Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 25, 2010

British judge faces anti-semitism probe after his anti-Israel instructions

A senior judge was under investigation yesterday after being accused of making anti-Semitic remarks in court that may have swayed his jury into acquitting a group of protesters.

Judge George Bathurst-Norman was said by critics to have persuaded a jury to clear a group of campaigners who smashed up a factory making parts for Israeli warplanes.

Summing up in the criminal damage trial, he compared Israel to the Nazi regime and accused the country of ignoring international law.

The judge added that 'there may be much to be admired' about the chief protester, and that 'in the last war he would probably have received a George Medal'.

The Office for Judicial Complaints, which deals with objections over the conduct of judges and magistrates, confirmed that an inquiry into how Judge Bathurst-Norman handled the trial of five political activists at Hove Crown Court in June is under way.

Its findings will be considered by Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge and Lord Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, who have the final say on any disciplinary action.

A number of complaints are said to have accused the judge not just of anti-Israel rhetoric but specifically of anti-Semitism.

Describing evidence shown in court, Judge Bathurst-Norman told the jury that he could only describe the 'horrific' events shown as 'scenes which one would rather have hoped to have disappeared with the Nazi regimes of the last war'.

In his summing up, he gave his backing to the evidence of one defendant, Ornella Saibene, a former Greenham Common activist.

The judge said: 'She took us through the horrors, and there really is no other word for it than horrors, that emerged in the press and on the news and the footage as to what the Israelis were doing in Gaza.

'You may think that perhaps "Hell on Earth" would be an understatement of what the Gazans endured.'

We discussed this judge here, here and here.

While I believe that some people complaining about the judge would have accused him of anti-semitism, the problem is that he disregarded any pretense of objectivity and instructed the jury how to rule. Bringing up anti-semitism is not the strategy to employ - even if the judge compared Israelis to Nazis.

It is possible that the Daily Mail played up that aspect of the complaints, and lets hope so. The judge should be investigated and punished for his egregious disregard for the law in the courtroom.

UN against "flotillas" to Gaza. Pigs fly.

This has to be one of the most astounding diplomatic victories ever for Israel at the UN:

The United Nations said Friday that groups seeking to deliver aid to Gaza should do so by land, after Israel warned it would intercept two ships seeking to break a blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

"There are established routes for supplies to enter by land. That is the way aid should be delivered to the people of Gaza," UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told a press briefing.

"Our stated preference has been and remains that aid should be delivered by established routes, particularly at a sensitive time in indirect proximity (peace) talks between Palestinians and Israelis," he added.

He made the comments after Israel served notice its forces would prevent a planned Lebanese aid flotilla from reaching the Gaza Strip.

"We have received information in recent days about a plan to send a new flotilla to break the blockade around Gaza," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Israeli television.

"This is an unnecessary provocation and we believe that preventing such a flotilla is the responsibility of the Lebanese government."

"If this flotilla does leave Lebanon and refuses to be led by our navy to the (Israeli) port of Ashdod, we will have no other choice than to arrest it at sea," the minister added.

"There exists a way of transferring goods, which are not weapons or material for war-like purposes, to the Gaza Strip through the port of Ashdod."

Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev earlier delivered a similar warning in a letter addressed to UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

This is especially notable since UNRWA's head John Ging said the exact opposite only two months ago:

Ging, speaking with a Norwegian newspaper earlier in the week, urged the world to send ships to the shores of Gaza, saying "We believe that Israel will not intercept these vessels because the sea is open, and human rights organizations have been successful in similar previous operations proving that breaking the siege of Gaza is possible."

Hamas, of course, says this this is proof that the UN is Zionist:

Hamas has said the United Nations call for aid groups to send supplies to the Gaza strip over-land rather than by sea amounts to "collaboration with the Israeli occupier".

"The UN call to international organisations to use the over-land road to Gaza instead of the sea is unacceptable and illegal," Sami Abu Zahri, a Hamas spokesman, said on Saturday.

Hamas, which is not participating in proximity talks, said that most Gaza residents "are still banned from leaving the territory and this is why this call [by the UN] is considered a contribution to the [Israeli] blockade".

This last part is especially humorous because the people who restrict Gazans from leaving Gaza are often Palestinian Arabs themselves, as Ha'aretz noticed today. Belatedly.

Israel may be slowly learning a lesson that her Arab neighbors have known for a long time: there is great diplomatic power in saying no. When one side in a dispute is adamant and the other is wishy-washy, diplomats will naturally pressure the side that appears to be wavering. Israel is saying very clearly that if the point of the "aid" is to help Gazans, they will help. If the point is political, it will be stopped. The UN will try to avoid supporting a plan that will force a showdown - as long as there is an alternative.

