Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

More pragmatism from Hamas

This animation was on Hamas' website: (hat tip LGF)

It is interesting how Muslims use the Crusades as a club to beat the West with. I wonder how tolerant they would be if prominent leaders would claim that they were a myth created to justify Islamist expansionism and warmongering.

Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies XXIV

Soccer Dad asks a good question from me: what exactly is this military exercise that Palestinian "policemen" are doing?

This other picture, however, gives the answer:

Obviously, because of how inconsistently their paychecks have been arriving, they are starting a circus! This will help cheer up the poor Palestinian Arab children and will of course be underwritten by the EU.

The circus will show Palestinian Arab policemen doing death-defying acts, and the part that makes it interesting is how often death wins! I'm sure that AbbaGav can give a more detailed description of this circus...

The money source fallacy

I've been seeing news stories that seem to suggest that the reason why the West should continue to fund the Palestinians in the wake of the Hamas victory is because if we don't, Iran and Saudi Arabia will.

This makes no sense. While in a very broad outline, Western money has some strings attached to ensure that the money ends up going towards specific programs, in the end all it does is free up money for Palestinians to blow up Jews.

And the idea that somehow Western money influences the Palestinians to have more Western attitudes is simply false. After all, they still elected the party of suicide bombers. One lesson of the cartoons is that you cannot buy respect from those who are pro-terror - Denmark was the most tolerant and pro-Palestinian Arab nation in Europe, and now their flag is burned in every Muslim capital.

Hamas is firmly tied to Iran ideologically, and no amount of Western money will change that. And Iran will fund Hamas regardless.

In the end, it is Western money that funds Saudi Arabia and Iranian-sponsored terror anyway. If we are going to use our economic might to make a difference, it needs to be against the true monetary sources of terror - the Saudi-funded madrassas, the terror "charities," Iran. Any other plan is just playing games and congratulating ourselves that we added an extra step in the inevitable money trail from our pockets to those who want to kill us.

Mrs Naeem, a 37-year-old social worker at the Islamic University in Gaza City and a mother of four, is one of six women elected to parliament on the Hamas ticket in the Islamist party's landslide victory last month....

Women played a crucial role in getting out the vote for Hamas, knocking on doors and often getting a sympathetic hearing. Hamas's strategy to build political support through its social programmes - the provision of health clinics, nurseries and food for the poor - sealed the loyalty of many Palestinian women.

Shortly before the election, Hamas launched a women's armed wing and pictured its members brandishing guns and rocket-propelled grenades in its campaign posters. But the women MPs say their priority is reform, not armed struggle.
[...]
Many of the male leaders of Hamas favour the extension of sharia to cover civil as well as criminal codes. Some have said they want to segregate schools, others favour a ban on the sale of alcohol. They also want to see women dress in accordance with Islam.
Mrs Naeem says changes should come only after Hamas has taken time to explain the benefits of religious law. "Our sharia is great if it's practised according to its values. It's not like they say about only cutting off hands," she said.
"It's not going to be forceful but anybody who believes in the religion has to be educated in it. At the end, what matters is fighting corruption, not what people wear."
Then there is an issue unlike any other. The most controversial of the newly elected Hamas women is Miriam Farhat, known as the "Mother of Martyrs" after losing three sons fighting Israel. Her campaign video included a scene of her bidding a son goodbye before he died killing five people in a Jewish settlement. Mrs Farhat said later that she wished she had 100 sons to sacrifice as "shaheeds" - Muslims who die in a holy war.
Mrs Naeem, who named her youngest child after a Hamas leader assassinated by Israel, says there is nothing illegitimate about suicide bombers. "[The Israelis] bomb our neighbourhoods with high explosive. What kind of weapons do we have against F16s?" she asked. But would she encourage her own 16-year-old son to die killing Israelis? "Yes, as soon as his homeland calls for it. I am preparing him to be a shaheed," she said.

How pragmatic and forward thinking!

Dhimmi Carter says to give Hamas lots of money

Another predictable idiotic op-ed piece by Jimmy Carter supporting terrorists in the name of democracy.

Don't Punish the Palestinians

[...]
The role of the prime minister was greatly strengthened while Abbas and Ahmed Qureia served in that position under Yasser Arafat, and Abbas has announced that he will not choose a prime minister who does not recognize Israel or adhere to the basic principles of the "road map." This could result in a stalemated process, but my conversations with representatives of both sides indicate that they wish to avoid such an imbroglio. The spokesman for Hamas claimed, "We want a peaceful unity government." If this is a truthful statement, it needs to be given a chance.

During this time of fluidity in the formation of the new government, it is important that Israel and the United States play positive roles. Any tacit or formal collusion between the two powers to disrupt the process by punishing the Palestinian people could be counterproductive and have devastating consequences.

Unfortunately, these steps are already underway and are well known throughout the Palestinian territories and the world. Israel moved yesterday to withhold funds (about $50 million per month) that the Palestinians earn from customs and tax revenue. Perhaps a greater aggravation by the Israelis is their decision to hinder movement of elected Hamas Palestinian Legislative Council members through any of more than a hundred Israeli checkpoints around and throughout the Palestinian territories. This will present significant obstacles to a government's functioning effectively. Abbas informed me after the election that the Palestinian Authority was $900 million in debt and that he would be unable to meet payrolls during February. Knowing that Hamas would inherit a bankrupt government, U.S. officials have announced that all funding for the new government will be withheld, including what is needed to pay salaries for schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, police and maintenance personnel. So far they have not agreed to bypass the Hamas-led government and let humanitarian funds be channeled to Palestinians through United Nations agencies responsible for refugees, health and other human services.

This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies.

