikely. Rather, readers would learn about Israel's overwhelming military might, brutal conduct in warfare and eroding democratic values—plus the Palestinians' plight and Israeli intransigence. The photographs would show not cool students and cutting-edge artists but soldiers at checkpoints and religious radicals.

Why has Israel's image deteriorated? After all, Israel today is more democratic and—despite all the threats it faces—even more committed to peace.

Some claim that Israel today is a Middle Eastern power that threatens its neighbors, and that conservative immigrants and extremists have pushed Israel rightward. Most damaging, they contend, are Israel's policies toward the territories it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, toward the peace process and the Palestinians, and toward the construction of settlements.

Israel may seem like Goliath vis-à-vis the Palestinians, but in a regional context it is David. Gaza is host to 10,000 rockets, many of which can hit Tel Aviv, and Hezbollah in Lebanon has 50,000 missiles that place all of Israel within range. Throughout the Middle East, countries with massive arsenals are in upheaval. And Iran, which regularly pledges to wipe Israel off the map, is developing nuclear weapons. Israel remains the world's only state that is threatened with annihilation.

Whether in Lebanon, the West Bank or Gaza, Israel has acted in self-defense after suffering thousands of rocket and suicide attacks against our civilians. Few countries have fought with clearer justification, fewer still with greater restraint, and none with a lower civilian-to-militant casualty ratio. Israel withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza to advance peace only to receive war in return.

Whereas Israelis in 1973 viewed the creation of a Palestinian state as a mortal threat, it is now the official policy of the Israeli government. Jewish men of European backgrounds once dominated Israel, but today Sephardic Jews, Arabs and women are prominent in every facet of society. This is a country where a Supreme Court panel of two women and an Arab convicted a former president of sexual offenses. It is the sole Middle Eastern country with a growing Christian population. Even in the face of immense security pressures, Israel has never known a second of nondemocratic rule.

In 1967, Israel offered to exchange newly captured territories for peace treaties with Egypt and Syria. The Arab states refused. Israel later evacuated the Sinai, an area 3.5 times its size, for peace with Egypt, and it conceded land and water resources for peace with Jordan.

In 1993, Israel recognized the Palestinian people ignored by Life magazine, along with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the perpetrator of those "Arab terrorist attacks." Israel facilitated the creation of a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza and armed its security forces. Twice, in 2000 and 2008, Israel offered the Palestinians a state in Gaza, virtually all of the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. In both cases, the Palestinians refused. Astonishingly, in spite of the Palestinian Authority's praise for terror, a solid majority of Israelis still support the two-state solution.

Israel has built settlements (some before 1973), and it has removed some to promote peace, including 7,000 settlers to fulfill the treaty with Egypt. Palestinians have rebuffed Israel's peace offers not because of the settlements—most of which would have remained in Israel anyway, and which account for less than 2% of the West Bank—but because they reject the Jewish state. When Israel removed all settlements from Gaza, including their 9,000 residents, the result was a terrorist ministate run by Hamas, an organization dedicated to killing Jews world-wide.

Nevertheless, Israeli governments have transferred large areas to the Palestinian Authority and much security responsibility to Palestinian police. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has removed hundreds of checkpoints, eased the Gaza land blockade and joined President Obama in calling for the resumption of direct peace talks without preconditions. Addressing Congress, Mr. Netanyahu declared that the emergence of a Palestinian state would leave some settlements beyond Israel's borders and that "with creativity and with good will a solution can be found" for Jerusalem.

Given all this, why have anti-Israel libels once consigned to hate groups become media mainstays? How can we explain the assertion that an insidious "Israel Lobby" purchases votes in Congress, or that Israel oppresses Christians? Why is Israel's record on gay rights dismissed as camouflage for discrimination against others?

The answer lies in the systematic delegitimization of the Jewish state. Having failed to destroy Israel by conventional arms and terrorism, Israel's enemies alit on a subtler and more sinister tactic that hampers Israel's ability to defend itself, even to justify its existence.

It began with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's 1974 speech to the U.N., when he received a standing ovation for equating Zionism with racism—a view the U.N. General Assembly endorsed the following year. It gained credibility on college campuses through anti-Israel courses and "Israel Apartheid Weeks." It burgeoned through the boycott of Israeli scholars, artists and athletes, and the embargo of Israeli products. It was perpetuated by journalists who published doctored photos and false Palestinian accounts of Israeli massacres.

