Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Iranian "news" agency replaces "Iran" with "Israel" in HRW press release

From HRW, in a press release about human rights abuses in Bahrain:

United Nations member states should scrutinize Bahrain’s deplorable human rights record during the country’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council on May 21, 2012, Human Rights Watch said today.

The voice of the international community has been subdued regarding Bahrain’s manifold violations, especially compared with the international response to abuses in Syria, Libya, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries, Human Rights Watch said.

Iran's FARS News reports on this statement, but it seemed to have a problem with HRW's list of countries performing human rights abuses:

The voice of the international community has been subdued regarding Bahrain's manifold violations, especially compared with the international response to abuses in Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, Human Rights Watch said.

The list of countries engaging in human rights abuses changed from "Iran and its allies" to "Iran's enemies."

That's Iranian "news" for you.

(HRW's Arabic version of the press release is identical to the English one.)

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Israel Research Fellow at NGO Monitor)

Exposing more BDS hypocrisy: 400 PalArabs attend agriculture show in Tel Aviv

A few weeks ago, someone named Ben White tried to make fun of my assertion that Palestinian Arab farmers are not keen on boycotts of Israel, since it can hurt them too.

White's main piece of evidence that Palestinian Arab farmers really want to boycott Israeli goods and services came from a quote from a spokesman for the "Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees," saying that Palestinian Arab farmers do in fact support boycotting Israel.

I easily showed that he's an idiot and a hypocrite, and that plenty of Palestinian Arab farmers willingly cooperate with the supposedly hated "occupiers". And I pointed out a number of specific cases where Palestinian Arab farmers eagerly attended seminars in Israel to increase their profits.

Here's more proof that the BDS haters like White are obviously acting in ways that are at odds with normal Palestinian Arab farmers and agriculturalists.

The Agritech exhibition (the international convention on agricultural technology), which took place [last] Tuesday-Thursday in the Exhibition Grounds in Tel-Aviv, was attended by agriculturalists and commercial representatives from all over the world, and included Israeli innovations in agriculture and various agricultural crops. Amongst those present and presenting in the exhibit were Palestinian agriculturalists from Judea and Samaria.

The Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria issued entry permits to approx. 400 Palestinian agriculturalists that came to view, learn, develop and even acquire some of the innovations presented in the convention, so that they may develop their own agricultural estates. In addition, the Civil Administration funded the farmers’ carpooling services, so that they may conveniently attend the exhibit. “Palestinian farmers are exposed here to many technological developments and innovations in agricultural technology”, explained Samir Mudai, the Civil Administration Agriculture Headquarters Officer. “We are attempting to create a connection between Israeli and Palestinian agriculture.”

In addition, in the area allotted by exhibition organizers, 4 stands were positioned upon which Palestinian farmers presented their wares: the “Cnaan” Company from Jenin, which produces olive oil, Tehina: “Hayona” from Nablus, a company which produces natural fruits and vegetables from Jericho region, and “Taibe” Beer, a company in Ramallah.

As presenters attended every day of the exhibit, the Civil Administration issued them with Israeli entry permits which include sleeping arrangements, so that they may sleep nearby and readily attend every day of the exhibit. “We are exposing them to Israelis and to the world”, Muadi remarked. “Here, they are exposed to potential customers and generate business relations from all over the world.”

Among the various stands, it was clear that a great deal of interest was shown in Palestinian products, particularly those of “Hayona” Tehina Company, who managed to sell tehina and halva to the audience with great success.

The Civil Administration Agriculture Headquarters Office works restlessly – throughout the year, we vigorously endeavor to integrate Palestinian agriculturalists within conventions of this kind, and arrange seminars so as to develop the Palestinian economy and its agriculture, and farmers are already bearing fruit. “Following the Agrotech exhibit, business relations commenced with “Rami Levi” Company, who intend on buying vegetables from Palestinian farms”, remarked Mr. Muadi. “Rami Levi already met with several farmers and we truly hope that he will distribute their agricultural produce.”

In addition, the Civil Administration Agriculture Headquarters Officer is exploring the option of introducing Palestinian products into Israeli markets. “We’re currently exploring the possibility of attempting to introduce Palestinian stations in the new Tel Avivi Wholesale Market”, Mr. Muadi summarized.

This also neatly proves that, contrary to what the haters claim, Israel wants to help these Palestinian farmers succeed - unlike people like White.

In case you are unaware, the Civil Administration is a branch of the IDF.

When boycotters say that they are following the desires of "Palestinian civil society," they want to make it sound like a large swath of Palestinian Arabs support an effort that directly hurts them economically. As we can see, this is absurd. The "civil society" is made up of self-appointed "spokesmen," tiny NGOs built to attract money from Western useful idiots and some unions which do nothing besides declare strikes every once in a while to feel important. They do not represent anyone who actually does productive work.

Given this evidence, the haters will have to fall back on their next moronic argument - that this is just "farmwashing."

Freedom of the press, Hezbollah-style

From Al Akhbar:

Restrictions have been imposed at Hezbollah’s Manar television to avoid the appearance of unveiled women on the station’s programs.

