Iran's Thought Police (Omedia)

Every once in a while I find a website online that makes me feel redundant.

A Hebrew online journal, Omedia, has recently launched an English edition and so far it looks stellar. It is chock-full of well-written, serious political analysis, media criticism and historical context. In other words, it does what I attempt to do but much, much better.

Here is a recent fantastic article about the extent of censorship and thought-repression in Iran:

The Iranian Thought Police
Nir Boms and Niv Lilian

“Ignorance is power” wrote George Orwell in his novel “1984”, in his description of the thought police, which kept “bad” ideas away from good people. Throughout history, “Big Brother’s principle has been effective in eliminating undesirable ideas by isolating them from those who would use them. With no alternative thought or faith– the only available thought or faith will triumph. Good Morning Iran.

The Security Council’s decision to impose sanctions on Iran reflects the consensus building up against Iran’s intentions, which are no longer taken as innocent. However whereas the West has only just begun shutting down access to Iran through fruitless economic sanctions, Teheran beat everyone to it, and recently finished closing down possible channels of communication with the “vile West”. This policy recently blocked the “New York Times” website, the video clip site, “YouTube”, and the free encyclopedia site “Wikipedia”, all following on Iranian thought police orders.

Iranian internet providers were also ordered to narrow the bandwidth to 128 kb/sec, to prevent internet telephone communication (VoIP) and prevent people from downloading files. Add to this other measures like removing satellite dishes, actively blocking broadcast frequencies, and arresting bloggers and Iranian opposition activists, a dismal picture is obtained of Iranian freedom of expression and freedom of thought.

These measures will even further limit the maneuverability of students and researchers, who have also been hounded of late, and of opposition activist in Iran whose voices recently began to be heard again. As if all this isn’t enough, Iran's head of the Communication Development Agency announced that text messaging would also be monitored from now on. Big Brother's eye is always open.

Praising Indoctrination

For the Israeli public, Iran is presently perceived as a strategic-militaristic threat closely connected with weapons of mass destruction. However, the subject of Iran's most powerful weapon, mass repression and the blocking of the free movement of ideas and thoughts is missing from Israeli discourse. The Iranian regime is not only working to repress Western-liberal thought but also to export the revolution, including through familiar groups such as Hizbollah. Iran's influence is evident in Iraq, Africa, Lebanon, and closer to us, in the Palestinian Authority.

Ever since the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran has shone in propaganda, which it considers an important value. In the Iran-Iraq war, thousands of Iranian children were sent to the front with "keys to heaven" round their necks. They were sent to clear minefields and march before the soldiers to undermine enemy morale and show the Iranian people's determination. Those who died were declared martyrs and were guaranteed a place in the next world. 500,000 plastic keys were imported from Taiwan for this and many of them were used.

A new study by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace shows that Iranian textbooks speak of the "collective sacrifice" that will bring about the desired salvation. For example, an eighth grade textbook reads "The order of Jihad will be given by order of the prophet, the Imam, or the Muslim leader, and the Muslim army will defeat the army of the proud (the American enemy and its allies) in a holy war and pave the way for free preaching, awakening, and redemption."

There is A Partner

Despite this, the Iranian people, in contrast to its government, give the impression of being less radical and malevolent. The Iranians are mostly peace-loving though trampled by a fanatic, radical, separatist, religious government. Only last week, for example, we saw a successful student protest in Teheran, which despite strict security measures, managed to convey the message that Ahmadinejad was not wanted in an institution that respects knowledge and education.

The students, who represent the vast majority of Iranians under the age of thirty, are identified with the opposition, which is working to change the regime and make it more democratic.

The Iranian people–again, as opposed to its government–also finds ways to communicate with Israel. Daily, large numbers of Iranians respond to Israeli radio broadcasts in Persian by telephone and email. A new Jewish Agency website recorded over 55,000 hits in the first month, 50% of them from Iran (before Iranian censorship also discovered this site).

In the Iranian theater, there is a routine clash between fundamentalism and liberalism, freedom and dictatorial suppression. This is a struggle for Iranian public opinion – and not just in Iran. The propaganda war continues as does the fight for public opinion in countries of the region whose citizens could be influenced one way or another. On the one hand, it would be a dangerous threat to Israel and to the stability of neighboring regimes if Hizbollah's modus operandi were successfully copied to other borders such as Egypt or Jordan. On the other hand, there a few light ray in the form of critical new voices on television and across websites in the Arab and Muslim world.

Find A Good Listener

Precisely in these dark days, when all knowledge and thought channels are being blocked by Ahmadinejad's regime, it is all the more important to reach the Iranian public. Activities like Israeli radio broadcasts in Persian and the Jewish Agency website, which are aimed directly at the Persian people must continue.

For some reason, though, these issues were missing from Defense Minister Amir Peretz's budgetary demands. We can assume he realizes that Israeli radio broadcasts in Arabic cannot even be received in Jerusalem because of the lack of transmitters, and that the budget for printer paper and ink for the Iranian radio station's old printers ran out long ago. Which is a pity.

