Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Which country will collapse first?

Ahmadinejad said that he feels that Israel will soon collapse.

Let's do a quick comparison on some major economic indicators for Israel and Iraq (from the CIA World Factbook):

	Israel	Iran
GDP per capita	$25,000	$8,400
Unemployment rate	9%	11.2%
Population below poverty line	21%	40%
Gini index (rate of inequality between richest and poorest)	34	43
Inflation	1.3%	13.5%
Industries	high-technology projects (including aviation, communications, computer-aided design and manufactures, medical electronics, fiber optics), wood and paper products, potash and phosphates, food, beverages, and tobacco, caustic soda, cement, construction, metals products, chemical products, plastics, diamond cutting, textiles, footwear	petroleum, petrochemicals, textiles, cement and other construction materials, food processing (particularly sugar refining and vegetable oil production), metal fabrication, armaments

And these numbers are from 2005 and earlier. 2006 was a spectacular year for the Israeli economy, especially considering a war and constant political turmoil.

Meanwhile, Iran has a 40% poverty rate. Even though Iranians outnumber Israelis by 10-1, Israel has more cell phones!

Which country seems more likely to collapse?

PalArabs just as peaceful in the new year (updated)

Besides the two deaths reported yesterday (a 57-year old mechanic found dead and a "work accident") in the PalArab self-death watch, there were two bodies found today: a 14 year old boy who was beaten and shot in the Nuseirat camp, and a 40-something woman who was beaten to death in Jabaliya. Our count since Operation Summer Rains is at 209; our 2007 count is at 4.

Keep in mind that I monitor about 5 PalArab news sources and typically stories like these only show up in one. If brutal murders are only mentioned incidentally the way typical newspapers would mention minor traffic accidents you can be sure that I am missing many other Arab killings in the territories. In addition, the main "human rights" website that used to be pretty consistent in reporting these incidents (as examples of "misuse of weapons and security chaos") has itself given up, with no updates for over a week now. Another "human rights" organization that tried to list all internal PalArab deaths by gunfire has not updated its list since November.

And B'Tselem only lists deaths that they can say are related to the intifada.

UPDATE: It appears that three members of the PA police were killed as they tried to storm a "militant" house suspected of housing the kidnapped AFP photographer. (Two dead mentioned in the story linked, a third mentioned in Maan News Arabic article.) Abbas blamed Hamas who denied it.

Meanwhile, a Fatah terrorist was killed in northern Gaza and a woman bystander was killed as well (same Haaretz article.)

So our numbers are now 214 since Summer Rains and 9 dead already this year.

UPDATE 2: Another woman killed, counts up to 215 and 10.
UPDATE 3: A bodyguard for the PA Interior Minister decided to moonlight as a bombmaker, since that is a respectable side job for a government aide. Unfortunately his bomb blew up and this evening, he succumbed to his injuries. So we are now at 216 and 11, making this New Year quite explosive.

What do PalArab kids want for 'Eid? Toy guns!

In a culture that worships violence, in a place where killers are lionized, in an area where manlihood is defined by murder and mayhem - is it any wonder that the next generation is growing up so dysfunctionally?

It is the plastic toy gun season again. Eid Al-Adha brings the money and the children rush to the shops to purchase the gun they have had picked out for months. But these are not just any guns. Born, and being raised, under military occupation is rearing a generation of sophisticates in the weapons business. (Notice that the author doesn't mention the fact that there are terrorists with guns and rockets on every street corner, and tries to blame the PalArab love of guns on "occupation". -EoZ)

Omar is a child from the northern West Bank's Nablus. He chose a plastic M16 for 150 shekels collected from his uncles for Eid Al-Adha. His sister chose the same.

Mohammed Salah Abu Wardeh from Nablus' Balata Refugee Camp chose a Kalashinkov, designed to resemble the real thing. The name is emblazoned on its side and although his mother told him that just two days ago the neighbor children were injured playing with toy guns, he bought it anyway.(Does this mean that these "toy guns" shoot BBs or the like? No matter! - EoZ)

The plastic guns are omnipresent in camps, villages, towns and cities on holidays. In the northern West Bank's town of Assira Al-Shamaliya the football field becomes a military theatre. Yousuf Al-Sawalhi, a student at Nablus' Al-Najah University, said that every young child carries a plastic weapon on the first day of Eid.