The decision by Manar TV not to host unveiled women on its programs is no secret, although the management seems to be dealing with it as such. The media PR manager, Ibrahim Farhat, politely declines to answer questions on the subject, promising “to talk about it later.”

He says that the “information is not accurate,” while refusing to explain where the inaccuracy lies. “When the (inaccurate) information is published, we will issue a response,” he adds.

However, what seems to be inaccurate to the manager, is very clear to the station’s employees, who were informed of the decision more than a year ago and have been implementing it.

Manar employees are often embarrassed when their contacts lead them to a guest who would be informative on a subject under discussion, but who does not fulfill the new condition: “She has to be wearing the hijab.”

How did the decision come about? One employee recalls that the management held a meeting with the employees about a year and a half ago and informed them of a series of decisions, one of which was to not host unveiled women.

The employees do not know at what level these decisions were made, but they suspect that they came directly from the general secretary of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.

{T]he result was that management took the decision, without discussing it beforehand with the journalists. It was made clear at the time: “If it is difficult to implement in a certain program, then cancel the program.”

With time, however, some exceptions began to appear. In news bulletins and reports, unveiled women are allowed to appear. They are also allowed in reports where people on the street are asked for their opinion. So the standard is “what can be controlled.”

There is evidence that the management imposed restrictions on what headscarves can be worn by female presenters, insisting that the headcovering had to be a dark uniform color.

Even the “beauty” of the presenters was part of this approach. For example, the management got rid of a number of female presenters because they had had plastic surgery.

These measures sealed a series of (economically) “daring” decisions initiated in the advertising department, which operates under strict conditions. The station, for example, does not show advertisements for products on the Israeli boycott list.

Did Columbus put Hebrew "B'Ezrat Hashem" on his letters?

From CNN:

Today marks the 508th anniversary of the death of Christopher Columbus.

Everybody knows the story of Columbus, right? He was an Italian explorer from Genoa who set sail in 1492 to enrich the Spanish monarchs with gold and spices from the orient. Not quite.

For too long, scholars have ignored Columbus's grand passion: the quest to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims.

...Recently, a number of Spanish scholars, such as Jose Erugo, Celso Garcia de la Riega, Otero Sanchez and Nicholas Dias Perez, have concluded that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing.

Columbus, who was known in Spain as Cristóbal Colón and didn't speak Italian, signed his last will and testament on May 19, 1506, and made five curious -- and revealing -- provisions.

Two of his wishes -- tithe one-tenth of his income to the poor and provide an anonymous dowry for poor girls -- are part of Jewish customs. He also decreed to give money to a Jew who lived at the entrance of the Lisbon Jewish Quarter.

On those documents, Columbus used a triangular signature of dots and letters that resembled inscriptions found on gravestones of Jewish cemeteries in Spain. He ordered his heirs to use the signature in perpetuity.

According to British historian Cecil Roth's "The History of the Marranos," the anagram was a cryptic substitute for the Kaddish, a prayer recited in the synagogue by mourners after the death of a close relative. Thus, Columbus's subterfuge allowed his sons to say Kaddish for their crypto-Jewish father when he died. Finally, Columbus left money to support the crusade he hoped his successors would take up to liberate the Holy Land.

Estelle Irizarry, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, has analyzed the language and syntax of hundreds of handwritten letters, diaries and documents of Columbus and concluded that the explorer's primary written and spoken language was Castilian Spanish. Irizarry explains that 15th-century Castilian Spanish was the "Yiddish" of Spanish Jewry, known as "Ladino." At the top left-hand corner of all but one of the 13 letters written by Columbus to his son Diego contained the handwritten Hebrew letters bet-hei, meaning b'ezrat Hashem (with God's help). Observant Jews have for centuries customarily added this blessing to their letters. No letters to outsiders bear this mark, and the one letter to Diego in which this was omitted was one meant for King Ferdinand.

I had heard some of these claims before, but the idea that Columbus put a Hebrew B"H in the corner of all the letters to his son was a new one on me.

So I found a book of all (or many) of Columbus' letters online.

Sure enough, there is....something...on the upper left of each letter to Diego, that looks like initials scrawled quickly, but not to be seen on any of his other letters.

However, I cannot see how they can be read as a Bet-Heh.

Interesting, nonetheless.

(h/t KS)

"Zionist orgy in Al Aqsa"

I mentioned that a small crowd of Jews peacefully visited the Temple Mount yesterday on the occasion of Jerusalem Day.

The most over-the-top reaction this time came not from the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation, as it usually does. It was not from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. No, this foaming-at-the-mouth story comes from Israel's "peace partners" in Jordan.

From Jordan's Addustour:

Zionist Orgy in Al Aqsa

Zionist gangs came to seize the Al-Aqsa Mosque, under the protection of the occupying army, confirming that the enemy is implementing his plans and his expansionist aggressive schemes for the Judaization of the Holy City, and he is no longer interested in negotiations and the peace process.

In this regard, it must be noted that this aggression is in accordance with malignant Jewish Policy, with the enemy creating events and Talmudic religious holidays, to rally Jews who hate, and the mob of settlers, and to release them like rabid dogs on the Arabs of Jerusalem to terrorize them, and to caused them to leave the holy city, or to terrorize the worshipers, and cause them to not pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, allowing them to attempt to split it with Muslims similar to what happened to the Mosque of Ibrahim in the city of Khalil Rahman (Hebron.)

