Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Importing potassium nitrate disguised as EU aid sugar

The IDF and Shin Bet uncovered 6.5 tons of potassium nitrate hidden in sacks that were disguised as aid from the European Union, the army announced on Saturday.

Security forces discovered the stash in the cargo of a Palestinian truck at a West Bank checkpoint earlier in December. According to the IDF, the material, hidden in sugar sacks, was planned to be used by terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
"Potassium Nitrate is a banned substance in the Gaza Strip and the Judea and Samaria region due to its use by terrorists for the manufacturing of explosives and Kassam rockets," the IDF spokesperson wrote in a statement.
"This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval," the statement read.

Reuters adds:

"We are looking into this report," said an EU official in Israel. "If it is found to be accurate, this is an illegal act that should be condemned."

It will be very interesting to see if this story gets any traction in European news outlets, and if there are any reactions of outrage by EU diplomats. So far, I cannot find it being picked up by any specific newspapers or websites outside Reuters. (Typically, major stories will be picked up by many news outlets in minutes.)

UPDATE: The story is now over six hours old and only a satirical UK site has published it, according to Google News.

EoZ Dhimmi of the Year update

Thanks for all the comments and nominations for EoZ Dhimmi of the Year.

Because there is a probability of coercion and abject fear behind the Iranian Jewish community leaders' statements, I will take them off the nominee list.

Some of these fit in better with Jihad Watch definition (the person "who behaved in the most pusillanimous, abject, and/or suicidally stupid way in the face of Islamic supremacist bullying and intimidation, peaceful or violent") or with LGF's Idiotarian definition ("the most moonbattish, obtuse, deranged, or duplicitous person or group of the year") so if possible I would like to try to stick with the official EoZ definition:

The nominees should be prominent non-Muslims who have accepted and embraced their second-class status in a Muslim-dominated world.

This means that being merely anti-Israel or anti-semitic is not necessarily enough to be the Dhimmi of the Year, but actually doing things to boost political Islam at the expense of the Western world. I would prefer people who did something dhimmi-like specifically during 2007.

At the moment, the nominees are (with links to appropriate dhimmi-like statements made in 2007 when available, please help me fill in those I do not have.) The people who may not qualify are in parentheses; if you can show a quote that boosts their Dhimmi bona-fides it will be taken into consideration.

Rev. Manuel Musallem
Bishop Tiny Muskens
Jimmy Carter
(Walt and Mearsheimer)
Nancy Pelosi (just for putting on the scarf)
Robert Fisk
(The EU) (h/t Jeff)
(Noam Chomsky)
James Petras
Ken Livingstone
(Ron Paul)
(Condoleeza Rice)
US Congress (not that I'm really against that resolution, but look at the California congress members) h/t Jeff
James Abourezk
Hanan Ashrawi
Dr Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury
Christiane Amanpour
Juan Cole (excellent choice, Yitzchak!)

Nominations will end on Sunday, December 30, and I'll hopefully start the voting soon afterwards.

Nice shooting (4)

In another astonishing day of IDF effectiveness, some 8 terrorists were eliminated yesterday with no civilian deaths.

Seven Palestinian terrorists were killed in several incidents in the Gaza Strip.

A top Islamic Jihad man, Muhammad Abu Abdullah, also known as Abu Murshud, was killed in an air strike late Thursday evening.
An IDF spokesman said Abdullah was a senior operative in charge of manufacturing Kassam rockets and explosives. The operation was carried out with the assistance of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), he added.
According to Palestinian sources, IAF aircraft fired several missiles toward the car in which Abdullah and other gunmen were traveling. The sources said that two other Palestinians were killed in the air strike and several others were wounded.
In another operation Thursday overnight, an IAF aircraft killed a Hamas gunman near the southern Gaza Strip security fence.
Palestinian sources said five others were wounded in the attack.

During earlier operations in Gaza earlier in the day, the IDF killed five members of Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip in air strikes and fire exchanges.
Two Islamic Jihad men were killed in an IAF strike on their car in the early evening, Palestinian officials said. The military said it targeted a car filled with explosives on the way to an attack.
Earlier, the IDF killed three Palestinian gunmen in an exchange of fire and an air strike in the southern Gaza Strip, the army reported. Palestinians said the dead were members of Hamas.
Nine people were wounded, including four civilians, Palestinians reported, claiming that among the wounded was a 13-year-old boy. None of the injuries were life threatening, officials said.

