Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Free Gaza freaks are seasick!

I signed up to be on Free Gaza's mailing list so I get the latest news quickly. And their dispatches sometimes contain real gems.

From Greta Berlin, of the FGM Media Team:

It's 2:30 am, and Osama has just gone to get some sleep for a couple of hours. He and I wait in Cyprus for news from the Dignity and watch the small blip of the SPOT checker as it moves slowly toward Gaza and a possible forceful intervention from the well-armed Israeli navy somewhere are oung 6:00 am. The rumblings out of Jerusalem are fierce. They will not let us come into Gaza, because we didn't behave the last time. What that means only the minds of neurotic military men can sort through, and I am reminded of the movie, Dr. Strangelove, only this confrontation will be real, pitting nonviolent human rights watchers against the 4th largest military in the world.

The people on board are now Osama's and my friends, most of them having been to Cyprus twice in an attempt to get on board. We talked to David S about a half hour ago, and 80% of them are sea-sick, some seriously. Even with the new boat, one that rides better and is more stable, the people are still sick. Twenty-seven of them are crowded onto that boat, because they care enough about the human rights of an occupied people being slowly strangled to death by Israeli military might to take the risk.

If the doctors on the boat can't handle seasickness in a couple of dozen people, exactly how much help can they give to 1.5 million during their attempted photo-op?

And why am I not surprised that one of their leaders is named Osama?

Clearly Greta is tired, because she let slip something she surely didn't mean to:

Israel is panicked that the Palestinians will do the same thing that they did in the late 40s and that is get on boats and come home.

It took me a second, but then I realized what she was saying: she was comparing Palestinian Arabs to the Jews who had to "illegally" immigrate to Palestine to save their lives from the Nazis!

Which means that she must consider the Palestinian Arabs' host countries to be as oppressive as Nazi Germany, I guess.

But notice her word choice: even this rabid anti-Zionist admits that the Jewish refugees of the 1940s were not European colonialists, but they were members of a nation coming home!

I doubt that this dispatch will make it onto their website before they realize that they just justified Zionism as a national restoration movement.

An early Jewish settlement in Palestine (1882)

Famed, eccentric British explorer and writer Laurence Oliphant journeyed to Palestine in the early 1880s. In this excerpt from his book "Haifa; or, Life in modern Palestine," this is a somewhat humorous and illuminating account of the founding of a new unnamed Jewish agricultural settlement in 1882, probably Zichron Yaakov. (h/t anonymous commenter)

About sixteen miles to the south of the projecting point of Carmel, upon which the celebrated monastery is perched above the sea, there lies a tract of land which has suddenly acquired an interest owing to the fact of its having been purchased by the Central Jewish Colonization Society of Roumania, with a view of placing upon it emigrants of the Hebrew persuasion who have been compelled to quit the country of their adoption in consequence of the legal disabilities to which they are subjected in it, and who have determined upon making a bona fide attempt to change the habits of their lives and engage in agricultural pursuits. I was invited by the local agent in charge of this enterprise to accompany him on a visit to the new property, whither he was bound with a view of making arrangements for housing and placing upon it the first settlers. Traversing the northern portion of the fertile plain of Sharon, which extends from Jaffa to Carmel, we enter by a gorge into the lower spurs of the Carmel range, which is distant at this point about three miles from the seacoast, and, winding up a steep path, find ourselves upon a fertile plateau about four hundred feet above the level of the sea. Here over a thousand acres of pasture and arable land have been purchased, on which a small hamlet of half a dozen native houses and a storehouse belonging to the late proprietor compose the existing accommodation. This hamlet is at present occupied by the fellahin wlio worked the land for its former owner, and it is proposed to retain their services as laborers and co-partners in the cultivation of the soil until the new-comers shall have become sufficiently indoctrinated in the art of agriculture to be able to do for themselves.

