Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The 3-0 count: As off-topic as I can get

I cannot say that I am a big baseball fan. When I was a kid, sure, I knew all the players and the statistics, I memorized records, I knew batting lineups. Since then, my baseball knowledge has atrophied and I certainly do not watch any games during the season.

But I still follow my Philadelphia Phillies in the standings, and I try to watch their post-season games even as I am blissfully ignorant of the players and what they did all year outside of the standings.

So I am catching up, hoping for a Phillies/Yankees (Turnpike?) World Series, as nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see the Phillies beat the despised Yankees.

But, you gotta admit - much of the game is really boring. Sure, the sportscasters try to make up for it with flashy graphics on the screen; the pitch placement chart that TBS' HD games show is fairly cute, as are the graphics showing the pitching count and the speed of the fastballs and the first base runner lead. Even so, the fact that there is no problem with going to an interview of the first base coach during the gameplay itself indicates that, for most of the three hours, the game is pretty dull. The very dullness is what spawns the new statistics that the viewers are peppered with, of how well a certain player did against left-handed pitchers in odd-numbered years when the temperature was between 45 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Which brings me to the point of this post: the 3-0 count.

It is accepted wisdom that almost invariably, a batter will take a 3-0 pitch, and get the green light for a 3-1 pitch. For the life of me, I cannot figure out the former.

In both cases the pitcher does not want a walk and will try to keep the ball over the plate. Why not swing away at 3-0? 3-0 pitches are hardly ever balls; they are hardly ever breaking pitches. Unless the batter is a singles hitter and the pitcher is struggling (where the odds of a walk are higher than of a single) wouldn't it make sense for batters to get the same green light for 3-0 as they do for 3-1?

Am I missing something?

(Now that I wrote this, I see this article makes a pretty good case for taking, but I think the stats are deceptive. The NYT looked at this a couple of years ago and gave reasons to swing away. This article is interesting as well.)

Allah Save the Queen

From The Sun(UK):

HATE preacher Anjem Choudary sparked fury yesterday after calling for the Queen to become Muslim.

He demanded an Islamic revolution across Britain.

Choudary, 42, said Her Majesty - head of the Church of England - should convert to ensure her place in paradise.

He also wants to see senior members of the Government switching faiths. Choudary, a key henchman of rabble rousing cleric Omar Bakri, said: "We invite everyone from the Queen, to the ministers, to the Parliament, to the aristocracy, to the ordinary person in Britain to embrace Islam.

"Save yourself and your children in this life from misery and prepare them for a great destiny in the hereafter."

He made his call during an internet rant to promote a march in London later this month supporting Sharia law.

The ex-lawyer also made a scathing reference to the next general election, declaring: "Britain does not need a new leader, it needs a revolution - an Islamic revolution."

Labour MP Andrew Dismore said: "It'd be laughable if we didn't know that some take this man seriously." A Muslim group branded Choudary an "extremist nut".

Sounds like he's saying that the Queen is going to hell, so he is clearly showing his concern for her.

Good news from Morocco

From Al-Arabiya:

This year's festival of the Atlantic Andalusias, held in the Moroccan port of Essaouira, will focus on a Moroccan Jewish musical tradition known as Matrouz, organisers announced Thursday.

During the festival, to be held from October 29 to November 1, there will be concerts to gather together "our poets, our musicians and our singers, Muslims and Jews, to sing and dance together," Andre Azoulay, festival chairman and an advisor to Morocco's King Mohammed VI, told AFP.

The north African country's Jewish art is a "major component of the cultural wealth and identity in Morocco," Azoulay said. "It shouldn't just be reduced to folklore (...). It gives the best example of how to make mentalities evolve by going out to meet other people."

Matrouz is a tradition that dates back several centuries. One example of the art form will be a concert in which the rabbi Haim Louk will sing accompanied by the Zyriab orchestra from Oudja in east Morocco.

A victory for Kuwaiti women

From the Kuwait Times:

The Constitutional Court yesterday issued a landmark ruling by abrogating an article in the 1962 passports law that banned Kuwaiti women from obtaining their own passports without the prior approval of their husbands.