The aggression against al-Aqsa comes to coincide with the Zionist campaign on the increasing the pace of settlement and crimes of ethnic cleansing, and seizure of the largest area of the West Bank, and terrorizing farmers through leveling agricultural land, and the uprooting of olive trees, and harness the courts of Zionism for the issuance of unfair rulings, including confiscation of houses of Jerusalem, and given to the settlers, to complete the project of converting the Holy City to the Jewish capital of Israel. ...

To summarize: the Zionist aggression on al Aqsa will continue, and the enemy will not back off from his expansionist plans, in light of Arab impotence and U.S. support and hypocrisy of Europe. The brotherly [Arab] countries must react out of the box to rescue Jerusalem and Al Aqsa, and the Palestinian people must join the Arab spring as the only way to liberate the land and establish of the state, and bring about their return.

At least one other newspaper, in the equally moderate UAE, republished this little hateful screed.

(UPDATE: The proper translation instead of "orgy" seems to be "ruckus" or "revelry." h/t arabicreader.)

Anti-semitism is alive and well among soccer-fan tweeters

Two small Israeli flags were displayed in the crowd during a major televised soccer game in Germany:

And the Jew-haters came out of the woodwork on Twitter:

WTF....do u see those Israeli flags at mid pitch....muthfukers r everywhere....even in germany

RT @Ali_ElMaestro8: Them jews with the Israeli flags are pissing me off.

Dean whitney

2 days ago

Reply Retweet
Hardly surprising there's Israeli flags either. The Jews blackmail Germany cos of what they did and will do it for ages.

Ryan

2 days ago

Reply Retweet

I'm pretty sure the two fellas waving Israeli flags at the CL final have been sent on a PR mission. Infuriating.

Azero

2 days ago

Reply Retweet
them guys waving the israeli flags on the halfway line are mocking the Germans on a different level #ChampionsLeagueFinal

Majid Freeman

2 days ago

Reply Retweet
@goldman1007 abramovich is Jewish - the Israeli flags on the halfway line were possibly a reference to the massacre at Olympics 40 years ago

Armchaireverton

2 days ago

Reply Retweet

You can read the whole thing at Storify.

(h/t Daniel F)

Links, links and more links

Zvi's linkdump:

Pressure for arts boycott of Israel condemned

The Irish government's #2 man (and FM) criticized the IPSC's bullying of Irish artists who want to visit Israel.

Why the cultural boycott of Israel is a blunt and backward instrument

This author is plainly not a friend of Israel. I suggest reading this mostly because this is a non-friend who seems to have realized that the "cultural boycott" of Israel is not only disingenuous but cruel and completely unfair.

Israeli kibbutz takes bite out of Iran's caviar exports

Algerian author sparks uproar with Israel visit

South Sudan, world’s youngest nation, develops unlikely friendship with Israel

"JUBA, South Sudan (JTA) – This city in the world’s newest country is not your typical Arabic-speaking capital. For one thing, most of the city’s inhabitants are Christian. For another, the Israeli flag is ubiquitous here."

Israel attracting Chinese students

"When Zhong Weichao, a doctoral student at Harbin Institute of Technology in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, started a yearlong exchange in Israel five months ago, he soon thought you can never judge a country by its size.
...
"The coolest thing here is that the environment is very open. You can challenge the teacher by asking whatever questions interest you, and they are capable of and willing to answer them all. And the technology you are engaged in is world-class," he said."

N.Y. mural contrasts gay rights in Israel with neighboring countries

A mural created by gay Birthright alumni contrasts gay rights in Israel with repression in the Arab countries.

And finally, a satirical look at the way the media report on Israel:

How to Write About Israel

From Yoel:

Tantawi (in hint to Israel?): we'll cut off the tongue of whoever turns against us...we're ready to fight (Hebrew)

Nasrallah: we can hit Tel Aviv, Israel will be annihilated

Iran to Hezbollah (in response to above?): Don't strike Israel

Israeli detention was ‘five-star’ compared to Syrian jail — freed Turkish journalist who was on Marmara

Egyptian paper: Egyptian nuclear scientist defected to Israel (Hebrew)

Palestinian, African migrants brutally rape two Israeli girls

Archaeologists discover ancient olive press in Modiin

Israeli may become next world chess champion

Also, Report: Israel to deploy 20,000 commandos in Greek Cyprus (h/t Dan)

Jacob responds to my Hasbara Challenge from yesterday

How Bedouins are systematically stealing land in Area C (series translated from Makor Rishon) (h/t zozosophie)

"Very dangerous" Israeli candy infiltrates Lebanon

While Lebanese citizens are killing each other over their Syrian loyalties, an even more important story has come out of Lebanon:

A joint national and security forces committee has seized Israeli made candies in the southern Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh, al-Liwaa newspaper reported on Monday.

The candies had wrappers with Hebrew inscriptions on them and another layer of Arab writings about the name of the alleged Syrian factory that made them. They were stashed in hundreds of bags, it said.

The committee is now questioning the trader who smuggled the candies to the camp.