Hussein Kamel is a school counselor in Nablus and says that the phenomenon is linked to the political situation and the news children watch everyday, on the television and in front of their homes and schools. Kamel says that he is concerned that the new generation will grow up violent after seeing nothing but suffering and playing nothing but death.

Notice that the parents are the ones buying these toy weapons for their children. But the word "responsibility" does not seem to translate to Arabic very well.

Gaza terrorists try to aim rockets during Jewish holidays

The Arabic Maan news agency has an interview on the "inside story" of the terrorists who launch rockets towards Israel. The autotranslate is very poor so I will try to quote it and correct it as best as I can, but the article makes the terrorists sound heroic, as usual:

The cat-and-mouse game between Israel and the Palestinian Arab rocket launchers has resumed after a short lull.

A group of Palestinians, three to four young men in the prime of their lives, prepare their missiles to be fired at Israeli targets and then must disappear in seconds into Gaza outside the reach of the Israeli army, which monitors their missiles as they are shot on their way to settlements in the western Negev, but it was too late for Israel to respond.

Maybe the Palestinian rockets are primitive but they certainly leave the Israeli army without recourse, and they impose terror and fear on the population of the south of the country. The members of the Palestinian cells are not intimidated by Israel and its army and always find enough time for press interviews that turned them into TV stars in Europe and other continents.

In this context found the commander of a group of missiles, known as Abu Hamza, had enough time to give the French news agency, "a. B, "an interview which he spoke of how their work and fear of the Israeli army, separated as much as possible for the cat and mouse game between the two parties to the conflict.

The bearded commander of the cell Abu Hamza "has just launched seven rockets, the Israelis tried all ways of aircraft and aircraft unmanned aerial vehicles and helicopters and land invasions in order to stop the firing of rockets but to no avail and we raise the level of our ongoing and now we can launch our far beyond, which will help us to a range of sites somewhat further away from the battle lines where aircraft can reach us."

Despite the differences and conflicts between the Palestinian factions, it did not affect the cells firing rockets, which carries out its functions in collaboration and coordination among the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Islamic Jihad groups in the central efforts of the firing of rockets at Israeli targets, in contrast with what comes from the political dispute in the street. The atmosphere of friendliness and love dominates between the cells firing rockets.

Came to the press interview commanding one field commander Abu Hamza and another known as Abu Jabal and revealed for the first time before the press modus operandi as Abu Hamza "is our men erected missile platforms and withdraw rapidly. There is a group responsible for the firing of rockets and the second secures the protection of the launch."

They cannot fire the rockets towards any specific targets. They know that the range is between 10-20 kilometers but where the rockets hit is up to God.

Abu Hamza and Abu Jabal say they have "consistently employed great efforts and time to identify a time of launching rockets. They prefer the early morning hours or the early hours of the evening for the implementation of the bombing operations. Abu Hamza says "the hours morning or evening are the hours in which the movement of the Israelis is greatest, as well as Jewish holidays are our favorite tool for a religion. We are trying shelling during and well as when we know from the media on the visit of the commander or the Israeli official trying to do of aerial bombardment. "

UPDATE: AFP has the article in English - but translates "Jewish holidays" as "public holidays," something that the autotranslate would not have gotten wrong. So AFP apparently purposefully mistranslated the interview so as not to add a religious dimension to the Islamic Jihad/Fatah terrorists.

"Mujahideen Secret" - Terrorist encryption

The MEMRI blog reports

On January 1, 2007 the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) announced the imminent release of new computer software called "Mujahideen Secret." According to the advertisement for the software (see below), it is "the first Islamic computer program for secure exchange [of information] on the Internet," and it provides users with "the five best encryption algorithms, and with symmetrical encryption keys (256 bit), asymmetrical encryption keys (2048 bit) and data compression [tools]."

This is probably good news.

The best encryption algorithms take years to create, and they are made public so cryptographers can try to find flaws. If the terrorists don't trust Western encryption and they wrote their own, almost certainly it has enough holes that the West's code-breakers will blow it open in a few days.

It is also entirely possible that the entire program was written by Western espionage services to begin with and it has a backdoor built in and is being marketed to the terrorists.

Either way, chances are that the big Internet sniffers at the NSA can recognize when messages are being passed with this encryption and the very existence of such messages automatically makes the endpoints suspect, so they will then know what to watch.

So - hooray for Islamist encryption!