IDF troops killed one of former PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei's bodyguards, the military said Friday morning.

Palestinian sources reported that IDF troops operating south of Ramallah in the town of Bituniya shot and killed Muatassem a-Shariff, a Fatah operative and a Presidential Guard member. Eye witnesses said a-Shariff was shot while after opening fire while trying to escape IDF troops who came to his house in order to arrest him.

The Palestine Center for Human Rights counts 1 Gaza civilian death from December 13-26 out of 23 total killed by the IDF. In their detailed report I could not find the name nor circumstances of that supposed civilian death. In fact, when I added up their 23 deaths I didn't find any civilian, unless you count a "police officer" as a civilian. PCHR likes to add the appearance of Israel shooting randomly at civilians with lines like "At approximately 20:30 on Monday, 17 December 2007, an IOF aircraft fired a missile at civilian car (a white Skoda), in which the commander of the al-Quds Brigades (the armed wing of Islamic Jihad) and his bodyguard were traveling, in al-Nasser Street in the north of Gaza City. The missile hit the car and killed the two occupants."

According to PCHR's own very biased reports and counting the deaths from today, the IDF has managed to kill 54 terrorists since November 29 - and only 6 civilians. And this source tries as hard as it can to classify victims as "civilians" even if they do a clearly aggressive act, so chances are the ratio is even more impressive. (One of the victims from early December was "shooting birds." The December 6th report mentions one civilian that I could not find in their detailed report either.)

Arabic news sources have been buzzing about Hamas' discovery of "collaborators" in Hamas itself - including at least one prominent member - that help the IDF identify and eliminate terrorists. It looks like the IDF and Shin Bet have been doing a good job on Gaza intelligence lately, although it has been much harder since Israel abandoned Gaza.

That legendary Palestinian Arab religious tolerance

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) -- Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning on Thursday.

The basilica, built over the grotto in Bethlehem where Christians believe Jesus was born, is administered jointly by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities.

Any perceived encroachment on one group's turf can touch off vicious feuds.

On Thursday, dozens of priests and cleaners were scrubbing the church ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in early January. Thousands of tourists visited the church this week for Christmas celebrations.

But the clean-up turned ugly after some of the Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church's section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians.

Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue, then ordered an Associated Press photographer out of the church.

Four people, some with blood running from their faces, were slightly wounded.

So the Palestinian Arab Christians, who are more moderate than their Muslim counterparts, in the moderate West Bank, cannot stop themselves from beating each other up in their own holiest places.

But we can be sure that Palestinians would happily allow free access for Jews to worship in their own holy spots in a future Palestinian Arab state, right?

Reuters does it again

Check out the differences in captions of these three pictures:

A view is seen of the Israeli neighborhood of Har Homa in east Jerusalem, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2007. At their first summit since pledging to renew peace talks and try for a treaty next year, Israeli and Palestinian leaders faced a familiar obstacle on Thursday, Israeli construction in a disputed part of Jerusalem.(AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

A view of the settlement of Har Homa near Jerusalem December 27, 2007, with the outskirts of the West Bank town of Bethlehem in the background. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert balked on Thursday at a total freeze in settlement activity as demanded by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli officials said. Abbas had demanded that Olmert commit to halting all settlement activity, including so-called natural growth, as called for in the long-stalled "road map" peace plan. But Israel stood by plans to build hundreds of new homes in an area near Jerusalem known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Jabal Abu Ghneim. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov

Israel considers Har Homa as part of East Jerusalem. Palestinian Arabs consider it a part of the West Bank. Reuters doesn't even try to hide which side it agrees with, and it even takes pains to show Har Homa near "the West Bank town of Bethlehem," when it would have been just as easy to show it near the rest of Jerusalem.

AFP tries to have it both ways:

View of the Jewish Har Homa settlement in southern Jerusalem. Israeli and Palestinian leaders have met to try to jumpstart newly revived peace talks which have stalled after just two sessions over the issue of Israeli settlements. (AFP/File/Musa Al-Shaer)

Egypt not allowing Hamas members to return from Hajj?