The experiment of associating Jews and Moslem fellahin in field labor will be an interesting one to watch, and the preliminary discussions on the subject were more picturesque than satisfactory. The meeting took place in the storehouse, where Jews and Arabs squatted promiscuously amid the heaps of grain, and chaffered over the terms of their mutual co-partnership. It would be difficult to imagine anything more utterly incongruous than the spectacle thus presented —the stalwart fellahin, with their wild, shaggy, black beards, the brass hilts of their pistols projecting from their waistbands, their tasselled kufeihahs drawn tightly over their heads and girdled with coarse black cords, their loose, flowing abbas, and sturdy bare legs and feet; and the ringleted, effeminate-looking Jews, in caftans reaching almost to their ankles, as oily as their red or sandy locks, or the expression of their countenances — the former inured to hard labor on the burning hillsides of Palestine, the latter fresh from the Ghetto of some Roumanian town, unaccustomed to any other description of exercise than that of their wits, but already quite convinced that they knew more about agriculture than the people of the country, full of suspicion of all advice tendered to them, and animated by a pleasing self-confidence which I fear the first practical experience will rudely belie. In strange contrast with these Roumanian Jews was the Arab Jew who acted as interpreter—a stout, handsome man, in Oriental garb, as unlike his European coreligionists as the fellahin themselves. My friend and myself, in the ordinary costume of the British or American tourist, completed the party.

The discussion was protracted beyond midnight—the native peasants screaming in Arabic, the Roumanian Israelites endeavoring to outtalk them in German jargon, the interpreter vainly trying to make himself heard, everybody at cross-purposes because no one was patient enough to listen till another had finished, or modest enough to wish to hear anybody speak but himself. Tired out, I curled myself on an Arab coverlet, which seemed principally stuffed with fleas, but sought repose in vain. At last a final rupture was arrived at, and the fellahin left us, quivering with indignation at the terms proposed by the new-comers. Sleep brought better counsel to both sides, and an arrangement was finally arrived at next morning which I am afraid has only to be put into operation to fail signally. There is nothing more simple than farming in co-operation with the fellahin of Palestine if you go the right way to work about it, and nothing more hopeless if attempted upon a system to which they are unaccustomed. Probably, after a considerable loss of time, money, and especially of temper, a more practical modus operandi will be arrived at. I am bound to say that I did not discover any aversion on the part of the Moslem fellahin to the proprietorship by Israelites of their land, on religious grounds. The only difficulty lay in the division of labor and of profit, where the owners of the land were entirely ignorant of agriculture, and therefore dependent on the co-operation of the peasants, on terms to be decided between them.

Jihadis love their kiddie pr0n

I had missed this story from a couple of weeks ago, from the Times of London:

Paedophilia and terrorism seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. We think of men who prey on children, and those who are a step away, collecting child po-rnography over the internet, as depraved isolated individuals wallowing in their own obsessions.

By contrast, despite the destruction of innocent lives that they crave, the popular view is that terrorists are driven by some external, if distorted, ideology that they at least see as a noble cause. The illegal child porn images found on the computers of a number of extremists give the lie to this simple division.

It is probably sensible for the police to take stock before assuming there is an inevitable link between terrorism, especially the jihadi variety, and child pornography. But it is possible that an extreme interpretation of Islam that regards male sexual urges as so uncontrollable that all women have to cover themselves from head to toe generates in some men a confusion about their sexuality and appropriate sexual partners. An interest in child pornography may be one consequence.

In 2005 anti-terror police were monitoring Abdul Khalisadar, a Muslim preacher. They were astonished to find that his DNA came up on the national database for an unsolved rape in Whitechapel. His computer contained enough extreme child pornography for him to be charged with possession of this illegal material, but he was never convicted of terror offences.

Another religiously observant youth who was caught up in British anti-terror surveillance in 2006 was also found to have serious child po-rnography on his computer.

In Spain Abdelkader Ayachine, a man in his forties who is thought to be a leader of a terrorist cell, is awaiting trial accused of having thousands of extreme child po-rnography images. These files were on the same computers as videos of Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalist ideologues extolling jihad.

Just as anti-terror police have found that their investigations have led them to collectors of child po-rnography, so also have child protection officers found that their investigations have led them to people preparing to carry out terrorist acts. This overlap is seen as of such significance that Scotland Yard has considered whether child protection officers should be alerted to the possibilities of terrorists being among their suspects.

This story, also at the Times, gives more details.

More proof that immorality breeds immorality, even if the practitioners like to clothe it in religious terms.

Today, the Free Gaza leftards and terrorist-huggers gave out another of their endless supply of press releases where they lie about their goals:

We are returning to Gaza for exactly the same reasons we came in August: to deliver medical supplies, meet with civil society organizations, volunteer in hospitals, and visit Palestinians who have requested our presence.