“This is a very dangerous phenomenon which should be resolved responsibly,” the head of the committee of social affairs for popular committees in the southern city of Sidon, Fouad Othman, said.

“This requires the reunification of all Palestinian efforts inside the camp,” he added.

Othman also urged the Lebanese authorities to investigate how the candies were smuggled to Lebanon and then to Ain el-Hilweh.

They have a photo of this "candy:"

These wrappers say "Tnuva Butter."

Maybe it tastes so good that they thought it was candy.

Or maybe it just had the same physical effects of other Israeli products smuggled to Arab areas.

Iranian commander confirms Iran's commitment to destroy Israel

How much more explicit can they get?

From Iran's official FARS news agency:

Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said threats and pressures cannot deter Iran from its revolutionary causes and ideals, and stressed that the Iranian nation will remain committed to the full annihilation of the Zionist regime of Israel to the end.

Addressing a defense gathering here in Tehran on Sunday, General Firouzabadi said that nations should realize the threats and dangers posed by the Zionist regime of Israel.

He reiterated the Iranian nation and Supreme Leader's emphasis on the necessity of support for the oppressed Palestinian nation and its causes, and noted, "The Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel."

The top military official reminded that the Iranian Supreme Leader considers defending Palestine as a full religious duty and believes that any kind of governance and rule by anyone other than the Palestinians as an instance of usurpation.

Earlier this year, Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei stressed in explicit remarks Iran's direct involvement in the Palestinian and Lebanese confrontation with Israel, including the Lebanese Summer 2006 33-day resistance against the Zionist regime.

"Wherever Iran interferes, it announces it in a very straightforward manner. For instance, we interfered in confrontations against Israel, which resulted in the (Lebanese) victory in the 33-day war and (Palestinians' victory in) the 22-day (Gaza) war," Ayatollah Khamenei said, addressing millions of Friday Prayers worshippers on Tehran University Campus in February.

"In future too, we will support and help everyone who opposes the Zionist regime," the Leader underscored.

"The Zionist regime is a real cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut, God Willing," Ayatollah Khamenei underscored.

Time for Iran's Western apologists to work overtime to parse these words as if they aren't aggressive or threatening.

(Lots of hat tips but Challah was first)

Wafa Sultan vs. Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad

Worth watching:

(h/t Israel Matzav via Cheryl)

Seen today

Two lessons from the barn owls

Al Arabiya English last week aired a very nice story about cooperation between Israel and Jordan in using barn owls as a natural way to control pests.

Seven barn owl chicks nestled together in a wooden box in Israel's Beit Shean valley are not fuzzy and cute exotic pets, but they have become functional as they are the success of a decade-long project to use their species as biological pesticides.

In 2002, Jordanian and Israeli farmers wanted to end the use of poisons and toxic pest controls but still needed a way to safeguard their products from rats and mice.

The farmers, along with Israel's Society for the Protection of Nature and Jordan's General Mansour Abu-Rashid, began placing nesting boxes where the barn owls would breed in, up to 2,600 boxes in fields on the Israeli side of the border, hundred which are used by Jordanian farmers.

According to Ornithologist Dr. Motti Charter from Haifa University, around ten years would pass until an Israeli male owl and Jordanian female owl coupled up and bred.

"For them, they don't know that the border is here and they probably met, you know, not like people at a bar or something like that, they met one night and decided to have -- that they fell in love and they started a nest here," Charter said. "The whole concept is that, you know, it doesn't matter if it's Jordanian or Israel, they're barn owls. And for us it's a great success story because it shows, because of the Jordanians started thinking differently, started using the barn owls, they succeeded."

I'm not sure who had the story first, Al Arabiya or Reuters or the BBC. Green Prophet seems to be the source for the story.

It is a very nice story, and one that is tailor-made for Western audiences. It shows that Israels and Arabs can and do cooperate on projects that are mutually beneficial.

It would be nicer if the Arabic media would cover this story as well.

So far I haven't found a single article about this Arab-Israeli cooperation in Arabic-language media. (Jordan's Ammon News published the English Al Arabiya story.)

If there will ever be real peace, articles like this must be published in the Arabic media where ordinary Arabs can see that Israel is not as one-dimensionally evil as it is usually portrayed.

(The story can also help stop incidents such as this one where Jordanians bragged about killing an owl, and videotaped themselves doing it.)

Jews visiting Temple Mount again freaks Muslims out

On Jerusalem Day, a group of Jews visited the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount.

Here are photos of them from Qudsmedia:

As usual, Muslim Arabic media is freaking out over the "usurpers" who are "defiling" and "profaning" this indisputably Jewish holy place.

The proper response, of course, is to ensure that such peaceful visits happen multiple times a day.

Stunning Jerusalem webpage from JCPA

JCPA made a great webpage about Jerusalem, featuring a nice high resolution panoramic photo of Jerusalem with annotations, as well as a video and other information. Great for Yom Yerushalayim!

Video of IDF capturing Temple Mount, 1967

JTA links to this video for Jerusalem Day, showing not only the famous scenes of soldiers at the Kotel but on the Temple Mount as well.

It is to Israel's everlasting shame that the keys to the Mount's gates were given back to the radical Muslims of the Waqf almost immediately.

