Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, November 07, 2009

A small terrorist get-together

This picture was taken at an Islamic Jihad festival that took place in Damascus over the weekend. It was yet another gathering to honor the anniversary of the death of its founder, Fathi Shakaki.

I'm not great at recognizing faces, but we certainly have Khaled Meshal of Hamas there, as well as Ziad Nakhala of Islamic Jihad. It seems that there are also some PFLP leaders there as well.

That's what I call a target-rich environment!

Just something to keep in mind the next time someone claims that the different terrorist groups hate each other and don't cooperate.

Obama's Rabin speech justifies terror

Am I the only person who finds this sentence outrageous?

Remarking on Rabin's quest for peace during his life, U.S. President Barack Obama said in a video message that "Israelis will not find true security while the Palestinians are gripped by hopelessness and despair."

No one is saying that anyone should live in "hopelessness and despair" but the clear implication is that as long as Palestinian Arabs are pissed off, Israelis need to watch their backs.

People are responsible for their own happiness. Like it or not, not everyone gets everything they want. Plenty of Jews have very good reasons to want to gain back control of biblical Judea and Samaria and are frustrated that they cannot do that - but can anyone imagine Obama saying that as long as Jews are "frustrated and angered" by their inability to freely visit, say, Joseph's Tomb or the Temple Mount, that Palestinian Arabs will never have security?

Or would Obama say that US citizens cannot find true security while native Americans live in squalor and despair, or that Turks cannot find security while Armenians are stateless?

This is liberalism run amok, where the for one's happiness is found not from within but is rather the responsibility of the Western world. Where personal responsibility simply doesn't exist, and where terror is justifiable.

It is an attitude like this that gives cover to terrorists and their apologists, as they play on this insane thought process and use it as ammunition to blackmail the West into giving in to their ever-increasing demands. I have not seen the entire speech and perhaps there was a context there, but the fact that the leader of the free world said that sentence is incredibly frightening.

And that one sentence is already being quoted in the headlines of the Palestinian Arabic media.

Arab report: Extremists use sex to recruit suicide bombers

Al Arabiya is presenting an Arabic language TV show about suicide bombers tonight. In the show, they reveal that terrorist leaders explicitly use the lure of sex in Paradise as a means to recruit young men:

An analysis of the content of SMS messages sent by the bombers before they blew themselves up showed that more than 80% of the suicide bombers mention a wish to meet virgins as one of the reasons that compel them to carry out these operations.

[One man interviewed] said they refers to a button that, once pressed and activating the bomb, will come nymphs welcoming him to heaven. While there is another beautiful girl waiting for him that has prepared for him a buffet full of food and drink.

Psychologists say that the content that appears in the tapes clearly reflects on the way in which [terrorists] recruit, selecting young people and placing them in isolation for long periods in the mountains, exposing them to physical training and teaching violent extremist ideas about women, which would aggravate their sexual frustrations, and ultimately promise a legitimate means to unload this repression as a sure way to get them to implement what the organization's leaders tell them without discussion.

Lebanese school bans Anne Frank

From AFP:

Anne Frank's diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by the militant group Hezbollah claiming the classic work promotes Zionism.
The row erupted after Hezbollah learned excerpts of "The Diary of Anne Frank" were included in the textbook used by a private English-language school in western Beirut.
Hezbollah's Al-Manar television channel ran a report slamming the book for focusing on the persecution of Jews.
"What is even more dangerous is the dramatic, theatrical way in which the diary is emotionally recounted," said the report aired last week and also published on the station's website.
It questioned how long Lebanon would "remain an open arena for the Zionist invasion of education."
A member of the school board, Jimmy Shoufani, told AFP the school dropped the textbook from its curriculum after the controversy erupted. He asked that the school not be identified.
Hezbollah officials could not reached for comment.
In the Al-Manar report, party MP Hussein Hajj Hassan had criticized the school for showing poor judgement in picking out its textbooks.
"These respected, established schools are teaching the so-called tragedy this girl lived, and yet they are ashamed to teach the tragedy of the Lebanese people, the tragedy of the Palestinian people... the tragedy of the people of the south under the hands of Zionist occupation," he told Al-Manar.

