Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 25, 2008

Saudis whining over poor Olympic showing

It seems that one cannot just buy Olympic medals by throwing millions at sports federations. It would also help if someone in the Saudi delegation had a calendar:

A state of anger dominated Saudis over the poor results of their representatives in Beijing Games.

Some claim that officials of the five federations should give reasons for the poor show of their representatives, especially with the financial support for these federations.

“Why did they go,” Ibrahim Al-Ghamdi, a teacher, asked the Saudi Gazette. “Hasn’t the government spent millions and millions of riyals on these players to keep Saudi Arabia in the front line of international sport? We need to be transparent and see where the problem lies,” he added.

Ghamdi suggested that if we continue to perform like this “We’d better refrain from participating”.

Sultan Al-Dawoodi and Sultan Al-Hibshi who participated in shot put failed to put up a good performance.

Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that pay great attention to equestrian, since it is the sport of ancestors. Arabs have been known for their love if this sport.

In Beijing, Saudi riders too disappointed their supporters. Prince Abdullah Bin Mot’ib Bin Abdullah, Fasial Al-Sha’alan, Ramzi Al-Dahami, Kamal Ba-Hamdan and Adnan Al-Baitouni are globally known for their achievements. Saudi fans expected that this team could win a silver medal or at least a bronze.

None of the Saudi representatives in Beijing would get much attention than Ali Al-Dohaili, a weightlifter who claimed that he was misinformed about the day of his participation. According to him, the team’s administrator had informed him that the event would be on Tuesday.

“I was surprised to know that it was on Monday,” he told the Arabic daily Al-Riyadiah.

Saudi sport columnists and writers insisted that such incident ought to be investigated officially to see who was responsible for depriving the young man from representing the country.

The only Saudi swimmer in the competition, Badr Al-Muhanna, also failed to at least prove himself as a professional swimmer.

Badr Al-Mutair, the sole Saudi representative in shooting was no luckier than his friends.

I especially like the sentiment that if Saudi Arabia is not going to win medals, why send any representatives at all?

By the way, Saudi Arabia excludes women from their Olympics team, which didn't stop the Washington Post from pretending that their allowing a woman to attend the Olympics as a member of the staff for the first time this year was a huge breakthrough. (The WaPo did follow up with an editorial calling to ban Saudi Arabia from the Olympics in 2012 if it continues to ban women athletes, based on an earlier op-ed by an Egyptian woman.)

August "cease-fire" calendar

Q=Qassam
M=Mortar

August 2008

8/16 - YNet reports three rockets over the weekend, I could only find specific mention of two so I don't know when the third was fired.

Previous "cease fire" calendar here.

The PLO's "goodwill gesture" to Rice

Israel over the weekend allowed two boats filled with terror supporters to reach Gaza, partly because of the desire to make Condi Rice's visit to the area this week more congenial.

Moreover, Israel released nearly 200 prisoners, including two known murderers, also to placate the US Secretary of State.

And how does the PLO, the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" and organization whose name is often automatically prefixed in the Western press as "moderate," welcome Condoleeza?

From Mathaba.net, quoting Iran's IRNA:

Head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization`s `PLO` Political Department Farouk Kaddoumi on Sunday denounced the US colonial approach in the Middle East.

He told a joint press conference with [Iranian] Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki that the US policy is aimed at supporting Tel Aviv regime in the region.

As to the Palestinian resistance movement to the Tel Aviv regime, he said the PLO and Hizbollah share identical views regarding their approach towards Israel.

Kaddoumi underlined the importance of national unity, saying, "anyone against the resistance movement should go to hell".

Praising resistance of Hizbollah to the Zionist aggressions, the PLO official said the victory achieved by Hizbollah was in fact an Arab-Islamic victory.

Expressing support for Iran's national program to produce nuclear energy, he said that Tehran must achieve its legitimate rights enshrined by Non-Proliferation Treaty.