Even so, this is a day of celebration when Jews finally regained sovereignty over the only capital they have ever had.

For Jerusalem Day, AP pushes a Muslim lie

On the occasion of Jerusalem Day, AP has an article about how Jerusalem is important - to Muslims. (As of this writing, there is no AP article about Israel's celebrations of Jerusalem Day.)

Here is one part of the article that shows how lazy wire service reporters are in researching basic history and believing false Muslim narratives:

After decades of shying away from an ancient pilgrimage route, Muslims are visiting Jerusalem to pray at Islam's third-holiest site, the revered Al-Aqsa mosque....

While Islam's birthplace is in the Arabian Peninsula, Jerusalem is intimately tied with Islam's beginnings. Muhammad's first followers prayed toward Al-Aqsa and only later turned their prayers east to Mecca.

Muslims did indeed pray towards Jerusalem when they were trying to recruit Jews in the new religion around the year 625. (They changed this prayer direction to Mecca when the Jews refused to join them.) But the Al Aqsa Mosque wasn't built until 690.

AP, by implicitly claiming that the Al Aqsa Mosque was a holy site during Mohammed's time, is denying the Jewish claim to the site and upholding a false interpretation of the Koranic story of Mohammed's mystical night journey, where he says he traveled to "the farthest [al-Aqsa] mosque" on a flying horse, a site not identified as Jerusalem in the Koran itself.

(The classic article on this topic is by Daniel Pipes.)

An exercise for would-be hasbarists

Tomorrow night I will be part of a panel discussion held by the American Zionist Movement called "Israel in the Write Light" in New York City. Along with Commentary contributor/Tweeter extraordinaire Noah Pollak and Tablet senior editor Bari Weiss, we will be discussing how to effectively communicate pro-Israel messages.

I believe that knowing history is essential to being an advocate for Israel, and it takes practice to hone the historical arguments down to a form that can be read in a couple of minutes.

So here is a challenge for people who want to be good at Hasbara:

In an obscure newspaper called the Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune, someone named George Smith ("a nonreligious member of Congregation Beth Shalom") wrote a polemic against Israel for the occasion of Nakba Day. It is literally filled with the usual anti-Israel lies, compressed in the space of an op-ed. Over the years, I have disproved these lies many times on this blog.

The challenge is to write an effective response that is no lengthier than the original.

Taking the time to actually go through something like this - sentence by sentence - and disproving the lies yourself, briefly but thoroughly, is a most valuable use of time. The first time you do it it would probably take a few hours, but by the end of that time you will know how to answer the lies quickly and devastatingly.

If you want to send your resulting response to the newspaper (or to me) is up to you. The point here is that while many Zionists know that this article is absurd propaganda, not as many know enough to actually prove it. Proving it and boiling that proof down to something readable is a very valuable skill, one that you can only get from practice.

So if you can, this might be a good way to spend some time this Sunday.

The Iranian version of "pinkwashing"

From Iran's FARS:

Kossari is spooked

A senior Iranian legislator blasted a gay parade planned to be held in the Muslim state of Azerbaijan on May 26, warning that Baku will soon regret holding the event.

"The parade has been planned based on the goals of the Zionists and the world arrogance (the US)," member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mohammad Esmayeel Kossari told FNA on Saturday.

"The Azeri government which paves the way for the gathering of such immoral groups as homosexuals through this method (of action) should know that it will be struck by problems in the near future and the country's political and state officials will regret this move," he added.

Kossari lamented that the Azeri statesmen act based on the Zionist thoughts and views instead of paying attention to the Islamic thoughts and their people's beliefs.

Even Iranians say that Israel is gay-friendly!

The funny part, of course, is that groups like "Queers Against Israel Apartheid" side with Iran against Israel.

The bureaucracy of censorship in Kuwait

From the Kuwait Times:

Proud of her job to keep others ignorant

Different professions have different tastes. Sometimes we wonder how the work of some people goes on, especially if it is not very common. The censors who are responsible for censoring books and other publications do an interesting job, which becomes harder during some periods of the year, yet it seems they enjoy it. In Kuwait, freedoms are respected yet within certain limits. “The limits of freedom in the press, TV, radio or other media is organized by law no. 3/2006 concerning Press and Publications, law no. 61/2007 concerning Visual and Audio Media, and related by-laws,” Dalal Al-Mutairi, head of the Foreign Books Department at the Ministry of Information told Kuwait Times.

These laws set the basic rules to deal with right and wrong acts announced or published in the media. “This is also related to books, electronic publications and games and many other things. There are certain red lines that should not be crossed by the publishers, writers, authors and others. In order to check the application of the laws and that it’s not violated, there are inspectors and censors working at the Ministry of Information,” she added.

Dalal started her career as a censor at the Foreign Books Department and became the head of the department after a few years. “Many people consider the censor to be a fanatic and uneducated person, but this isn’t true. We are the most literate people as we have read much, almost every day. We receive a lot of information from different fields. We read books for children, religious books, political, philosophical, scientific ones and many others,” she pointed out.

“As a censor, I read a book from beginning to the end, word by word. In case the censor makes a mistake, the head of the department will be responsible for this mistake, as they should also read the book. The time to finish censoring a book depends on the kind of the book. For instance, a philosophical book needs about four days to read,” Dalal added.

