Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Iranian blogger in the doghouse

From Radio Free Europe:

November 28, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian authorities have detained a blogger after he published details about the reported use of bomb-sniffing dogs in President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's security detail.

The Persian-language website gooya.com says Reza Valizadeh was the object of a complaint from the president's office. He was detained on November 26, but his whereabouts are unknown. Iran's judiciary has neither confirmed nor denied Valizadeh's arrest.

Valizadeh wrote on his blog that Ahmadinejad's security staff purchased four dogs in Germany for 150 million toumans each (about $150,000).

He reported that the canines were deployed to sniff out possible explosives on November 14, before Ahmadinejad's appearance at an annual press exhibition. The sweep left exhibition visitors standing outside the venue for several hours.

He also said the price of the dogs and their appearance in public evoked surprise and criticism. Some strict Shi'ite interpretations of the Koran regard dogs as unclean, and dog ownership is controversial in Shi'a-dominated Iran.

The British daily "The Guardian" reported on November 20 that the use of dogs in the protection of an Iranian head of state could be unprecedented in the 28-year history of Iran's Islamic republic.

Valizadeh quoted an unnamed official as saying the decision to deploy the bomb-sniffing dogs was made by the security team, and was outside the authority of the president.

Valizadeh's arrest comes two days after dozens of Iranian journalists and intellectuals issued a statement to protest the jailing of journalists who are critical of the Iranian government.

Yet more on Gaza's "humanitarian crisis"

WAFA, the official PA "news" agency, says:

Agriculture Ministry declared Wednesday that the efforts, were exerted to export the strawberry and flowers of Gaza Strip to Arab and European countries, succeeded despite the Israeli siege imposed.

Succeeded "despite" the siege?

The ministry said in its statement that “such a success in exporting flowers and strawberry came as a result of Premier Salam Fayyad and Agriculture Minister Mahmoud al-Habbash’s efforts with their Israeli counterparts in Israel and Rome in the 34 Conference of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome”.

So even though Israel allowed the exports, the "moderate" PA "news" agency still makes it sound like Israel was dead-set against it and only the heroic efforts of Fatah managed to help the Gaza farmers.

And where was Hamas in all this?
Ma'an (Arabic) fills in the missing pieces:

According to the Israeli official, Israel prevented the rest of the trucks from crossing after a Palestinian mortar shelling the crossing during the export process.

So Israel arranged for Gaza farmers to export berries and flowers, and Gaza terrorists shot mortars at the crossing to stop them.

Now, whose fault is the Gaza mess again?

More Gaza Hajj news

Palestine Press Agency and Ma'an, both in Arabic, report that Israel will allow some 2400 Gazan pilgrims to cross the Erez crossing early next month, take buses to the West Bank and then travel on to Mecca for Hajj.

Hamas disagrees, saying that the pilgrims will go through Rafah to Egypt and then go on to Mecca from there. Hamas does not want any Gazans to leave Gaza through Israel because that implies that Hamas is not in control of the Gaza borders.

So Hamas and Fatah's Muslim leaders seem less interested in allowing their people to go to Hajj than the dhimmi Jews of the Zionist entity. As usual, playing politics with their people's lives is the major hallmark of Arab leaders.

Arab roadmap logic

Palestine Today (Arabic) quotes AFP (I cannot find the AFP article, auto-translate cleaned up a bit):

An Arab official who participated in the Annapolis conference yesterday told Agence France Presse that the Arab participants at the meeting "were all disappointed," after the announcement by President George Bush of "common understanding" reached between the Palestinians and Israelis to launch negotiations on the final settlement of the Palestinian issue.

The official, who asked to remain anonymous, said, "The mutual understanding announced by President Bush (was that the) application of any peace agreement requires the implementation of the first phase of the road map, the dismantling of terrorist networks in the Palestinian territories, which means to engage in war with Hamas."

The official stressed that the late President Yasser "Arafat has not been able to implement the security part in the road map, how can Abbas do that now?"

So since Abbas is way too weak to enforce security, it should be dropped as a requirement! Israel should just suck it up and be happy about suicide bombers and rockets and the likely Hamas takeover of the West Bank.

Brilliant!

Saudi ambassador tells a whopper of a lie

From JTA (and also PalPress):

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States rejected recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
"There are 1.5 million civilians in Israel who do not define themselves as Jewish," Adel al-Jubeir told reporters at the U.S.-convened Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Annapolis, Md.
"We do not believe states should define themselves according to religion or ethnicity."

