Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 18, 2008

Gilad Schalit's children's story

JERUSALEM - Years before he was a soldier seized by Palestinian militants, 11-year-old Gilad Schalit penned a simple parable about how enemies can get along.

His story, "When the Shark and the Fish First Met," has now been published as a children's book that teaches tolerance — while its author, now 21, spends his 19th month captive in the Gaza Strip.

The tank crewman was seized in June 2006 by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip in a cross-border raid into Israel. Two of his comrades were killed in the attack. Secret negotiations on a prisoner swap deal have stalled.

The story Schalit wrote as a fifth-grader in 1997 was published Saturday with its 64 pages illustrated by 29 Israeli artists. The project is also on display in a gallery in Nahariya, the Mediterranean coastal town where Schalit was born.

In the story, a shark is about to eat a little fish, but the fish persuades the shark to let him live. Instead, the two play hide-and-seek underwater and become friends.

But their mothers disapprove. "The fish is an animal we eat. Don't play with it!" the shark's mother tells him.

"The shark is the animal that devoured your father and brother — don't play with that animal!" the fish's mother tells him.

After avoiding each other for a year, the two meet again. The shark says, "You're my enemy, but shall we make up?"

The fish agrees, and eventually the two announce their friendship to their mothers.

"Since that day, the sharks and the fish have lived in peace," wrote Schalit.

His message: 'Even enemies can live together'

One of Schalit's teachers found the story while doing spring cleaning last year and brought it to his family, said Noam Schalit, Gilad's father.

"This is a message from an 11-year-old kid who believes that even enemies can live together in the end," Schalit told The Associated Press. "It's amazing how relevant that is to his situation today."

Mazal Gabai, Gilad Schalit's fifth-grade teacher, said he wrote the story after she taught the class about parables.

"I believe that the prophecy will come true, and the two will live together," she told Israel Radio on Sunday. "The message is clear — nothing can happen without dialogue. Even if the other side is extremely difficult, we'll find a way to bridge the gaps."

All of the illustrators who took part in the project volunteered their work, said Lee Rimon, the artist who came up with the idea of turning Schalit's story into a book. The illustrations are on exhibit at The Edge, the gallery she runs with her husband in Nahariya, and will begin touring Israel this week.

"When we heard about this story, we knew we had to do something," she said.

The story is online, including Schalit's original illustrations.

Palestinian Press modifies UN remarks

The UN released a statement yesterday:

Deeply concerned at the escalation of violence in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Israel, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for an immediate halt to Palestinian sniper and rocket attacks, as well as maximum restraint by the Israeli Defence Forces.

But when Palestinian Press Agency reported on it, something was missing:

United Nations Secretary-General expressed concern about the Israeli escalation

Ban Ki-moon stressed the Secretary General of the United Nations, deeply concerned about the current escalation in the killings in Gaza and the West Bank.

In a press statement issued at dawn today, deeply regretted the bloodshed and the killing and wounding of civilians in the Palestinian territories, warning of the likelihood of further victims in the case are not calm the situation in the region.

Notice that this "news" agency somehow managed to overlook Ki-Moon's call for an "immediate halt" to Palestinian Arab rockets and shootings?

Once again, the PalArabs show no ability to comprehend that they have any responsibilities at all - to the point that they will censor any news stories that indicate that they are responsible for their actions. Everything, and I mean everything, is 100% Israel's fault.

Always.

"Dismantled" Fatah group says it is ending its "cease-fire"

From Ma'an:

The general commander of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, in the West Bank announced an end to their three-month ceasefire on Friday.

Abu Uday said in a statement that the ceasefire was now over and that the Brigades will respond to the recent Israeli assassinations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

"We will not stand idly by while witnessing massacres of our people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We will respond to these massacres and we give the green light to all our brigades. Thus we will calm the hearts of the martyrs' families," he said.

But I thought that the Al Aqsa Brigades were dismantled by the PA! And then ten days later it was disbanded again!

And that after they were dismantled they were still taking credit for attacks from the West Bank! And the last one occurred only yesterday!