It should be remembered that the PA is still officially run by the PLO, and even though Kaddoumi has been in a long-standing power struggle with Abbas and has been in exile he is still apparently the secretary-general of the PLO's political department. It is the PLO, not the PA, that has observer status and participates in debates at the UN.

PalArab press roundup

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, while welcoming Israel's "goodwill gesture" of releasing 198 PalArab prisoners, emphasized that there can be no peace agreement unless Israel releases every single terrorist and murderer. Because they are the heroes of Palestinian Arab society, among the "moderates" like himself.

There is a report that Abbas wants to meet with another of those heroes, Samir Kuntar, when he visits Lebanon later this week.

Even so, Abbas' PA continues to arrest Hamas members in the West Bank. Apparently, Hamas members in Israeli jails is unacceptable but in PA jails it is OK.

Abbas' government is set to give $100 to some 63,000 unemployed Gaza workers and fishermen on the eve of Ramadan, thus alleviating any pressure on Hamas to take care of Gazans and freeing up Hamas funds for more important things like rockets and guns.

Egypt is said to be ready to open the Rafah crossing tomorrow to allow hundreds of Gazans and Egyptians stuck on the wrong side of the border to return to their respective areas.

Israel allowed some 1800 gas pipes to enter Gaza. Hopefully they are plastic.

Jordan is planning to enter the fray as Arabs criticize Israeli excavations around the collapsed Moroccan Gate as undermining the Temple Mount and they continue to accuse Israel of covering up any Muslim artifacts they find while faking Jewish archaeological finds. (Of course, Israeli archaeologists have found and do publicize Islamic finds, and Arabs are the ones who have been proven to destroy any vestiges of Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount.)

A writer published in two papers his disgust at Al Jazeera for allowing Israelis to be interviewed on that channel. He claims that Israel gets millions of dollars worth of free propaganda by Al Jazeera's interviews, that Israeli TV never allows any Palestinian Arabs to appear on its channels, and that allowing Israelis on Arab TV is "inadvertant normalization" with the Zionist enemy.

Islamic Jihad training pictures!

Palestine Today is the voice of Islamic Jihad and as such it often has exclusive photos of Islamic Jihad training sessions.

Here are some of the latest:

I haven't quite figured out why hanging upside down from a rope is such a necessary skill for the brave mujahadeen of PIJ, but perhaps it is the Gaza equivalent of the Blue Angels.

Remember how Gaza is always described as "one of the most densely populated areas on Earth"? Maybe it is because large swaths of Gaza are off limits to civilians as terrorists need lots of space to test their rockets.

This is perhaps one of the better camouflage outfits I've seen. You can hardly see his ski mask and automatic weapon peeking out from all that foliage.

Always a favorite, the Flaming Jump is all the more impressive when you realize that it is over 100 degrees F in Gaza and these guys are flying through a ring of fire - while wearing ski masks. If nothing else, their stench would be a great asset in any hand to hand combat.

Latest PalArab news

Hard to understand this article, but apparently one of the original Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Gaza was arrested by Hamas internal security for incest with his son and, I think, with Muslim Boy Scouts in a mosque in Gaza. Looks like the pervert also videotaped either his own escapades or the boy/girl scouts who met in the mosque.

Hamas continues to abduct and torture prominent Fatah leaders in Gaza including the governor of Khan Younis.

The Gaza Federation of Teachers claims that over 80% of its members in Gaza plan to strike at the beginning of the school year. Hamas is doing everything it can to intimidate them into going to work, including breaking into their homes, beating them and in one case stealing a union leader's car.

Time magazine shills for terror-supporters

Time magazine's coverage of the "Free Gaza" PR stunt betrays its biases:

The Palestinians in Gaza don't get many visitors. That's because the Israelis have imposed an air, land and sea blockade since 2007 when Islamic militants seized control of the coastal strip on the Mediterranean, making it impossible for friends to just drop by. So when two vessels loaded with 46 peace activists arrived on Saturday, thousands of Palestinians lined the harbor in a party mood. Fishing scows honked their foghorns and swarms of kids swam out to the arriving boats just as the sun was turning the water to molten reds and gold.