But their mission statement gives the real reason they came:

We want to break the siege of Gaza. We want to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation. We want to uphold Palestine's right to welcome internationals as visitors, human rights observers, humanitarian aid workers, journalists, or otherwise.

Not a single word about acually helping Gazans in their mission statement!

The goals of the FGM have nothing to do with helping Gazans, and their bringing small amounts of medical supplies and a few doctors is a show - to try to embarrass Israel and score brownie points in the international media. As we have seen, the terror-supporting FGM freaks have proven that helping Gazans is the last thing on their minds.

Egypt's siege of Gaza

Last week, CAMERA released a backgrounder aimed at the many media outlets that refer exclusively to an "Israeli siege" of Gaza without acknowledging that Egypt also chooses to severely restrict people and goods from entering Gaza.

A case in point can be seen in this story which has been ignored by the Western press.

Ma'an wrote last week:

A European group is organizing the largest-ever parliamentary visit to the Gaza Strip next month, aimed at breaking the ongoing Israeli siege.

The European Campaign to Lift the Siege of Gaza announced its preparations on Thursday, saying it intends to send legislators from all over the world to Gaza in November.

Several Arab and foreign parliamentarians expressed their wish to participate in the visit aiming at breaking the siege of the Gaza Strip, organizers said in a statement.

Leaders from Rights for All, a Swiss-based organization in Geneva, said that "parliamentarians from Algeria, Kuwait, Yemen, Jordan, Sudan and other Arab countries will join the international parliamentarian delegation."

The head of the European Campaign said that the group will also include leaders from various other countries, namely the United Kingdom, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and Scotland, as well as Asia and Latin America.

Concerning the arrangements for entering the Gaza Strip, Al Gharbi said that “negotiations are ongoing with the Egyptian side."

He added that the movement has high hopes for Egypt to open the Rafah crossing to enable the delegation to enter Gaza and "see the human and medical situation" there.

In an ironic twist that has gone completely unnoticed by the mainstream media, Egypt denied this delegation from crossing Rafah:

The "European Campaign to Lift the Siege on Gaza" condemned the decision of the Egyptian authorities to refuse to allow the group, which includes scores of Arab and foreign deputies, from entering the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing dividing Egypt and the Gaza Strip early next month.

The head of the delegation said in a press statement: "We strongly condemn the surprise decision refusing to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt, although the objective of the visit was humanitarian."

Yes, a group of self-declared "humanitarians" who say that their objective it to stop the "Israeli siege" is stopped from entering - by Egypt.

The irony doesn't end there. The "Free Gaza" movement, which is set to sail their patched-up boat today from Cyprus to Gaza, got British MP Jeremy Corbyn to submit an absurdly anti-Israel motion to the British House of Commons (received via email):

This House applauds the excellent work of the Free Gaza Movement in highlighting the fact that Israel is imposing collective punishment on the 1.5 million people of Gaza, in contravention of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention; acknowledges the considerable amount of pressure applied by the Israeli government on a previous (FG) voyage last August; wishes the latest boat travelling from the port of Cyprus to Gaza carrying both a large group of concerned human rights workers and, including among them Palestinian MP - Dr Mustafa Barghouti, and the Nobel Peace Prize winner - Mairead Maguire, as well as medical practitioners and supplies, a safe voyage with no outside interference, and calls upon her majesty's government to take action to ensure that the massive economic, political and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is brought to an end as a matter of urgency.

So the "Free Gaza" movement gets massive amounts of publicity and claims that Israel interfered with their non-humanitarian, PR-fueled voyage last August - when Israel allowed the boats through unimpeded - but when a much more prominent group actually does get stopped from entering Gaza by Egypt, the world media is utterly silent.

LG Electronics markets Quran TV set

The line between religion and commerce is nonexistent when it comes to Islam. Korea-based LG has released a TV with built-in Quran:

Keen to read the Quran on your TV set in the comfort of your home or bookmark your favourite phrases from the Holy Quran at the flick of your TV remote? You can now, with LG's latest Quran-enabled Time Machine TV.

Fresh from the success of its Qiblah mobile phone, digital leader LG Electronics has announced the Middle East-wide availability of the only TV in the world with built-in Quran, to honour the Holy Month of Ramadan.

