Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 27, 2009

Take the subway to the Kotel!

Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic movement in Israel, has built his career on his constant accusations of Jewish destruction of Muslim Jerusalem. Literally every week, and often more often, he accuses Israelis of doing something or other. (He has famously claimed that there is no Jewish claim to the Western Wall.)

Of course, when you have to make up new accusations every week, you inevitably have to start making things up. So every time he opens his mouth, he comes up with something more bizarre than the previous time, just to stay in the news.

Now Salah is saying that the Zionists are planning to build a subway to travel to - and seemingly under - the Temple Mount.

And yet, no matter how absurd his claims are, Salah inevitably manages to grab headlines in the Palestinian Arab press every time he opens his mouth. In the PalArab world, there is no correspondence between someone's believability and their track record for being proven right; in fact there may be an inverse relationship between the two.

Obama cracks open the door for Hamas

From the Los Angeles Times:

The Obama administration, already on treacherous political ground because of its outreach to traditional adversaries such as Iran and Cuba, has opened the door a crack to engagement with the militant group Hamas.

The Palestinian group is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization and under law may not receive federal aid.

But the administration has asked Congress for minor changes in U.S. law that would permit aid to continue flowing to Palestinians in the event Hamas-backed officials become part of a unified Palestinian government.

The administration requested the changes this month as part of an $83.4-billion emergency spending bill that also contains funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill also would provide $840 million for the Palestinian Authority and for rebuilding in Gaza after the 22-day Israeli military assault this year. The administration still is wrestling with how to deliver the aid to Gaza because of the tough federal restrictions on dealing with Hamas.

U.S. officials insist that the new proposal doesn't amount to recognizing or aiding Hamas. Under law, any U.S. aid would require that the Palestinian government meet three long-standing criteria: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and agreeing to follow past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Hamas as an organization doesn't meet those criteria. However, if the rival Palestinian factions manage to reach a power-sharing deal, the Obama administration wants to be able to provide aid as long as the Hamas-backed members of the government -- if not Hamas itself -- meet the three criteria.

Clinton defended the administration's position last week before Congress. She said that the United States supports and funds the Lebanese government, even though it includes members of Hezbollah, another militant group on the U.S. terrorist list.

She contended that the United States should try to gradually change the attitudes of Hamas members, as it did with militants in Northern Ireland, where it helped broker a deal that included the Irish Republican Army, even though not all of its members agreed.

The mindset that can equate Islamic terrorists with the IRA is a classic example of the West not understanding Islamic terrorism.

Another Iranian arms shipment reported foiled

From Ha'aretz:

An Iranian vessel laden with weapons bound for the Gaza Strip was torpedoed off the coast of Sudan last week, allegedly by Israeli or American forces operating in the area, the Egyptian newspaper El-Aosboa reported yesterday.

Anonymous sources in Khartoum told the newspaper that an unidentified warship bombed the Iranian vessel as it prepared to dock in Sudan before transferring its load for shipment to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The sources said they suspect U.S. or Israeli involvement in the attack, but neither Washington nor Jerusalem have released a statement on the matter. The Israel Air Force is suspected of attacking a convoy of Iranian arms that passed through Sudan en route to Gaza in January, according to foreign news reports released in March.

The original Egyptian article didn't have any other details.

We are up to 217 fake civilians

One reason I am not posting as much is because we are still finding more Gaza terrorists who have been counted as civilians by PCHR by scouring Arabic websites and forums.

We are up to 217 names, far more than I expected to find when we started.

(Over the weekend, a tunnel collapse killed a PalArab, so the self-death count is now at 68.)

Depravity illustrated

From the signature of a poster named Abu Ahmed, at the Hamas al-Qassam Brigades message boards:

Palestinian Arabs' deadliest year?

Ma'an reports:

2008 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since the violent creation of Israel in 1948, the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported (PCHR) on Saturday.

More than 1,000 were killed last year, including 820 killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and 40 in the West Bank. Another 143 Palestinians were killed in inter-Palestinian violence.

Presenting PCHR’s annual report to media in Gaza, the center’s director, director Raji Sourani, said, "2008 was the worst year and the deadliest for the Palestinians ... since 1948," according to AFP.

This is very interesting, since in 1970, at least 3400 - and possibly as many as 10,000 - Palestinian Arabs were killed by Jordan.

In the span of ten days.

Today's Palestinian Arab hypocrisy

The concluding paragraph of an article in the Palestine Telegraph by Steven Salaita:

Ultimately, when Zionists demand that you affirm Israel 's right to exist, what they are really asking for is your validation. Don't give it to them. Until Israel treats the Palestinians equally and humanely, it won't have earned the right to a celebrated existence.

Palestinian Arab law demands the death penalty to anyone who sells land to a Jew.

If you accept Salaita's argument, then an Arab state in Palestine does not have the right to existence either, by his own definition.

This is the state of Palestinian Arab intellectualism.

Zionist oranges invade Iran

Iranians are freaking over seeing Israeli Jaffa oranges on store shelves. From Iran's PressTV:

Oranges allegedly imported from Israel have sparked controversy in Iran since Tehran has banned any sort of dealings with Tel Aviv.