Huge demand for Saddam photos by PalArabs

From "Palestine News Network:"

In a show of solidarity with the executed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hundreds of Palestinian homes have put his picture on their walls. Many already had them as Hussein was considered a hero to many, seen as one of the few world leaders who would stand up to the United States. He was also generous morally and financially to Palestinians in general.

Photography studios in the northern West Bank's Nablus are reporting dozens of young men coming in asking for copies of existing images of Hussein in different sizes to frame for their homes.

At the Cairo Studio in central Nablus City some customers are bringing in small pictures of the late Iraqi President asking for them to be enlarged for display.

With tens more copies distributed in meetings, it is still not enough. The Nawwas Restaurant in eastern Nablus' Balata Refugee Camp, the photo of large-scale wooden image of Hussein is being photographed, and those photos are being enlarged.

Dozens of young men have asked for the traditional Palestinian embroideries to be done in the image of Hussein. This is what happened with the passing of the late President Yasser Arafat and the assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

As we've mentioned before, you can tell a lot about a society by looking at who they consider heroes.

Cuckoo Ahmadinejad aide: Hitler was Jewish and helped create Israel

From YNet:

Just when you thought the Iranian leadership could stoop no further: A top advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed in an interview with Iranian website Baztab that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's parents were both Jewish and that Hitler himself was one of the founders of the State of Israel.

In the interview, translated by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) Mohammad-Ali Ramin, a chief aide to Ahmadinejad, told Baztab that Hitler's paternal grandmother was a Jewish prostitute and his father even kept his Jewish name until finally changing it to Hitler when he was 40.

I dunno, I think the Ahmadinejad/ape theory holds a bit more water.

Israel saving the planet. Again.

Who else would think of raising fish - in the desert?

KIBBUTZ MASHABBE SADE, Israel — The day’s coppery last light reflects off the backs of sea bass swimming in fish ponds lined in neat rows on this desert farm.

Fish farming in the desert may at first sound like an anomaly, but in Israel over the last decade a scientific hunch has turned into a bustling business.

Scientists here say they realized they were on to something when they found that brackish water drilled from underground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proved an ideal match.

“It was not simple to convince people that growing fish in the desert makes sense,” said Samuel Appelbaum, a professor and fish biologist at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the Sede Boqer campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

“It is important to stop with the reputation that arid land is nonfertile, useless land,” said Professor Appelbaum, who pioneered the concept of desert aquaculture in Israel in the late 1980s. “We should consider arid land where subsurface water exists as land that has great opportunities, especially in food production because of the low level of competition on the land itself and because it gives opportunities to its inhabitants.”

The next step in this country, where water is scarce and expensive, was to show farmers that they could later use the water in which the fish are raised to irrigate their crops in a system called double usage. The organic waste produced by the cultured fish makes the water especially useful, because it acts as fertilizer for the crops.

Fields watered by brackish water dot Israel’s Negev and Arava Deserts in the south of the country, where they spread out like green blankets against a landscape of sand dunes and rocky outcrops. At Kibbutz Mashabbe Sade in the Negev, the recycled water from the fish ponds is used to irrigate acres of olive and jojoba groves. Elsewhere it is also used for irrigating date palms and alfalfa.

The chain of multiple users for the water is potentially a model that can be copied, especially in arid third world countries where farmers struggle to produce crops, and Israeli scientists have recently been peddling their ideas abroad.

Dry lands cover about 40 percent of the planet, and the people who live on them are often among the poorest in the world. Scientists are working to share the desert aquaculture technology they fine-tuned here with Tanzania, India, Australia and China, among others.

“Each farm could run itself, which is important in the developing world,” said Alon Tal, a leading Israeli environmental activist who recently organized a conference on desertification, with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and Ben-Gurion University, that brought policy makers and scientists from 30 countries to Israel.

“A whole village could adopt such a system,” Dr. Tal added.

At the conference, Gregoire de Kalbermatten, deputy secretary general of the antidesertification group at the United Nations, said, “We need to learn from the resilience of Israel in developing dry lands.”

Israel, long heralded for its agricultural success in the desert through innovative technologies like drip irrigation, has found ways to use low-quality water and what is considered terrible soil to grow produce like sweet cherry tomatoes, peppers, asparagus and melon, marketing much of it abroad to Europe, especially during winter.

Imagine thousands of Israelis, more than eager to teach their innovations, fanning out from Yemen to Morocco, teaching people how their lives can improve, how they can not only grow their own food but export it, how their economies can grow from industries other than oil.