The ruling, which is final and cannot be appealed, said that the article in the law violates a number of articles in the constitution, especially articles 29, 30 and 31 which guarantee personal freedom. In the ruling, the court also stated that under the constitution, women right to travel cannot be denied by anyone including their husbands because this is one of their basic rights in the constitution.

This is a big deal, because it is directly against sharia law (as I understand it.)

A fluffier but similarly good story for women from Jordan (and the UAE):

A Royal Jordanian flight from Athens to Amman could have passed off as any other routine trip except this RJ 132 flight was a little different as it boasted a female pilot leading an all female crew.

Carol Rabadi captained her first flight of 100 passengers after working as a co-pilot for six years, a move that has been hailed as a new era set to end the male domination of the Jordanian aviation industry.

“It was a wonderful feeling,” Rabadi told Al Arabiya. “It was a very safe and we proved ourselves as women without any problems.”

Meanwhile in related news the UAE saw two of its nationals become the first women to complete the first level of pilot training with the Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways.

The two women were expected to become fully fledged first officers, or co-pilots, in just eighteen months, a landmark achievement in the country, which for generations has kept women out of fields such as aviation.

HRW tries, and fails, to rebut founder's comments

From Commentary's Noah Pollak:

In case you missed it, yesterday something very important happened: Bob Bernstein, the founder and for 20 years the chair of Human Rights Watch, published an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing the organization for its obsessive attacks on Israel. He wrote that HRW is “helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”
HRW was quick to offer a response — and it is a pathetically weak and deceptive one. A quick fisking:

Human Rights Watch does not believe that the human rights records of “closed” societies are the only ones deserving scrutiny.

A classic red-herring argument. Nowhere did Bernstein argue that open societies should not be subject to scrutiny. What he said is that the amount of attention HRW pays to Israel is wildly out of proportion to Israel’s violations, especially when Israel is compared with the Middle East’s dozens of dictatorships. Misrepresenting the plain meaning of Bernstein’s argument allows HRW to rebut an accusation that he never made. The press release continues:

Human Rights Watch does not devote more time and energy to Israel than to other countries in the region, or in the world. We’ve produced more than 1,700 reports, letters, news releases, and other commentaries on the Middle East and North Africa since January 2000, and the vast majority of these were about countries other than Israel.

Another red herring — this one with some clever weasel phrasing. Bernstein never said that HRW “devotes more time and energy to Israel than to other countries in the region.” He wrote that “Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.” The obvious difference is that Bernstein was comparing the number of reports on Israel to the number of reports on any other individual country in the Middle East. HRW presents Bernstein as claiming that HRW writes more reports on Israel than on all the countries in the Middle East combined. Obviously, HRW cannot contest the accuracy of Bernstein’s statement, so it dishonestly responds to a charge he never made.

It is not the case that Human Rights Watch had “no access to the battlefield” after the Israeli operation in Gaza in January 2009. Although the Israeli government denied us access, our researchers entered Gaza via the border with Egypt and conducted extensive interviews.

Human Rights Watch is apparently incapable of dealing with criticism on its own terms. Bernstein did not argue that HRW had no access to the battlefield after the war was over, as HRW claims he said. What Bernstein in fact said was that HRW was not present on the battlefield during the war, therefore limiting its ability to know what happened and to make war-crimes judgments.

The dishonesty and manipulativeness of HRW’s response to Bernstein is but a small manifestation of the organization’s larger problems: its inability to engage honestly with the arguments of its detractors, and the related problem of the unreliability of the group’s reporting on the Middle East.

Someone else noticed report didn't condemn Hamas

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, who has done similar work to mine concerning Gaza casualties, noticed the same thing I noticed yesterday about the Goldstone Report not condemning Hamas. The only differences are that he publishes his findings in major newspapers and writes better (and goes farther) than I do!