On-line Al Arabiya poll: Most Arabs don't care about "peace process"

An on-line Arabic Al Arabiya poll (not scientific, but not as self-selecting as PressTV polls) showed that only 10% of their audience followed the "peace process" closely, and 71% say it no longer interests them at all.

A columnist in Asharq al-Awsat, Saleh Qallab, is very upset. He asks, unbelievingly, "Palestine is not the top priority for Arabs?!" He calls the results "surprising and frustrating" and calls this development "dangerous."

It is inconceivable to this editorialist that the wall-to-wall coverage of a people who have nothing to do with the day to day lives of ordinary Arabs has made them sick of the whole topic - especially in light of the Hamas/Fatah split, which turned off a lot of previously supportive Arabs. If Palestinians can't get their act together, they are saying, why should we beat our heads against the wall for these babies?

Qallab allows that Arab nations have other concerns that may appear more pressing, like the war in Yemen and the situations in Iraq and Somalia and the Sudan and fears of an Iranian nuclear bomb and intra-Arab terrorism. Even so, he continues to claim - without any supporting evidence - that the Palestine issue is the "core of conflict in the region," as if those other issues would vanish once there is a Palestinian Arab nation.

It shows once again that ordinary Arabs tend to be far wiser than their intellectual and political leaders. They don't buy the fiction that Palestinian Arabs are the most important issue in their lives, despite being brainwashed to that effect for generations. And more than a few are actively angry at Palestinian Arabs.

The first comment to the op-ed is interesting. An Iraqi now in Sweden writes:

On the issue of Arabs and their problems with Israel, I say why didn't the Arabs will agree to the United Nations partition in 1948? And why did they not give the Palestinians the West Bank and Gaza Strip when it was under their control before 1967? I say to myself, an Iraqi, why would you want me to support the people who applauded the criminal who killed my people, who still have his picture in their homes and who they now they see as a martyr? Do you think I have suffered blindness? The Palestinians do not deserve me, not even a fingernail, and never will!

Apparently, "linkage" is believed more by the Obama administration than it is by the Arab world whose leaders harp on that very fiction.

(h/t Ali for finding the poll.)

Zvi's analysis of Lebanon

Zvi comments on this post:

It sounds as though Hezbollah is very much on the defensive at the moment. It is apparently looking for a way to avoid being blamed as an organization.

The risk to HA is not that a formal STL charge against HA would ignite a civil war. The other Lebanese factions are severely outgunned. They know that the US and Europe will emphatically not save them, and that Syria/Iran will pump in as much weaponry as HA needs to crush them. So the other factions will bluster and anger will grow, but unless HA makes a staggering series of mistakes, they will not mount a serious military challenge.

However, there are significant risks to HA. If the STL makes a credible claim that Hezbollah as an organization was involved in the assassination of Hariri... .

1. This could indirectly implicate HA in the assassinations of other opponents of Syria, which could damage some of HA's alliances.

2. It would probably cause the breakdown of the current government (led by Saad Hariri) to whose collective throat Hezbollah so casually holds a knife.

3. It could severely impact HA's quest for legitimacy in Europe. Heretofore, the EU has been reluctant to place HA on the European terror list. This has allowed Hezbollah to operate with a degree of freedom in many countries. If the EU were to finally add HA to the terror list, then this would cause HA's European financial assets to be frozen and would make it that much more difficult for HA to operate around the world. Heretofore, Lebanon's chief "Europatron/Euromeddler" (France) has opposed adding HA to the list. But if the STL were to formally accuse Hezbollah of participating in the assassination, the EU might feel compelled to act. At the very least, it is very difficult to imagine even left-wingers being so urgent to "engage" the "political arm" of Hezbollah at a time when Hezbollah is under a cloud for assassinating a reigning head of state.

4. This would give Sunni Arabs abroad another dose of dislike for Hezbollah.

5. Don't ignore the humiliation factor or the fact that failing to kill the SLT, despite all of their machinations and violence (even starting a war and launching a coup), makes Hezbollah and its regional masters look like local bullies.

Nasrallah said: "I will declare that Hezbollah had nothing to do with it" and "We must understand that Lebanon is entering a very sensitive and complicated phase... This is not due to internal circumstances or a war with Israel, but because of a report that will soon be published by the international tribunal."