Ma'an (Arabic) is reporting that Egypt is not allowing the Gaza Hajj pilgrims to return through the Rafah crossing, from where they came. 1200 of the pilgrims are stranded at the Gulf of Aqaba and Egypt is saying that they can only re-enter Gaza through the Keren Shalom crossing, which is controlled by Israel. The report further confirms earlier Israeli claims that some of the "pilgrims" were Hamas members who refuse to go through Keren Shalom because they would be arrested by Israel.

The anti-Hamas Palestine Press Agency quotes Debka as saying that a number of top Hamas officials, including Khalil al Haya, had left Gaza through Rafah and met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Mecca. PalPress also quoted an Israeli source (possibly also Debka) that at this meeting, Iran gave some $50 million to the Hamas leaders to keep their terror attacks against Israel going.

It makes sense that after meeting with Israeli leaders at Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday the Egyptian government might have had second thoughts about allowing Hamas members to travel freely between Gaza and the rest of the world through Egypt.

At any rate, these are the first confirmations I've seen to the original Jerusalem Post article I previously linked to (no longer online) saying that Israel identified terrorists who had left Gaza through Rafah.

UPDATE: Ma'an now has the English story.

Why Palestinian Arabs cannot govern themselves

Despite all the faults of the Arab countries - despite all of their anti-semitism, misogyny, corruption, antipathy towards the West, persecution of minorities and myriad other problems - they still manage to keep their governments going. Even when run by dictators or monarchs-for-life, a government still needs thousands of faithful civil servants to do the millions of ordinary, boring bureaucratic functions to keep things running, and the Arab world has been pretty successful at this job for decades. Arab governments have survived assassinations and other deaths of their leaders without collapsing. While there have been exceptions like Lebanon and Iraq/Kuwait, for the most part there is a fairly reliable status-quo.

One of the outstanding attributes of Palestinian Arabs, however, has been their utter inability to create or maintain a functioning government. Ironically, even though Palestinian Arabs have traditionally had more education - and more common sense - than their Arab brethren, they have completely failed in choosing effective leadership.

Why should this be?

We need to look at the history of Palestinian Arabs to understand why PalArabs never truly had any leadership.

There have been three major periods of Pali leadership: the Husseini era, the Arafat era and the Intifada era.

The Husseini era, where the de facto leader of the Palestinian Arabs was the Mufti of Jerusalem, was by any objective analysis a disaster. Haj Amin al-Husseini used his supposed leadership to enhance his own status and to launch terror attacks against the British and the Jews; while the Zionists were building institutions and filling any vacuum that the British would leave, the Arabs attacked and whined about how they weren't being treated fairly. The 1936 riots - which the Arabs of Palestine still consider their "Great Revolt" - resulted in the Husseini factions crushing their Arab rivals, then in the British expulsion of Husseini (where he got cozy with Hitler) and it left no one to truly lead the PalArabs. Historians are practically unanimous that this was the reason that the Zionists won in 1948 - they were better prepared than the Palestinian Arabs were and most of the neighboring Arab countries were big on promises but short on the actual desire to help.

The Palestinian Arabs were left leaderless through the 50s and most of the 60s, but they romanticized the Husseini era as a golden age of Palestinian Arab nationalism. The West Bankers seemed pretty satisfied with being under Jordanian rule.

While the Arab nations gained independence and started doing the real work involved in keeping countries going, their leaders paid lip service to the "Palestinian cause" - using them as pawns in their own power plays. Yet the leaderless Palestinian Arabs believed them even as these leaders showed no desire to create an independent Arab Palestine and continued to discriminate against them.

The long-dormant "cause" got resurrected after the Six Day War as the Arab nations realized that their Pali pawns might be able to accomplish through terror what the Arabs could not do with military power. And Yasir Arafat, a clone of Amin Husseini, stepped right up to do what Husseini did: he used power to increase his own prestige, to terrorize not only the Jews but the entire world in a spectacularly successful play for sympathy, and he did nothing to actually help the people that he was supposedly leading. No institution building, no nation building, no planning a state. And yet, the Palestinian Arabs - marginalized by other Arab nations and invisible for decades - enthusiastically embraced Arafat, who had no ability nor desire to change his persona as a revolutionary into a leadership role.