The election of Hamas candidates cannot adversely affect genuine peace talks, since such talks have been nonexistent for over five years. A negotiated agreement is the only path to a permanent two-state solution, providing peace for Israel and justice for the Palestinians. In fact, if Israel is willing to include the Palestinians in the process, Abbas can still play this unique negotiating role as the unchallenged leader of the PLO (not the government that includes Hamas).

It was under this umbrella and not the Palestinian Authority that Arafat negotiated with Israeli leaders to conclude the Oslo peace agreement. Abbas has sought peace talks with Israel since his election a year ago, and there is nothing to prevent direct talks with him, even if Hamas does not soon take the ultimately inevitable steps of renouncing violence and recognizing Israel's right to exist.

It would not violate any political principles to at least give the Palestinians their own money; let humanitarian assistance continue through U.N. and private agencies; encourage Russia, Egypt and other nations to exert maximum influence on Hamas to moderate its negative policies; and support President Abbas in his efforts to ease tension, avoid violence and explore steps toward a lasting peace.

Carter is so incredibly willfully blind, so unbelievably wrongheaded as to make it remarkable to conceive that he was once President of a great country.

Is he completely unaware that Abbas is also the leader of Fatah, which is responsible for scores of terror attacks? Is he clueless about the Palestinian Arab "policemen" who are nothing but terrorists in uniform? Does he really consider money that others pump into the Palestinian economy for free "their own money?" Can he really believe that after seeing the lies of the PA over the past decade that the "peace process" has any value to anyone? Can he not read the Hamas charter in black and white? Why does he believe an anonymous Hamas spokesman who doesn't even say anything remotely peaceful over the explicitly anti-semitic and genocidal statements of Hamas in Arabic?

Perhaps the most clueless and dhimmified part of the article is the part that is unwittingly bigoted towards Arabs. Yes, Jimmy Carter is a bigot against Arabs. He holds them to a much lower standard than human beings , and he justifies their terrorism as a natural part of their personalities. How else can he say that withholding money from them is an incitement to violence? What exactly is the genetic psychological condition that Palestinians evidently have that means that if we don't do what they want, they are justified in killing Jews?

No, according to the liberal mindset typified by Dhimmi Carter, all of their violence is our fault. Somehow when the Mafia threatens violence when they don't get their "protection money" it is a crime, but when Hamas does exactly the same thing it is reason to bow before Allah and submit to an Islamic 'ummah.

And now Hamas doesn't even have to make that threat explicit. President Jimmah will do it for them, in the pages of the Washington Post.

Wine and cheese

From Denmark:

Kosher Wine and Cheese.

Haveil Havalim #58 has arrived

The grand-daddy of Jewish blog carnivals is back with HH58 hosted by Soccer Dad himself! Lots of new (to me) blogs to check out and a great job, as always.

He was nice enough to link to this article of mine.

If you haven't yet seen this weekly collection of the best of the J-Blogosphere, read it now!

Insane Muslim Protesters of the Day

In my previous posting, I reproduced a sign from some New York City protesters that appear to show death threats against people who have upset Muslims.

The sponsors of that poster are from the "Islamic Thinkers Society" whose webpage is currently down. But thanks to Google's cache, we can find a lovely recent picture of a protest by these people in Europe, threatening to "butcher" anyone who disagrees with them:

It also shows them threatening the US recently at Ground Zero, with the picture of an Islamic flag over the White House:

Islamist supremacism and death threats in NYC

The insane Muslims are in the US as well:

The pictures that I recognize on the placard are Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islam who helped make the film about women in Islam called Submission with Theo Van Gogh who was murdered because of it; and Flemming Rose, who published the pictures in Denmark. (The picture on the right, Michael Leunig, is a different story and it is very unclear why he is being targeted - he penned a cartoon comparing Israel to Nazi Germany which was not published in Australia and someone else submitted it to Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest under his name.)

Look carefully at the pictures: they have what appear to be gunshot wounds drawn in to the foreheads of Hirsi and Rose:

So, in the United States, today, Muslims apparently threatened to assassinate people who disagree with them.

And if you are unclear as to what these people ultimately want, just have a look-see at this lovely sign:

TORONTO -- A student newspaper at Canada's largest university is drawing criticism for publishing a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus embracing.

The University of Toronto student union says it's received several complaints about the Strand, published by Victoria College.

The cartoon, submitted by a student, was published Wednesday alongside an editorial addressing the debate on whether to publish controversial Danish cartoons that have sparked protest around the world.

It depicts a man resembling Jesus embracing another figure with his back turned with a turban and a tattoo of a crescent moon and star.

Student union president Paul Bretscher says the editors should pull the cartoon and issue an apology.

The part that bugs me about this story isn't the absurd political correctness, the abject dhimmifying of the Student Administrative Council at the U of T, or even the fact that the cartoon is not very funny or illuminative.

The part that bugs me is that many newspapers are picking up on this story without a single one printing a copy of the actual cartoon - one that doesn't even show Mohammed! (This one came from the student newspaper itself.)

The mainstream news media in North America is showing complete and utter submission to the threat of Islam, which means that it is no longer the place to get news.

Cross-burning in Iran

Iranian Sunny Muslim protesters burn a cross during a demonstration against the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad outside the Danish embassy in Tehran, on Friday Feb. 17, 2006. The drawings, first published by a Danish newspaper, sparked at times violent protests in Muslim countries. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)

Well, well. It sure appears like they are attacking one of the religions they claim to respect.

UPDATE: On the hypocritical front:

Tehran, Feb 17 (ISNA)-Iran's Judiciary first deputy highlighted that Iran knows insulting religious beliefs as a prosecutable charge in internal and international courts and to the rich texts of Islamic resources, internal and international laws, this matter can be investigated and charged.