Time takes pains to talk about Gaza's "friends" dropping by. How many of the "friends" that want to go in and out of Gaza are terrorists? One only needs to go back to February and December and October to find out.

Notice also how Time waxes poetic about the scene surrounding these purported "peace activists" who support Hamas terror against innocent Jews.

It was a remarkable odyssey for the two battered ships of the "Free Gaza" movement, a U.S.-based pro-Palestinian group, which set out from Cyprus on Friday morning with few hopes of reaching Gaza. The activists, who hail from 14 countries, said that before they even set sail, they faced anonymous death threats, the mysterious drowning of one potential sponsor, and constant badgering by Israeli spies badly disguised as guitar-strumming hippies. "They kept popping up, everywhere," said Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, an organizer. "They were really annoying."

Fact check, anyone? Time just lets slide the implication that Israel is assassinating pro-peace patrons.

Once at sea, the activists — who include an 81-year old nun, a Greek leftist parliamentarian and the sister-in law of ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair — braved a squall and a bizarre communications blackout, which they say was caused by lsraeli electronic jamming, and which thwarted a rendezvous in heaving seas between peace activists and a ship of journalists.

The biggest danger they faced was possible arrest by the Israelis. Earlier, Israel had declared Gaza's waters to be a "designated maritime zone" and warned the peace activists to steer clear or face arrest. At one point, says Palestinian-American law professor Huwaida Arraf who joined the activists, the radar picked up three vessels which were shadowing them from just over the horizon. The "Free Gaza" crew presumes the ships were Israeli.

But Israel chose to play nice, letting the peaceniks into Gaza on a once-only pass instead of acting the part of a high seas ogre. "They wanted a provocation at sea, but they won't get it," explained Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron. Now, Israel has to contend with a barrage of international media coverage of the two peace vessels sailing into Gaza harbor — and the publicity boon this will give to the Hamas militants who have ruled Gaza since June 2007 when they split with Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who governs from the Palestinian inland enclave in the West Bank. Hamas' leader in Gaza, Ismael Haniyeh, personally welcomed the activists. Israel and Hamas are sworn enemies (the Islamic militants say they want to destroy the Jewish state) but nonetheless they agreed to a cease-fire in June that has largely held firm.

Without irony, Time calls them "peace activists" (and even Yiddishizes them as "peaceniks") even as it mentions that Hamas' terror leader "personally welcomed" the terror supporters. And as the picture shows, these "peace activists" have no compunction whatsoever about hugging a master terrorist who works tirelessly on ways to kill as many Jewish civilians as possible.

For Time to repeatedly refer to these wretched moonbats who consistently oppose any and everything that Israel does to defend its women and children from being blown up by Palestinian Arab terrorists as "peace activists" is the height of absurdity, and it shows how low the media has sunk in recent years in its inability to tell right from wrong.

Let's hope that Israel allows these "friends" of Gazans to stay and visit for a long, long time.

Peaceful PalArab weekend

Hamas stormed Al Azhar University in Gaza and the ensuing riots saw many injuries, including professors and a vice president of the university.

A teachers' union in Gaza decided to go on strike to protest these sorts of attacks against teachers by Hamas. Hamas responded by abducting a Rafah school principal, one of the leaders of the union.

Palestinian Arab welfare recipients in the West Bank again closed the UNRWA offices there in protest of not getting enough free stuff from the world. It is unclear how closing the offices will help them. As always whenever Palestinian Arabs act violently against UNRWA, the UNRWA is completely silent about it, with no mentions of these problems in its press releases.

Hamas called on Arab states to stop giving money to the PA.