Israel must confront the acute dangers of delegitimization as it did armies and bombers in the past. Along with celebrating our technology, pioneering science and medicine, we need to stand by the facts of our past. "The Spirit of Israel" has not diminished since 1973—on the contrary, it has flourished. The state that Life once lionized lives even more vibrantly today.

I would say that the plot to delegitimize Israel came a few years before the 1974 speech, in 1968, but otherwise this is right on.

I could not find the Life article online, alas. But here's a copy of the cover (h/t Brad):

(h/t David G)

UPDATE: I found the link the the 1968 PLO document I was referring to.

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Lawrence of Judea

An interesting 2009 article by Martin Gilbert:

T.E. Lawrence—better known in Britain and throughout the Middle East as Lawrence of Arabia—was a lifelong friend of Arab national aspirations. In 1917 and 1918 he participated as a British officer in the Arab revolt against the Turks, a revolt led by Sharif Hussein, later King of the Hedjaz. He was also an adviser to Hussein’s son Feisal, whom he hoped to see on the throne of Syria. For generations of British Arabists, Lawrence was and remains a symbol of British understanding of and support for the Arab cause. Virtually unknown, however, is his understanding of and support for Jewish national aspirations in the same era....

[I]ndeed, Lawrence’s view of the potential evolution of the Jewish National Home in British Mandate Palestine was far from hostile to Jewish hopes. In an article entitled “The Changing East,” published in the influential Round Table magazine in 1920, Lawrence wrote of “the Jewish experiment” in Palestine that it was “a conscious effort, on the part of the least European people in Europe, to make head against the drift of the ages, and return once more to the Orient from which they came.”

Lawrence noted of the new Jewish immigrants: “The colonists will take back with them to the land which they occupied for some centuries before the Christian era samples of all the knowledge and technique of Europe. They propose to settle down amongst the existing Arabic-speaking population of the country, a people of kindred origin, but far different social condition. They hope to adjust their mode of life to the climate of Palestine, and by the exercise of their skill and capital to make it as highly organized as a European state.”

As Lawrence envisaged it in his Round Table article, this settlement would be done in a way that would be beneficial to the Arabs. “The success of their scheme,” he wrote of the Zionists, “will involve inevitably the raising of the present Arab population to their own material level, only a little after themselves in point of time, and the consequences might be of the highest importance for the future of the Arab world. It might well prove a source of technical supply rendering them independent of industrial Europe, and in that case the new confederation might become a formidable element of world power.”

Which is exactly how the Zionists at the time felt.

(h/t Aaron)

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And now...FemTechWashing

More hasbara from the US Embassy in Israel.

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Iran executes "Israeli spy"

From BBC:

Majid Jamali Fashi, 24, was convicted of killing Professor Massoud Ali Mohammadi by detonating a bomb outside his home in January 2010.

Fashi was also accused of being a spy for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and receiving $120,000 (£72,000) for the killing.

Israel does not comment on such claims.

"Majid Jamali Fashi, the Mossad spy and the person who assassinated Masoud Ali Mohammadi, our nation's nuclear scientist was hanged on Tuesday morning," Iran's Irna news agency reported.

Professor Massoud Ali Mohammadi was a particle physics professor at Tehran University. He is one of several high-profile nuclear scientists to have been killed in Tehran in recent years.

Iran has repeatedly accused Israel and the US of trying to harm its nuclear programme.

Fashi, who was tried and convicted in August 2011, appeared on Iranian TV in January confessing to the professor's killing, and giving details of the intelligence gathering operation he said he was involved in.

Opposition sources in Iran have accused the government of killing Professor Mohammadi because he was one of their supporters.

Al Arabiya adds that he was convicted of Moharebeh (waging war against God) and notes "Western analysts said Ali-Mohammadi, a 50-year-old Tehran University professor, had little, if any, role in Iran’s sensitive nuclear program. A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said at the time he was not involved in its activities."

The Mossad may have been involved in the assassination, but it is far from certain that Fashi had anything to do with it.

Sounds like an Iranian hit job where they got the opportunity to kill 2 people they wanted to get rid of.