The oranges have stickers with a sign that reads, "Jaffa sweetie Israel PO." However, they were distributed in boxes bearing 'made in China' prints.

In an interview with Mehr news agency, the head of the Fruit and Vegetable Distribution Organization in Tehran, Hossen Safaie described the incident as 'worrisome' adding that the violators of the law should be brought to justice.

Safaie said that his organization will follow the issue closely and will not allow those who want to make a profit ignore the Iranian citizens' religious and revolutionary learning.

Meanwhile, Deputy Iranian Commerce Minister Mohammad Sadeq Mofatteh presented a prize of 1,000,000,000,000 Iranian rials (USD 1 billion) for anyone who can prove that the Iranian Commerce Ministry has issued an import permit for the oranges, IRIB reported.

Mofatteh alleged that some rouge elements might have labeled the oranges as 'Jaffa sweetie Israel PO' in a bid to disgrace the ruling government.

If Israel was smart, they would take advantage of the existing paranoia that Iranian officials already have. Just slapping some Hebrew stickers around Tehran would be enough to cause Iranian officials to uncontrollably shake and sputter.

(Photos h/t Marc El)

April 2009 rocket calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)

MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

* - Fatal non-rocket attack

K=Katyushas from Lebanon

April 2009

Proof of the Hamas/Zionist Conspiracy!

One of the funnier parts of watching the Arab world is seeing how the worst insult possible is to call someone a Zionist.

You can understand how Hamas accuses Fatah of being "Zionist," after all, they actually negotiate with those hated Israelis. But can Fatah actually believe that Hamas is Zionist as well?

Apparently so.

Palestine Press Agency published a photo last August showing an Israeli flag flying serenely over a Hamas compound in Gaza City:

This caused a bit of a stir in the Fatah message boards, as poster after poster used this as proof that Hamas was cooperating with Israel and were really secret Zionists and that the Americans and Israelis were working together with Iranian Shi'ites and Hamas. Others expressed extreme sorrow that Hamas could have become such a lost cause.

Finally, one member wrote a message explaining that Hamas was creating a video about the life of one of its "martyrs" and that the Israeli flag was just a part of the scenery.

Even after that explanation, the posters kept on going, saying things like "Hamas = Iran = Israel = America" and "They are the grandsons of monkeys and pigs, they are terrorists and they belong to Israel" and "Hhahahahahahahaha we knew this for a long time. Hamas is the second incarnation of the Jewish state."

Not the brightest bunch.

(h/t Suzanne)

Good backgrounder on Gaza casualties

Besides the research we have been doing comes this analysis by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Herzliya. I wish it had more specifics but it points to some new avenues of research.

Excerpts:

4. During Operation Cast Lead Hamas adopted the policy of concealing its own casualties to prevent morale from flagging and to reinforce the (false) impression that Israel was deliberately directing its military operations against Gazan civilians. Surfers on PALDF, Hamas's main Internet forum, were informed that it was strictly forbidden to post the names, pictures or any identifying details about “resistance” [i.e., terrorist] operatives killed or wounded until the end of the “Israeli aggression” in the Gaza Strip 3 (see the Appendix for the text of the instructions). In some instances reports were received of unofficial (and sometimes secret) and improvised burials during the fighting.

5. The policy of hiding the real number of terrorist operative casualties and issuing false reports about the number of civilians killed has continued after Operation Cast Lead . That was manifested by the creation of a false propaganda presentation of the mass killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip (the “holocaust” claimed by pro-Hamas propaganda) and the reduction or hiding of the blow dealt to Hamas's military infrastructure and its terrorist operatives. All of the above were aimed at serving the “victory narrative” which Hamas has been carefully constructing since the end of Operation Cast Lead.

6. Hamas, which controls all information originating in the Gaza Strip, issued exaggerated numbers of the number of “civilians” killed during Operation Cast Lead, while feeding the media false data and selective, biased reports about the number of armed operatives killed. That was done by lending a civilian character to security forces' operatives despite the fact that such operatives also serve in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades in unequivocally operational capacities. 4

7. The numbers of armed terrorists involved in the fighting are therefore swallowed by the general statistics, where their identity as terrorists is blurred and they are represented as civilians or innocent, harmless policemen deliberately killed by the IDF . As a result a gap has been created between the biased data provided by Hamas (which the human rights organizations base their reports on) and the aforementioned findings of the examination undertaken by IDF Military Intelligence .

8. After Operation Cast Lead the Palestinians media reported an exaggerated 1,330 deaths. 5 By the end of February the total had been inflated to 1,414 (according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights) and then to 1,452 (by a media report which originated with the Hamas de-facto administration 6). The continual increase in the numbers of the dead was not supported by reports of scores of newly-found bodies or deaths of the wounded.

9. The discrepancy between the initial and later numbers can be explained by the inclusion of those who were not actually killed during Operation Cast Lead or the addition of those who died of natural causes.

To my Cleveland Indymedia re-poster

Someone has been posting many of my articles to Cleveland Indymedia. I don't know who it is, and I appreciate it very much, but could you please include a link to my original posting when you re-post? The formatting, links and quotes sometimes get messed up and I would like interested people to be able to find the original.

Thanks!