Like Husseini in 1936, Arafat overreached in 2001 and ended up turning from a respected putative leader into a reviled and marginalized non-entity because he only knew how to use terror to achieve his goals. But his accomplishment of unifying the Palestinian Arabs is viewed as nothing less than heroic by the very people he ended up hurting the most with his policies.

It is instructive to learn that the Palestinian Arab per capita GDP peaked not during the Oslo period , but in 1992 - when PalArabs were still fully under Israel's economic control. Even with the millions being donated by the world towards Oslo, with everyone including Israel supporting Palestinian Arab independence, the PalArabs themselves could not find the leadership to pull it off. Instead, they happily kept the Arafat personality cult and kleptocracy intact.

After Arafat's syphilitic life ended, a new era of non-leadership emerged. Mahmoud Abbas never had either Arafat's charisma nor his blood-thirst, and as a result the more radical "leaders" rushed to fill the void for a people who desperately want them. The PalArabs are severely hampered by their own deeply flawed ideas of leadership and heroism that have been inculcated in them now for generations. Using Husseini and Arafat as their heroes and prototypical leaders, the Palis are unable to find nor support the fresh blood and new, pragmatic leadership that they need. While the Arab nations have been able for the most part to move on past the Nasser era and into practical governance, as corrupt and flawed as it may be, the Palestinian Arabs have been left behind with no idea of what kind of leader can get them out of their limbo. Terror-worship remains, new "martyrs" are celebrated daily and the cult of death has been implanted, almost genetically, into their collective psyche.

This cartoon was recently shown in a Saudi newspaper:

Terrorist on right: "Don't forget, when you want to blow yourself up, make sure you do so with your right hand – blowing yourself up with your left hand is forbidden!"

Source: Al-Watan, Saudi Arabia, December 26, 2007

It seems strange that Saudi Arabia, a proud theocracy as well as supporter of terror, can effectively make fun of the "religious" dimensions of suicide bombing.

It is explainable because the Saudi royal family is a target of Islamist terror as well, and high on Al-Qaeda's list. The practical realities of running a country trumps sloganeering and some types of martyr-worship.

But can one imagine this cartoon appearing in a Palestinian Arab newspaper? Not at all. The entire Palestinian Arab culture is so dependent on their self-image as "resistance warriors" for their cause, and suicide bombing is such an integral part of that self-image, that it is unthinkable that such a cartoon could appear in the West Bank. Similarly, no Palestinian Arab leader would dare denounce terror as a tactic when it has been the cornerstone of all previous leaders from Husseini to now. The Palestinian Arabs are held hostage to their own national myths of the beauty of terror, and it is inconceivable that a strong leader can emerge that can denounce terror while at the same time build a responsible, pragmatic society that can live in peace with all of its neighbors.

And it will take at least another generation for the poisonous, self-destructive mindset to be eradicated from the PalArab psyche. Until it happens, they will remain without true leadership, as they have been for decades.

Al-aretz editor hits bottom, digs

Unbelievable:

Israelis are known for being direct and blunt. But comments made by David Landau, editor of the Israeli daily, Haaretz, to Condoleezza Rice about Israel needing to be “raped” by the U.S. to achieve a Mideast settlement caused quite a stir among the 20 or so attendees at a confidential briefing with the secretary of state on a recent visit to Israel.

The incident, which took place Sept. 10 at the private residence of America’s ambassador to Israel, Richard Jones, has not been fully reported until now. What is contested is not the raw language Landau used but the context of his impassioned comments.

Following Rice’s briefing to the gathered military, academic and media elites at the dinner, the guests offered their views and comments about the Mideast impasse. Landau, who was seated next to Rice, was said to have referred to Israel as a “failed state” politically, one in need of a U.S.-imposed settlement. He was said to have implored Rice to intervene, asserting that the Israeli government wanted “to be raped” and that it would be like a “wet dream” for him to see this happen.

When contacted this week, Landau said the description was “inaccurate” and “a perversion of what I said.” He said his views had been delivered with “much more sophistication.”