(h/t John W.)

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Thousands of Jews go on pilgrimage to Morocco

From AFP:

Thousands of Jews from Morocco, Israel and other parts of the world have over the past week carried out an annual pilgrimage to the Islamic nation to honour celebrated rabbis.

Morocco may not be the likeliest of Jewish pilgrim destinations, but the north African nation has for centuries had a vibrant Jewish population and some 1,200 of the faith's pious ancestors are buried in cemeteries here. In recent days, about 5,000 pilgrims have gathered to pray for peace at sanctuaries and gravesites.

Perhaps the most famous of these burial grounds is that of Amran Ben Diwan, a venerated rabbi who was interred 250 years ago in the mountains of Ouazzane, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the capital Rabat.

Ben Diwan's tomb, nestled in a Jewish cemetery among acres of olive trees, was placed under police guard and only people who had been authorised by Morocco's Jewish community were allowed access.

The pilgrimage will finish Saturday, following five days of prayers and celebration, with pilgrims hurling candles into a large fire by Ben Diwan's tomb.

Arab media reports that no Israelis attended last week's Lag B'Omer pilgrimage to Tunisia, but this one in Morocco is attracting many Israeli Jews.

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Gaza exports clothes to British retailer. Who will boycott them?

From Reuters:

Israel allowed on Monday the export of Palestinian-made clothes from the Gaza Strip for the first time in at least five years, a Palestinian official said.

Raed Fattouh, who coordinates supplies into Gaza, said a truck carrying 2,000 pieces of mainly woolen garments were exported through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing towards an Israeli seaport en route to Britain.

Gaza's Ashour knitwear company, which was rebuilt with UK aid after it closed in 2007, will export the goods to Britain's J.D. Williams clothes outlet, a UK official said.

Since Hamas is systematically repressing Palestinian Arabs - unjustly jailing them, evicting them from their homes, and so forth -  and since Hamas controls Gaza and collects taxes from these exports, I'm sure that the "pro-Palestinian" crowd will want to boycott these clothes - and the entire JD Williams company - to help bring down the Hamas government.

That is the logic of the "pro-Palestinian" boycotters, isn't it?

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"Nakba" protesters attack worshippers at Rachel's Tomb

YNet Hebrew reports that dozens of masked Palestinian Arab youths tried to stone about about 20 Jewish worshippers at Rachel's Tomb. The Jews were forced to go back inside the shrine to protect themselves.

Both Israeli border police and PA security forces came to break up the riot.

Palestinian Arabs also threw stones and burned tires near the Ma'arat HaMachpela in Hebron.

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Turkey freaks over "Israeli spy bird"

Add another member to the Zionist Attack Zoo.

A bird found in Turkey, with markings indicating it was from Tel Aviv, has been called an Israeli spy by Turkish media.

The already dead bird was caught by beekeepers. Besides the words "Tel Aviv Israel" they saw the most nefarious tag saying "C43917," obviously a secret spy code.

The bird's left nostril was three times the size of its right nostril, leading Turkish authorities to conclude that it might be hiding spy equipment in its beak.

It took a few days before Turkish media noted that researchers tag birds all the time to note migration patterns.

One article noted that Turkey accused Moscow of using spy birds over 60 years ago.

This bird is clearly a martyr for the Zionist cause. I hope that his or her body can be returned so Israel can give it a proper burial with the full military honors it deserves.(After the secret photos are extracted from its beak electronics, of course.)

UPDATE: It looks like the bird is the European Bee-Eater. (h/t Ian)

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Arabs testify about Hamas' repressive rule

I mentioned that a literature festival in Gaza was disrupted by Hamas police last week.

The festival was then moved to Cairo, where the participants talked about what a hellhole Gaza turned out to be under Hamas (after the perfunctory Israel-bashing):

The closing ceremony of the fifth Palestine Festival of Literature (aka Palfest) was overshadowed by politics as writers who returned from a trip to the Gaza Strip gave their testimony on the situation there and described Hamas’s “repressive rule.”

Most of the writers who visited Gaza had one opinion with respect to cultural activities in Gaza: “deplorable.” They say the aim appears to be to erase the Palestinian character and culture, which gave the world thinkers and poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said.