But Allah forbid you should call them anti-semitic. They love Jews! Just as long as the Jews are dead or subjugated into silence.

Notice also how a private school in Lebanon must do what Hezbollah says, giving Islamic fundamentalists effective absolute power over the entire country just by using threats.

Erekat: Compromise is not "realistic"

From Palestine Press Agency:

Dr. Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said that the option of two countries on the borders of June 1967 is the only realistic option of making peace in the Middle East.

In other words, the idea of compromise is anathema. The idea of any Jews living in the West Bank is unrealistic. The idea that a single Jew should remain in the Old City is horrendous and an obstacle to "peace." The very thought that Jews should have free access to their holy places or be able to live in towns on the east side of a border that Arabs rejected before 1967 is simply not "realistic" and therefore must be shot down.

Thus spoke the "moderate."

Erekat stressed that the shortest way to peace is ending the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, and away from a state with provisional borders and a long-term interim agreements.

Because we all remember how peaceful things were between Arabs and Jews before 1967!

Palestinian Arabs are unique in international law

The Guardian says that accused Fort Hood murderer Nidal Hassan was "the son of Palestinians from a village near Jerusalem."

The New York Times says, "His mother’s obituary, in The Roanoke Times in 2001, said she was born in Palestine in 1952."

This got me to wondering about a contradiction in the standard pro-Palestinian Arab narrative that the world has swallowed whole.

We all "know" that Israel is considered the legal occupier of the West Bank. It was declared as such by the UN and the ICJ, among others.

The definition of occupation, however, is straightforward:

"Military occupation occurs when a belligerent state invades the territory of another state with the intention of holding the territory at least temporarily."

The original definition from the Hague Conventions of 1907 states:

Military authority over the territory of the hostile state

Art. 42. Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.

The question that remains murky is, what is the state that Israel is occupying? It cannot be Jordan, because Jordan relinquished control in 1988, and the international community never recognized Jordan's annexation of the West Bank. It seems clear, from the aforementioned sources, that this "state" is "Palestine."

In other words, according to the UN and the ICJ, there is a legal entity called "Palestine" and it has existed since at least 1967, probably since 1948. This is remarkable in itself that international law is implicitly recognizing a state that was never declared or recognized. As a matter of fact, it may be against international law to prematurely recognize a state (note 26.)

(The ICJ takes the position that the intent of the Fourth Geneva Convention is not only between High Contracting Parties and that the intent of the drafters was to protect civilians even if they were not in a state beforehand. This is probably true: the Fourth Geneva Convention is specifically concerned with civilians. The advisory opinion is being extended way beyond treatment of civilians - the responsibility of which Israel voluntarily accepted in 1967 - and into the legal status of the territories themselves. That isn't defined by Geneva, but by the Hague. This brings up an entire other set of anomalies as Israel ceded day to day control of large parts of the territories to the PA, as a strict reading of "occupation" would imply that Israel has a much greater responsibility over West Bank Palestinian affairs than it exercises now, a position that would horrify the UN and ICJ.)

If we ignore these anomalies and assume that there is a legal entity called Palestine that is under occupation, then we come up to another problem: the definition of "refugees."

We have discussed a number of times in the past how Palestinian Arab "refugees" are the only ones in the world whose definition includes the descendants of the original people who fled a war. The UNRWA's operational definition has somehow become the legal definition.

But this definition has another dimension of exceptionalism: if one considers the West Bank to be legally "Palestine," then the original "refugees" who are there would normally be considered "internally displaced persons." After all, they just moved from one part of "Palestine" to another - if one accepts that "Palestine" is "occupied."

This analysis shows that the only way for the worldview of "occupation" and "refugees" to both be accurate and not contradictory is to redefine both words to accommodate a specific circumstance. To say that normal legal terms must be redefined for Palestinian Arabs - and only Palestinian Arabs - is to make a mockery of the idea of law itself.