Imagine how much Western investment would be attracted to industries that Israelis could start in Arabia, employing tens of thousands of Arabs.

Imagine how much better life would be in Arab countries if they didn't teach their children that Jews and Zionists are evil, if they didn't incite their people to hate, if they would accept the idea that a Jewish state in their midst at peace with them can make their own lives better.

Alas.....it is very, very hard to imagine all this.

So who will benefit? Countries like Tanzania, India, Australia and China. The Arab world will be left behind yet again, because of their stubbornness and misplaced "pride."

(Other "Israel saving the world" articles here and here.)

Arab sheep

This story came out yesterday and got a fair amount of play in the J-sphere:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: The recent fighting between Hamas and Fatah militants did not just play out in the streets of the Gaza Strip. The rival groups also pummeled each other over the airwaves, calling each other's fighters "mercenary death squads," "child killers" and even "Zionists."

The harsh rhetoric, coupled with the stations' ability to quickly rally their armed supporters in the streets, has led to fears that the local disc jockeys could fan the flames of the recent violence into a full-blown of civil war.

"If we wanted, we could burn down Gaza," said a smiling Ibrahim Daher, director of Aqsa Radio, the voice in Gaza of the Islamic militant group Hamas.
...
"Radio is in every house, every car and every street. It can cause a revolution or quell one. That's a dangerous role," said Salah al-Masri, director of Al-Quds Radio, funded by the radical Islamic Jihad militant group.

"I bet you, in a few hours, I can orchestrate a protest. The question is what kind. We can launch a protest against the Israeli occupation, or at (Abbas), or fire rockets," he said.

The subtext is that Palestinian Arabs have a hard time thinking for themselves. If the radio tells them to do something, a large number will unthinkingly do it.

This is apparent throughout the Arab world. The "Arab street" is a myth largely because the governments that control the media can make the "street" do anything they want them to do. One only has to look at how Egypt manipulated their people to support Camp David in the late 70s and then turn around in an instant to turn them back against Israel. Massive rallies appear out of nowhere whenever the current dictator decides it would help nudge the West in whichever direction he wants.

The word "sheep" comes to mind because I saw a very telling, and very sad, posting at ProgressiveIslam.org yesterday, the the site's slogan is "Sheep are for `Eid."

The posting was from an Islamic woman in a polygamous marriage who says that she would prefer if her husband would have an affair rather than take on another wife.

While the two have little to do with each other, there is a fundamental problem with people who do things and accept things without any critical thought. Those people are nothing more than pawns, and too often they are accidental players in a very deadly global game.

(This of course is not only an Arab or Muslim problem. Too many people even in the West will unquestioningly accept truths without the slightest bit of skepticism. But the problem is far worse in places where there is simply no opportunity to think independently while remaining safe.)

All PalArabs are united - in condemning Saddam's execution

Fatah and Hamas might be fighting and lots of other groups may be building their own armies, but Palestinian Arabs are united on one topic: that Saddam Hussein was their hero.

According to Hamas' Ramattan "news" agency, every single PalArab group condemned his execution, including Fatah, Hamas, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, Islamic Jihad, and the the Abu Rish Brigades.

It is always gratifying to see that they can agree on something.

Meanwhile, a "mysterious explosion" (which means "work accident") in Gaza killed two PalArabs in Gaza City and seriously injured three others, bringing my count of violent PalArab self-deaths since Summer Rains to 205.

UPDATE: Maan News (Arabic) points out that not all have been vocal in condemning Saddam's execution:

The Palestinian leadership is silent ... Abu Mazen does not want to anger Kuwait and Ismail Haniya does not want to antagonize Iran.

UPDATE 2: Death count at 207 as the first from the New Year becomes known - a 57 year-old car mechanic with many gunshot wounds, and Ramattan reports:

The killing of a Palestinian and injuring two others mysterious explosion in the north of the Gaza Strip - 2/1/2007 13:0-

PalArabs say again that Arafat was murdered

Here's an object lesson in how activist "journalism" can create lies out of whole cloth.

Stephen Lendman, who writes for far-left rags like Counterpunch, claims to have unearthed evidence from a French book by the late Uri Dan that claims that Ariel Sharon assassinated Yasir Arafat. The Palestinian Arab has been highlighting this story, although it has barely created a ripple in the West.