LG's latest Time Machine plasma/LCD TV allows viewers to listen to the Quran, search and bookmark passages - all on the TV screen. The Holy Quran incorporated into the plasma/LCD TV includes all of the 114 suras, allowing users to search for specific sura or verse and bookmark up to 10 favourites with record and stop button on the remote control.

The innovative TV also allows viewers to listen to the Quran, an excellent feature for allowing several people to study and understand the scriptures together. A multilingual interface allows viewers to navigate and read the text in Arabic and Farsi. At the top of the screen is a status bar that displays the name of the sura, verse numbers and the time of day.

"The built-in Quran TV will provide believers in Allah and his Prophet (PBUH) a new and rewarding way to experience the Holy Scriptures during the most sacred time of the year," said Mr. H.S. Paik, President of LG Electronics Gulf FZE. "As a brand that respects Muslims, LG is committed to ensuring that we offer solutions that meet local needs, and the built-in Quran TV comes as a part of this effort."

The latest innovation follows the unprecedented success of LG's Qiblah mobile handset, which notched up impressive sales especially in the GCC. The Qiblah Phone (LG-F7100) indicates the direction users should face in order to pray toward Mecca, even if they are in the desert with few reference points. Users simply input their location and the phone, which works in 500 cities worldwide, automatically points the way.

As was with Nokia, this is a case where a multinational company is endorsing a single religion.

If the Muslim market would demand that Nokia or LG boycott Israel, what are the chances they would resist? They've already shown that they bend over backwards to uniquely accommodate Muslims.

The peaceful Palestinian Arabs, 1834

I just saw this account of a Muslim riot against Jews in 1834 in Safed in a book called Eōthen by Alexander William Kinglake published in 1846:

At length I drew
near to the city of Safet. It sits as proud as a fortress upon the
summit of a craggy height ; yet because of its minarets, and stately
trees, the place looks happy and beautiful. It is one of the holy
cities of the Talmud, and according to this authority, the Messiah
will reign there for forty years before he takes possession of Sion.
The sanctity and historical importance thus attributed to the city
by anticipation render it a favourite place of retirement for Israelites,
of whom it contains, they say, about four thousand, a number
nearly balancing that of the Mahometan inhabitants. I knew
by my experience of Tabarieh that a "holy city" was sure to have
a population of vermin somewhat proportionate to the number of
its Israelites, and I therefore caused my tent to be pitched upon
a green spot of ground at a respectful distance from the walls of
the town.

When it had become quite dark (for there was no moon that
night,) I was informed that several Jews had secretly come from
the city, in the hope of obtaining some assistance from me in
circumstances of imminent danger...These men informed me that
the Jews of the place, who were
exceedingly wealthy, had lived peaceably in their retirement until
the insurrection which took place in 1834, but about the beginning
of that year a highly religious Mussulman called Mahommed
Damoor, went forth into the market-place, crying with aloud
voice, and prophesying, that on the fifteenth of the following June
the true Believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews,
and despoil them of their gold, and their silver, and their jewels.
The earnestness of the prophet produced some impression at the
time, but all went on as usual, until at last the fifteenth of June
arrived. When that day dawned, the whole Mussulman population
of the place assembled in the streets, that they might see
the result of the prophecy.

Suddenly Mahommed Damoor rushed
furious into the crowd, and the fierce shout of the prophet soon
ensured the fulfilment of his prophecy. Some of the Jews fled,
and some remained, but they who fled, and they who remained,
alike and unresistingly left their property to the hands of the
spoilers. The most odious of all outrages , that of searching the
women for the base purpose of discovering such things as gold,
and silver concealed about their persons, was perpetrated without
shame. The poor Jews were so stricken with terror, that they
submitted to their fate, even where resistance would have been
easy. In several instances a young Mussulman boy, not more
than ten or twelve years of age, walked straight into the house of
a Jew, and stripped him of his property before his face, and in
the presence of his whole family.* When the insurrection was
put down, some of the Mussulmans (most probably those who
had got no spoil wherewith they might buy immunity), were punished,
but the greater part of them escaped; none of the booty
was restored, and the pecuniary redress which the Pasha had undertaken
to enforce for them, had been hitherto so carefully delayed,
that the hope of ever obtaining it had grown very faint.