And I could have sworn that Al-Aqsa in Gaza has been sending daily rockets towards Israel!

Could it be - just maybe - that murderous terrorists and their "moderate" Fatah leaders aren't the most honest people in the world?

Saudi teacher beaten up; police refuse to enter girls school to save her

From the Arab News:

Angry Man Barges Into Girls’ School

A man and his wife and one of his daughters busted into a girl’s secondary school here and beat up a teacher inside, the daily Al-Watan reported yesterday.
According to the report, the family was upset at the teacher because she wouldn’t allow one of the daughters out of school at the end of the day for some unknown reason.

OK, so the guy (and his wife and daughter) have some anger issues. An interesting "oddly enough"-type story that is similar to many that happen in the West.

But what happened afterwards is far more newsworthy than the headline:

The building superintendent, upon hearing the ruckus inside, refused to enter the building due to the social restrictions on men entering women-only areas such as girl’s high schools.
Even the police didn’t go in after they were called; they waited until the man came out and arrested him.

Men who were in a position to save a female teacher from being beaten up by three angry people - who, for all they knew, was being murdered inside - refused to help her out because she was a woman, and surrounded by girls! Police, whose very job should be to protect innocent people in exactly these sorts of circumstances, refuse to do so because of the bizarre Saudi social construct of separating men and women.

One can only imagine the scene as men stand outside the girls' school, listening to a teacher's screams as she is being beaten, calmly waiting for the assaulter to exit so they can apprehend him - without being forced to look at high school girls.

And the Saudi-based Arab News thinks that the main story is the beating, not the gross negligence on the part of the men.

Let's talk about "jihad"

WND reports:

An Islamic "jihad" is an effort by Muslims to convince "others to take up worthy causes, such as funding medical research," according to a middle school textbook used in California and other states.

And even at its most violent, "jihad" simply is Muslims fighting "to protect themselves from those who would do them harm," says the "History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond" book published by Teachers' Curriculum Institute.
...The textbook council, an independent national research group set up in 1989 to review history and social studies texts in public schools, quoted directly from the book to provide evidence of its bias.
The word jihad means "to strive." Jihad represents the human struggle to overcome difficulties and do things that would be pleasing to God. Muslims strive to respond positively to personal difficulties as well as worldly challenges. For instance, they might work to become better people, reform society, or correct injustice.

Jihad has always been an important Islamic concept. One hadith, or account of Muhammad, tells about the prophet's return from a battle. He declared that he and his men had carried out the "lesser jihad," the external struggle against oppression. The "greater jihad," he said, was the fight against evil within oneself. Examples of the greater jihad include working hard for a goal, giving up a bad habit, getting an education, or obeying your parents when you may not want to.

Another hadith says that Muslims should fulfill jihad with the heart, tongue, and hand. Muslims use the heart in their struggle to resist evil. The tongue may convince others to take up worthy causes, such as funding medical research. Hands may perform good works and correct wrongs.

Sometimes, however, jihad becomes a physical struggle. The Quran tells Muslims to fight to protect themselves from those who would do them harm or to right a terrible wrong. Early Muslims considered their efforts to protect their territory and extend their rule over other regions to be a form of jihad. However, the Quran forbade Muslims to force others to convert to Islam. So, non-Muslims who came under Muslim rule were allowed to practice their faiths.

Besides the falsehoods - especially the last sentence, which certainly doesn't apply to Hindus and any other non-dhimmis - this is consciously parroting Islamist talking points as opposed to how the word "jihad" is used, and understood, in daily Arabic. (The fact that there are a number of "Islamic Jihad" terror groups proves the point quite well.)

In addition, many - or most - Muslims themselves do not believe that the hadith that introduced the topics of "lesser Jihad" and "greater Jihad" are authentic. See this thread in a British Muslim message board, where the first poster sniffs:

I jus thought i would make this post and make it clear that a major hadith which has desperately slipped into mainstream society of the so-called "greater" and "lesser" jihad is fabricated.

