Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 13, 2006

What to read

I don't have time today to compose anything major, but there are plenty of bloggers posting great articles and news about the two-front war in Israel.

Check out AbbaGav's editorial, Yourish's coverage, Israel Matzav's articles, and Israellycool's liveblogging.

I have found that traditional news sources, including Israel's, have been frustratingly slow and incomplete. The blogosphere seems to be doing a better job.

Hizbollah's hero

Ha'aretz reports:

Immediately after the Hezbollah attack, the organization's Al-Manar television station began broadcasting clips calling on Israel to release Lebanese prisoners held in Israel in return for the soldiers.

The group in particular emphasized the release of Lebanese militant Samir Kuntar, jailed in Israel since a 1979 attack in the northern town of Nahariyah, in which he entered an apartment and murdered three family members and an Israeli police officer.

Samir Kuntar isn't just another terrorist. He is one of the most loathsome creatures to ever breathe.

Here is an account, from the Washington Post in 2003 (no longer online) of the coldblooded crime that Hizbollah idolizes and the scumbag who committed it:

The World Should Know What He Did to My Family
By Smadar Haran Kaiser

Sunday, May 18, 2003; Page B02

NAHARIYA, Israel
Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas's terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar's name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

The next day,Abu Abbas announced from Beirut that the terrorist attack in Nahariya had been carried out "to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty"at Camp David the previous year. Abbas seems to have a gift for charming journalists, but imagine the character of a man who protests an act of peace by committing an act of slaughter.

Two of Abbas's terrorists had been killed by police on the beach. The other two were captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Despite my protests, one was released in a prisoner exchange for Israeli POWs several months before the Achille Lauro hijacking. Abu Abbas was determined to find a way to free Kuntar as well. So he engineered the hijacking of the Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt and demanded the release of 50 Arab terrorists from Israeli jails. The only one of those prisoners actually named was Samir Kuntar. The plight of hundreds held hostage on a cruise ship for two days at sea lent itself to massive international media coverage. The attack on Nahariya, by contrast, had taken less than an hour in the middle of the night. So what happened then was hardly noticed outside of Israel.

One hears the terrorists and their excusers say that they are driven to kill out of desperation. But there is always a choice. Even when you have suffered, you can choose whether to kill and ruin another's life, or whether to go on and rebuild. Even after my family was murdered, I never dreamed of taking revenge on any Arab. But I am determined that Samir Kuntar should never be released from prison. In 1984, I had to fight my own government not to release him as part of an exchange for several Israeli soldiers who were POWs in Lebanon. I understood, of course, that the families of those POWs would gladly have agreed to the release of an Arab terrorist to get their sons back. But I told Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister, that the blood of my family was as red as that of the POWs. Israel had always taken a position of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. If they were going to make an exception, let it be for a terrorist who was not as cruel as Kuntar. "Your job is not to be emotional," I told Rabin, "but to act rationally." And he did.

So Kuntar remains in prison. I have been shocked to learn that he has married an Israeli Arab woman who is an activist on behalf of terrorist prisoners. As the wife of a prisoner, she gets a monthly stipend from the government. I'm not too happy about that.

UPDATE: The disgusting al-Reuters writes a puff piece about this piece of garbage, whitewashing his sickening acts and leaving out any details until the very end of the article.

Syria's news agency also praises Kuntar.

A website dedicated to Kuntar quotes Hizbollah chief Nasrallah in February as saying, "We are working on making this year the year to free our brothers in Israeli detention, Samir Kantar and his friends, which will in turn pave way to free our Syrian and Jordanian brothers detained in Israeli prisons."

Hizbollah's kidnap goals different from Hamas

This morning's attack by Hizbollah against Israel had primarily different aims than Hamas' kidnap of Gilad Shalit.

Hamas fully expected Israel to negotiate for Shalit's release and to get Israel to free prisoners. They were surprised at the scope of the Israeli response.

Hizbollah, on the other hand, clearly sees that Israel did not capitulate (yet) to the Hamas kidnapping. So why did they choose now to perform this (clearly well-planned) attack?

The idea of a "prisoner swap" (more likely a swap of Jewish bodies for live terrorists) is only tertiary in the mind of Hizbollah's leaders. The major goals are:

Embarrass the Jews.
Make Hizbollah look macho

There's that Arab pride again. Here's the Hizbollah supporters' reaction to the kidnapping:

They are not celebrating the idea of a prisoner swap. They are celebrating a "victory", even one where far more Arabs will end up dead than Israelis. As Hizbollah continues to be under international pressure to disarm - which is the same as asking them to stop breathing - they needed the psychological boost that comes, in the sick Arab mind, from killing and terrorizing Jews.