“Every citizen can be monitored by the police 24 hours a day and influenced by official propaganda when every other communication channel is closed. This was the first time it was possible not only to enforce complete submission to the will of the State, but also to force complete agreement on each and every matter."

This Orwellian vision of "1984" is now being practiced in Iran. We must not let the Iranian thought police win. The loud, clear voice of freedom of expression, as well as our own voice, must continue to resound even in the suburbs of Teheran.

Nir Boms is vice president of the Center for Freedom in the Middle East
Niv Lilian is deputy editor of the YNET computer and Internet channel

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When Italians bombed Tel-Aviv and Haifa

In 1940 and 1941 there were a number of air-raids on Haifa and Tel-Aviv by Italian planes, killing well over a hundred civilians.

It started on July 15, 1940, when an air raid on Haifa caused little damage and few casualties. But on July 24 a much more deadly air-raid killed over 50 Arabs and Jews:


Then, in September, a residential neighborhood in Tel Aviv was targeted, resulting in the deaths of over a hundred people:


Even so, as the article states:

Life was quickly resumed, cinemas opened as usual and within an hour of the raid cafes, including one which had its plate-glass windows blown out, again had their patrons.

The Italian bombers returned the following June for a series of raids again on Tel Aviv and Haifa betwen June 10-12, 1941, but with little effect. Both the residents and the British army were better prepared, and air raid shelters minimized casualties while the anti-aircraft fire downed at least one Italian bomber:

Haifa residents styled themselves to act as stoically as the Londoners under German attack, with people returning to work after sleepless nights in shelters and cinemas and cafes losing no business:

This is only a footnote in the history of World War II but it shows the resolve and pluck of the residents of Haifa and Tel Aviv in the line of fire.

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BBC Editor: Everything's Israel's fault

A great find by Stephen Pollard (hat tip: Backspin) on an internal BBC memo that is a briefing on what lies ahead in 2007 for the Israel/PalArab conflict.

Here's part of the memo with my comments:

From: Jeremy Bowen
To: Editorial Board; Newsg World-Bureaux-Eds; Newsg World Asseds; News Leadership Group; Mark Byford & PA; Simon Wilson-NEWS; Jerusalem Bureau;
Newsg World-Affairs-Unit
Sent: Fri Jan 05 15:16:16 2007
Subject: FW: Mini briefing on the Israeli and Palestinians

2007 has started as unpromisingly as 2006 ended. The outlook is bleak because of fundamental instabilities and weaknesses on both sides.

Israel's major military incursion into Ramallah on Thursday, killing four Palestinians after a botched arrest operation, was a reminder of the non stop pressures of the Israeli occupation. [On the same day, some 9 Palestinian Arabs were killed by each other, but that is not a "reminder" for anything for Bowen. -EoZ]

What is new in the last year, and will be one of the big stories in the coming twelve months, is the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting. [Notice how he is glamorizing the terrorists as being the unifying hope for Palestinian Arab society. -EoZ]

The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile.

The result is that internecine violence between Hamas and Fatah is getting worse. On Thursday six people were killed in clashes between them in Gaza. The death of a major figure on either side would spark something much more serious. [Bowen is saying that Palestinian Arabs are unthinking animals who cannot be held responsible for their murderous actions. When they slaughter each other, it is because of Israeli policies - they have no choice, according to Bowen. - EoZ]

...
Olmert wants to replace Peretz at the defence ministry with Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister. Barak is a retired general, former head of the Israeli army and its most decorated soldier. (Among his many exploits was disguising himself as a woman during a raid in Beirut to kill various Palestinians). The feeling in Israel is that 2007 will be a year of wars, so aside from coalition politics Olmert wants to have a warrior next to him when they make the tough decisions. The intray could include whether or not to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. [What an interesting example of Barak's experience - that he killed "various Palestinians" in 1973 who happened to be members of the PLO during its heyday of airline hijackings and terrorizing the West. - EoZ]

...
The political crises in Israel - and violent political disintegration among the Palestinians - are not just internal matters. They make it impossible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to engage in a meaningful political dialogue, assuming that their protestations that they want one are true. (The one meeting that Olmert has had with Mahmoud Abbas can hardly be called a process.) [One would imagine that the fact that the elected leader of the Palestinian Authority has said hundreds of times that he wants to see Israel destroyed is possibly a contributing factor to the lack of "meaningful political dialogue," but Bowen would say that it is only because of Israel's political crises and the PalArab political problems which we've already established were Israel's fault. - EoZ]

Only strong Israeli and Palestinian leaders would be able to make the tough choices necessary to relieve the serious pressures that are building up in the holy land. To persuade their people to make the necessary concessions, they would need a strong political base, which neither Olmert nor Abbas possess.

Because they are weak - many would say lame ducks - don't expect any progress. And since an uneasy status quo cannot hold, no political progress will equal more violence. [Again, worshiping at the altar of useless negotiations when one side has made it abundantly clear that they will never accept living permanently side-by-side with the other. - EoZ]

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How Arabs Think (Kuwait Times)

From Dr. Sami Alrabaa of the Kuwait Times (excerpts):

Some of us Arabs are polemic and demagogic. Either we love or hate. There is nothing in between. We are selective. We are masters of distorting facts. We pick out those ideas that suit us and deliberately ignore those that do not match our line of thinking. Differentiated thinking is unknown to us. Westerners who disapprove of the death penalty are abused by both Arabs who love Saddam Hussain and those who hate him. Ali Al-Baghli in Al-Qabas, Jan 6, rightly indicated that while Westerners disapprove of the death penalty out of the conviction that humans must not kill their fellow humans, they also condemn Saddam's appalling atrocities.