...According to the law, if there is a violation, the censor writes a report about it. “Nobody can distribute any book unless he has a license to do so. The distributor should bring a copy of the book to our department. Sometimes we receive complaints from people regarding some books. Then we investigate with the printing press that published and printed this book. The printing house is responsible for the material and books printed by it and they should inform the Ministry of Information that they are printing a book, and then the book is not distributed without a license. There are some censors and inspectors from our department who inspect different printing presses to check their license,” Dalal stated.

...The greatest load on the department is during the Book Fair. “We start censoring the books in this fair about three months before it is held. We receive about 7,000 to 8,000 books to read. There are about 15 censors working on this fair. These censors take the books home with them to finish their reading. If we find a book containing restrictions, we write a report that is passed to a committee which decides that certain books will be banned from the fair,” she highlighted.

...Working as a censor is interesting. “I like this work. It gives us experience, information and we always learn something new. It takes about a year or a year and a half to become a censor, as the person is first employed as a censor assistant. The employee first starts slow in reading and it takes him a week or days to finish a book. Also, beginners are not given political or religious books in the beginning as these are difficult. Instead we give them children’s books or some scientific books, which are easy,” said Dalal.

In some religious books, the censorship department cooperates with the Ministry of Endowments. “Religious opinions may differ and that’s why we demand a professional explanation, although we have some censors who are graduates of the Faculty of Islamic Law. Some religious issues are transferred to the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs. The banned books include publications printed in Israel, Christian missionary and Jewish books and other similar books,” she noted.

(h/t @georgehale)

Latest Latma

Didn't get a chance to watch it yet....

"The End of the Jewish Left" (Tablet)

A very interesting article:

[T]he softening mainstream liberalism of American Jews can be seen as the feeble remnant of what was once a fiery and uncompromising leftism. Indeed, as historian Tony Michels said at the YIVO conference, the history of American Communism “cannot be understood without Jews.” But the mood of the conference was best summed up in the title of the keynote address, by the political philosopher Michael Walzer: “The Strangeness of Jewish Leftism.” What was once a proud inheritance now seems like a problem in need of a solution. For many Jews, it remains axiomatic that Judaism is a religion of social justice and progress; the phrase “tikkun olam” has become a convenient shorthand for the idea that Judaism is best expressed in “repair of the world.”

In his speech, and in his new book In God’s Shadow: Politics and the Hebrew Bible, Walzer offers a contrary vision of traditional Judaism, which he argues “offers precious little support to left politics”—a truth that he recognized would surprise those who, like himself, “grew up believing that Judaism and socialism were pretty much the same thing.” If a leftist political message cannot readily be found in the traditions of Judaism, it follows that the explosion of Jewish leftism in the late 19th century was actually a rupture with Jewish history, and potentially a traumatic one.

Walzer’s reluctance to associate Judaism too simply with leftist politics, or indeed with any politics, represents a break from his earlier thinking. In his influential 1985 book Exodus and Revolution, for instance, Walzer argued that the Exodus narrative had provided a template for generations of revolutionaries and progressives in Western society, offering a model of how to escape an oppressive past and create a better future. The contrast with his new book could not be sharper. In this work, Walzer reads the Bible with an eye to its explicit and implicit teachings about politics and finds that its most eloquent message on the subject is silence. “The political activity of ordinary people is not a Biblical subject,” he writes, “nor is there any explicit recognition of political space, an agora or forum, where people congregate to argue about and decide on the policies of the community.”

Coming from Walzer, who co-edited a multivolume treatise on “The Jewish Political Tradition,” and who has been one of the leading theorists of mainstream left-liberalism for decades, this emphasis on the antipolitical nature of the Bible is striking. In his YIVO speech, he listed six central features of traditional Judaism that made it a conservative force, including the very idea of Jews as a chosen people—an idea that cannot easily be made to harmonize with universalism and egalitarianism.

...The left’s rejection of Judaism, Walzer concluded in his speech at YIVO, was both “necessary and profoundly wrong.” Necessary, because traditional Judaism did not offer a basis for a social justice movement; but also wrong, because the severance with tradition rendered the Jewish left culturally disoriented and spiritually impoverished.

While a number of speakers at the YIVO conference invoked Isaac Deutscher’s concept of the “non-Jewish Jew”—figures like Trotsky or Rosa Luxemburg, who rejected on principle any definition of themselves or their goals in Jewish terms—both Walzer and Ezra Mendelsohn warned against the idea that identity could be so abstract and universalized. Walzer called instead for a renewed critical engagement with Jewish tradition, including a return to the Jewish calendar and Jewish lifecycle events.

If this represents a kind of retrenchment on the part of the left, it is partly because the Jewish left has lost any certainty that the future is on its side. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is the strongest and most popular leader in decades; in both Israel and America, the fastest-growing section of the Jewish population is the Orthodox, a right-leaning group who 50 years ago, Mendelsohn recalled, seemed headed for extinction. Still, political fortunes can always change, and Mendelsohn concluded his speech, and the conference, with a wan prophecy that the Jewish left would return: “Maybe I won’t see it, but my grandchildren will.”