...said the representative of a nation whose official religion is Islam, whose legal system is based on Shari'a, whose king holds the title "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques," and whose constitution starts with:

Article 1
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion; God's Book and the Sunnah of His Prophet, God's prayers and peace be upon him, are its constitution, Arabic is its language and Riyadh is its capital.

Article 2
The state's public holidays are Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha. Its calendar is the Hegira calendar.

Article 3
The state's flag shall be as follows:
(a) It shall be green.
(b) Its width shall be equal to two-thirds of it's length.
(c) The words "There is but one God and Mohammed is His Prophet" shall be inscribed in the center with a drawn sword under it. The statute shall define the rules pertaining to it.

The Olmert/Abbas joint statement

From the NYT:

“The representatives of the government of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, represented respectively by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas, in his capacity as chairman of the P.L.O. Executive Committee [1] and president of the Palestinian Authority, have convened in Annapolis, Maryland, under the auspices of President George W. Bush of the United States of America, and with the support of the participants of this international conference, having concluded the following joint understanding.
“We express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict between our peoples; to usher in a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition; to propagate a culture of peace and nonviolence[2]; to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis.
"In furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, we agree to immediately launch good-faith, bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues, without exception, as specified in previous agreements.
“We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008. For this purpose — [there is a brief break in the audio here] — committee led jointly by the head of the delegation of each party will meet continuously as agreed.
“The Steering Committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party. The first session of the Steering Committee will be held on 12 December 2007. President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert will continue to meet on a biweekly basis to follow up the negotiations in order to offer all necessary assistance for their advancement.
“The parties also commit to immediately implement their respective obligations under the performance-based road map to a permanent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict issued by the Quartet on 30 April 2003 — this is called the road map — and agreed to form an American-Palestinian and Israeli mechanism led by the United States to follow up on the implementation of the road map.
“The parties further commit to continue the implementation of the ongoing obligations of the road map until they reach a peace treaty. The United States will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map. Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map as judged by the United States.[3]”

[1] Is Abbas there as leader of the PLO or president of the PA? According to his own words, he is not representing the PA government at all! The entire legal question of what his authority exactly is has been bypassed by the organizers of this meeting. One would think that this is pretty important.

[2]Let's look at that PLO logo:

And let's look at that Fatah logo (for which Abbas is also the nominal leader):

Their very symbols are incitement to violence and to the destruction of Israel.

[3]The first sentence of Phase 1 of the Roadmap says "In Phase I, the Palestinians immediately undertake an unconditional cessation of violence according to the steps outlined below; such action should be accompanied by supportive measures undertaken by Israel." So now the US will determine whether they have done so?

Here is a list of the major terror attacks that occurred Between 1993 and 2000, during the "peaceful" years of Oslo and before the Intifada:

