Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Hamas ready to implode?

The not-always-reliable Kuwaiti press is reporting that Hamas is losing its grip on power in Gaza.

Firas Press reports of a Kuwaiti newspaper that quotes unnamed sources as saying that Hamas is in serious trouble, both from a security and an economic perspective, in Gaza, and it might prompt them to ignite fighting in the West Bank.

The sources said that the recent riots in Jerusalem helped divert attention from Hamas' internal problems, mentioning recent explosions against Hamas officials which are being blamed on unpaid workers protesting. It quotes rumors, that Hamas has denied, that Hamas' minister of the interior Fathi Hammad is being fired from his job.

The sources also point to well-known differences of opinion between Hamas leadership in Gaza and its leaders in Damascus.

Iranians caught with stolen Israeli passports

Ma'ariv reports that three Iranians were caught at an airport in Seychelles trying to use stolen Israeli passports. The Iranians were sent back on a flight to Nairobi, Kenya, from where they came.

Seychelles authorities passed the information to Israeli authorities, who found that the passports were stolen from Israelis who traveled to Thailand last year.

Israeli authorities fear that this was the precursor to a terror attack in the archipelago, which has been advertising heavily to attract Israelis on Passover vacation this year. Charter airlines now go directly to Seychelles from Israel.

Palestinian Authority considers Richard Falk to be too pro-Hamas?

Richard Falk, the UN's "special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories," says he has been asked to resign by the Palestinian Authority - because he is too pro-terror even for them:

Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said on Monday the Palestinian Authority (PA) urged him to step down after he criticized the PA’s treatment of a UN war crimes report.

Falk confirmed reports that the joint PA-PLO mission to the UN in Geneva also delayed consideration in the UN Human Rights Council of his most recent report detailing Israeli abuses of Palestinians’ rights.

Arabic-language news reports of the delay surfaced last week.

He said PA officials formally approached him in February asking him to resign, arguing that he is unable to carry out his responsibilities since Israel detained him at Ben Gurion International Airport and deported him in late 2008.

But, he stressed in an interview, "what they [the PA] say formally and what they say informally are quite different."

"Informally they say different things, things that are essentially untrue, that my health doesn’t me allow to do the job or that I’m a partisan of Hamas," Falk added.

Falk’s mandate is narrowly defined to include only the human rights record of the occupying power, Israel, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza – he does not report to the UN on the actions of the PA or the Hamas government in Gaza.

But Falk did raise hackles in Ramallah when he publicly criticized the PA for delaying UN action on judge Richard Goldstone’s report that accused Israel and Palestinian militias of committing war crimes during the 2008-2009 Gaza war. Goldstone’s UN-mandated report dealt with the three-week attack that left some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision, under US pressure, to delay a vote in the UN Human Rights Council on Goldstone’s report provoked a political crisis, including calls for Abbas to step down, and for the dissolution of the PA. Rights groups slammed Abbas for harming their efforts to bring accused war criminals to justice.

Now Falk says Abbas’ men have done the same to his own report. He says the PA-appointed ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ibrahim Khreishah, put forward a resolution in a recent plenary session of the Human Rights Council which delayed a discussion of his own report on Israeli rights violations from March until June. The resolution passed unanimously.

Falk, a Princeton international law expert, said he is "not happy" about the PA’s actions, but has no plans to resign. "I feel that it’s very important not to succumb to this pressure."

The delay of Falk’s report also caught the attention of Hamas leaders in Gaza. On Monday, The justice minister in the Hamas-controlled government in Gaza, Muhammad Faraj Al-Ghoul, held a news conference denouncing the delay as an effort to "kill the report and give Israel a cover for its crimes."

It is entirely possible that Falk is making this entire thing up. He has an exaggerated sense of self-worth and he has lied multiple times before.

Even so, it highlights that UN officials are more closely aligned with how Hamas views the Middle East than how the US does.

Mahmoud Zahar the deadbeat

Palestine Press Agency quotes Fatah member Jamal Nazzal as claiming that Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar did not pay the electric bill for his large house in 2006 and 2007, owing several thousand shekels.

Arab leaders call for Jihad over Jerusalem. Again.

Over the past 150 years, Muslims have learned that the threat of Jihad scares Westerners. The concern that hordes of half-crazed third-world Mohammedan zealots would go nuts is a consistent motif throughout contemporary newspapers of a century ago no less than it is today, just today it is less politically correct to think in terms of half-crazed third-world Mohammedan zealot.