And later, we see that the author harbored a little empathy for Jews himself - but only a little:

Mohammed Damoor had again gone forth into the market place, and lifted up
his voice, and prophesied a second spoliation of the Israelites.
This was grave matter; the words of such a practical man as
Mohammed Damoor were not to be despised. I fear I must have
smiled visibly, for I was greatly amused, and even, I think,
gratified at the account of this second prophecy. Nevertheless,
my heart warmed towards the poor oppressed Israelites, and I
was flattered, too, in the point of my national vanity at the notion
of the far-reaching link, by which a Jew in Syria, who had been
born on the rock of Gibraltar, was able to claim me as his fellow-
countryman. If I hesitated at all between the "improprietry" of
interfering in a matter which was no business of mine , and the "
infernal shame" of refusing my aid at such a conjecture, I soon
came to a very ungentlemanly decision — namely, that I would
be guilty of the "impropriety," and not of the "infernal shame."
It seemed to me that the immediate arrest of Mohammed Damoor
was the one thing needful to the safety of the Jews, and I felt
confident, (for reasons which I have already mentioned in speaking
of the Nablous affair) that I should be able to obtain this
result by making a formal application to the Governor. I told my
applicants that 1 would take this step on the following morning;
they were very grateful, and were for a moment much pleased at
the prospect of safely which might thus be opened to them, but
the deliberation of a minute entirely altered their views, and filled
them with new terror; they declared that any attempt, or pretended
attempt on the part of the Governor to arrest Mohammed
Damoor would certainly produce an immediate movement of the
whole Mussulman population, and a consequent massacre and
robbery of the Israelites. My visitors went out, and remained I
know not how long consulting with their brethren, but all at last
agreed that their present perilous, and painful position was better
than a certain, and immediate attack, and that if Mohammed
Damoor was seized, their second estate would be worse than their
first. I myself did not think that this would be the case, but I
could not of course force my aid upon the people against their
will, and moreover the day fixed for the fulfilment of this second
prophecy was not very close at hand ; a little delay, therefore, in
providing against the impending danger, would not necessarily
be fatal. The men now confessed that although they had come
with so much mystery, and, as they thought, at so great a risk
to ask my assistance, they were unable to suggest any mode in
which I could aid them, except, indeed, by mentioning their
grievances to the Consul-general at Damascus. This I promised
to do, and this I did.

My visitors were very thankful to me for the readiness which I
had shown to intermeddle in their affairs, and the grateful wives
of the principalJews sent to me many compliments, with choice
wines, and elaborate sweetmeats.

The course of my travels soon drew me so far from Safet, that
I never heard how the dreadful day passed off which had been
fixed for the accomplishment of the second prophecy. If the predicted
spoliation was prevented, poor Mohammed Damoor must
have been forced, I suppose, to say that he had prophesied in a
metaphorical sense. This would be a sad falling off from the
brilliant and substantial success of the first experiment.

How peacefully they lived together when the Jews were dhimmis!

By the way, I have a YouTube channel

Not that I've worked so hard on setting it up, but if you are interested, you can find it here. Some original material and some repackaging of things on Israeli websites that required Internet Explorer.

(This can be considered an open thread.)

Another heartless IDF restriction

Firas Press reports that the IDF decided to suspend deliveries of clothing to Gaza for a while.

It says that no official reason was given. What could possibly possess the Israelis to deprive Gazans of clothing?

Then we find out the reason: according to other sources, the IDF has discovered IDF uniforms being smuggled into Gaza in the clothing shipments, to be used by terrorists!

Israeli radiation blamed for birth defects. Who needs evidence?

From the ever-humorous Ma'an Palestinian Arab "news" agency:

Concern over earlier reports of increased rates of physical birth-defects and stillborn deliveries are heightened in the southern Gaza Strip after Director of Social Health Department in the de facto Health Ministry Salah Rantisi announced that he found an additional foetus with physical mutations in an ultrasound.

Rumors have been circulating that the defects are the result of nuclear materials dumped from the Israeli nuclear facility near Dimona.

In recent weeks the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority announced the beginning of a field survey to measure the effects of nuclear radiation, possibly emanating from Israeli military facilities, in the eastern Gaza Strip.

For their part, environment authorities in the Gaza Strip said in a statement on Monday that no radiation has been found in the air in Khuza’a. However, they suggested that radiation could be found in the earth or in water resources.

The statement explained that a technical team examined the area and found no radiation. The team encompassed experts from the power authorities, natural resources authorities and the Islamic University of Gaza.