November 7, 1999	Netanya	27 Wounded	Hamas	3 Pipe Bombs
August 10, 1999	Nahshon Junction	6 Wounded	Hamas	Car Plows into Crowd (Twice)
November 6, 1998	Jerusalem	2 Killed, 20 Wounded	Islamic Jihad	2 Suicide Bombers
October 29, 1998	Gush Katif	1 Killed, 8 Wounded	Hamas	Suicide Bomber Attacks School Bus
October 19, 1998	Be'er Sheva	59 Wounded	Hamas	Grenades Thrown at Central Bus Station
October 11, 1998	Hevron	18 Wounded	Hamas	2 Grenades Injure Palestinians and Israelis
August 27, 1998	Tel-Aviv	14 Wounded	Hamas	Bomb In Dumpster
August 20, 1998	Tel Rumeiyda	Rabbi Killed	Hamas	Fire Bomb & Stabbing
September 4, 1997	Jerusalem	4 Killed, 181 Wounded	Hamas	3 Suicide Bombers at Pedestrian Mall
July 30, 1997	Jerusalem	15 Killed, 178 Wounded	Hamas	2 Suicide Bombers at Outdoor Market
March 21, 1997	Tel-Aviv	3 Killed, 48 Wounded	Hamas	Bomb at Restaurant
March 4, 1996	Tel Aviv	20 Killed, 75 Wounded	Islamic Jihad	Suicide Bomber at Mall
March 3, 1996	Jerusalem	19 Killed, 6 Wounded	Hamas	Suicide Bomber on Bus
February 25, 1996	Ashkelon	2 Killed	Hamas	Suicide Bomber at Bus Stop
February 25, 1996	Jerusalem	26 Killed, 80 Wounded	Hamas	2 Suicide Bombers on Bus
July 24, 1995	Ramat Gan	6 Killed, 31 Wounded	Hamas	Suicide Bomber on Bus
June 25, 1995	Neve Dekalim	3 Wounded	Islamic Jihad	Explosives-ladden Cart
April 9, 1995	Gaza	8 Killed, 50 Wounded	Hamas & Islamic Jihad	2 Suicide Bombers
January 22, 1995	Beit Lid Junction	21 Killed, 69 Wounded	Islamic Jihad	2 Suicide Bombers at Bus Stop
December 25, 1994	Jerusalem	13 Wounded	Hamas	Suicide Bomber at Bus Stop
November 11, 1994	Netzarim Junction	3 Killed, 6 Wounded	Islamic Jihad	Suicide Bomber on Bike
October 19, 1994	Tel Aviv	22 Killed, 56 Wounded	Hamas	Suicide Bomber on Bus
October 9, 1994	Jerusalem	2 Killed, 14 Wounded	Hamas	2 Gunmen Open Fire
April 13, 1994	Hadera	5 Killed	Hamas	Suicide Bomber
April 6, 1994	Afula	8 Killed	Hamas	Car Bomb next to Bus

This level of violence was considered "acceptable" by the architects of Oslo, so much so that they were not even part of the calculus as Barak, Arafat and Clinton tried to come up with a final solution. In other words, multiple major terror attacks every year was considered just dandy by the United States and the Barak government.

So is the US qualified to say today that this is an acceptable level of terror that should be rewarded with a state?

The only concrete acts that has reduced terror since Oslo was Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 and the building of the separation fence. No "peace" agreement or accord has done more; on the contrary, they have been consistently counterproductive.

Annapolis is highly likely to continue this trend, with the added problem of a deep extra helping of wishful thinking and willful blindness towards terror attacks and attempts.

Another player in the PalArab extremist sweepstakes

The terrorist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir held an anti-Annapolis rally in Hebron as well as in Nablus, totaling thousands of people.

We don't hear much about Hizb ut-Tahrir in the PalArab territories, but they are a worldwide extremist Muslim organization dedicated to creating a single Islamic state based on Islamic law. (They are also more than a little anti-semitic.) This means that Palestinian Arab statehood is not their goal at all - they make no pretense of wanting a Palestinian Arab state, only a pan-Islamic state that of course involves the destruction of Israel.

The turnout indicates yet again that Mahmoud Abbas has very little influence on his own people, and that Ramallah is pretty much the only Palestinian Arab town that is more secular than Islamist.

Predicatbly, the rallies (which were unauthorized) descended into violence, and a 37-year old Hizb supporter was shot in the heart by those crack Palestinian Arab policemen and killed.

The 2007 PalArab self-death count is now at 585.

UPDATE: Perhaps I spoke too soon - Hizb also held a rally in Ramallah that was broken up by police.

I saw this picture on the webpage of the Jerusalem Summit, showing how vulnerable Tel Aviv and the entire Dan region would be if Israel abandoned Jewish communities in the West Bank. (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

To be fair, it was taken with a telephoto lens. In fact, Tel Aviv is a whopping 10 miles away from Peduel - easily within rocket range.

Luckily, Wikipedia has a much more accurate picture of what Tel Aviv looks like from Peduel, and it hardly makes things look better (click to enlarge):

As the Jerusalem Summit page asks:

How can one reconcile prudent and responsible governance with a willingness to expose such a large population to so great a danger?