The hadith that is used is:

"When the prophet was returning from battle he said 'we have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad'"

this hadith is used to say that the physical jihad is lesser than the actual jihad an nafs. [against oneself.]

sheikh ul islam ibn taymiyyah said that you will not find this hadith in any of the six books and that you can not trace the isnad. he also says that the killing of the mushrikeen in jihad is the greatest of actions. [Mushrikeen are polytheists - EoZ]

This is a corruption of jihad so people dont have to go and fight and would rather stay back and say "i am perfecting myself"

for now

wasalam

For fun, I decided to look up old books in Google and see how "Jehad" was explained by the earliest English-language chroniclers of Islamic history. In these texts, consistently, "Jehad" is translated as "religious war", "holy war" or something similar.

The earliest mention I could find is from the 1708 book "The Conquest of Syria, Persia, and AEgypt, by the Saracens" where Jehad is translated as "Bellum Sacrum - Battles of the Lord."

By no means were all of these books biased against Islam, many are describing Muslim wars in India as factually as possible. It just means that the definition of Jihad as "inner struggle" is at worst a recent fiction and at best an obscure usage that is being trotted out to counter the consistent Islamic use of the word to describe violent actions and atrocities.

Video of Sderot damage

Here's video from YNet showing the extensive damage that Qassam rockets are wreaking on Sderot. Remember, these rockets were called "Christmas firecrackers" by the moderate Palestinian Authority.

Seeing how Qassams rip through the walls of houses, one wonders what "taking cover" means for the terrified residents of Sderot - where exactly can they run in the 15 seconds' warning they sometimes have? It is an absolute miracle that more haven't been killed from the thousands of Qassams that have rained down.
(YNet's version only works for Internet Explorer, I uploaded it to YouTube so more people could see it. Too many Israeli multimedia news sites rely on IE and as a result they limit their audience.)

Woman and child killed in Gaza - but not by Israel

From Ma'an:

Palestinian police affiliated to the Hamas-run government announced on Thursday morning the death two teenagers in two separate incidents of weapons misuse in Gaza City.

Sources in the Gazan police said that Hamza Al-Arqan was killed and his brother was injured when gunmen were shooting into the air during a wedding party in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood in Gaza City.

Separately, nineteen-year-old Nawal As-Sarhi from the Zeitoun neighborhood was killed when a gunshot slipped mistakenly while she was playing with her father's pistol, police said.

A nineteen year old woman "playing" with a pistol? From past news items plus the fact that Hamas released this information, an honor killing sounds more likely.

Ma'an Arabic refers to the boy as a "child".

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 9.

UPDATE: A corpse was found near Rafah from some sort of infighting. Grim milestone time: 10.

First Temple-era family seal found in Jerusalem

From JPost:

A stone seal bearing the name of one of the families who acted as servants in the First Temple and then returned to Jerusalem after being exiled to Babylonia has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David, a prominent Israeli archeologist said Wednesday.

The 2,500-year-old black stone seal, which has the name "Temech" engraved on it, was found earlier this week amid stratified debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig.

According to the Book of Nehemiah, the Temech family were servants of the First Temple and were sent into exile to Babylon following its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

The family was among those who later returned to Jerusalem, the Bible recounts.

The seal, which was bought in Babylon and dates to 538-445 BCE, portrays a common and popular cultic scene, Mazar said.

The 2.1 x 1.8-cm. elliptical seal is engraved with two bearded priests standing on either side of an incense altar with their hands raised forward in a position of worship.

A crescent moon, the symbol of the chief Babylonian god Sin, appears on the top of the altar.

Under this scene are three Hebrew letters spelling Temech, Mazar said.

The Bible refers to the Temech family: "These are the children of the province, that went up out of the captivity, of those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and came again to Jerusalem and to Judah, every one unto his city." [Nehemiah 7:6]... "The Nethinim [7:46]"... The children of Temech." [7:55].

The fact that this cultic scene relates to the Babylonian chief god seemed not to have disturbed the Jews who used it on their own seal, she added.