Of course, in the Palestinian Arab psyche, if any kid is found with a birth defect it must be the fault of Zionists. Evidence really isn't necessary, because it is so blindingly obvious that Zionists are behind every natural problem.

For those who are interested, here is a map of the Negev:

The diabolical Zionists have managed to find a way for their radioactive materials to pass over Beersheba and countless other Jewish communities without causing any harm, and they only target pregnant Arab women in Gaza!

Perhaps because the Jews smear lamb's blood over their doors....

Hamas' top priority: releasing murderers of Jewish civilians

As Hamas continues to slowly grow in respectability in the West, it is instructive to see exactly who Hamas is demanding to be released from Israeli jails in exchange for Gilad Shalit.

Ma'an quotes Israel's Channel Two as saying that the list includes some of the most heinous terrorists responsible for scores of deaths of civilians. Hamas' heroes are in direct proportion to the number of Jews they killed.

At the top of the list is the person responsible for what may have been intended to be the first suicide attack on Jews in Israel. In 1989, a Gazan traveling on bus 405 from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem grabbed the wheel of the driver and forced the bus to tumble down a cliff, killing 14. The terrorist survived and remains in jail.

Others that Hamas wants released were responsible for the Passover massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya, where 29 were killed including 20 over the age of 70.

Most of the others on the list likewise were responsible for murdering Israeli civilians, including stabbings and shootings.

These are Hamas' heroes. These are the people they idolize, whom they hold up as role models to their children.

And their priorities in prisoners aren't, say, mothers in Israeli jails, or those who attacked soldiers. No, they mostly want the release of cold-blooded murderers.

Casual anti-semitism in Yemen Times

Incongruously placed at the top of an article about the Arab nations' place in the world comes these two paragraphs in the Yemen Times:

The whole world is currently undergoing an unprecedented financial crisis that reminds the elderly of what happened in 1929, which was also known as “Year of Economic Recession”. According to economic and political analysts, the economic recession of 1929 was caused by the Zionist Rochield [sic - Rothschild] family that originated from Germany with the intention to control stock markets and hit them whenever it wants.

Other Zionist families did the same thing with intention of achieving specific objectives that are clearly states in the books of “Invisible World Governments” or “Stones on the Chessboard”.

I could find no reference to either of these books anywhere.

However, anti-semites such as Father Coughlin have had no problem blaming the Great Depression on Jews since 1929.

Note also the replacement of "Jews" with "Zionists" that is almost subconscious among the Arab media as they reflexively use the Z-word to mean "Jewish," no more and no less.

The evil Zionists tried to get rid of good Palestinian malaria!

The hatred that so-called progressive intellectuals have of Israel and Zionism truly knows no bounds. A good example can be seen in this review of a book called "Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920-1947" by Sondra M. Sufian.

It is hard to know how much bias is from the author and how much from the reviewer, but the thesis of the book is, as the article states:

The Zionists imported European and U.S. medical technologies and foreign capital to restore the land to what was in their eyes its original state, with little concern for those who had long made their living from it. The Zionist settlers had no sense of the national rights of the Palestinian Arabs, who they believed had no real attachment to the land. Like European settlers elsewhere, the Zionists considered the indigenous population primitive and backward. The land was a swampy wasteland inhabited by an unproductive people. In this, the Zionists were merely drawing upon racial views of non-European, indigenous populations then prevalent among colonialists. As Sufian points out, Zionists, like other Europeans, saw malaria not as an environmental problem, but one caused by the neglectful, indifferent, and lazy lifestyles of the natives, whose watering holes and leaky irrigation ditches were ideal places for mosquitoes to breed. The Zionists' goal was to drain the swamps and pools of water to eradicate the disease, thereby expanding the land available for settlement and agricultural production. As the author notes, in many parts of world European settlers made this connection between disease eradication, immigration, and settlement. When the Zionists drained the swamps they also reduced the pasture land long used by Bedouins and other Arab agriculturalists for grazing their livestock. Despite stiff resistance, land formerly held collectively by Palestinian Arabs became private land owned by Zionist settlers.

Get it? By working to eradicate a deadly disease, the Zionists exhibited unbelievable selfishness and displacement! How dare they try to improve the land that they were buying at hugely inflated prices! How dare they try to improve the health of the natives - this is the very definition of self-absorption!