Translation: Hezbollah may try to sacrifice some of its people in order to protect the organization as a whole (whether this causes trouble in the ranks, we'll see). Hezbollah *will* drag Lebanon into it.

But I don't see "complicated" translating as, "We wil smash the nonsense out of the treacherous Zionist-loving March 14." It probably translates to "Please, everyone, walk very, very carefully; this place could blow up like a powder keg." Hezzies will be told to be on guard against Israeli invasion, not because Iran expects this but because it's a useful distraction from the fact that the organization is being indicted by an "incorruptible" foreign investigation for murdering the prime minister, and also that HA has been lying about its non-involvement.

But one thing that is easy to verify. HA is involved and Nasrallah is a liar.

How can we tell? Because Nasrallah is telling us "The guys who did it were undisciplined members." So he knows who they are and what they did, and claims to know why. And yet he has never turned over these "undisciplined members" to the police, even knowing that they assassinated the prime mininster and committed mass murder? Instead, he has denied that HA was involved. Well, clearly he knew.

So, well, Nasrallah is liar and a skunk. We knew that ; - ) but there are so many journalists and people in the Arab world who think that the man walks on water. Poor, poor dupes.

Friday open thread

Friday again looks unpredictable for blogging. It worked out on Thursday but I have no idea how much I will be able to blog on Friday.

The Gaza Mall video have now been seen over 20,000 times but it is slowing down. If you like it, put links to it in any message boards, bookmark sites or similar places so people can see the other side of Gaza that the media ignores. One good mentin could make it go to the next level.

Otherwise, use this thread to discuss whatever floats your boat.

Jordan condemns Jews on Temple Mount

From the Jordan Times (English):

The government on Wednesday condemned the visit of a senior right-wing Israeli lawmaker and several extremists to Al Aqsa Mosque compound under police escort.

Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications and Government Spokesperson Nabil Sharif described the move by Danny Danon, a deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, as provocative and offensive, calling on Israeli authorities to prevent such practices and spare Muslim and Christian shrines such provocative acts.

Just wanted to point out that the most "moderate" Arabs want to see Jews barred, permanently, from their holiest site. Why this is not considered bigoted by the world at large is one of those mysteries.

And, in case you were wondering, at least some Jordanians would like to expand the Judenrein area to the Kotel as well. An op-ed in Al Anbat, also in Jordan, speaks fondly about the 1929 massacres of Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron and Tzfat, which Arabs link to the Kotel, and the writer concludes:

The Buraq yard (Kotel plaza) and the wall will remain a source of inspiration for the Palestinians to revolt against the occupation and preserve the Arab identity of Jerusalem and its holy sites and its Islamic and Christian landmarks, rejecting the policy of the Zionist settlement at whatever cost and whatever the sacrifices!!!

Nasrallah backs down in face of Lebanese pressure

We mentioned that a speech made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last Friday caused an uproar in Lebanon. Among other things, Nasrallah accused the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, charged to investigate the murder of former prime minister Hariri, as working for Zionist interests. It is widely assumed that the STL will indict Hebollah members in the plot.

Lebanese politicians slammed Nasrallah for such a slur.

Now, Nasrallah has changed his tune, and says that he knows that "some undisciplined members of Hezbollah may be indicted by STL but not the party."

The plot to kill Hariri was well-planned, and of course Hezbollah had every reason to want to get rid of him. The idea that a rogue Hezbollah group managed to plan and execute the operation without other Hezbollah members knowing is simply ridiculous.

We will see if the tribunal will have the guts to mention Hezbollah, but since something like that could ignite a civil war, they might very well accept this face-saving attempt by Nasrallah as a way out. This way Hezbollah continues its stranglehold on Lebanese politics and military, Lebanon doesn't get sucked into another war and everyone wins.

Except for the Lebanese, of course.

The story of Hayim Farhi - and the first Jewish-led army of modern times

A recent auction of American Judaica did very well, with many pieces getting triple the expected price.

One such item:

A beautifully bound copy of Joseph Schwarz’s Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine, Philadelphia, 1850. Translated by Isaac Leeser, this was Leeser’s personal copy accompanied by correspondence with the author. It realized a premium price of $68,880, more than tripling its estimate of $20,000-25,000

The book is available on Google Books and elsewhere, and it contains a fascinating story I was not aware of about Hayim Farhi of Acre.