Since th Arabs do not have a prayer at this time to win an open confrontation with Israel they change the definition of "victory" to be any single successful attack against any single Israeli soldier.

We have a people pitifully low in self-esteem, suffering from a mass delusion where death is better than life and where pride is the major driving factor behind all activities (from honor killings to terror bombings.)

What if Israel had never been created?

A far-left Marxist nutcase named William Hughes, who writes often for loony left rags like Media Monitors Network, just came out with a classic piece blaming all the world's troubles on Zionists. (Interestingly, Iran's president says the same thing. )

Normally, I ignore his fevered rantings, even though they are unintentionally hilarious. For example, here are some of his ideas of how the world would be if Israel never existed:

1. The U.S. would not have any enemies in the Islamic World.
2. There would be no Al-Qaeda Terrorist Network.
3. Gasoline would be selling for less than $1 a gallon.
4. There would have been no 9/11.

I don't know what he is smoking, but I thought it may be a cool idea to come up with my own list of how the world might be today if there was never an Israel:

Egypt and Transjordan would have divided Palestine in 1948. There would be no Palestine.
Jerusalem would be Judenrein.
Any Jews who live in Arab countries would be living in fear of pogroms.
The Soviet Union would have gained complete control of the Middle East in the 1960's, and would have had the ability to starve the US of oil during the cold war. It may never have fallen.
Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons in 1991, so he would by now be allied with the Soviets and ruling Kuwait. He would have nuked Iran, and he would be a clear threat to the US.
Islamic fundamentalism would have arisen anyway as a reaction to the increased power of the secular Arab states. Many Arab states would become like Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Adolf Eichmann would have died peacefully and William Hughes would be writing a glowing biography of him.
Computers would be slower and buggier than they are now.
Instead of having 6 million Jews, the USA would have some 10 million, making people like William Hughes write articles about the undue Jewish influence on American policy. But they wouldn't use the word Jewish - perhaps "Hebrew" or "Semitic".

Any other ideas?

UPDATE: Dave Bender has a funny take on a similar idea.

TEHRAN, July 9 (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it had yet to pay $50 million it had pledged to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority and suggested the process for payment was still being discussed. The donation was announced in April to make up a shortfall left by an aid cut-off by the United States and the European Union and Israel's freezing of the transfer tax and customs receipts to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian government.

For all the Iranian bluster about how much they support the Palestinian Arabs, the reality seems to be somewhat different.

Red Cross very quiet about Shalit

From Arutz Sheva:

The Victims of Arab Terror organization has written to the International Red Cross, demanding to know why it has not been more forceful in demanding to see the kidnapped soldier. "Israel always agrees to allow the Red Cross to see imprisoned terrorists," VAT head Shifra Hoffman told Arutz-7. "We have not received a single sign of life from Gilad Shalit. Why is the Red Cross not making similar demands to see this soldier, who is suffering in captivity?"

Arutz-7 contacted the Gaza office of the International Red Cross, and asked Gaza sub-delegation chief Georgis Georgantas this question. Georgantas said that Shalit is being held in an undisclosed place by elements who have not been clearly specified. The Red Cross had therefore made it clear to "various interlocutors," Georgantas said, that "we are ready to visit the soldier."

Asked if the precise wording of the request could be seen, Georgantas said that it had been delivered orally.

Georgantas refused to explain why the Red Cross does not contact the Hamas government directly.

Israel's Magen David Adom (Red Star of David), newly accepted into the International Red Cross, has sent a letter to its parent organization, calling upon it to demand to see Shalit.

Arab woman and child join PalArab self-death count (23)

The number of Palestinian Arabs killed by other Arabs since the incursion began continues to grow, now at 23 by my count. As the mainstream media continues to concentrate on Israel killing terrorists, they continue to ignore the number of Arabs who kill each other all the time.

Yesterday, Bara’ Jamal Abu Jarbou’ (11) and Nema Abdel Rahman Hamad (45) from Nuseirat refugee camp were killed and 7 others were injured in a clan clash. And today, 3 other Palestinians were injured in a clan clash in the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Yunis.