From YNet:

The Hamas de-facto administration in the Gaza Strip received nothing but respect from the Goldstone Committee, which never mentioned it was an Islamist, fascist, terrorist organization, that it supported the murder of the Jews in “Palestine” (by burning, according to one Hamas leader), threw rival Fatah supporters off roofs and shot them in the knee, had taken over the administrative institutions of the Gaza Strip in a military bloodbath and were currently imposing on the Gaza Strip Islamic law (the Sharia), with its binding restrictions on women and with its gross, blatant disregard for basic human rights.

On the contrary, the Goldstone Committee viewed the Hamas de-facto administration as legitimate in every respect and made an artificial distinction between it and the “Palestinian armed groups operating in the Gaza Strip,” as if such “groups” did not kowtow to Hamas and had somehow spent eight years methodically launching rockets and mortar shells into Israel in opposition to Hamas policy.

The Goldstone Report implies and claims that the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military-terrorist wing, is not under the control and authority of the Hamas de-facto administration and its “political” leadership, and for that reason the Committee did not find Hamas responsible of the rocket and terrorist attacks against Israel. Those “responsible,” according to the report, are anonymous operatives in the field whose names are revealed only after they have died and find their way onto Hamas posters of “shahids,” and when bringing them to trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague is no longer relevant.

Even Hamas rejects the Committee’s interpretation and does not bother to hide the fact that the “military wing” answers to the “political wing” and that the two are inextricably bound up. Ismail Haniyeh explained in an interview in 2007 (and there are many other examples) that “Hamas is the jihad wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,” and that it was a military wing. When asked what the connection was between Hamas and its military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, he said that “the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades are part of the Hamas movement, but security considerations require the separation of politicians and military men, and that is what has happened during the past 10 years, but both the politician and the soldier (sic) have to carry out the movement’s policies.”

Moreover, the Hamas de-facto administration and its leadership boast of their responsibility for the rocket and terrorist attacks against Israel and have even documented them in a “victory album” of videotapes on their websites.

It does not seem that ignorance was responsible for the way the Goldstone Committee ignored the direct connection between Hamas and “Palestinian armed groups.” It is a fair assumption that its bias was deliberate and that the Committee’s curious methodology no less than its “ignorance” were behind the way it took statements from Palestinian “eyewitnesses” failing to ask basic questions on terrorist activities during the war.

The issue of Hamas’ invisible responsibility for war crimes, like many other claims made by the report, shows that it is a masterpiece of deception and manipulation whose only intention is to frame Israel for war crimes and exonerate Hamas. Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh can take a vacation to The Hague without having to worry about the Goldstone Report. Unfortunately, the same is not true of Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel’s chief of staff.

Originally I was giving Goldstone the benefit of the doubt, first that he really thought that he was making the mandate even-handed and then that his main problem was that he subconsciously framed the report in ways that made Israel more culpable, but as time goes on I am more convinced than ever that he was knowingly duplicitous. Between his ridiculous "legal findings" where he jumps through hoops to find only Israel guilty of bizarre interpretations of international law and the now apparent facts that he misrepresents and distinguishes between Hamas and "armed terror groups", one cannot look at Goldstone as fair-minded nor even as simply naive.

(h/t t34zakat)

Goldstone Report does not condemn Hamas once (part 22)

Ma'an quotes to an Al-Arabiya TV interview with Hamas politburo chief Moussa Abu Marzouq. In the interview, Marzouq points out exactly why Hamas is so ecstatic over the Goldstone report, even though people think that the report condemns Hamas for shooting rockets into Israel.

Marzouq points out something interesting:

Moussa Abu Marzouq reiterated the party’s stance on the UN-mandated Goldstone report, which says there is evidence of war crimes in the actions of Israel and Gaza factions during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in December and January.

“It was all Palestinian factions who launched projectiles,” Abu Marzouq said, “including Fatah,” indicating that the report does not single out Hamas.

Sure enough, the report does everything possible not to explicitly name Hamas as being in violation of any humanitarian laws.