Arabs, whether they are democrats or totalitarians, wish their enemies to be smashed by all means. Our whole history has been stained by killing and murder. The four Caliphs after the death of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) were murdered. Pragmatism and compromise are alien to Arab culture. Either we love or we hate, and our enemy must be obliterated at all costs. Think of Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon. The Arab states have never been governed by the rule of law and established institutions. The constitution is not worth the papers it is written on.

...Having said all that, the Western dream toward establishing genuine democracy in Arab countries remains a dream, a project of gargantuan proportion. Paradigms of rationality do not work in the Arab world. Besides, history has shown that cultural transformations take generations if not centuries.

P.S. Soon I'm going to write an article about culture and success. Why are the Japanese, the South Koreans, and most recently, the Chinese and the Indians successful, wherever they are, but we Muslims are not?
drsami@kuwaittimes.net

In the interests of fairness I must say that the entire article is written very poorly and if it was bashing Israel I would have made merciless fun of his writing style. Nevertheless, it is a rare example of introspection in the Arab world and is welcome.

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Bizarre stats and slanderous implications

The "Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics" just released a housing survey of the territories, and leads with a bizarre and highly suspicious statistic:

Housing Conditions Survey Data 2006 indicate that 29,314 of households in the Palestinian Territory lived in houses that had been completely or partly damaged during the period 28\09\2000 to 15\06\2006

That number would mean 14 houses damaged or destroyed, day in and day out, over six years.

Notice the start date they choose is the first day of the intifada, but they carefully do not say that Israel damaged all these houses, just that they were damaged or destroyed. The choice of start date makes the accusation while the bureau can claim accuracy. But in fact, how many of these houses were damaged by Israel and how many by Palestinian Arabs themselves? How many were torched by rival families, rocketed by rival militias or simply burned by bored arsonists?

Another implication of this statistic is that the homes damaged in 2001 have not been repaired since then. Obviously, most have, and the families are living in normal houses now. But this is more dramatic because it makes it sound like the families are not living in their houses today because of (implied) Israeli aggression.

The definition of "damage" is never described, either. A bullet hole? Smoke? A jealous husband knocking his wife's head through a wall?

Then comes this anomaly that may shed some light:

However, the number is higher for Gaza Strip at 28,997 than the West Bank at 317 household.

Nearly 99% of the houses reported damaged are in the Gaza Strip. Makes one think that perhaps the house damage has little to do with "occupation," doesn't it?

Now after the sensationalist findings are out of the way and the foreign press draws the proper anti-Israel conclusions, the survey finds some other facts that don't exactly jive with the "poor densely-populated starving Palestinian Arab territory" meme:

Results show that 55.6% of households in the Palestinian Territory live in a house, while 40.8% live in apartments, compared to rates of 58.0% and 39.9% at the end of year 2000.

Results show that the percentage of households living in owned housing units in the Palestinian Territory is 81.5%, where as 11.5% of households live in rented housing units.

According to the results the average of housing density in the Palestinian Territory in general is 1.8 persons per room, this average was nearly the same in comparing with the year 2000.

Not exactly the Third World that one would think with the billions in aid that the PalArabs have received over the past decade. Most families own their own homes and the homes are not crowded.

Just another example of how facts and half-truths can be easily twisted and turned into propaganda.

UPDATE: Sure enough, the PalArab media are saying explicitly that these are all Israeli "house demolitions."

And Soccer Dad rightly points out in the comments that we don't know if these numbers include the wholesale demolition of the thousands of Jewish-owned houses in the territories from Israel's abandonment of Gaza.

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Hamas will get US weapons and money

As usual, Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily actually asks the terrorists questions, and they answer.

One wonders what the hundreds of other "reporters" in the area are doing with their time.

JERUSALEM – A portion of $86.4 million in aid the United States pledged last week to bolster security forces affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party will fall into the hands of the Hamas terror group, Hamas officials told WND.

Also, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a terror group allied with Hamas, told WND his organization is planning attacks against Israel using weapons recently transferred to Fatah by the U.S. and Egypt.

The Popular Resistance Committees leader said attacks using the foreign weapons are meant "to prove the Zionist-American conspiracy to bolster forces against us won't work."

"We will obtain the U.S. weapons," the Committees leader said.

According to documents revealed Friday, the Bush administration will provide $86.4 million to strengthen security forces loyal to Abbas, including Force 17, Abbas' security detail, which also serves as de facto police units in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Some members of Force 17 also are openly members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror organization, Fatah's declared "military wing."


Abu Oubaida, a spokesman for Hamas so-called "military wing," told WND his terror group will obtain any weapons transferred to Fatah militias or purchased by Fatah using the incoming U.S. aid.