For some reason, Reuters and AP cannot seem to find any photographers to cover these incidents. For some reason, the funeral of the 11 year old girl is not newsworthy, but the heartbreaking pictures of mourners at the funerals of murderous terrorists get plenty of coverage by the wire services:

A Palestinian girl, a relative of Hamas militant Metwali Al Argan, who was killed by Israeli soldiers according to medics, mourns during his funeral in Gaza July 10, 2006. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

What else can you expect from the exclusively Arab reporters and photographers employed by Reuters and AP and AFP in the Gaza Strip? They have an agenda as well, and it does not include any mention of intra-Arab violence.

Yet another peaceful PalArab poll - the dangers of Arab pride

As I have documented before, Palestinian Arabs consistently support terror against Israel. The latest poll from JMCC shows that these trends continue.

The idea that ordinary Palestinian Arabs are not culpable for the crimes of the terrorists gets weaker and weaker as their support and tolerance for terror grows.

Major findings:

77% support the kidnap of Gilad Shalit
67% want more kidnappings of soldiers
80% oppose releasing Shalit to avoid a ground incursion into Gaza
60% support further Kassam rocket attacks against "targets"
Hamas would still win an election if held today, but barely.

Possibly the most fascinating finding was this one:

47% think that the kidnapping will end up hurting the Palestinian Arab side, and only 37% think it will help.

This would seem counter-intuitive. If a plurality of PalArabs know that the kidnapping will end up hurting their cause, why would they support it?

The answer is simple and sad. The Arab sense of "honor" is so overpowering, it trumps logic and even personal welfare. I wrote about this nearly a year ago - the flip-side to "honor" is a massive inferiority complex that results in infantile attempts to act in ways that will prove relevance.

A single kidnap against a single Israeli soldier is a victory, no matter how tiny and pyrrhic. In a world where the Arabs have precious little to feel pride over, this is something to feel proud of, in a completely sick way.

Terror seems a logical response when one's sense of pride is over-arching and psychotic. Israel can kill many Arab terrorists, but they cannot force the Arabs to give back their small victory and all it symbolizes.

A secure person can look logically at his faults and do things to improve himself. An insecure person cannot allow himself to admit any faults, and must blame all his troubles on others.

And that is the Israeli/Arab conflict in a nutshell.

Until this mass psychosis in the Arab world is dealt with, we cannot hope to have peace.

Amazing article from SF Chronicle

Credit where credit is due: Out of the loony left coast comes an article that is actual reporting, even if it is in the op-ed section. The author looks beneath the surface of the Arab hysteria over Israel and discovers that many Arabs see through the facade.