...The problem for the left today is that it has gone over largely—but not, Geras and others insisted, wholly—to the negative view of Judaism as an obstacle to human progress. Israel, Geras held, “has been an alibi for a new climate of anti-Semitism on the left,” a development whose full venomousness can only be seen in Europe. (“I don’t think people here realize,” he said mournfully, “what it’s like to be a Jewish leftist in Britain today,” comparing it to living in a sea of poison.) This is the atmosphere that the Anglo-Jewish novelist Howard Jacobson evoked so powerfully in his recent novel The Finkler Question: one in which hostility to Israel is a reflex and insinuations about Jewish power and the “Jewish lobby” go unchallenged.

(h/t @WarpedMirrorPMB)

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia discovered to be Zionist

As if you needed any more evidence after my post this morning about a Saudi company buying software from Israel, we have this from Hezbollah's Al Manar:

Thousands of people demonstrated in Tehran on Friday to protest a proposed union of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

The authorities had urged citizens to protest the American plan to annex Bahrain to Saudi Arabia and express their anger against the “lackey regimes of Al-Khalifa and Al-Saud”.

Media reports said demonstrators in the capital, many brandishing the Bahraini flag, shouted "death" to America, Israel, the "traitors" Al-Saud and Al-Khalifa. Official media also reported protests in other cities.

This week’s Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi said the "US-Zionist plot" to create a union between will fail. "Recently ... (Riyadh and Manama) came up with this plot to annex Bahrain to Saudi Arabia ... They call it a union but they want Bahrain to lose its identity instead of giving in to its people's demands," the cleric said on state radio.

"This is US-Zionist conspiracy and they should know that the Muslim people of the world and the Iranians will not tolerate this plot ... Saudi Arabia did not prevail by its military presence there, and will gain nothing in this plot except disgrace," he added.

The plan, floated last December, was Saudi Arabia's idea, not America's. And the smaller Gulf states are not too keen about it anyway.

But this hysterical reaction by Iran (and its Lebanese proxies) is interesting, mostly because of Iran's own territorial designs on Bahraini territory.

Muslims create a myth to claim Joseph's Tomb

Ma'an reports:

Israeli soldiers escorted hundreds of Jewish worshipers to Joseph's Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday, witnesses said.

Clashes broke out as locals threw stones and soldiers fired tear gas, witnesses told Ma'an.

Jews believe that the tomb is the final resting place of the biblical figure Joseph. Muslims believe that an Islamic cleric, Sheikh Yussef (Joseph) Dawiqat, was buried there.

So who was the fortunately named Sheikh Yusuf Dawiqat?

Well, either he is fictional or he is incredibly obscure. There is no entry for him in Wikipedia Arabic.

Apparently, this sheikh was made up as the inhabitant of the tomb only in recent decades, specifically to weaken the Jewish religious claim to the site. Jews have identified the site at that location since at least the fourth century CE. In the past, Muslims were known to refer to the site as "Qabr en-Nabi Yūsuf", the Tomb of the Prophet Joseph, not any obscure sheikh from the 18th century.

This sounds a bit familiar. This is exactly what the Muslims are trying to do with Rachel's Tomb by claiming it is an ancient mosque, when it never was.

Israel haters freak out over the hoopoe bird

From JPost:

Anti-Israel activists sharply criticized the socialist British daily the Morning Star for referring to Israel’s national bird the hoopoe in its daily quiz.

In a letter to the newspaper, Linda Claire, the chairwoman of Manchester’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, asked why it had referred to the bird after it has “always been the newspaper you could rely on to support the cause of the Palestinians.”

“Maybe you don’t support the methods chosen by the international solidarity movement of BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel] to assist the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and justice,” she said, adding that this included any reference to Israel’s wildlife.

“Despite its condemnation of zionists [sic] it yet finds space to include an item in its daily quiz about Israel’s national bird. Is the Star not aware there’s a cultural boycott going on?” Claire’s husband, George Abendstern, asked in another letter.

“And then, despite it’s [sic] condemnation of the Bahrain Grand Prix and rightly so, it then goes on to tell us who won. For goodness sake comrades, get your act together,” Abendstern continued.

After a letter appeared condemning the couple’s stance, the anti-Israel activists said, “It was not the bird we object to but what this bird represents – the racist and apartheid State of Israel.”

CiFWatch has the actual two letters written - by a husband and wife using different last names to try to make it look like there was a groundswell of concern over this important issue:

The Morning Star has always been the newspaper you could rely on to support the cause of the Palestinians, so why of all the birds in the world did you choose the Israeli national bird to include in your quiz?

Maybe you don’t support the methods chosen by the International Solidarity Movement of BDS to assist the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and justice – a demand that came from them originally.

This includes any reference to their wildlife.

Linda Clair

Rochdale

I had no idea that BDS includes a ban on mentioning Israel's wildlife!

Maybe they shouldn't say the word "Israel" at all, as that is a form of normalization. So is the word "Zionist." It would make their campaigns a little more difficult, but its the principle of the thing.

(h/t Zvi and Ian)

Arutz-7 (Hebrew) reports that a Saudi oil products company, Yanar, recently purchased an online tool for managing large business organizations - that was developed in Israel.