"I am sure that like in the past, this $86 million from America will find its way to the Hamas resistance via the honorable persons in the Fatah security organizations, including in Force 17. I can confirm 100 percent that this money and purchased weapons will find its way to Hamas," said Abu Oubaida.

The Hamas spokesman and other Hamas officials said "scores" of Fatah militants have switched over to Hamas in recent months.

Sources close to Hamas said the Fatah militants, including members of Force 17, worked with Hamas after receiving larger paychecks from the terror group.

"When they join Hamas, they bring along their new weapons," said a Hamas source.

A senior Fatah security official in the Gaza Strip, speaking on condition his name be withheld, confirmed to WND Fatah has a "significant problem" of its militia members in Gaza joining Hamas.
...
A Committees leader told WND his group is planning terror attacks using American and Egyptian weapons recently transferred to Fatah and obtained by the Committees.

He said when the attacks occur, the Committees will announce the foreign weapons were used.

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The tiny minority of extremists

Today's cartoon in the Palestinian Arabic Maan News:

Maan is not an "extremist" news agency and their cartoonist is not the type that will put Nazi-like caricatures in the paper. It is the model of what would be considered mainstream and modern among the PalArabs by the West.

Although it has been pointed out countless times in the past, it is worth repeating and clarifying over and over again. This is what the cartoon signifies:

1. The mainstream Palestinian Arabs are not interested in living side-by-side with Israel; they are interested in eliminating Israel.
2. The mainstream Palestinian Arabs expect that their ultimate victory will be military.
   

One corrolary to these two statements is that any "peaceful" moves made by the mainstream PalArabs are tactical in order to get that much closer to their ultimate military victory over Israel.

Another corrolary is that those who are actually fighting now, namely terrorists targeting Israeli civilians, are the heroes in Palestinian Arab society.

Fatah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the other paramilitary groups may differ a bit over strategy, tactics and focus, but ultimately essentially nobody who calls themselves Palestinian nowadays would be the least bit offended by the cartoon above. On the contrary, it is quite mild and simply appears to be patriotic.

Yet its symbolism is clear - there is no room for Jews to control a single square inch of land in the Middle East.

When the mainstream adopts an extremist position, it is absurd to refer to some of them as "moderate." The fact that there are essentially no Palestinian Arabs who truly believe in a permanent peace with Israel mean that any concessions that Israel makes for "peace" are just small steps to Israel's destruction.

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Turnabout is fair play

Very often you will hear the Israel-bashing crowd throw in their favorite keywords, like "apartheid" and "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and "child killers" and on and on, ad nauseum.

A large part of this blog is of course dedicated to showing the truth and context behind what Israel does. But there is another way to look at these issues, which may be unusual but it also shows the hypocrisy of the bashers.

The other way is to find out exactly what the critic's definitions of these crimes are, and then to see whether they admit that even if they can twist words to mean that Israel is guilty of these crimes, that the side they support is far more guilty.

Genocide? No problem! Look at Hama, look at Black September, look at The Palestinian Arabs themselves. If Israel is guilty then Syria and Jordan and pretty much the entire Arab world is more guilty.

Ethnic cleansing? Sure! Look at how many Jews are in Arab countries nowadays and how many there were in, say, 1940. Look at what happened to Palestinian Arabs in Kuwait, and what's happening now to them in Iraq. (We're not even talking about European adventures.)

Apartheid? When Saudi Arabia doesn't allow churches to be built or Bibles to be seen? When Kurds and Copts are mercilessly persecuted? Go for it!

And of course, there are the children. When Israel kills a 16- or 17-year old who is shooting at them, it gets counted somberly as another "child" that Israel "murdered." But what is it when a child is the one being recruited to blow himself up - is there a word for that as well?

Israel Defense Forces soldiers arrested four members of the Fatah-aligned Tanzim movement in the West Bank city of Nablus early Sunday, in a raid that also yielded the discovery of two explosive belts.

The army said the operation had thwarted a suicide bombing planned in the coming days, and that the arrests included two masterminds of the attack. The would-be bomber, a 16-year-old boy, had been arrested previously, army officials said.

No matter how you want to frame the argument, Israel always comes out as being far more moral than the people that the Israel-bashers support - as long as they are being consistent.

Which, of course, they never are. It is much easier for them to compare Israel with some never-seen ideal, because that is the only way they can make Israel look bad. But if you ask them who they think is more moral, they shut up real fast. Otherwise, their heads might explode rather than their being forced to admit that they support some of the most sickening, immoral, murderous people in history.

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Morning links

If you haven't checked it out yet, Esser Agoroth's Haveil Havalim 101 is a must read.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach throws cold water on some post-high school yeshiva/seminary programs. (hat tip Life in Israel)

Charles Morse has an interesting take on Saddam's "Palestine is Arab" statement. I'm not sure if his statistics are right (saying the majority of Israelis are full or partly Arab Jews) since the Russian Jews came in the 90s.

Israel Matzav has a good analysis of the Sunday Times piece claiming Israel is planning to use tactical nukes on Iran.

Daled Amos reviews the year in Islamic terror, over at Soccer Dad.