The seal of one of the members of the Temech family was discovered just dozens of meters away from the Opel area, where the servants of the Temple, or "Nethinim," lived in the time of Nehemiah, Mazar said.

"The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible," she said. "One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find."

What did the Syrian Mufti tell the EU parliament?

The Syrian Grand Mufti addressed the EU parliament on Tuesday and said some pretty moderate things. According to the EU report:

The Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, yesterday (15 January) told Parliament's Strasbourg plenary that perceived clashes of culture were instead conflicts of "ignorance, terrorism and backwardness".
He stressed that although religion gave culture its moral values, "it is we who build civilisation", arguing that "we must create states on a civil basis" rather than a religious one. Moreover, he said there was "no such thing" as a holy war [but only a "holy peace"].

MEMRI translates an article from champress.com that goes much further:

In a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Syrian Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun came out with a surprising call: "May Allah curse anyone who kills a Palestinian, Israeli, or Iraqi child or man, because he is killing a person whom Allah honored without connection to his religious belief."
The mufti added that if the Ka'ba, the Church of the Nativity, or the Al-Aqsa Mosque were to be destroyed, someone would rise up to rebuild them, but when a person was killed no one could bring them back to life.

The autotranslation of the champress.com report indicates that the speech was unusually moderate:

«We must rearing of our children and future generations on the basis of human values and the dignity of each individual and we must start here Palestine, the land of peace, if we could objectively, Israelis and Palestinians together, will live peacefully», recalling the words of the late Pope John Paul II,« instead of building the wall, Build trust and understanding with you »...

However, the Brussels Journal quotes a Dutch blogger, translating an article in a Dutch news site that says that when the Syrian Mufti addressed the EU parliament, he said (among other things):

Should it come to riots, bloodshed and violence after broadcating the Quran movie by PVV-leader Geert Wilders, then Wilders will be responsible.

This was said by the Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, Tuesday in teh European Parliament, where he gave a speech at the invitation of the fraction presidents.

If Wilders tears up or burn a Quran in his film 'this will simply mean he is inciting wars and bloodshed. And he will be responsible', according to te Grand Mufti.

Al Hassoun thinks it is 'the responsibility of the Dutch people to stop Wilders'.

So we have the Arabic press and the EU stressing the Mufti's moderate tone, and a Dutch newspaper saying otherwise - that the Mufti made an implicit threat against the Netherlands if they don't stop Wilders' anti-Muslim film. I could not find any media outlet that reported that part of his speech outside this reference to the Dutch-language site. (The Champress site mentions the Danish cartoons but I couldn't discern the threats mentioned here in the autotranslation.)

It is certainly plausible that he said those threatening words, but it is equally newsworthy to hear him say explicitly that terrorists who kill Israelis should be cursed. This is a way more peaceful position than most Islamic clerics are willing to say publicly. Whether it is his true belief or just politics I do not know, and it is intriguing to see both differing accounts of the same speech.

The limits of reliance

In the waning days of the Clinton presidency, Clinton presented his peace plan to Yasir Arafat with its well known concessions on the part of Israel (94-96% of the West Bank plus 1-3% of Israel proper, all of Gaza, splitting Jerusalem, destroying dozens of settlements.) Part of Clinton's intent was that if Arafat would not accept this offer it could not be a basis for future negotiations - as Dennis Ross wrote, “to be sure that it couldn’t be a floor for [future] negotiations... It couldn’t be a ceiling. It was the roof.”

This was an extremely extremely important point for Israel. Even so, Israel is now negotiating based pretty much on the same terms that were intended then by the US President to not be a basis for future negotiations.

In 2002, President Bush helped write the "roadmap" for peace, and he made it very clear that nothing would happen until Palestinian Arabs stopped their terror and incitement - cessation of violence was a precondition of every other part of the roadmap.