An interesting contradiction then comes up:

Sufian also illuminates other contentious aspects of the malaria eradication process. For example, she documents Arab participation in and contributions to such efforts, contradicting the Jewish Agency's claims that the great majority of the eradication schemes were carried out solely at that organization's expense. Much of this is illustrated through the work of Dr. Tawfiq Canaan, a Palestinian Arab and prominent physician before and during the Mandate era, who lectured about malaria in German and English to scientific audiences. In a report to the Mandatory authorities, he stated that Palestinian Arabs had done their share of the eradication work. They had carried out swamp drainage projects and worked as laborers in government malaria control measures.

Apparently, when Arabs drained the swamps it was because they were forward-thinking and modern, but when Jews drained the swamps it was because they were colonialist pigs hell-bent on turning mosquito-infested cesspools of disease into productive farmland. Arab swamp draining improved the lives of the natives, Zionist swamp draining destroyed them.

Clear as day!

You can file this in the same category of recent quasi-scholarly drivel that claims that the lack of Arabs raped by IDF soldiers indicates the Jews' barbarity or that Israeli archaeologists are unprofessional hacks who only work to advance the evil Zionist enterprise.

UPDATE: Commenter Womble points to a great blog post by Imshin that takes a quite different tack on the "colonialism" of draining swamps and fighting a horrendous disease.

Free Gaza freaks set to sail again

Last we looked, the Free Gaza leftards were trying desperately to find a new boat, willing to sell their old boats to anyone strange enough to want them.

Apparently, their please were less than successful, as their press release from a couple of days ago stated:

On October 28, 2008, the Free Gaza Movement will set sail again for Gaza. On board will be a Nobel Peace Prize winner, five physicians, a member of the Israeli Knesset, and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. The boat will again carry 26 passengers and crew to the port of Gaza.

"We've spent the past month making sure that our boat is better and stronger, because the weather is getting more severe. Since we promised the people of Gaza we would return, we wanted to make sure we would return safely", said Derek Graham, first mate on board the boat.

The patched boat, now seemingly renamed"Waves of Hope," is supposed to arrive in Gaza on Thursday.

The freakazoids are trying to rectify a problem they had last time. In their first journey, they wanted to show that Gaza should be "free" so they sailed directly there without officially informing Israel. But now they realized that a great part of their narrative depends on the idea that Gaza is "occupied" by Israel, so this time they sent a letter to the Israeli government telling them of their peaceful intentions.

Apparently, Lauren Booth has decided not to visit this time. It seems that she ate enough Gaza food the first time she was there.

Ancient Palestine, according to Palestinian Arabs

The Democratic Front for the History of Palestine, a Marxist group that is part of the PLO, has a history of Palestine on its website that is says came from the Palestinian National Information Center, a part of the Palestinian Authority.

It is a bizarre mix of purposeful pseudo-scholarly lies and Quranic fantasy.

It is almost certain that this is the "history" taught in Palestinian Arab universities.

Here are some relevant parts:

▪ First: Palestine Denomination
Long ago Palestine was known “Canaan Land” as mentioned in the reports of military leaders at king (Marry). It was obviously mentioned on the spire of (Adreemi) king of ALALAKH (Tel Al Atshana) in the middle of the fifth century.

The origin of the word “Palestine” as in Assyrian records of the Assyrian king (Addizary The Third) about (800) B.C. was (Filastia). As he mentioned on his spire that in the fifth year of his regime, his forces subdued (Palasto) and forced the population to pay the tribute.

Almost certainly they are referring to Philistines, who lived in southern Canaan in roughly what is now Gaza, although I could not find this specific reference anywhere. Absolutely no one considers Palestinian Arabs to be descendents of Philistines, but (as we shall see) the Palestinian Arabs are anxious to pretend so, when it is convenient. (The Philistines were not Semitic.)

The denomination formulation (Palestine) was focused at Herodotus on Aramite bases. Sometimes it was known as a place called on the southern part of Syria or (Palestinian Syria) near Finithia to the borders of Egypt.

The Roman historians used this appellation, like A gather chides STRABO and DIODORU.
The name Palestine was called, in the Roman age on all the holy lands and became an official term since Hadrian time.

The truth, as Wikipedia says, is that "The term was first officially used to describe all the Land of Palestine Roman domination of the Hebrew nation. The Romans changed the region's name from Judaea in order to historically disconnect the Jews from their land as punishment for their rebellion against Roman imperialism.^[1] Jerusalem was also re-named to Aelia Capitolina, but this name change did not succeed."