The PalArab media is reporting on an article in Debka that claims that an 11-point joint Saudi-Egyptian plan for Palestinian Arab unity includes the introduction of Egyptian forces in Gaza. The plan, according to Debka, includes:

1. The rival Palestinian Hamas and Fatah must end their vendetta.
2. They will both release prisoners.
3. Fatah fugitives from the Gaza Strip will be allowed to return home.
4. The tit-for-tat bans on Fatah and Hamas institutions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank must be lifted.
5. Hamas must hand Gaza’s ruling institutions back seized two years ago to the Palestinian Authority.
6. Hamas must suspend the operations of its militia and police forces.
7. Inter-Arab monitors, headed by Egyptian officers, will supervise the Gaza police force.
8. Another panel headed by Egyptian officers will compile a reform program for the Palestinian security bodies in Gaza, effectively removing them from Hamas’ hands.
9. In the interim, until the reform program is implemented, an inter-Arab force of 3,000, commanded by Egyptian security officers, will be in charge of security matters.
10. A provisional Palestinian government will be installed in Ramallah in place of the Salam Fayad administration. It will consist of nonpartisan technocrats acceptable to Fatah and Hamas alike.
11. The PLO’s governing institutions will be overhauled to make room for Hamas representation for the first time.

Egypt bans cross-religious organ donation

From Egypt's Daily News, August 18:

Head of the Doctors’ Syndicate Hamdy El Sayed refuted claims made by human rights activists that the proposed organ transplant law discriminates between Muslims and Christians.
The draft law that would regulate organ donations and transplants limits the practice to family members and bans it between people of different religions or different nationalities. This would restrict trade in human organs, the syndicate had said in previous statements.
Without any regulation, Egypt has struggled with the problem of organ trafficking for years. Poverty and desperation have led many to be manipulated into selling their organs with little knowledge of the consequences.
“It’s a racist law that calls for discrimination and it discriminates between the Coptic Christians and the Muslim donors and made it less likely for sick patients to get their organ transplants,” Naguib Gabriel, head of the Egyptian Human Rights Union, told Daily News Egypt.
Gabriel added that they filed a suit against the Doctor’s syndicate.
On his part El Sayed denied any sectarianism in the law saying that “if some Copts are angered by the law then why is it that Muslims aren’t.”
El Sayed added that under the draft law, it’s not possible for a Copt to donate organs to a Muslim and vice versa simply because donations have been restricted to family members up to the fourth degree.
“For starters, it is degrading for both religions if lets say, a poor Christian has to sell his kidney to a rich Muslim, or a poor Muslim has to sell his kidney to a rich Christian. It is not right for either religions and that is why we made this law so we can stop organ trafficking.”

And if the minority Copts now can no longer use 90% of the organs on the market, well, it is to protect them from being "degraded."

It is amazing that a head of a doctor's union can think that these arguments "refute" the fact that he is supporting a purely bigoted law.

Arab hate for the West - not just for Islamists

It is seductive to believe that the Arab hatred for America (and Israel) is a purely religious phenomenon; that while the Islamic fanatics hate the United States there are a large number of modern, moderate, practical Arabs who wear Western clothing and who understand concepts like economics and the media who are more flexible and pragmatic in their thinking.

It is not true.

For a tiny example of the hatred that "progressive" Arabs have for the West, check out this MEMRI TV clip of an Egyptian actor being interviewed on a Lebanese talk show:

First Woman: What if you fell in love with an American woman?
Khaled Saleh: Impossible. Impossible. That would never happen. [Applause.]

Second Woman: What about a French woman? Is that any better?

Saleh: No.

First Woman: What about a Lebanese woman?

Saleh: She must be Arab, of course.

First Woman: Why is it impossible for you to fall in love with an American?

Saleh: Let me tell you something. I traveled there once and lived among this people. The great problem that happened in America – September 11 – was not a good thing, but the panic I saw in the eyes of the Americans that day... I hoped it would make these people a little more focused – just a little – so that they would feel that there is such a thing as fear in the world, things like terror, oppression, and so on. I am against anything that is American nowadays, because I feel they are phony. When I talk to an Arab, I feel I am talking to someone who knows what is going on in the world. With an American, I feel I'm talking to a Nazi, who sees nothing but himself.