The Jewish History Channel came by here and gave me a compliment, and I am returning the favor.

A completely nonsensical and bizarre rant about Illuminati, Jews, Wahhabis is at EtherZone. I only mention it because this is another of those insane conspiracy sites that Google deems to be "news."

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Abbas' support for terror

Reading a little between the lines of the news the past couple of days....

Mahmoud Abbas outlawed the Hamas militia (the "Executive Force") that have been fighting his Fatah-backed militias.

Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades terrorist group hold a massive rally supporting Abbas and "national unity."

Al Aqsa, of course, is responsible for countless terror attacks againstIsrael, both bombings and rockets.

Abbas never outlawed Al Aqsa, even though he at the very least has more influence over them at at most he is their leader. They can walk the streets of Palestan with their ski masks and RPGs without any fear from the "security forces." They can also fire rockets without fear that Abbas will stop them (Hamas has taken no credit for the past month's rocket attacks; they've all been Al Aqsa and/or Islamic Jihad.)

Is there any other possible conclusion than to say that Abbas supports terror?

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More chaos in Palestan

The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights announced that 23 had been killed during the week, as of this afternoon (of course, their English site is silent.) So my count of 22 was close.

In addition, 3 more were killed today, all Hamas supporters from the same family, along with assorted kidnappings, house bombings and more of the usual acts we've all come to expect from this proud people. Not to mention the point-blank shooting of a lecturer at A-Najah university at his house, also a Hamas supporter, who is now in serious condition.

Hamas is not standing still for this, and they announced that they're doubling the size of their now-illegal militia.

Our counts of PalArabs violently killed by each other, are now up to 231 dead since Summer Rains and 26 dead since January 1. (This death will not be counted by Mezan's methods above because this was a martyrdom operation, not from infighting.)

UPDATE: One of the people injured in a "work accident" in the end of December has gone on to meet his virgins in Paradise, because while he didn't manage to take any Jews with him, he gets credit for trying. So our count is now 232 and 27.

UPDATE 1/8: A 19-year old in Nablus playing with his gun got on the wrong end. 233 and 28.

UPDATE 1/9: Another died from injuries in the fighting last week. The AP story wrongly says that all the deaths were in Gaza - I documented one in the West Bank. 234 and 29.

UPDATE 1/10: A university student killed in a clan clash in a refugee camp north of Ramallah. 235 and 30.

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Palestinian Arabs killing each other - in 1938

The hundreds of murders of Palestinian Arabs by other Palestinian Arabs that I have been documenting for the past six months is nothing new. A very similar situation occurred from 1936-39.

The Arabs of Palestine tried on a few occasions in the 1920s and 1930s to rise up and destroy the Jews of Palestine, and things were very bad in 1936. Yet no matter what they did, the Jewish influence on the area kept increasing, Jews kept arriving and Jewish institutions thrived.
They then started killing each other in earnest. I'm not sure why - perhaps it was frustration at their impotence, perhaps because an entire generation had been raised to praise Arab murderers as heroes and therefore bloodshed itself became considered desirable, or maybe they simply started misplacing their hatred for Jews and the British onto any Arab that was too Western for their tastes. Nationalism and religion seems to have played a part but more as excuses rather than as root causes.

Either way, the amount of lawlessness that ensued looks very familiar to those of us who have been following "clan clashes" and the Fatah/Hamas civil war. Especially notice how many Arabs were killed for not wanting to join in with the terrorists, or for speaking out against the terrorists. Also note the left column, dealing only with the terror crimes of the previous day.




There are three more columns of dead Arab victims of Arab violence I didn't reproduce.

Whatever psychological reason one wants to hypothesize, one thing is the same then as now: the most extreme elements of Arab society are not dealt with adequately by more moderate Arabs (either out of fear or out of ideology.) This apathy is treated as carte blanche to accelerate the terror.

This could explain why so many Arab societies are either chaotic messes or autocratic dictatorships. There seems to be no real internal mechanism within Islam or Arab thinking to limit the influence of the terrorists, so either go the route of Egypt/Syria and repress everybody, or go the route of the PA and Somalia and let the foxes run the henhouse.

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And the "hits" just keep on coming!

Today's first fatal victim is Sheikh Adel Nassar, 50, who was shot many times after leaving a mosque where he gave a sermon. He was the "founder" of the Muslim Sunnis in Gaza, whatever that means, and it appears he was a critic of Hamas.

Also, here is a picture of the house that Hamas destroyed yesterday as they assassinated the PA security commander and much of his family:


Our counts of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other are now 227 since Operation Summer Rains and 22 since January 1.

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Mubarak's Gaza fears (JPost)

From an analysis by the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh:

Mubarak's biggest fear is that the Gaza Strip, which is entirely under the control of armed militias, could turn into a major base for global jihad and other terrorist groups.

Reports about al-Qaida terrorists who have infiltrated the Strip through the border with Egypt have left Mubarak and his top security officials extremely worried. These terrorists, who apparently work in cooperation with elements in Egypt's banned but powerful Muslim Brotherhood, are said to be very active among the Beduin population in Sinai.