Going back to the section that is about Qassam rocket attacks against Israel, here is the first time the word "Hamas" is written in that section outside the footnotes, para. 1608:

On 20 April 2009, a member of Hamas called on other armed groups to stop firing rockets “in the interests of the Palestinian people”

Unbelievably, Hamas is only mentioned as a force that wants to stop rocket fire!

Later on, Goldstone does passingly mention the "armed groups" that it is referring to. Hamas, of course, is not one of them, but the Qassam Brigades are described as:

1611. The ‘al Qassam Brigades’ are the armed wing of the Hamas political movement.

Goldstone's reluctance to blame Hamas even for rocket attacks on Israel borders on the comical. The report is forced to admit that Hamas had taken specific responsibility for rockets:

1627. The first civilian casualties from rocket fire were recorded on 28 June 2004 in Sderot, when Afik Zahavi (4 years old) and Mordehai Yosefof (49 years old) were killed by a Qassam rocket. Afik’s mother, Ruthie Zahavi (28 years old) was critically injured and nine others were wounded. Hamas claimed responsibility.994

1631. On 6 January 2009, during the Israeli military operations in Gaza, Khaled Mashal, Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau wrote in an open letter that the demand to stop the Palestinian resistance was ‘absurd … our modest home made-rockets are our cry of protest to the world”

The comedy descends into farce in this paragraph:

1635. In response to questions by the Mission, on 29 July 2009, the Gaza authorities stated that they had “nothing to do, directly or indirectly, with al-Qassam or other resistance factions” and stated that they were able to exercise a degree of persuasion over the armed factions in relation to proposed ceasefires. While noting that the weaponry used by the armed factions was not accurate, the Gaza authorities discouraged the targeting of civilians.

Not an ounce of skepticism by Goldstone for these manifestly absurd distinctions between Hamas and the al-Qassam Brigades; on the contrary, it appears that Goldstone embraced these distinctions - even when it clearly knows otherwise (para. 1611 above.)

In its Conclusions and Recommendations section, concerning rockets, the most critical paragraph again avoids blaming Hamas:

1950. In relation to the firing of rockets and mortars into southern Israel by Palestinian armed groups operating in the Gaza Strip, the Mission finds that the Palestinian armed groups fail to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population and civilian objects in southern Israel. The launching of rockets and mortars which cannot be aimed with sufficient precisions at military targets breaches the fundamental principle of distinction. Where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into civilian areas, they constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population. These actions would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.

This is the "balance" that Goldstone proudly points to. Israel is mentioned explicitly with regards to tens of alleged human rights violations; Hamas is not mentioned in connection with any war crimes! And Goldstone maintains the fictional separation between "the Gaza authorities" and "armed groups," meaning between Hamas and its own military wing called the al-Qassam Brigades.

Nothing about Hamas in the Gilad Shalit paragraph:

1952. With regard to the continuing detention of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the Mission finds that, as a soldier who belongs to the Israeli armed forces and who was captured during an enemy incursion into Israel, Gilad Shalit meets the requirements for prisoner-of war status under the Third Geneva Convention and should be protected, treated humanely and be allowed external communication as appropriate according to that Convention.

Even the sections that undoubtedly must refer to Hamas manages to avoid They Who Must Not Be Named:

1954. Although the Gaza authorities deny any control over armed groups and responsibility for their acts, in the Mission’s view, if they failed to take the necessary measures to prevent the Palestinian armed groups from endangering the civilian population, the Gaza authorities would bear responsibility for the damage arising to the civilians living in Gaza.

Similarly, the Recommendations section avoids the dreaded H-word as well:

1973. To Palestinian armed groups,
(a) The Mission recommends that Palestinian armed groups should undertake forthwith to respect international humanitarian law, in particular by renouncing attacks on Israeli civilians and civilian objects, and take all feasible precautionary measures to avoid harm to Palestinian civilians during hostilities;

(b) The Mission recommends that Palestinian armed groups who hold Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in detention should release him on humanitarian grounds. Pending such release they should recognize his status as prisoner of war, treat him as such, and allow him ICRC visits.