Professor of English Literature Sahar El-Mougy said that there’s a deplorable condition of cultural hunger. There aren’t even cinemas, libraries, or shops that sell books on the arts, philosophy or literature. The only available books are those on Islamic Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence) and Fiqh (thinking).

“There’s a conspiracy against the Palestinian character, to destroy its beauty. Hamas is erasing Palestinian culture, replacing it with an extremist version of Islam. They don’t even allow men and women to be in the same place!” El-Mougy objected.

“But through all this, and despite the security and intelligence, who we saw everywhere in Gaza, students we met have the spirit of resistance — not against Israel this time, but against the repressive practices of Hamas.”

“When we started writing workshops with young girls in schools, they first wrote about resistance against Israel,” said El-Mougy. “But when we showed them that writing could also express your inner feelings, the results were magnificent. Girls started to realise that writing is also about the self.”

El-Mougy says that Hamas, the resistance movement against occupation, became itself a movement of repression. “Hamas stands between Palestinians and life.”

(h/t Petra)

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Not so trivial administrivia

A couple of years ago, I started a new job.

At the time, I wrote

I recently started a new job, and it will not afford me the ability to post as often as I have been.

However, it turns out that the opposite occurred: I could find lots of time during the day to throw in some posts, and in fact my output roughly doubled!

Alas, the days where I can post 9 or 10 posts a day are history. Because I just started another new job - with a much longer commute and longer working hours, as well as a huge amount of work that needs to be done.

I will continue to blog when I can, mostly in the early morning and then queuing the posts at intervals during the day, but they will be less frequent and generally less time-intensive. Tweeting and email will also go way down the priority list.

So I apologize for not being able to keep up the torrid pace of posting I maintained for the past 30 months.

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Do Zionists torture puppies too?

From the ever entertaining a>Fars news agency:

"The Zionists' existence is against goodness and is a source of evil, suffering orment" for all humanity, Ahmadinejad said, addressing a large group of people in Khorassan Razavi province, Northeastern Iran, on Sunday.

Ahmadinejad is running out of things to say about us evil Zionists. What's next, that we love torturing puppies?

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Egyptian minister wants to ensure Sinai land cannot be sold to Jews

Shorouk News reports that Egypt's Minister of Agriculture, Mohammad Reza Ismail, is starting a program where Sinai Bedouin can purchase land for cultivating crops.

But there is a caveat: they are not allowed to sell their land to non-Egyptians.

And the reason?

"So that [the land] is not to be found in the hands of the Jews."

Just some of your run-of-the-mill Arab anti-semitism. Nothing to see here.

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Listen to Grandpa, Andy Ling (video)

Cute video series from Jewlarious, starring Elliott Gould:







DoZ and her husband never heard of Elliott Gould. I had to say "the old guy with the big glasses in Ocean's Eleven." Sigh.

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For "Nakba Day" - an e-book that tells the truth (updated)

This booklet, from Im Tirtzu, debunks the many "Nakba" myths that have become embedded into the standard narrative of the founding of Israel.




My only quibbles from a quick read-through:

The booklet quotes Efraim Karsh liberally but says that there were only 560,000 Arabs who left Israel in 1948. Karsh's number is between 583,000-609,000 Arab refugees.

The last chapter's title implies that all Palestinian Arabs were pro-Nazi, although it only talks (accurately) about the Mufti of Jerusalem. My research indicates that most PalArabs were ambiguous, not really supporting either side, although some clearly did. Also they happily used ex-Nazis to help them in 1948.

(UPDATE: Commenter BHCh points out that Benny Morris' "1948" book points out that in a 1941 poll commissioned by the American consulate in Jerusalem found that 88% of Arabs in Palestine supported Nazi Germany, as opposed to only 9% for Great Britain.)

But in general this is a very good reference to show people the truth about the "Nakba."

(h/t Yoel)

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Evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons program mounting

From JPost:

Iran is accelerating its nuclear weapons program, according to a report Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) Iranian opposition group compiled and The Jerusalem Post obtained on Friday.

The report first appeared in the Die Welt German daily, and Brussels-based Iran expert Emanuele Ottolenghi, who provided it to the Post, was asked by the paper to verify its contents.