But he added: “I did say that in general, Israel wants to be raped — I did use that word — by the U.S., and I myself have long felt Israel needed more vigorous U.S. intervention in the affairs of the Middle East.”

In a vacuum, it would be merely shocking to read that the editor of Israel's leading daily newspaper wants to see his nation "raped" by the US.

But in context when Landau has already admitted that he doesn't even pretend to pursue an objective journalistic policy, where he actively uses his newspaper as a thinly-veiled propaganda tool, this is beyond the pale of even the most liberal, freedom-loving democracy. It is not democratic to ask a foreign government to actively undermine your own government's policy. If Ha'aretz' news policy is to encourage outside nations to force Israel to do things most Israelis don't want, that is closer to sedition than free speech.

(h/t My Right Word)

UPDATE: See Augean Stables, Backspin, Israel Insider.

Two tunnels collapse in Gaza in two days

Yesterday, a tunnel collapsed in Gaza, injuring 8.

Today, another one collapsed, killing 1 and injuring several.

The 2007 PalArab self-death count rises to 601.

UPDATE: "Training accident" kills a 26-year old Hamas member in Gaza. 602.
UPDATE 2: It was no accident: it was an internal Hamas murder.
UPDATE 3: One PalArab reported killed, another injured in a presumed family feud. No names yet. 603.

Get your nominations in for 2007 Dhimmi of the Year

I recently wrote about the 2006 winner...who do you think should get the honor for 2007?

The nominees should be prominent non-Muslims who have accepted and embraced their second-class status in a Muslim-dominated world.

A couple of likely nominees would be:

Iranian Jewish leaders Maurice Mo'atamad and Ciamak Morsathegh
Rev. Manuel Musallem
Bishop Tiny Muskens (and if you follow that link, enjoy the irony of this one)

Who else?

UPDATE: I see that Jihad Watch has two similar awards, but I think there is room for more.

Another reason for "honor killings"

Ma'an (Arabic) has an article about honor killing statistics this year, saying that the number of such killings has gone down this year to only 9 as opposed to somewhat higher numbers in years past.

One very interesting paragraph (autotranslated and cleaned up):

The study revealed that some of the murders, which are committed against women for reasons of honour, in reality are caused for a completely different reason. They are often related to the question of inheritance, in the refusal of many large families granting women their share of inheritance, being careful that the money not go to a strange man in the event of her marriage. As a result, the proportion of "spinsters" are high in wealthy families.

So not only are women's lives worth less than "family honor," but they are also worth less than family money as well. And the women who are unfortunate enough to have been born into wealthy families have a hard time getting married, as their families pressure them to remain single to keep the money in the family.

Perhaps some enterprising Islamic lawyer can create a sharia-compliant pre-nuptial agreement?

UPDATE: In the comments section of the Israellycool posting of this article, two authors on similar topics weigh in.

All you need to know about Iran's Jews

On December 21:

The attempts by a Zionist organization to persuade Iranian Jews to leave the country and receive $10,000 in return have failed.

The organizers of the project in Israel and the United States have voiced their disappointment after they were given the cold shoulder.

According to a report by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), of some 25,000 Jews living in Iran, only 125 accepted the money during the course of the one-year project.

Iran's Jewish community leaders denounced the IFCJ attempts in a statement saying “Iranian Jews will not abandon their identity for any amount of money.”

“We love our Iranian identity and culture, so threats and enticements would not persuade Iranian Jews to give up their identity,” the statement added.

When did anyone make any threats? Sounds more like the Iranian Jewish "leaders" are saying what they think the Iranian mullahs want to hear.

December 25:

Forty Iranian Jews secretly flew to Israel yesterday, completing a yearlong covert operation to start a new life in the country that Iran's leader vows to "wipe off the map."

The modern-day Exodus was the largest influx of Iranian Jews to Israel since Ayatollah Khomeini established his hard-line Islamic Republic in Tehran in 1979.

The smuggled immigrants were greeted by relatives who screamed with joy and tossed candy as they were reunited at Ben Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.

"I feel so good," said a 16-year-old who gave his name as Yosef.

He arrived with his brother, sister and parents and was greeted by grandparents he hadn't seen in six years.