From the March 2, 1899 Otago Witness:

From the Evening Independent, February 7, 1913:

From the Timaru Herald, September 27, 1876:

Over the years, Muslim leaders have learned that the very idea of a religious war strikes fear in Western hearts, because Westerners tend to be afraid of naked fanaticism. The thought that religion is enough reason to wage war seems primitive to modern ears, and being confronted with people who are fundamentally irrational is a scary thought.

Arab and Muslim leaders have cultivated this fear over the decades, to the extent that Westerners now censor their own speech to avoid any chance of offending the irrational Muslim hordes and spark a Jihad, or at the very least a murder spree.

I have called this mindset "the diplomacy of fear." These leaders have learned that their very threats can get the Western world to bend to their bidding, and the fear is based on the concept that Muslims cannot be trusted to act rationally. Leftists embrace this soft bigotry and the Muslim and especially Arab leadership exploit it.

In that context, it is telling that a conference in Cairo over the weekend called on all Muslims worldwide to initiate a religious war in defense of Jerusalem as a reaction to Israel daring to consider the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb to be "Jewish." The intent is not so much a show of strength by rioting Muslims - whose actual jihads have invariably fallen far short of the threats - as it is to frighten the West into pressuring Israel not to tick off the crazy, irrational "Mussulmans."

Rambam synagogue and school rededicated in Cairo

From CNN-I:

[A] small group of Jews from around the world gathered in Egypt's capital on Sunday afternoon to celebrate the rededication of a 12th-century religious school once used by one of Judaism's most revered figures, and a neighboring 19th-century synagogue built in his honor.
The $2 million, 18-month restoration project of the Rav Moshe synagogue, in an area of Cairo once called "the neighborhood of the Jews," was financed by the Egyptian government.
The school attached to the synagogue was the study of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon -- better known as Maimonides -- a 12th century religious scholar and medical doctor who led the Mediterranean Jewish world and whose patients included Saladin, the Muslim ruler of Egypt and Syria.
The Egyptian government has kept largely quiet about its synagogue restoration campaign. There were no public officials on hand for the rededication of the Rav Moshe synagogue on Sunday, and Egyptian security forces prevented some journalists from entering the building.

Al Masry al-Youm describes it a bit differently:

Newly-appointed Israeli ambassador to Egypt Yitzhak Levanon attended the celebration, along with the US and Canadian ambassadors and French embassy officials. Officials from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), however, which funded the restoration operation, did not attend.

Festivities took place amid a heavy security presence, with police cordoning off a 500-meter area around the synagogue. Local residents were banned from leaving their homes during the event and were ordered to keep their windows tightly closed. All shops in the district were shut for the duration of the event.

In advance of the celebration, Cairo Provincial Authority workers had cleaned the area, paved the sidewalks and painted nearby building facades.

Israeli embassy security personnel, in charge of security inside the synagogue, barred Egyptian journalists from entering the building to cover the event. A Jewish reporter from Israeli daily Haaretz was also denied entry for lacking an official permit.

As to why Egyptian officials didn't attend:

Egyptian officials were absent from the ceremony, and Culture Minister Faruk Hosni said Sunday's opening was a purely religious ceremony. Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Antiquities Department, said that a more formal opening next Sunday would be attended by Egyptian officials.

Iran's new short-range cruise missile

From AP:

Iran announced Sunday that it has started a new production line of highly accurate, short range cruise missiles, which would add a new element to the country's already imposing arsenal.

Gen. Ahmad Vahidi told Iranian state TV that the cruise missile, called Nasr 1, would be capable of destroying targets up to 3,000 tons in size.

For some reason, Google's autotranslate of the rocket name mentioned in Al Asharq al-Awsat calls it "Nasrallah-1."

"Nasr" means "victory," and I thought perhaps Iran intended a pun on the name of their Hezbollah leader friend in Lebanon. But it looks more like an auto-translate bug than anything else.

Musab Youssef on Israel TV

h/t Oleh Girl

The Mufti, the hotel and the cemetery

Tom Segev and Haim Watzman in their book "One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate," tell an incredible story about the infamous Mufti Husseini of Jerusalem and his hotel.

According to the book, the Mufti didn't knowingly build the Palace Hotel on top of the Mamilla Cemetery. At least, not at first. He built the hotel across the street - but the workers did find human remains.

The Mufti's reaction? Don't tell anybody about it and move the bones elsewhere.