The use of this name was extensively spread in the Christian Church and it was mentioned in the reports of the Christian pilgrims. But in the Islamic time, Palestine was a part of Great Syria.

This is a rare admission that Muslims never considered Palestine to be anything other than a part of Southern Syria.

Semites :
Owing to remnants discoveries in Egypt and Iraq, the Semites were obviously the most ancient peoples known in Palestine. Since the fourth thousand B.C. they have been living on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

As for religious part, the Semites-in origin- were the descendant tribes of Sam, the eldest son of Noah, peace be upon him. The original ancient population of Palestine were all Arabs, as they immigrated from Arab peninsula due to the drought. So they lived in their new homeland (Cana’an) for more than two thousand years before the appearance of Moses, the prophet, with his followers, on the scene.

This is known as the Winckler-Caetani theory, and it is by no means universally held, but it is convenient for the purposes of this "history."

Incidentally, Caetani wrote a massive critique of Islam which I don't think the Palestinian Arabs would be teaching in their schools any time soon.

Anyway, the rest of this "history" changes at will the idea that the Philistines or Canaanites are the forebears of today's Palestinian Arabs, whichever is convenient:

Cana’anites were famous in agriculture and industry and excelled in mining as well as in the industry of pottery, glass, textiles, clothes and architecture. Music, and literature were at the top of the Cana’an civilization, as no other sematic peoples were interested in arts and music as the Cana’anites. They derived much of their musical elements from various peoples from the ancient far east because the rites of Cana’anite worship were musically based. Therefore their musical instruments and tones spread throughout the Mediterranean areas.

Nobody can argue that Art and Literature are the symbols of civilization, so it is not strange-through the Israeli writings- to find out the strenuous efforts the Israelis have been exerting to allege they were the founders of the original civilization and the chanters, choristers and singers. They were actually delusive, but the great trusted historians, like (Bristed), in his description of the flourishing Cana’anite cities, which the Hebrews entered, that there were cities with comfortable luxurious houses, and industries, trade, writing, temples and the civilization, which were soon imitated by the primitive herdsmen Hebrews.

In fact, "The urban development of Canaan lagged considerably behind that of Egypt and Mesopotamia and even that of Syria."

They left their tents and imitated them in building houses. Furthermore, they took off the leathers, they wore in the desert, and instead, they put on the colored woolen clothes. After a period of time, one couldn’t differentiate between Cana’anites and Hebrews in appearance, though, since five thousand years (the start of written history) Palestine, until the British Mandate in 1920, knew only three languages; the Cana’anite firstly, the Aramite secondly, (the language the Christ spoke) and the Arabic thirdly.

Notice that this "history" easily refers to ancient Hebrews but purposefully ignores ancient Hebrew!

1200-550 B.C (Mameluke Age “Iron Age”):
At that time, Palestinians considered themselves as legal successors to the Egyptian Authority on Palestine so, they dominated most parts of Palestine. They were often called the population of the Palestinian coast because they founded a number of main cities, as; Gaza, Askalan, Asdod, Akeer, Tal Al Safi and others.

Here again they are calling Philistines "Palestinians," as they do here:

The Judges Age lasted for a century and a half. During this period twelve Judges, ruled country and the last one, was Samue’l. The Israelis agreed to enthrone Sha’al Ben Qays”- according to the Samuel’s advice- to be their king in order to unify their tribes, but he was killed in war with the Palestinians. David succeeded him in (1010) B.C. then Solomon followed in (971-931B.C). Contrary to his father, his period was a time of peace, not war. He was prudent and active in trade.

When king Solomon died, the exorbitant taxes he had imposed, because of the high luxury living he was known during his time were unbearable. By his death, the descendents of Israeli tribe exterminated when the Assyrians defeated them in (724 B.C) . At the time of (Nobukaz Nass’ar) the kaldans replaced the Assyrians and ruled Palestine.

Nowhere in this entire "history" is the Kingdom of Judah mentioned!

The entire purpose of this "history" is to fabricate an ancient "Palestinian" civilization and to erase any vestiges of Jewish life in the area that was not mentioned in the Quran.

There is plenty more in this seemingly official "history" going up to modern times, so this is only a small indication of the indoctrination that occurs in Palestinian Arab schools.