Let's look a little closer at what Lendman writes:

Former Longtime Confidant Accuses Ariel Sharon of Assassinating Yasser Arafat - by Stephen Lendman

Longtime and now recently deceased confidant to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Uri Dan, published a book in France that may have been his 2006 one titled Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait in which he accused the former prime minister of assassinating Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat by poisoning him.

OK, Lendman is saying straight out that Dan accused Sharon of assassinating Arafat. Here's Lendman's evidence:

Dan claimed Sharon got approval from George Bush by phone early in 2004 to proceed with his plan after he told the US president he was no longer committed to "not" liquidating the Palestinian leader who then was under siege and practically incarcerated in what remained of his Ramallah compound, most of which had already been destroyed by the Israelis in a lawless act of retribution against him.

So his evidence is that Sharon felt that he was allowed to kill Arafat. That's it. He adds stupid irrelevant (and well-known) facts to buttress this idiotic argument:

Based on his record during his tenure as Texas governor, when he authorized more death row inmate executions than any US governor in history (and was called by some the Texecutioner), this revelation should come as no surprise. It's even clearer based on Ariel Sharon's boast once about his relationship with George Bush saying: "We have the US president under our control."

Of course Lendman, completely out of evidence and completely unbound by journalistic integrity, throws in a complete fabricated quote from Sharon (and he doesn't even get the fabricated quote right!)

Arafat died in Paris on November 11, 2004 at age 75. He was taken there on October 29 that year and hospitalized for treatment for an undiagnosed illness that began developing in April and became serious enough for him to need special care. It may have already been too late when he arrived as he slipped into a coma on November 3 and remained in that state till his death eight days later from what was explained at the time as complications from a blood disorder. Indeed it may have been true if his blood was poisoned by a substance able to work slowly and from which no cure was possible at least once the former Palestinian leader arrived in Paris.

To those knowledgeable about Israel's history since it became a state in 1948 and earlier, this revelation, if true, should come as no surprise.

In other words, Uri Dan said no such thing (and Lendman isn't even sure if he has the right book!) but that's enough for this ersatz "journalist" to make wild, unfounded accusations.

Even funnier is that all of this information had been widely available in 2004:

But Uri Dan, a Sharon confidant, wrote in November 2004 that he remembered meetings in 1982 held by Sharon, then defense minister, in his Tel Aviv office "in which he asked the heads of the Mossad when they would finally carry out Prime Minister Menachem Begin's order to eliminate Arafat."

In September 2003, Sharon's vice prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said of Arafat that "killing him is definitely one of the options." He added: "We are trying to eliminate all the heads of terror, and Arafat is one of the heads of terror."

There have been reports in the Israeli press of a secret cabinet decision made in late 2003 to eliminate Arafat, which Dan describes as "a deliberately vaguely worded decision to remove Arafat, since he was an obstacle to peace." Officials have hinted that operational plans were drawn up to eliminate Arafat, although they say no action was taken.

Under American pressure, Sharon agreed simply to isolate Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters after the Israeli military operation to retake control of the West Bank in the spring of 2002.

But Sharon himself said he informed President George W. Bush on April 14, 2004, that he no longer felt bound by his promise to Bush in March 2001 not to harm Arafat, Dan says.

"President Bush replied that it would perhaps be best to leave Arafat's fate in the hands of the Almighty. Sharon said that one should sometimes help Him."

It is no surprise then, Dan concluded, that many Palestinians "are spreading a conspiracy theory that Israel poisoned Arafat."

Now, if Sharon had ordered the assassination fo Arafat it wouldn't bother me in the least, but Lendman has uncovered no evidence at all. That doesn't stop him from publishing it everywhere he can find, thinking he has a scoop, and it doesn't stop the paranoid PalArabs and their terror supporters from taking the story and running with it.
The Ma'an "news" agency added a detail:

>Another writer, Amnon Kabilok, wrote a revision of the book which is entitled 'Sharon,' in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He inquired how Uri Dan knew about the sickness of Arafat and its causes and symptoms months in advance of the deceased's symptoms appearing.

Amnon said that while reviewing a book by Uri Dan, he received the news that the author of that book has passed away. He also said that he struggled to get a copy of the book, which he finally obtained with the help of a French friend.

So this Kabilok was writing a revision of Dan's book, apparently without meeting Dan (who only died last month), but he didn't have a copy of the book he was revising. Yes, this all makes sense!