Mubarak's merciless crackdown on al-Qaida cells in Sinai has forced some of the terrorists to flee to Gaza, where they have been welcome to use the training camps established on the ruins of some former settlements. The Egyptians fear that these terrorists will eventually return to Egypt to carry out attacks.

The absence of IDF troops along the Philadelphi Corridor, the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, has put Mubarak's regime at risk. The weapons smuggling industry that has flourished there in the aftermath of disengagement poses a serious threat, not only to Mubarak's regime but also to that of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Some PA security commanders are convinced the Egyptians are not doing enough to combat the smuggling. According to these commanders, the main reason for this is Mubarak's fear that the weapons, including tons of explosives, could end up in Cairo if they don't make their way to the Gaza Strip.

Notice the throwaway phrase "training camps established on the ruins of some former settlements."

The entire world never ceases to describe Israeli settlements as "obstacles to peace." Yet those horrendous Gaza settlements plus the Israeli investment in the industrial zone in Gaza gave thousands of Palestinian Arabs money and jobs.

Their being replaced by terrorist training camps is not the fodder of the thousands of pundits, politicians and reporters who could not bear the existence of Jews in Gaza. No one is coming forward and saying that perhaps the Palestinian Arabs' lives were better when the Jews were there. No one is describing the replacement of beautiful communities with grenades and rockets as a step backwards. There may be some tsk, tsking at what a shame it is that PalArabs can't get their act together but no one will admit that Israel's presence in Gaza was the golden age for average Palestinian Arabs there.

No, these know-it-alls learn nothing from the disintegration of Gaza and still insist that Israel must leave the West Bank as well.

For whose benefit? Certainly not for the average Arab there. Because Gaza today is what the West Bank will become if Israel leaves. Yet the only Arab voices that are being heard are the politicians and the terrorists. For a regular Arab who just wants to provide for his family to say otherwise makes him a "collaborator" subject to instant deadly "justice."

True peace can only come from a complete overhaul of Palestinian Arab society, from the corrupt and terrorist government through the inciteful media and the hate taught in schools, a complete change from the culture of death that celebrates mayhem and murder. The idea that Israeli concessions will bring peace while the society is so thoroughly screwed up is a joke.

But the West likes to solve problems quickly, and this penchant together with the virulent Jew-hatred endemic throughout Arab societies combine to create pressure on the only entity whose presence stabilizes the situation. This is, as can be seen in Gaza, a recipe for disaster, far worse than the "evil" of Jews living their lives in territories that Jews have held sacred for millenia.

Who in the West is willing to admit it?

UPDATE: See TCSDaily for a similar point.

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More Arabic/English dichotomy at Maan

I only recently discovered Maan News, which appears to be so far the best place to see breaking news in the territories.

But only in Arabic.

The English site was down during 'Eid and the New Year and only came back up today. But the English site contains very different news and opinions than the Arabic site.

First, look at the main picture on the Arabic site, which reflects the major news of the day - Hamas and Fatah killing each other and dozens dead and injured:


Now look at picture on the English site:


Israeli oppressors!

The Arabic site details the deaths of at least 7 people from infighting, the English site mentions only one.

The Arabic site includes a nonsensical editorial extolling Saddam and blaming the Zionists/"Chosen People" who control America for his death. (It also has a poem about him.) The article adds that the Jews are encouraging Shiite/Sunni violence.

The English site doesn't mention a word about Saddam or the PalArab grief over his death.

In other words, the Arabic site reflects the true way that Palestinian Arabs think, and the English site is nothing but propaganda.

Just like Wafa. Just like the Palestine News Network.

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Jefferson's Koran

Boker Tov, Boulder points to a news story from yesterday that Keith Ellison will swear on a Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Anne points out that in all probability, Jefferson read the Koran to learn how to combat the Barbary Pirates, who he had been informed followed the Koran.

This may or may not be true - Jefferson was a very well-read man and he owned a large number of books about religion. But what we do know is that he owned the Koran translated by George Sale around 1741. An 1881 edition is available on Google Books and it is fairly interesting.

Sale wrote essentially an entire book as an introduction to the Koran's translation, and while he is sympathetic with Islam he by no means subscribed to it: his commentary was written as a believing Christian.

So for example we can see this passage, where Sale looks upon Islam's being spread by the sword as proof that it is not a divine religion: (p. 35)



So while it may be a very smart move politically for Ellison to swear on Jefferson's historic Koran, one wonders if he knows what is actually in the text that he will be placing his hand on.

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Pakistani columnist on Arabs vs. Israel

From "The News" (Pakistan):

By Farrukh Saleem
Imam Ali Ibn Abi Taleb: "If God were to humiliate a human being He would deny him knowledge"

The League of Arab States has 22 members. Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman are 'traditional monarchies'. Of the 22, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria and Somalia are 'Authoritarian Regimes' (Source: www.freedomhouse.org). Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Morocco and Somalia are among the 'world's most repressive regimes' (Source: A special report to the 59th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights). Of the 330 million Muslim men, women and children living under Arab rulers a mere 486,530 live in a democracy (0.15 per cent of the total).