Later, when Husseini's archrival Mayor Nashabishi of Jerusalem refused to connect the Palace Hotel to the sewer system, Husseini agreed to lay pipes to send the hotel's (partially treated) sewage - to the cemetery itself.

This excerpt from the book (pp 278-279) is fascinating, and exposes yet again the hypocrisy of Arab Muslims concerning the supposed sanctity of Muslim graves in Jerusalem (click to enlarge):

Disco Dubai open thread (translated)

Translation, courtesy Annie:

Nobody told me there's going to be a party
If I'd have only known, I'd also have come along
From one minute to the next it all becomes clearer
Everyone was there besides me, it seems.

You thought you could keep it from me, a big secret
But "naive" Dahi has a big mouth and he's got cameras
All the world and his wife saw how you flew off without me
To the crazy costume party in Dubai.

Cheese... cheese... cheese

Only me they didn't invite to El Mabhouh's party
Wow, if I'd have been there I'd have sat him on a low chair
Also naive Dahi was there, found some bullets
And since then, from morning till night he's eating movies.

From one press conference to another he rattles on
From all that smoke he can't see the fire.
"I'm on to you, you killed Mabhouh"
DJ Dahi is in his groove, and whoever isn't jumping is suspect.

Cheese... cheese... cheese.

Straighten up your glasses, your wig's a little crooked
Straighten your mustache and smile at the camera
Put on the tennis cap and call the elevator
Because Mabhouh is coming in a minute and we'll put a pillow on him.

Golan Hen - lyrics, melody and coffee
Avihai Porat - vocals, sound and beer.

Open thread time!

Fake "Palestinian" culture gets a boost from the Netherlands

From Ma'an:

A 5,000 year old city is the focus of a UNESCO, Nablus and Dutch government initiative seeking to boost the Palestinian Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage's resources and technical experience, a statement said.

A 300,000 euro donation from the Netherlands to UNESCO will support continued excavations and preservation at the Tell Balata Archaeological Site. Under the initiative, students from the University of Leiden will participate to provide technical expertise, officials said at the signing ceremony on Monday.

The Tell Balata site is listed by UNESCO in the Inventory of Cultural and Natural Heritage Sites of Potential Outstanding Universal Value in Palestine, and is located in the city of Nablus. According to experts, the area includes towers and buildings from the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age dating back 5,000 years.

There is nothing objectionable about archaeological research, of course. What is curious is the reason given by the Dutch for doing this:

Dutch representative to Palestine Jack Twiss Quarles van Ufford called the initiative a step in support of caretaker Prime Minster Salam Fayyad's plan to build state institutions ahead of the declaration of a Palestinian state in 2011. "The creation of institutions can only be sustainable if it goes hand in hand with the strengthening of the cultural identity of the Palestinian people," Twiss said in a statement.

Hold on...if the "Palestinians" have been a unique people living on their land for thousands of years, why do they need outside help to strengthen their cultural identity? Do the Chinese or Greeks or Egyptians need help from Europeans to remember who they are and where they came from?

Not only that, but it Twiss seriously thinking that the residents of the region in Chalcolithic times have any cultural or historic ties to the Palestinian Arabs of today?

Deep down, Twiss and his ilk knows that "Palestinian" culture is a recent and mostly artificial phenomenon driven more by politics than anything else. But since they want another Arab state to exist so badly, they are willing to throw Dutch government money at an initiative that is apparently meant not so much to do serious scientific research but to create a fake history and culture where virtually none exists.

(And, yes, I have looked for years for examples of this ancient Palestinian Arab culture. The closest I have found have been some unique clothing styles and crafts that more reflect normal local and tribal custom than anything that could be remotely called "Palestinian." Palestinian Arab art, music and literature was virtually non-existent a century ago.)

Riot at Bethlehem University

From Ma'an:

Bethlehem University’s student senate accused the university's guards of assaulting 17 students on campus on Friday, following a brawl.

Anan Jawabra, president of the student senate, told Ma'an that the attack followed an attempt to allow a visitor on campus. The senate president said BU's vice president, Mussa Darwish, refused to permit the visitor entry and university guards took the guest to a room and began beating him.

Students were then attacked by guards wielding batons during a 40 minute brawl, Jawabra said, with two students left bleeding for two hours before being transferred to hospital.

The student senate further accused the university guards of brining knives and fire extinguishers to the fight, and calling on friends to assist them in the brawl. The senate says the incident was re-instigated at 2:30pm, despite the campus being cleared of students.

Call the Human Rights organizations!

Oh, that's right - they don't get involved when Israel can't be blamed.