Marriage in Somalia

An interesting article in Al Arabiya discusses how marriage has turned into a legal way of sleeping around for young Somalians, helped by random calls on inexpensive cell phones:

Bile Farah, 25, said marriages nowadays have become more of an "entertainment."

"I don't think I'd be sane if it were not for the 'Qudbasiro', free-of-charge secret marriages," the unemployed secondary school graduate told Reuters, sitting cross-legged on a ragged mattress and sending a text message with his phone.

"I've divorced nine women already. Voluntary brides and cheap phone services, it is the only life we have."

Unsurprisingly, such behavior is frowned upon by hardline Islamist Shabaab insurgents who rule over much of central and southern Somalia and want to impose their own austere version of Sharia law on the whole country.

They have banned elopement in the areas under their control. But for Halima Osman, a Mogadishu mother-of-three, the mobile phone helped her run away with the love of her life.

I am very proud. I would not have these three kids if it were not for the cheap calls and elopement," the 20-year-old told Reuters, covering her face with a scarf.

She said her sister lived a "dog's life" being beaten for seven years after being married to an old man against her will.

"She suffered. But you can just dial a number or pick up a ringing phone. You make an appointment then elope. Life is so easy if you are lucky."

Aden, the shop owner, said he was shocked when his own daughter eloped and gave birth to a child with a young man he had never met. But he also had a confession.

"I enjoy this lifestyle myself, to some extent," he said.

Apart from an older wife in a "far away" region, he said he had three younger spouses in the capital: one through an arranged marriage and the other two "secretly."

"I call them day wives, because we usually have to meet discreetly during the daytime, the other one will take it out on the children if I'm missing from her nightly roll call," he said.

"But the recent insecurity has favored us. You hear gunfire, and you have an excuse to be absent."

The article started off with that same shop owner describing how things were in the good old days:

Somali courtship was different in Hassan Aden's day. When he was a teenager, you gave the girl's parents 11 camels and an AK-47 assault rifle as bride price and then waited respectfully.

More brilliant Arab military analysis

Arab military analysis is a pretty simple affair. It can be summed up in one sentence:

If someone does something you don't like, they must be working for Israel.

The latest example comes from pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. It quotes a Lebanese military analyst as saying that the recent rocket attack against Israel from the town of Hula was probably done by the extremist Sunni Fatah al-Islam group...and they did it to help Israel.

You see, Fatah al-Islam agrees with al-Qaeda philosophy. As such, it is trying to embarrass "moderate" Arab regimes by instigating terror attacks against the West and shooting rockets into Israel. This is all, of course, in order to help Israel create a rift between the West and the Arabs as well as between Arabs themselves.

See how easy it is?

Syrian minister says UN is pro-Israel

On the very same day that the UN General Assembly (for the umpteenth time) voted overwhelmingly against Israel, a Syrian minister and columnist for Asharq Al Awsat writes that the UN is just another Zionist tool:

The shy and shameful language of the UN’s call [for Israel not to evict Palestinian Arabs in jerusalem] comes in the context of the submission of the Security Council to the Zionist will, and consequently commits a historic disgrace in the form of ignoring the legitimate political, civil and human rights of the Palestinian people including their right to life and freedom like other peoples of the world.

For the UN not to take any initiative or measure which leads to giving the Palestinian people the right to self determination will remain a disgrace in the history of the organization which will never be removed except with the removal of Jewish colonialism in Palestine. The Palestinians have been under a racist settler form of colonialism for over sixty years; and they are targeted with a campaign of ethnic cleansing launched by armed gangs of settlers supported by the Israeli police and army. This is unparalleled in the 21st century in terms of the crimes which include siege, murder, food poisoning, starvation, assassination, demolishing houses, scorching crops, destroying farms, raping prisoners, trafficking in the organs of martyrs and preventing Palestinians from moving between their villages, farms and schools.
All this happens under the full gaze and silence of the ‘civilized’ world which fully supports the Israeli government and fully ignores the daily savage crimes committed by Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers.

Ms. Shaaban seems not to inhabit the same world that the rest of us live in.

If all these crimes committed daily against Palestinians do not amount to ethnic cleansing and genocide, what does?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe Hama?