Arab blogs that fight for reform
Frida Ghitis

Sunday, July 9, 2006

When Israeli forces entered Gaza in late June, the news media in the Arab world spared no adjective to describe the "Zionist aggression," as the Syrian News Agency labeled it, or the "crazed racist extermination war," in the words of a writer in the Palestinian al-Ayyam paper. No observer of the Middle East would find that degree of invective and bitterness surprising.
However, buried below the furious, raging surface, a different sort of commentary flowed through the Internet.
In Arab blogs and deep inside the Web comment pages of some major news organizations, a few people dared to disagree. In fact, some Arab advocates of political and social reform saw recent events in the Palestinian territories as ammunition with which to criticize the dictatorial regimes they want to change in their own countries.
The Israeli incursion, with its controversial bombing of a Palestinian power plant, came less than three days after Palestinian militants dug a tunnel into Israel and captured 19-year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit. About one year ago, Israel had completed a withdrawal from Gaza. This was the first major Israeli operation on that strip of land since the withdrawal and since the coming to power of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
Many -- though not all -- in the Arab blogosphere sharply criticized Israeli actions as excessive, but they saw in the fury of the Israeli government something lacking in their own: concern for the life of a single citizen. "They will turn the world upside down to get that soldier back," wrote Sandmonkey, who describes himself as 25-year-old Egyptian living in Cairo. "I kind of envy how much they care about their own." The sentiment was echoed by Isis, at BigPharaoh.com, wishing that "our government had half the respect" for its citizens' lives "that the Israelis have for theirs."
Lebanese bloggers found bitter irony in the failure of their leaders to accomplish very much and yet find the time to rhetorically blast Israel. Lebanonesque (lebanonesque.blogspot.com) printed a local news item about a meeting of the country's National Dialogue, which "failed to solve any of their own country's problems ... but they did manage to agree that the international community should step in to halt Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip." A contributor noted sadly that "Arab 'leaders' are following in the grand tradition of posturing and emitting hot air while unable/unwilling to deliver bread to their own people."
Several progressive Arab blogs quoted approvingly from the comments page of the satellite news channel Al-Arabiya. An article titled "Where is the Arab Brain?" and signed by "A Wise Muslim" beseeched Arab leaders to stop supporting terrorism and start helping their own people. "The Arab leaders cheat and lie their people and make them holocaust fuel to their wars with Israel to divert their people from their national and democratic rights," the writer argues, adding, "Continuing the war with Israel is an advantage for Arab rulers and not their people."
Syrian democrats also maintain that their government should stop supporting terrorism, particularly by playing host to Hamas leaders. After Israeli jets entered Syrian airspace and flew low over the home of Syrian President Bashar Assad, someone identified only as Fares wrote at amarji.blogspot.com, a Syrian reformer's blog, "Now even myself for the first time ever I applaud an Israeli action. ... Israel by this action has shown that it does not want to harm Syria. ... (It is) time for Syrians to pick the message up and stop supporting radicals and terrorists."
A recurring theme among many who want regime change in their own countries is a demand that their leaders stop supporting terrorists.
Hamas itself came under withering fire from several writers, including many who expressed impassioned support for Palestinians. In the Al-Arabiya page, someone asked, "What did Hamas expect" when it took the Israeli soldier? With concern for the Palestinians and little sympathy for Israel, he cries out, "the people in Gaza have enough troubles than to be occupied again due to the stupid, irresponsible actions of Hamas idiots."
Hamas leaders fall into the same category as other regional governments that "enrich themselves and enlarge their external bank accounts" while speaking about the "glories of Jihad and martyrdom," was the sentiment in an article quoted in the blog "Free Michel Kilo Now," a site named after a Syrian writer taken prisoner by the authorities in a recent crackdown against the opposition.
The majority of the writing on Arab blogs and other Internet commentary was in support of the Palestinians and highly critical of Israel. Still, Arab democrats are increasingly noting that, however much anyone sympathizes with Palestinians, there is little doubt that Arab autocrats, dictators and assorted rulers-for-life have long used the Palestinian cause as a thick cloak to cover up the deficiencies of their rule.
The Internet, it seems, is slowly drawing the threads off that cloak, making it transparent enough to reveal the ugly truth. This time, even an Israeli crackdown in the Palestinian territories has provided an opportunity to bring more attacks against Arab regimes.

Palestinian Arab self-death count: 21

Statistics you will not see mentioned in the mainstream media:

Number of Palestinian Arabs killed by other Palestinian Arabs since the Israeli incursion began: 21

Since my last posting about this on Friday, we have three members of a family killed by an Arab anti-tank missile, a bystander killed in an armed clash, a terrorist was killed while handling a bomb, and a police officer was assassinated.

In fact, far more Arab civilians have been killed by Palestinian Arabs since the incursion began than by Israel.

AP's bias of the day

The article says:

The Palestinians on Sunday blamed Israel, saying it fired the missile at the house. Israeli military officials, citing intelligence, said a Palestinian anti-tank missile inadvertently hit the house, located on the outskirts of Gaza City near the front lines.

The headline says:
Palestinians blame Israel for missile hit

Even though it would be exactly as accurate to say
Israel blames Palestinians for missile hit
and it would be even more accurate to say
Palestinian Arab anti-tank missile kills three Gazans
along with some background information about the sheer number of anti-tank missiles smuggled into Gaza over the past year.

But that would require the AP to actually seek truth rather than even-handedness and fitting the facts into their pre-written script.

Knesset Member Wasal Taha, corresponding publicly with internet surfers on the Arabic-language IslamOnline site, said he repeatedly advised PA terrorists to battle and kidnap Israeli soldiers.

MK Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party), who last week submitted a bill to negate Knesset membership to MKs who support terrorists, said that Taha's "traitorous" remarks are further proof that Israeli democracy must protect itself.

According to a report in Maariv newspaper today, Taha told surfers on Thursday that he repeatedly advised the PA Arabs to stop shooting and targeting civilians, and to concentrate on IDF targets. An English translation of Maariv's Hebrew translation of Taha's Arabic words:
"We told them more than once that the Palestinians, who are subjected to murder and ongoing crimes on the part of the Israeli army, have two options: One is to explode and kill civilians - and these are much easier operations. The second option is the military option, in the framework of which a military unit from the resistance [i.e., terrorist infrastructures - ed.] is established in order to break into a military camp, clash with the soldiers and battle them and take them and the conquest into captivity."

How exactly can Israel let this traitorous scum remain in Knesset? What definition of "democracy" allows those in government to actively support and advise the enemy?