Ehud Barak, 2002

After the failure of Camp David and the resultant intifada, Ehud Barak spoke about what went wrong:

Barak today portrays Arafat's behavior at Camp David as a "performance" geared to exacting from the Israelis as many concessions as possible without ever seriously intending to reach a peace settlement or sign an "end to the conflict." "He did not negotiate in good faith, indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying 'no' to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own," he says. Barak continuously shifts between charging Arafat with "lacking the character or will" to make a historic compromise (as did the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1977–1979, when he made peace with Israel) and accusing him of secretly planning Israel's demise while he strings along a succession of Israeli and Western leaders and, on the way, hoodwinks "naive journalists"—in Barak's phrase—like [Deborah] Sontag and officials such as former US National Security Council expert Robert Malley (who, with Hussein Agha, published another "revisionist" article on Camp David, "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors"^[*]). According to Barak:

What they [Arafat and his colleagues] want is a Palestinian state in all of Palestine. What we see as self-evident, [the need for] two states for two peoples, they reject. Israel is too strong at the moment to defeat, so they formally recognize it. But their game plan is to establish a Palestinian state while always leaving an opening for further "legitimate" demands down the road. For now, they are willing to agree to a temporary truce à la Hudnat Hudaybiyah [a temporary truce that the Prophet Muhammad concluded with the leaders of Mecca during 628–629, which he subsequently unilaterally violated]. They will exploit the tolerance and democracy of Israel first to turn it into "a state for all its citizens," as demanded by the extreme nationalist wing of Israel's Arabs and extremist left-wing Jewish Israelis. Then they will push for a binational state and then, demography and attrition will lead to a state with a Muslim majority and a Jewish minority. This would not necessarily involve kicking out all the Jews. But it would mean the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. This, I believe, is their vision. They may not talk about it often, openly, but this is their vision. Arafat sees himself as a reborn Saladin—the Kurdish Muslim general who defeated the Crusaders in the twelfth century—and Israel as just another, ephemeral Crusader state.

Barak believes that Arafat sees the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants, numbering close to four million, as the main demographic-political tool for subverting the Jewish state.

Arafat, says Barak, believes that Israel "has no right to exist, and he seeks its demise." Barak buttresses this by arguing that Arafat "does not recognize the existence of a Jewish people or nation, only a Jewish religion, because it is mentioned in the Koran and because he remembers seeing, as a kid, Jews praying at the Wailing Wall." This, Barak believes, underlay Arafat's insistence at Camp David (and since) that the Palestinians have sole sovereignty over the Temple Mount compound (Haram al-Sharif—the noble sanctuary) in the southeastern corner of Jerusalem's Old City. Arafat denies that any Jewish temple has ever stood there—and this is a microcosm of his denial of the Jews' historical connection and claim to the Land of Israel/Palestine. Hence, in December 2000, Arafat refused to accept even the vague formulation proposed by Clinton positing Israeli sovereignty over the earth beneath the Temple Mount's surface area.

Barak recalls Clinton telling him that during the Camp David talks he had attended Sunday services and the minister had preached a sermon mentioning Solomon, the king who built the First Temple. Later that evening, he had met Arafat and spoke of the sermon. Arafat had said: "There is nothing there [i.e., no trace of a temple on the Temple Mount]." Clinton responded that "not only the Jews but I, too, believe that under the surface there are remains of Solomon's temple." (At this point one of Clinton's [Jewish] aides whispered to the President that he should tell Arafat that this is his personal opinion, not an official American position.)

Repeatedly during our prolonged interview, conducted in his office in a Tel Aviv skyscraper, Barak shook his head—in bewilderment and sadness—at what he regards as Palestinian, and especially Arafat's, mendacity:

They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie...creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn't. They see themselves as emissaries of a national movement for whom everything is permissible. There is no such thing as "the truth."
Speaking of Arab society, Barak recalls: "The deputy director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation once told me that there are societies in which lie detector tests don't work, societies in which lies do not create cognitive dissonance [on which the tests are based]."

Now, Abbas and his colleagues are saying exactly what Arafat said in 2000 - their goals are identical and the 2000 Barak offer is considered "completely unacceptable and out of the question."

It is more than a bit ironic for Ehud Barak to talk about "cognitive dissonance" on the Arab side in 2002 and then to sit at a table with them again, willing to go beyond the Camp David and Taba offers - all in the name of a "peace" that is simply a reward for a six-year intifada.

How to distinguish Islamist from non-Islamist schools

Progressive Muslim M. Zuhdi Jasser writes an article in Family Security Matters about the danger of Islamist schools in the United States, and he includes this guide to tell an Islamist school from a non-Islamist school:

1. How does the school teach American history and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights? What is taught about the struggle of our founding fathers against theocracy? Is European Enlightenment ideology taught? Are students encouraged to learn from non-Muslim philosophers especially those who influenced our founding fathers and taught liberty and freedom?