"I just saw all of my family. You can't put that into words," he said.

Being reunited with relatives was only one reason for their secret escape, the immigrants said.

"I was scared in Iran as a Jew," Yosef's brother Michael, 15, said.

Like others, they declined to give their family name to protect relatives still in Iran. The new arrivals - 10 families and three individuals who traveled by themselves - said they had to abandon all their possessions when they fled.
Some of the immigrants disputed claims that they suffered from rising anti-Semitism under Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"I'm in heaven," said Avraham Dayan, 63, who hadn't seen his son in the 11 years since he made his own secret escape from Iran.

He recalled how he was jailed in Iran in 1993.

"I didn't know that the authorities were listening to my phone, and they came to arrest me," he told The Jerusalem Post.

"They said I was a friend of [Israeli Prime Minister Menachem] Begin, that I was a Zionist, and they threw me in jail."

"I bribed my way out of jail, bribed my way to an Iranian passport and left Iran," he said. He added his son also obtained a new passport by bribes.

And today:

Representatives of the Jewish Community in Iran said Wednesday that Iranian Jews have never taken steps to emigrate because of the good living standards enjoyed by religious minorities in Iran and their common cultural roots.

In a communiqué published a day after news of 40 Iranian Jewish immigrants landing in Israel, Jewish community leaders Maurice Mo'atamad and Ciamak Morsathegh wrote that "the report that was published regarding the Iranian Jewish community by the foreign news agencies is an outright lie."

Jewish representative in the Iranian Parliament, Mo'atamed, and President of Tehran's Jewish community Mareh-Sadegh, continued: "The massive propaganda issued by the enemies of the Iranian people and the Jews of Iran has never influenced Jews because of our historical, cultural, and national roots in Iran.

"As we have previously declared, the childish attempts to tempt us and the spreading of lies by anti-Iranian Zionist-Imperialist elements can in no way harm the strong connection of Iranian Jews to the Iranian nation and the sacred government of the Islamic Republic."

Again emphasizing their loyalty to the regime, the leaders write, "We, the Jews of Iran, are Iranians, have always been Iranians, [funny - they were never Persians? -EoZ] and will always be Iranians. We are ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of our homeland. In spite of foreign propaganda we shall continue to live in the land of our birth."

The Jewish community representatives blamed other countries for raising the immigration issue. "Any attempt on part of foreigners to meddle in Iranian Jewish internal affairs constitutes a part of the West's plan to attack the Iranian people and to fracture Iranian unity. The Jews of Iran, therefore, strongly condemn this completely unacceptable interference. The collective, peaceful life of Iranian Jews throughout history is a testament to the shared path of the Iranian nation and Iran's Jews.

Let's assume that Iran is extraordinarily benevolent towards its Jews and that the Iranian Jews are beloved by all Iranians (as Iran's Press TV illustrated its article on the topic.)

Now, when 40 Iranians (out of 200 this year) are interviewed on Israeli soil, what would one expect the leaders of the Iranian community to say?

Perhaps that they are sad to see their friends leave? Or that the ones who left have made a big mistake? Or that the ones that left were malcontents as opposed to the peaceful majority of Iranian Jews?

But you would not expect them to say that the entire episode was fiction.

The fact that they bend over backwards to say something so absurd indicates that they are making statements out of fear, not out of conviction. They are parroting Ahmadinejad-style rhetoric to prove to the nation their loyalty. And the only reason to do that is because of the fear of what would happen to them if they would react differently - they have seen first hand what happens to their friends who are labeled "Zionist spies."

I have no doubt that Iranian Jews are treated better than any Jews in Arab countries are. I am sure that there is no overt, obvious persecution of the Jewish community there.

But the over-the-top reaction from the "leaders" of that community to this news are perhaps the best proof that the Jews in Iran live in great fear, and will say anything necessary to stay on the mullahs' good side.