This is the state of terror journalism - know the facts before you look for evidence, and then make the "evidence" fit the facts. (Of course, this seems to be the state of mainstream journalism as well.)

So now the PalArab press is filled with new accusations that they claim Sharon's friend and confidante stated.

And they are, simply, lying.

New Year 1937 Eve:Toscanini and the Palestine Orchestra

1936 was a rough year for the Jews of Palestine. There were Arab riots, strikes and many terror attacks.

But the Jews did not whine nor did they quit. They fought mightily to live their lives to be as normal as possible even in situations where a bullet could come from anywhere and end any of their lives.

In one representative article in the Palestine Post, we see that Hebrew University was going forward with plans to expand even though students and faculty had been murdered by Arabs that year (All articles here are from the December 31, 1936 Palestine Post):

In the end of the year, the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini came to Jerusalem (at his own expense) to conduct in what was considered a hugely important cultural event to the Palestinian Jews as the coming out of the Palestine Orchestra. (Notice thatneither the ads nor the articles even mention Toscanini's first name; he was that well-known and revered that it was simply not necessary.)

Sadly, the bulk of the article is not available in the Palestine Post archives, but it is clear that the concert series was a smashing success. (One letter writer to the Post did complain about the actions of the press photographers at the previous week's concert, though.)

The Haifa concert on New Year's Eve was sold out:

Haifa residents could enjoy a traditional New Year's party afterwards:

And due to popular demand, an additional concert was scheduled for Jerusalem:

TIME magazine described one concert:

As a full Palestine moon rode one evening last week over Tel Aviv, exclusively Jewish city, the Hebrew Sabbath ended and thousands of Jews began to move toward the Levant Fair Grounds. There they packed the Italian Pavilion to capacity to hear great Arturo Toscanini lead Palestine's first civic orchestra through its first performance. Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, the British High Commissioner, brought with him a party of notables. Open-shirted German immigrants gathered in rowboats on the adjacent Yarkon River. A few Arab fishermen paddled quietly toward shore, listened respectfully outside the pavilion walls which are still pitted by Arab bullets.

Inside those walls Arturo Toscanini was proving again his art, and allaying the fears of those who had heard the orchestra rehearse. A week prior it had been ragged, particularly in winds & strings. But the great master made the Brahms Second come out so clear and controlled. Schubert's Unfinished Symphony sing with such freshness that the audience could forget the flocks of frightened sparrows which swooped and twittered above their heads. There was no raggedness when, partly as a taunt to Nazi Germany, he led them through a scherzo by Jewish Felix Mendelssohn.

The Palestine symphony was grateful to Toscanini for coming all the way to make its debut a success. But all Tel Aviv knew and did not forget that Violinist Bronislaw Huberman was the man who made its debut a possibility. Touring Palestine in December 1935. Huberman, a Polish Jew, was impressed by the attendance and enthusiasm of natives & exiles who came to hear his violin concerts. He determined to build for them an orchestra at Tel Aviv, their brave new cultural capital, and resigned his Vienna teaching post to do so. Already in Palestine, or easily available all over Europe, were scores of refugee Jewish musicians. It was easy to get, as permanent administrators of the new orchestra's trust fund, such influential Jews as Financier Israel Sieff of London, Belgian Industrialist Dannie Heineman. Palestine's Lieut. Col. Frederick Hermann Kisch. Palestine's top-notch lawyer, Solomon Horowitz. Dr. Albert Einstein took the honorary presidency of the U. S. branch of the organization.

The Palestine Symphony Orchestra now numbers 72. Germans make up about half the number, the rest are Poles and Russians. Six are natives of Palestine which has several competent music schools but welcomes the new orchestra as its only permanent symphony. So many first-desk musicians are playing in it that critics expect the Palestine Symphony to rank soon among the first four orchestras in the world. Impresario Huberman is proud to have engaged for the forthcoming season such guest artists as Violinist Adolf Busch and Cellist Pablo Casals. After Toscanini takes the orchestra to Jerusalem, Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria this season, Issay Dobrowen, former conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, Hans Wilhelm Steinberg, onetime director of the Frankfort Opera, and Michael Taube, former leader of famed German ensembles, will replace him on Jewry's proudest podium.

For a people who desire and celebrate life, a few terror attacks will not break their will. In many ways, it makes them more determined than ever to live their lives exactly the way they want to.

For people who are raised in a culture of death, however, one will be hard-pressed to find any similar stories.