First Woman: But you are making a generalization with regard to them.

Saleh: By God, they generalize themselves. All of them.

The irony is that here is a talk show with hostesses wearing low-cut dresses, with modern graphics and production values - consciously imitating Western TV as much as possible. It is a sluttier Arab version of "The View." There is nothing remotely Islamic about this show. Yet the hatred shown there is palpable, as the audience wildly cheers a popular actor saying how he considers all Westerners to be beneath contempt and how he sees a silver lining in 9/11.

Saudi women against colored abayas

From Arab News:

It is eight o’clock in the evening at Sahara Mall in Riyadh and Um Abdul Aziz is distributing booklets to shoppers titled “To where are you going?” She is completely covered except for one small hole in her veil over her right eye.
“Fear God,” she whispers to women whom she attempts to give her pamphlets. “May He guide you!”
Some show interest, others just ignore her as they walk past. The booklet was written by Muhammed Alarify, an Islamic scholar, who decries the “odd phenomenon” of women wearing the hair covering of their abayas down on their shoulders, and finds it strange that women choose not to wear long black gloves that cover their hands and arms and stockings to ensure their ankles are not exposed inadvertently from the hemline of their robes.
Um Abdul Aziz, who is an Arabic language arts instructor at a girls’ secondary school in Riyadh, agrees and considers her shopping mall proselytizing important. She laments the way Saudi women dress these days.
“I seek God’s satisfaction,” she said. “Have a look around! Colored and tight abayas... today’s veil needs to be covered by another veil.”
Majeedah Al-Rashid, a mother of four girls, supports women preachers in public places and she even started to do it herself, targeting girls wearing abayas in ways she considers improper.
“The way some women look troubles me because my 16-year-old daughter is now insisting on not covering her face because this is what she sees everywhere,” she said.
She also said that some women’s appearance annoyed other women, who, as she put it, “can’t close their husband’s eyes in public.”
In recent years, abayas that reveal the shape of the body has become popular among Saudi women, especially the young. They are made of thin material with colored designs. This has raised the ire of many Islamic scholars, who say that they are not the kind of abayas prescribed in the Shariah as they understand it. They believe that the Shariah dictates that an abaya should be black, wide and cover the entire body from head to toe.
Thahab Alotaibi, a translation student at King Saud University, disagrees with the way some preachers approach girls. The 21-year-old recounted an incident when a woman threw a hand-written leaflet into her trolley in a supermarket that said her face would be burned in hell because she did not cover it.
She added: “I do wear black abayas and cover my hair so I am not violating Islamic teachings. But whether my abaya has blue or white stripe is a very personal choice.”

I'm sorry for mentioning the unthinkable of Saudi women wearing abayas with a blue stripe; it is a family blog, after all....

Egypt: Where courts sentence and sheikhs punish

Even "moderate" Egypt doesn't distinguish between secular and Islamic jurisprudence. From MEMRI Blog:

Attorney Nabih Al-Wahsh has filed a lawsuit against Al-Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi demanding that he be removed from his position, banned, and fined 20 million Egyptian pounds for refusing to implement a sentence of 80 lashes handed down by an Egyptian court to film director Inas Al-Daghidi.
Al-Daghidi, director of "Diary of a Teenager," was accused of slandering Egyptian girls, harming their good name, and spreading licentiousness via his film.

Source: Al-Masryoon, Egypt, August 21, 2008

The main point of the story is, of course, that Egypt uses lashes to suppress freedom of expression.

But notice the sequence of events: An Egyptian court (secular?) sentenced a film director to lashes (Islamic) for "slandering Egyptian girls and harming their good name" (Islamic.)

The sentence was to be carried out by a cleric (Islamic) but he refused. Therefore the lawyer sues in a (secular) court to punish the sheikh, using secular methods (fine and demotion) for not carrying out a religious punishment imposed by the secular court.

No one that I'm aware of refers to modern Egypt as a theocracy. Although its constitution explicitly says that "Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia)."