Muslims abandon babies, Jews are blamed

From the Daily Telegraph (h/t Backspin):

A Christian children's home in Bethlehem, which has provided sanctuary for abandoned youngsters and orphans for more than a century, is being squeezed between Israel's security clampdown and growing hostility from Palestinian Muslims.
Babies have been abandoned to die on rubbish tips or in the street because the Israeli security wall that now hems in the West Bank city makes it difficult for distressed mothers to reach the Holy Family Children's Home.
Social workers also report that Palestinian Muslims are now more reluctant to rely on a Christian institution in the post-September 11 climate of distrust between the faiths.
Consequently, the number of children gathering around the home's modest Christmas tree this year will be half of that from recent years.
Sister Sophie, who runs the home, said: "The wall makes Bethlehem feel like a zoo. It makes it difficult for mothers to travel and so these children are being delivered in poor conditions and then abandoned on the street.
"Some of the little ones are already ill with severe health problems when they are found."
The home, which opened in 1895, was once the largest provider of care in the West Bank for abandoned children and young mothers who fell foul of Palestinian society's conservative and often brutal taboos.
Unmarried mothers or young Muslim women pregnant by non-Muslim men would flee in fear of their lives from so-called honour killings where members of their family would rather kill them than have their name tarnished.
In Bethlehem, a tradition had developed where such mothers were offered medical care for the delivery of the child who might then be brought up by a relative or in a foster home.
The 25ft concrete security wall has been ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
But Israel has persisted, arguing that it reduced the threat of suicide bombers.
A social worker said: "This home has been functioning for decades. But now, more than ever before, Palestinian families who consider sending their child here want to know about religion." This Christmas, only 15 children are left in the home.
Diana Mubarak, the director of social welfare in Bethlehem, said there were no other facilities in the occupied territories capable of looking after such infants.
Under Palestinian law, adoption is illegal. So Mrs Mubarak's department looks for foster homes to look after the foundlings.
If the religion of the child is not known, it is assumed they are Muslim.

So we have found out that even with the billions of dollars flowing into the PA, there are no Arab Muslim orphanages; Muslims would rather throw their babies in the garbage than have them raised by Christians, PalArab Muslims would rather kill their daughters then have their neighbors find out that they are pregnant; the PA outlaws adoption and therefore encourages the throwing out of babies.

Yet the entire tone and emphasis of the article is to blame Israel for daring to build a wall to keep out suicide bombers, and it bends over backwards to make sure that no one blames the Palestinian Muslim culture for any of this - even to the point of saying that the reasons that Muslims don't want Christians to raise the abandoned babies is because of "the post-September 11 climate of distrust between the faiths" as if somehow the heroic Christians who are trying to save the Muslim babies' lives are equally to blame for Muslims preferring to treat them like rubbish.

Bot Mitzvah

YouTube didn't like me posting the 30 second clip, so here is the next-best thing:

               [Lodgatorium Comfort Dome Inn: Corridor. Fry and Zoidberg walk
             out of Ballroom A and Fry sees a sign outside Ballroom B.]

             
             
                                     FRY
                         Ooo, a bot-mitzvah. Shalom hunger, shalom
                       free food!

             
               [He walks in and Zoidberg follows. A robot blocks Zoidberg's
             path.]

             
                                     ROBOT #1
                         No shellfish!

             
               [He slams the door.]

             
                                     ZOIDBERG
                         That is so unfair!

             
                                     PIG
                         Tell me about it.

             
               [Cut to: Lodgatorium Comfort Dome Inn: Ballroom B. The Jewbots
             dance around the bot-mitvah bot at extremely high speed. The
             banner behind them says "Hayom Ani Robot".  Fry gets some food
             from the  buffet.]

             
                                     FRY
                         So what's the deal? You guys don't believe
                       in Robot Jesus?

             
                                     ROBOT #2
                         We believe he was built and that he
                       was a very well programmed robot but
                       he wasn't our Messiah.

Egypt wants to revoke citizenship of 25,000 Egyptian Israelis

Palestine Today reports that Egypt is considering revoking the citizenship of some 25,000 Egyptians who have moved to Israel by marrying Israeli Arabs, saying that they are a threat to Egyptian national security.

Some observers think this is unlikely in light of the Egyptian/Israeli peace treaty.

The article quoted a recent World Bank report that the 25,000 Egyptians in Israel sent some $42 million back to Egypt, compared to the total of $78 million that Egypt has given to Palestinian Arabs.