The report and various additional charts outline the different offices involved in Iran’s weapons program and identify some 60 directors and experts working in various parts of SPND and 11 additional institutions and companies affiliated with the program.

The SPND headquarters is based in Mojdeh, a military facility near Tehran. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, whom western intelligence agencies have identified as the man responsible for the nuclear weapons program, heads the facility. He is under United Nations sanctions.

MEK also identified a facility called the “Center for Explosives, Blast Research and Technologies” – known by its Persian acronym METFAZ – which is based in a five-story nondescript office building in Tehran’s Pars neighborhood.

Scientists there are responsible for building high-explosives for nuclear detonators and conducting tests at the Parchin site, a facility long suspected of being connected to nuclear activity which Iran has refused to open to UN inspectors.

SPND, according to the report, is comprised of seven sub-divisions: 1) a division that works on the main element for the bomb, including the enriched uranium; 2) a division that shapes and molds the material needed to build a warhead; 3) a division that produces metals required for a nuclear warhead; 4) a division that produces high-explosive material used to cause a nuclear detonation; 5) a division which conducts research on advanced chemical materials; 6) a division that conducts electronic calculations required for building a nuclear warhead; 7) and a division which is responsible for laser activities needed for a nuclear weapon.

“The information sharply contradicts the assessment by some that Iran has not yet made the decision to go forward with the weapons program, as well as the observation by others who suggest that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has forbidden the development of a nuclear bomb, because it would be a ‘sin’ to do so,” the report said.

The report claims that the Fordow uranium enrichment facility built in a mountain near the city of Qom was built under the personal supervision of Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi. It said that experts who work at another facility involved in the weapons program are in direct contact with the Fordow site and supervise activities there.

“This makes increasingly clear the objectives with which the Fordow site was built,” the report said.

MEK, which is a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has long been suspected of working closely with the Mossad and the CIA. In 2002, for example, the NCRI revealed the existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility which until then had not been known to the world.

Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the MEK report could be a “game changer” in Western perceptions of Iran’s nuclear program.

“Until now, intelligence agencies and policymakers surmised that Iran sought civil nuclear energy but kept the option open for nuclear weapons, while pending a decision from its religious leaders,” he explained.

“These documents support the opposite conclusions – namely that Iran’s program was always military and its civil nuclear component was just a façade. Iran decided long ago to make nuclear weapons – the only question is when.”

And from AP:

A drawing based on information from inside an Iranian military site shows an explosives containment chamber of the type needed for nuclear arms-related tests that U.N. inspectors suspect Tehran has conducted there. Iran denies such testing and has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of such a chamber.

The computer-generated drawing was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran's nuclear program who said it proves the structure exists, despite Tehran's refusal to acknowledge it.

That official said the image is based on information from a person who had seen the chamber at the Parchin military site, adding that going into detail would endanger the life of that informant. The official comes from an IAEA member country that is severely critical of Iran's assertions that its nuclear activities are peaceful and asserts they are a springboard for making atomic arms.

A former senior IAEA official said he believes the drawing is accurate. Olli Heinonen, until last year the U.N. nuclear agency's deputy director general in charge of the Iran file, said it was "very similar" to a photo he recently saw that he believes to be the pressure chamber the IAEA suspects is at Parchin.

He said even the colors of the computer-generated drawing matched that of the photo he had but declined to go into the origins of the photo to protect his source.

And from ISIS:

ISIS has acquired commercial satellite imagery of the Parchin site in Iran showing new activity that substantiates the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) stated concern regarding recent “activity” at the site. The new activity seen in the satellite image occurred outside a building suspected to contain an explosive chamber used to carry out nuclear weapons related experiments (see figure 1). The April 9, 2012 satellite image shows items lined up outside the building. It is not clear what these items are. The image also shows what appears to be a stream of water that emanates from or near the building. Based on new information that the IAEA received, the Agency asked Iran to visit this building at the Parchin site, but Iran has not allowed a visit. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano noted recently that the IAEA has “information that some activity is ongoing” at the Parchin site 1. When asked if he was concerned that these activities could be associated with cleansing the site, Amano replied, “That possibility is not excluded…We cannot say for sure because we are not there.” The items visible outside the building could be associated with the removal of equipment from the building or with cleansing it. The stream of water that appears to emanate from the building raises concerns that Iran may have been washing inside the building, or perhaps washing the items outside the building. Satellite images of the building from recent months do not show any similar activity at the site—indicating that such activity is not a regular occurrence at this building (see figures 2 and 3).