A mere two hundred and fifty miles from the 'League of Dictators' HQ in Cairo is the only 'parliamentary democracy' in the region; universal suffrage, multi-party, multi-candidate, competitive elections. Israel's 6,352,117 residents are 76 per cent Jewish and 23 per cent non-Jewish (mostly Arab).

Israel spends $110 on scientific research per year per person while the same figure for the Arab world is $2. Knowledge makes Israel grow by 5.2 per cent a year while "rates of productivity (the average production of one worker) in Arab countries were negative to a large and increasing extent in oil-producing countries during the 1980s and 90s (World Bank; Arab Development Report)."

Facts cannot be denied: The state of Israel now has six universities ranked as among the best on the face of the planet. Hebrew University Jerusalem is in the top-100. Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University and Weizmann Institute of Science are in the top-200. Bar Ilan University and Ben Gurion University are in the top-300. The Arab League does not have a single university in the top-400 (http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm). One in two Arab women can neither read nor write (remember, "If God were to humiliate a human being He would deny him/her knowledge").

Israel's universities are producing knowledge. Israeli society is applying that knowledge plus diffusing knowledge produced by others. On the other hand, within the Arab League, repressive regimes have erected religious, social and cultural barriers to the production as well as diffusion of knowledge.

Look at how knowledge is abandoning the Arab world: Between 1998 and 2000 more than 15,000 Arab physicians migrated. According to the World Bank, "roughly 25 per cent of 300,000 first degree graduates from Arab universities emigrated. Roughly 23 per cent of Arab engineers, 50 per cent of Arab doctors and 15 per cent of Arab BSc holders had emigrated."

Israel, on the other hand, has more engineers and scientists per capita than any other country (for every 10,000 Israelis there are 145 engineers or scientists). Israel ranks among the top-7 countries worldwide for patents per capita.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Israel's pharmaceutical giant, is the world's largest producer of antibiotics (Teva developed Copaxone, a unique immunomodulator therapy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, the only non-interferon agent available).

Facts are hard to deny: Most members of the Arab League grant Muslim women fewer rights -- with regards to marriage, divorce, dress code, civil rights, legal status and education. Israel does not. Spain translates more books in a year than has the Arab world in the past thousand years (since the reign of Caliph Mamoun; Abbasid, caliph 813-833).

Six million Israelis buy 12 million books every year making them one of the highest consumers of books in the world. Israel has the highest number of university degrees per capita in the world; the Arab world has the lowest. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other country (109 per 10,000 Israelis); the Arab world -- next to nothing.

Results are for everyone to see: The average per capita income in Israel is $25,000 while the average income within the League of Arab States is $5,000.

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

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More death! More injuries! Plus some Saddam poetry!

This morning's Peaceful PalArab News shows that six to ten were injured during two Fatah funerals. Maan says it was from people shooting in the air; Wafa seems to imply Hamas shooting at the funeral.

Also, one was killed and six more injured, two critically, in Fatah/Hamas clashes in Jabaliya.

The Wafa PA news agency was itself attacked as well.

My count is at 217 violently killed by other PalArabs since late June, 12 this year.

As a bonus, Maan News has a poetry section, and one poem is called "Long dark O Saddam." Obviously an autotranslate program cannot do such a poem justice, but here is a taste from the much, much longer poem. The last line makes it all worth it.

When darkness disappear?
متى سنفرح لسقوط الامطارWhen would rejoice in rainfall
ومتى سنعد الايام ونراقب حركة الاقمارAnd when we will produce the days and watch the movement of satellites
وكيف سنكون يوما ثوارHow we will be days revolutionists
وكيف سنحقق الانتصارHow we will achieve victory
ظلم وقسوة في الجوارThe injustice and cruelty in the neighborhood
استعباد وظلم للثوارThe enslavement and oppression of the insurgents
سقوط لاعظم الجبابرة والاحرارThe fall of the greatest giants and the Liberals
متى سيزول الظلامWhen darkness disappear

كثر السؤال والكلامRumors question and talk
حزنت عليه دماؤنا والعظامSaddened by the blood and bone
جرحت القلوب وذبحت بالسهامWounded hearts and butchered dart
لذهاب الحسامGo to the sword.
سقط القائد المقدامCommander fell venture
وفرحت النفوس الضعيفة وفكت اللثامAnd happy weak and tore down light
ما عاد للسر وجود وكثر طيران الحمامThe general returned to the presence of many airline bathroom
ما عدنا نرفع رأسنا وبتنا كالنعامWhat we raise our heads and we ostriches
فقدت البشرية الشموخ والعظمة بفقدان القائد والاب والامامLost Chammokh human greatness and the loss leader, father and Imam
قائد ثورتنا سقط وما عاد لنا الا الركامCommander of the Revolution fell and returned to us only rubble
ركام قواد ورؤساء هذه الايامThe ruins of the commanders and heads these days

...
When darkness disappear?
ونفضل الرجل والقائد على الكراسي والحساباتThe preferred men and the commander in the seats and Accounts
طال الظلام يا اعز القوادLong dark you dearest pimp

UPDATE: 3 dead so far today, including a senior Fatah dude:

A senior Palestinian security officer and Fatah loyalist were killed Thursday in an assault on his house by Hamas gunmen, Palestinian officials said.