The only recommendations in the report to "Gaza authorities" are to release political detainees and to "continue to enable the free and independent operation of Palestinian non-governmental organizations."

Hamas is not given a single recommendation to stop rocket attacks. Hamas is not told to stop incitement. Hamas is not told to release Gilad Shalit (as if he is being held against Hamas' wishes!).

No wonder Hamas is thrilled about the report. In the entire 450 page report, Hamas is not singled out once for condemnation.

And all the news stories and Goldstone interviews that claim that the report condemns Hamas are wrong.

The Honor Song

From Israeli humor show Latma, a musical interview with the Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Rage. Click on the lower right arrow and the CC button to read subtitles.

"Who needs life at all if there is honor?"

Islamic Jihad al-Quds Brigades endorses Goldstone

The Sayara.ps al-Quds Brigades website praises the Goldstone Report and "the great efforts undertaken by the legal institutions and human rights organizations in rallying support" for the report.

Terrorists really seem to be enamored of this report and of the "human rights" organizations that have pushed it.

In the same website today is another article that stresses that terrorism ("resistance") is the only way to defeat Israel.

Islamic Jihad website brags about prisoner getting masters degree

Saraya.ps, the Islamic Jihad al-Quds Brigades website, has an article about PIJ leader Abd al- Rahman Rabia Shihab, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Hadarim prison Israel.

While in prison, Shihab received a bachelor's and master's degree in sociology.

The article talks about how the Israeli authorities supposedly tried to stop him from taking these courses, but how he prevailed anyway. Which is really weird, because he received his degrees from Israel's Open University and clearly he was allowed to take these classes by the Israeli prison authorities.

But, everyone knows that Palestinian Arab prisoners are routinely tortured, so perhaps the torture was scheduled while he was doing his homework.

Saudi rumors that H1N1 vaccine causes infertility

Al Arabiya reports that rumors are speeding through Saudi Arabia that the swine flu is a conspiracy and that the vaccine causes infertility in 80% of those who take it. This rumor is spreading just as the vaccine is being readied to be given to the population.

The conspiracy theory did not originate in the Middle East. Here's one version of it on YouTube.

Unlike Al Arabiya's last article quoting an Arab doctor about how H1N1 is a conspiracy, this article actually interviews real doctors and also attempts to uncover the origins of the conspiracy theory.

Morning tweet links

Media Backspin's tweets this morning include:

The 3-minute video that may prove Iran's nuclear intentions (Ha'aretz)

The video depicted a room made of stone. At the center stood a Perspex mock-up - equipped with a flashing red light - of a ball-shaped bomb resting in the metallic, gold-plated cone of a missile warhead. In the most important scene in the film, the computer simulation shows the launched warhead reentering the atmosphere and exploding 600 meters above the earth's surface. According to experts, this is the ideal altitude for detonating a nuclear bomb in order to generate the maximum degree of destruction on the ground.

Historical revisionism on the Temple Mount (HuffPo)

The Waqf Authority -- the Islamic land trust that has administered the Temple Mount since the 12th century -- has used bulldozers to destroy Judeo-Christian ruins beneath the Mount. I toured the rubble firsthand and saw the crushed Herodian-era glass, Temple pottery, and smashed Templar crosses. The Israeli archaeologists sifted through the piles like medics surveying a battlefield with no survivors.

HRW founder joins its critics (NYT)

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.
That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.
When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

And one more link, The Bedouin who Serve in Israel's Army (BBC):

The traditional view of the Arab-Israeli conflict is of Jews fighting Muslims. But that image does not always reflect the truth.

In fact, there are thousands of Muslim Bedouin who serve in the Israeli army, or IDF, and even bear arms against their fellow Muslims in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

They do so although it is not compulsory for them to serve in the Israeli military, as it is for most Israeli Jews, and sometimes military service comes with a price tag.

"I will do whatever is required from me to do the job with the full faith in the service of the Israeli state," asserts Maj Fehd Fallah, a Bedouin from the village of Saad in the Israeli occupied Golan.

He is happy to perform his duty, whoever he may have to fight against.