The software, called TBM, was developed by the Israeli Daronet company, and is said to be unique among cloud management platforms.

Yanar purchased the software through a branch in Australia after Daronet exhibited it in a Melbourne software show.

The Saudis insisted that their men will complete training on the software in order to avoid the using Israeli support services it normally provides its customers. The support center is in Elad, a religious Jewish community, and is mostly staffed by women.

The Daronet CEO stated that the entire transaction value is estimated at 700 thousand shekels.

The BDS movement was unavailable for comment.

Jordanian newspapers fall for spoof news report

From the spoof site the Pan Arabia Enquirer:

AMMAN: British Glamour model and renowned children’s author Katie Price yesterday issued a warning to government officials in Amman over the name ‘Jordan’, claiming that her celebrity profile was now enough to secure its full global trademark. [She was formerly professionally known as sinply "Jordan." - EoZ]

“I can’t believe that them Jordanese folk have been using my name for so long,” the disgusted model told reporters yesterday at the launch of her own range of charcoal, or weapons-grade plutonium or something, before going on to describe the time when she first found out.

“I hadn’t not never heard of it before, then one of my nan’s friends said she going Jordan on holiday and knew she wasn’t not talking about me.”

Katie Price’s solicitors, Bed, Knobs & Broomsticks, are claiming that, with 185 autobiographies and 65 reality TV shows already under her belt, the model has a far greater international connection to the name ‘Jordan’ than the country of Jordan, which has so far only been the setting for Laurence of Arabia and a few rubbisher films.

“We strongly feel that Jordan is using the fame and enormous goodwill of Jordan’s name to attract people to its country,” they said in a statement, adding that they were calling for “damages of $1 billion or an immediate cessation of the name ‘Jordan’ by King Abdullah and his fellow countrymen”

The first few comments on the story, seemingly from Arab readers, assumed that it was true.

And now at least two Jordanian newspapers are running this story as if it is true. The first was Assawsana on Wednesday, followed by Ammon News early Friday, both headlining that Price is suing Jordan for one billion dollars over the use of "her" name.

An important anti-Israel Arab meme

A Jordanian newspaper, Assabeel, has published an op-ed that rehashes a theme that I have seen before in the Arab world but that rarely gets mentioned in English.

The article, by Salah al-Khalidi, states that while Israel may be 64 years old now, that is still very young in terms of history. Israel, to Khalidi and most Arabs, is a minor aberration of history that will ultimately disappear and be forgotten.

A Jewish state in Palestine is a bizarre cacophony, ...it is like a festering strange virus that appears in the human body, and acts as a parasite from the body's organs...The State of the Jews on the land of Palestine is a rotten infestation in the body of humanity and does not have any justification for its survival; despite the lapse of these years it has existed - and it will go through more years yet - but those years are short, and humanity will get rid of it, God willing, at the hands of the Mujahideen God willing.

Ages of nations is analogous to ages of individuals, and if the age of individuals is measured in years, or tens of years at most, the age of nations is measured by centuries. History tells us that the pre-Islamic nation Israel did not last for centuries on the land of Palestine, that is, they did not live the lifetime of even one individual, and the state of Israel ended after the death of Prophet Solomon peace be upon him.

History tells us that any nation invading and occupying another nation will not last for long...The Crusaders went to the Holy Land for permanent residence therein; but they didn't last even two centuries, before they were expelled by the Muslim Ummah to wake up the spirit of jihad for the sake of God, mere years in human terms.

We must learn from history. We live with a Jewish-based challenge, to truly witness history, and we must look ahead, and not remain prisoners of the Arab reality, and in fact the Jewish might is transcendent and empty!! The signs and signals that indicate the short life of the Jews in Palestine are many, and is growing, but Muslim seers must deftly pay attention to it, and draws the attention of the nation to it!!

History will record that the State of the Jews on the land of Palestine, died in her childhood crawling, before standing on the her feet, God willing.

This way of thinking - in terms of centuries and millennia, not years and decades - is part and parcel of the Arab world. This is why they can talk about non-permanent truces with Israel - as long as the direction is that Israel is losing its land, then the Arabs can afford to be patient. They know that Westerners think in terms of election cycles and not eras.

Sacrificing a few generations of Palestinian Arabs to being stateless is a small price to pay in the long run for the ultimate good of reclaiming "Palestine."

And this is why they are not afraid of Zionism. They regard Zionism as a temporary political phenomenon like Communism, and political fashions don't last too long. But they are deathly afraid of Judaism. Judaism is far older than Islam, and committed Jews have the ability to think in terms of centuries - and look at the Arab conquest of Palestine as a temporary phenomenon that only lasted a few centuries itself, before the Ottomans and then the British. Jews can look at Islamic history as an anomaly, and their continued existence as a nation is what scares Arab Muslims silly.

When Zionists base their territorial claims on international law, the Arabs are happy; as that is another fad that can change over time. But when Jews assert their claim based on their history and faith, Arabs go crazy - because they have no answer to that, and no realistic hope that Judaism will fade away the way they think Zionism will.

But they remain hopeful that the Jews will disappear as well. The name of the essay, after all, is "The brief age of the Jews."