More details on the Hezbollah weapons cache

The shipment included:

20,000 fragmentary grenades
9000 mortar shells
3000 106 millimeter artillery shells
2000 122 and 107 millimeter rockets
600,000 7.62 millimeter rounds for AK47 assault rifles

(source: IDF email)

[Considering that the Jews run Hollywood, this is an extraordinarily bad slide show. It looks like it was made in Microsoft Movie Maker by a ten year old. ]

Saudi Cast Lead

AP reports:

Saudi Arabia has launched a large military incursion across the border into northern Yemen, using fighter jets and artillery bombardments to try to end a Shiite rebellion inside its troubled southern neighbor, Arab diplomats and the rebels said Thursday.
The northern rebels, known as Hawthis, have been battling Yemeni government forces intensively over the past few months in the latest flare-up of a sporadic conflict that has lasted five years. The Hawthis are based in northern Saada province, which borders Saudi Arabia.

"Saudi jets dropped bombs on a crowded areas including local market in the northern province of Saada," Hawthi spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam told The Associated Press. "They (Saudis) claim they are targeting al-Hawthis, but regrettably they are killing civilians like the government does," he added.

"The attacks were followed by hundreds of shells from the border," Abdel-Salam said.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

Two Arab diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP Saudi Tornado and F-15 warplanes have been bombarding targets inside Yemen since Wednesday afternoon, inflicting significant casualties on the rebels. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to talks to the media.

They said army units and special forces have been sent to northern Yemen, and that several Saudi towns on the border have been evacuated.

The BBC adds that the Houthis claim that Saudi Arabia dropped phosphorus bombs on them.

So a Western-backed nation, using American and European airplanes, struck against an Islamist extremist group across its border, killing innocent civilians.

According to the Goldstone Standard, it sounds like numerous war crimes are occurring.

I would love to see copies of the leaflets that the moral Saudis no doubt dropped ahead of the bombing of the market, as well as the results of the internal investigation that Saudi Arabia is certainly embarking on right now.

(h/t Capt Diggs in an LGF link)

UPDATE: I don't know if it is true, but the Houthis are claiming that Saudi Arabia is putting up a "separation fence" in Yemen territory:

Saudi forces opened fire on the crowd following conflicts with local residents over the construction of a separation fence on Yemeni soil," said a Wednesday statement released by members of the Shia group.

Consequently, the incident inflicted the loss of numerous lives, as well as serious injuries upon both sides.

"Residents of the area reject any fence which would have a negative economic impact on them and cut them off from their brethren on the other side," the statement also noted.

We need more international law experts to specify all the clear legal distinctions between the good Saudis and the evil Israelis, and between the evil Houthis and the good Hamas members.

Lebanese upset over prize for Israeli falafel

Al Arabiya (Arabic) reports that the president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists, Fadi Abboud, is protesting the fact that an Israeli company won an award at a New Jersey food expo for a falafel product.

He is sending a letter to the organizers emphasizing that falafel is a Lebanese product, not Israeli, and to give such an award in an insult to Lebanese falafel vendors.

He says that Israel persists in stealing Arab food like falafel, hummus and tabbouleh,

Abboud will send a letter to the Lebanese Economic Minister to formally protest to the United Nations that "Israel's efforts strive to give the impression in the international markets that falafel is one of its culinary heritage, as they did with other dishes" like tahini.

Lebanon will also respond to this insult by making the world's biggest falafel ball, similar to last month when they prepared the world's largest hummous and tabbouleh dishes.

And what was this food fair in New Jersey that has Lebanon so upset?

It was the annual Kosherfest fair! The award that irks him so much was the "best food from Israel" award, which would make it difficult to give to a Lebanese company (unless you want to include Lebanon in Biblical Israel, which might upset them a bit more.)

I suggest that Lebanese vendors who are so upset over Israeli companies stealing their cuisine feel free to obtain kosher certification for their products and to display them in next year's Kosherfest so they can be judged and compared with Israel's entries. And I wish them much luck in cracking the kosher consumer market.