Again, this was a terrifically important point for Israel, the realization that a mindset of peace was a precondition for Israeli concessions, rather than the wishful thinking that peace will naturally come after Israel already gave up its own security. And yet, last week, COndoleeza Rice abrogated the roadmap and this condition. As Jeff Jacoby quotes Rice:

The reason that we haven't really been able to move forward on the peace process for a number of years is that we were stuck in the sequentiality of the road map. So you had to do the first phase of the road map before you moved on to the third phase of the road map, which was the actual negotiations of final status," Rice said. . . . What the US-hosted November peace summit in Annapolis did was "break that tight sequentiality. . . You don't want people to get hung up on settlement activity or the fact that the Palestinians haven't fully been able to deal with the terrorist infrastructure. . ."

In 2004, Ariel Sharon used a letter from President Bush as a major victory in the withdrawal from Gaza, showing that the US was against a withdrawal to the Green Line:

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.

Yet again, this was a crucial point in Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, knowing that the US supports Israel keeping some of the major settlement blocs in the West Bank. However, now the US government disagrees with this interpretation of the letter:

The United States clarified to Israel during U.S. President George Bush's visit this week that it disapproves of all building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank including in the large settlement blocs, a senior Western diplomat said Tuesday.

The diplomat added that Israel and the U.S. differ on their interpretation of the letter President Bush sent to former prime minister Ariel Sharon in April, 2004.

"The letter refers to major population centers and not the settlement blocs, while stressing that everything must also be decided in the negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians," the diplomat said.

According to the diplomat, Bush is steadfast in his objection of building in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem.

"The American government also opposes construction due to the natural growth of the present settlers", he said. He added, however, that if progress is made on border issues it may help to resolve the settlement issue. "When the route of the permanent border becomes clearer, the locations where Israel can and cannot build will also be clearer."

These three times Israel trusted her friends in the White House to help guarantee its security, and in each of these times the promises and understandings that Israel relied on turned out to be ephemeral.

It is clear that both Bill Clinton and George Bush have great affinity and feelings for Israel. But it is equally clear that it is a mistake for Israel to rely on any promises, letters, or understandings from a third party when the subject is Israel's security. In the end, countries act in their own interests, and in the case of the current administration the Arab world has fooled the White House into thinking that they would support the West against Iran if only the Palestinian Arabs get what they want, no strings attached. Since the Iranian problem is truly a geopolitical threat to the West, the false linkage to Israel turns into something that Washington needs to address.

Of course, the current Israeli government has more than its share of blame for this situation - it is unreasonable for Israel's supporters to ask the White House to be more Zionist than Israel's own leaders. Beyond that, though, Israel's dependence on US largesse also means that Israel is no longer free to make its own decisions for her own security without "consulting" (getting permission from) Washington.

Israel's relationship with the US should be one of mutual self-interest, not of dependence.

Joke of the day

From Jay Leno:

Today President Bush said the Saudis are fully enlisted in the war on terror.

Yeah - so fully, they're on both sides.

Saudi "love children"

From Arab News:

She looked Arab but spoke, in addition to English, a Southeast Asian language. When asked about her origin, she said her father was Saudi, who left her mother and returned to the Kingdom, said Najeeb Al-Zamil, a businessman and Saudi columnist, who met the girl by chance while abroad.
The girl worked as a masseuse, serving tourists at their private accommodations. “She was not the only Saudi-origin girl abandoned in that country or in other countries,” he said.
“Unfortunately, after four years the girl died at the age of 17 with HIV. ... She was not the only victim in the family. Her mother also had Arab features and she too was abandoned by her Saudi father as well,” Al-Zamil said.
“We tried to reunite them with their family in Saudi Arabia but both Saudi fathers left no trace and we failed to help them... The only thing we managed to do was to move them to a better home,” he added.
Al-Zamil said it was a reality that many Saudis fly to the Far East, get married, have children and then simply leave.
Another heartrending tale is that of a 14-year-old girl called Salma, not her real name. At the age of seven her Saudi father left both her and her mother, and returned to the Kingdom.
Salma left school early and began working at a bar and as a model featuring in low budget advertisements. She was nicknamed the queen of advertisements. However, life’s experience has left her bitter about men, Saudi Arabia and Islam.
In spite of everything, Salma’s mother, who had converted to Islam to marry her father, had still brought her daughter up as a Muslim.