Iran should immediately allow IAEA inspectors into the Parchin site and allow access to this specific building. It should also explain the purpose of the activities seen at the building in this recent satellite image.

But some anti-Israel idiots will keep claiming that Israel's concern over Iran is really to deflect world attention from Israel's primary purpose, which is of course to persecute poor Palestinian Arabs.

(h/t Yoel, Petra)

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Lies, damned lies and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics came out with its annual "nakba" report where it tries to twist numbers to make Israel look as bad as possible.

Just a quick glance through it shows a number of lies as well as more evidence that the PA has no real interest in peace.

For example:

Nakba in literary terms means a natural catastrophe such as an earthquake, volcano, or hurricane. However, the Nakba in Palestine describes a process of ethnic cleansing in which an unarmed nation has been destroyed and its population displaced to be replaced systematically by another nation. Unlike a natural catastrophe, the Palestinian Nakba was the result of a man-made military plan with the agreement of other states, leading to a major tragedy for the Palestinian people.

Who started the war again? Oh, yeah, the "unarmed nation" of Arabs in Palestine who immediately started killing Jewish civilians after the UN partition resolution. They were then joined by their compatriots from neighboring Arab states.

If they would have accepted partition, they would have had a state 64 years ago. Instead they decided to kill the Jews. Bad decisions have consequence - unless yo are Palestinian Arab, in which case your bad decisions must be the fault of the Jews.

In 1948, 1.4 million Palestinians lived in 1,300 Palestinian towns and villages. More than 800,000 of the population were driven out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries, and other countries of the world.

The number is closer to 600,000. But what's wrong with inflating it by 33%? It's not as if the PCBS really cares about accurate statistics, is it?

According to documentary evidence, the Israelis controlled 774 towns and villages and destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages during the Nakba. The atrocities of Israeli forces also included more than 70 massacres in which 15,000 Palestinians were killed.

This paragraph is still referring to the "nakba" - and nowhere near 15,000 Palestinian Arabs were killed then. It was probably closer to a thousand. The total number of Palestinian Arabs killed in 64 years by Israel is about 15,000.

Statistical data also show that refugees constitute 44.1% of the total Palestinian population in the Palestinian Territory.

If they are on their territory, how can they be refugees from their territory? Just one of the many anomalous definitions that apply to Palestinian Arabs only.

Population Density: Gaza Strip the most crowded place in the world
The population density in the Palestinian Territory at the end of 2011 was 703 individuals per square kilometer (km2): 462 individuals/km2 in the West Bank and 4,429 individuals/km2 in Gaza Strip. In Israel, the population density of Arabs and Jews in 2011 was 362 individuals per km2.

Except for Macau, Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong and Gibraltar. The first two have population densities quadruple that of Gaza.

Historical Palestine: Israel controls more than 85% of its land
At the end of 2011, there were 11.7 million people living in the historical land of Palestine with a land area of 27,000 km2. Jews constitute around 52% of the total population and utilize more than 85% of the total area of land. Arabs comprise 48% of the total population and utilize less than 15% of the land. A Palestinian therefore has less than a quarter of the area of land available to an Israeli.

I don't know if these numbers are correct (how do they characterize Israeli Arabs, for example First they say "Jews" and then "Israelis.") However, "historic Palestine" is one of those Palestinian Arab myths they love to throw around. It is an artificial construct created by the British after World War One, and in reality there was something called Eastern Palestine before then - in a land now known as Jordan. And it was larger than western Palestine, what the Palestinian Arabs now call - "Palestine."

Why did they give up their claim to more than half of their historic area? Because Jews didn't control any of it!

The number of martyrs killed in the al Aqsa Intifada between September 29th, 2000 and December 31st, 2011 was 7,460, up from 7,235 at the end of 2009.

Notice that the official Palestinian Arab position is that suicide bombers are "martyrs." Notice also that they are claiming that the second intifada is still going on.

You can learn a lot from reading reports from the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics. But not al lof it was what they wanted to try to teach you.

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