2. Are students taught that sharia is only personal or that it also specifically guides governmental law? Does their answer change whether Muslims are a minority or a majority?

3. Do they view non-Islamic private and public schools as part of a culture of ‘immorality’ and decadence since they are not Islamicized or can non-Islamic schools be morally and equally virtuous?

4. Do they teach their children that ‘being American’ and being ‘free’ is about moral corruption or is being American and free about loving the nation in which they live and sharing equal status before the law regardless of faith tradition?

5. Is complete religious freedom a central part of faith and the practice of religion? In the Islamic school, how are children treated who refuse to participate in school faith practices?

6. Are the children taught Muslim exclusivism with regards to the attainment of paradise in the Hereafter? From that, are the children also taught that government and public institutions must thus be ‘Islamic’ in order for the community as a whole to be able to enter the gates of Heaven?

7. How are student discussions, debate, and intellectual discourses approached regarding American domestic and foreign policy? Do the teachers have a political agenda? Does that agenda demonstrate a dichotomy between Islamist interests and American interests?

8. Is the historical period of Muslim rule of Spain (Andalusia) taught in the context of the history of the world during the Middle Ages or is it looked upon as superior to current day American ideology even after the advances of the Enlightenment?

9. Is the pledge of allegiance administered every day at the beginning of the school day?

From what I can tell, many universities would score fairly poorly on these questions as well.

Jerusalem Mufti on destroying Israel by "right of return"

Palestine Today has an interview with the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Irema Sabri, where he says (autotranslated, somewhat cleaned up):

"[There are] key items, the first item that the right of return is a legitimate sacred right, that children inherit from our fathers and grandchildren inherit from their children, if a person died and the heirs claimed this inheritance, it is their legitimate claim, and therefore the refugee abandonment of the town then the children died of their legitimate claim to be a number of refugees who have fled from their country and their land more than six million Palestinians, whether inside Palestine or outside .. this first item right of return [is a] legitimate right.

"The second item is that the main compensation for the taking of land is a sale, [and selling the land is] religiously forbidden, ... but they may take compensation for the suffering and damage, those who do not wish to return have no right to take compensation, but his family of his or granting her run of the Palestinian state."

Here is an aspect of the conflict that most would rather ignore: the Islamic religious aspect. If a cartoon or teddy bear is enough to elicit deadly riots and threats, imagine how inflammatory it is for Muslims - no matter how "pragmatic" - to publicly give up on the "sacred" land of Palestine (whose Islamic sanctity has historically been directly proportional to the number of Jews there.)

If past history is any guide, the very idea that a Muslim leader would ignore his more, um, extreme brethren is exceedingly remote. People who do that often lose their heads. And a Muslim leader would not only have to appease the local yahoos like the former Mufti, but also the entire universe of Muslim extremists.

A look at Sabri's words show that the usual Western assumption that in the end, most Palestinian Arabs would have to be compensated in order to give up their "right of return" (a "right" that no refugee group in history has ever been given) is shortsighted. Oh, they'll be happy to take infidel money, of course - nothing unIslamic about that - but it would be compensation for their suffering, you see, not for the land they (for the most part) abandoned because they thought their Arab brethren would act like brethren. Nope, once land is declared Islamic, it is always Islamic, including (according to OBL) parts of Spain.

And notice also in the end what Sabri says - that the state they would be "returning" to is a "Palestinian" state. The very idea that they would go to a Jewish-run state, or even a state called Israel, is not contemplated. Sabri is pretty clear that the point of the "right of return" is to create a PalArab state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan.

Now, as is well known, even the "moderates" of Fatah call for a Palestine that covers exactly the same territory, as their peaceful logo shows.

So - the "moderates" and religious fanatics share their belief in the "right of return," and they share a vision of what their state should look like.

I'm sorry...what is the difference between them again?

Some Annapolis reading

History News Network: The Annapolis Conference: A Chance to Right an Historical Wrong?
- Decent overview if an overly sunny conclusion

Shrinkwrapped: Peace will come
- Some relevant observations from my favorite online shrink.

Bernard Lewis, On the Jewish Question
- Always nice when a real scholar stands up and tells the truth.

Soccer Dad: Sieg-speak
- Fisking Henry Seigman is easy but Soccer Dad goes above and beyond. The fact that he links to two of my postings is an extra bonus...