The officer, Colonel Mohammed Ghayeb, had appeared on Palestine TV just moments before his death and appealed for help. Ghayeb's wife was seriously wounded in the attack, in which Hamas fired assault rifles and rockets at the building.

Ghayeb was the chief of the Preventive Security Service in northern Gaza, and his killing was expected to trigger revenge attacks by the men under his command.

A Hamas policeman was also killed in the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabalya when members of a Hamas police unit attacked the house of a senior Fatah official. Hamas said its forces were shot at first.

And another person, seemingly a civilian protesting the death of the Colonel, was killed by Hamas this evening. Also, no one knows how many people died with Ghayeb in the house as ambulances can't get there. Unconfirmed reports say 7 more - including his brother and two daughters.

The counts are now at least 220 since Summer Rains and 15 for the year.

UPDATE 2: JPost reporting 5 were killed in the house (including the two daughters) and a Hamas man outside, so 4 more added to the counts: 224 and 19.

UPDATE 3:Right before midnight, a Hamas terrorist was killed by those infamous "unknown gunmen" in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus - in the West Bank. They also burned some cars and shops there and in Jenin, and shot at a house and burned another car in Tulkarem. . So violence is spreading outside Gaza now. 225 and 20.

UPDATE 4: One more person died from injuries at the Ghayeb house yesterday - it may be the brother. 226 and 21.

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2006 top Middle East conspiracy theories

The highly anticipated annual list from MEMRI (see last year's here and the Spring 2006 edition was classic):

"I think if the U.S. did not exist some of us would have invented it. … It is because we are used to hanging all our problems and catastrophes on America. … We add Israel to America." — A former Kuwaiti oil minister, Ali Baghli, Kuwaiti daily Al-Seyassah, March 30

On her winter vacation to Saudi Arabia in December, a professor at Brandeis University whose work has been promoted by the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., Natana DeLong-Bas, gave an interview to Asharq Al-Awsat.

"I do not find any evidence that makes me agree that Osama bin Laden was behind the attack on the twin trade towers," she said of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

To any observer of the Middle East, such a statement comes as no surprise, even from a university professor.

In an article for the September 10 edition of the New Sunday Times, "Did the U.S. Stage a Lie on 9/11?" the vice chancellor of the University Sains Malaysia, Dato Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, also questioned the official version of the attacks. And the Malaysian cleric Hussain Ye appeared on Peace TV on November 1 and said there was no proof Muslims were involved in the attacks and that Jews are guilty.

An article in the November 22 edition of the Syrian government-controlled newspaper Tishreen said a former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, was connected to the September 11 attacks.

The article also criticized those who blamed Syria for the assassination of a Lebanese government minister, Pierre Gemayel. The Syrian minister of expatriates, Bouthaina Shaaban, instead blamed American Embassy employees in Beirut, as well as Israel, for the Gemayel assassination in the October 12 issue of Asharq Al-Awsat.

Conspiracies surrounding Darfur also abounded in 2006. In an address before the U.N. General Assembly on September 19, President al-Bashir of Sudan said that what was really happening in Darfur was a Zionist plot to dismember Sudan and plunder its resources.

The "American-Zionist interest in Sudan" is not to prevent genocide in Darfur but to get control of oil and uranium, Muhammad Salahuddin wrote in the Saudi daily Arab News on August 10. And "American-Israeli" "fabricated lies" about Darfur are part of a Zionist conspiracy to control the "Nile basin to the Euphrates River," the Sudanese writer Muhammad Keshk wrote in the Syrian government-controlled daily Al-Thawrah on December 14, while America is "encouraging the Christians of south Sudan to break away from Sudan," Hassan Tahsin wrote in the Arab News of June 23.

Anti-Semitic conspiracies also continued unabated in 2006 in the Arab press. In the Iraqi magazine Al-Shabaka Al-Iraqiyya of March 13, the article "Look for the Jews" blamed Jews for the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad published in Europe and for the destruction of the Buddha statues in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Samarra mosque in February.

The Egyptian cleric Hazem Sallah Abu Ismail, a former Islamic lecturer in America, appeared on Saudi Al-Risala TV on April 14 and discussed U.N. documents that purportedly showed that "82% of all attempts to corrupt humanity originate from the Jews." Six weeks later, Uwe Frisecke of Lyndon LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review said on Lebanon's New TV that Jews spread AIDS, SARS, mad cow, and other diseases. The children's Web site of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood devoted a section of its April issue to "murdering children — part of the Jewish religion."

Conspiracies about Guantanamo Bay were also common last year. Following the suicide of a Saudi man at Guantanamo, the man's father told the Arab News on June 19 that Zionists and neoconservatives in the American administration had masterminded his death.

"In countries and cultures where governments and the media have regularly colluded to hide the truth from their citizens, mistrust of authority is pervasive," the British foreign and Commonwealth office minister for the Middle East, Kim Howells, wrote of the Arab press in the London Arabic daily Al-Hayat on October 19. As 2007 begins, one can only hope that the conspiracy theories from the Arab press will lessen. This, however, is unlikely.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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!

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.)

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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-

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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.

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