Of course Ellison should swear on the Koran

The controversy over Keith Ellison's desire to use a Koran to swear in as a member of Congress has raised a number of criticisms, most notably (and controversially) from Dennis Prager. A very good roundup of all points of view can be seen in the Wikipedia article on the topic.

From everything I've read, Prager is wrong and inconsistent in many areas of his article. Most of them were addressed by Eugene Volokh. But there is one aspect of this story that I haven't seen mentioned.

The purpose of the book that some (not all) public officials swear on is to show the seriousness of the oath, not as an affirmation of the contents of the book. The use of a Bible or Koran or Tanakh is tangential to the point of the oath - which is, in this case, to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Here is the text with the words in italics not being necessary:

I do solemnly swear (affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

If Ellison believes that the Bible is a corrupt and incorrect document, which is what Islam states at least in reference to the Old Testament, then insisting that he take the above oath on a book he doesn't believe in is much worse than his swearing to uphold the Constitution on a book that he believes passionately in. In other words, his swearing on a book he doesn't believe in has the same import to him as swearing on a comic book.

The fear that some have about Ellison is whether he, as a Muslim, has the ability to uphold the Constitution. There may or may not be contradictions between Ellison's flavor of Shari'a and the US Constitution, and that is a reasonable question to ask (just as some worried that JFK would put his Catholicism above his patriotism.) But his swearing on a Koran has nothing to do with that - on the contrary, it indicates that at least to him, the two are not mutually exclusive, a conclusion that could not be made if he was forced to "swear" on a book he has no belief in.

Slightly more problematic is the idea that he will replace "So help me God" with "Allahu Akhbar." While I have no problem with the words "God is great" themselves, it is very troubling to think that the very words that have been shouted to accompany the murders of thousands of Americans and other innocents worldwide should be uttered in Congress. This is not a logical argument but an emotional one, but it is one that I cannot personally let go so easily.

The Times of London "censors" Iran!

Today's Times of London printed a letter from the Iranian ambassador to Britain. Iran is upset that the Times watered down their hysterical rhetoric, and, frankly, so am I.

It would be much better for readers to see the spit flying out of the Iranians' mouths when evaluating the merit of their arguments. (Calling it censorship is, of course, nuts - editors have the right to edit. But the Times edits seriously downplays the insanity of the argument.)

Here's the letter that the Times published, along with a reconstruction (in bold) of the parts that Iran sent based on this IRNA article:

Sir, Iran (letter, Dec 26) is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and has categorically rejected development, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons on ideological and strategic grounds, while on December 11 the Prime Minister of Israel boasted about his regime's nuclear weapons ~~appeared to admit that his country had nuclear weapons, although his aides later denied this.~~

For decades the international community, especially countries in the Middle East, has been aware of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, but the reversal of the hypocritical policy of “strategic ambiguity” has posed a serious threat to the security of the region.

On the other hand, those governments which have pushed the Security Council to take measures against Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme have systematically prevented it from taking any action against Israel for refusing to abide by the NPT ~~to nudge Israel towards submitting itself to the rules governing the nuclear non-proliferation regime~~.

There is a famous Persian saying that 'Truth is bitter whether you like it or not.' The root causes of all the troubles and miseries are Israel's long and dark catalogue of atrocities, such as occupation, aggression, militarism, state-terrorism, crimes against humanity. It is these which pose a uniquely grave threat to regional and international peace and security.
HAMID BABAEI
Chargé d’Affairs
Embassy of Iran
London SW7

Babaei's screed seems almost reasonable in the way the Times presented it. Only in its original context can one see that his main point was the last paragraph, where he blames everything from Arab poverty to Saddam Hussein and the Saudi kleptocracy on Israel.

My best of 2006 (streamlined)

This was an interesting exercise. I tried going through all my posts and found dozens that I liked - it is much harder to pick only a few than I expected.

It was worthwhile, though - because looking at my posts from months ago, many of which I had forgotten about, allowed me to evaluate my posting style a little more objectively and I must say that I am proud of this blog. I found relatively few posts that look incorrect or silly in retrospect - on the contrary, I think almost all of my longer essays could be posted today with little loss of relevance.

So I am arbitrarily choosing only some posts that people created trackbacks to in their own postings.

Thanks for reading!

The most moral army in history
Some of those female prisoners
The problem with the BBC
The perfect weapon
Using Israel's morality as a weapon
Building an economy under fire: The Jews of 1939