Wikipedia has a much more readable account, so here is a mix of Wikipedia's and Schwartz's narratives:

Haim Farhi was born to a respected and ancient Jewish family in Damascus. His father Saul had established a banking business that flourished to the extent that it expanded to control Syria's finances, banking and foreign trade for nearly a century.[6][7]

He, and other family members worked as financial agents[8] (Turkish sarraf)[9] throughout the Damascus district, and contemporary sources often mention them as the 'real rulers of Syria'.[10]

They may also have mediated between the Jewish community and the law. They tried to alleviate the tax burden placed on the Jews of Safed. Haim Farhi succeeded his father as banker of the ruler of Damascus. He gained extensive influence with the Turkish government and became the adviser to Ahmad al-Jazzar, the ruler of Acre, probably thanks to his intrigues that led to the execution of the previous advisor, Mikhail Sakruj, a Christian merchant from Shfa'Amr.[11]

Al-Jazzar recognized his administrator's talents, acted upon his counsel, and provided relief, at Farhi's request, from the heavy taxation placed on the Jewish community.

Al-Jazzar was, nonetheless, a violent and cruel individual whose title 'al-Jazzar' means 'The Butcher'. He would often find a pretext to lash out in savage assaults and harm Farhi and others. In fact, al-Jazzar had his adviser's eye plucked out, cut off the tip of his nose, and severed his left ear.[12] A famous illustration of those days shows al-Jazzar sitting in judgment in front of his Jewish adviser, who is wearing an eye patch.

It was during the reign of al-Jazzar, in 1799, that the French general and future Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte tried to conquer the Damascus governorate. In February Napoleon and his army arrived from the south, captured Jaffa and massacred 2,000 Turkish prisoners. They then moved north, captured Haifa and the Jezreel Valley and laid siege to Acre. Al-Jazzar's troops, refusing to surrender, withstood the siege for one and a half months. A British naval force under the command of Admiral Sidney Smith came to the town's defense, and an artillery expert from the fleet, Antoine DePhelipoux, redeployed against Napoleon's forces artillery pieces which the British had intercepted from the French at sea.

Farhi played a key role in the city's defense. As al-Jazzar's adviser and right hand man, he directly supervised how the battle against the siege was run. At the culmination of the assault, the besieging forces managed to make a breach in the walls. After suffering many casualties to open an entry-point, Napoleon's soldiers found, on trying to penetrate the city, that Farhi and DePhelipoux had, in the meantime, built a second wall, several feet deeper within the city where al-Jazzar's garden was.

Discovery of this new construction convinced Napoleon and his men that the probability of their taking the city was minimal. The siege was raised and Napoleon withdrew to Egypt.

After the death of al-Jazzar in 1804, his son Sulayman Pasha succeeded to the Pashalik of Akko. Under him, the Jews enjoyed, according to one traveller, 'perfect religious freedom', and were relieved of the substantial fines they were frequently compelled to pay under al-Jazzar, and were obliged to pay only the customary kharadj.

Pharchi had a distinguished Mahomedan friend, who died suddenly, with his wife, and left quite a young child, only a few years old, called Abdalla, who was without any protectors, and was therefore educated in the house of the noble Pharchi, who viewed him as his own child, and had him instructed in all the necessary scientific branches; and in addition to this, Pharchi caused that Abdalla was appointed Pacha of Akko, after the decease of Seliman. He at first viewed Pharchi as his father, and followed his guidance to execute justice and equity in the land. But as early as one year after assuming the government, he commenced to act counter to this advice and instruction, and was reproved occasionally on this account by his venerable guardian. Abdalla now observed that he stood in his way, and that he would be a check on the exercise of his mere will and pleasure, and resolved therefore to get rid of him. He endeavoured first secretly to accuse him of treason and other charges, to find thus an opportunity to lay violent hands on him. The confidants of Pharchi revealed to him the terrible purpose of his ungrateful ward, and advised him to save himself by flight. But he declined doing this, and he answered magnanimously that his flight would call down on all the Israelites of Palestine the greatest persecution, and might indeed cause their entire extermination, since the Pacha might be induced through his escaping, to wreak his fury on this innocent people. He added, that he was prepared for everything, and would bear patiently whatever might occur, in order to save thereby, or at least to benefit in some degree, his own people.

Now it happened, on Thursday, the 28th of Ab, 5579 (August, 1817) [1820 in Wikipedia], which the pious Pharchi kept as a fast day (as the eve of the New Moon of the month Elul), and as he was about to take his supper, that an officer with his soldiers suddenly entered his apartment; his death-warrant was read to him, in which he was condemned on account of treason, and with the offence that his private Synagogue was built higher than the mosque of Akko, and several other diabolical charges and crimes; and this sentence was instantly executed.

The day following his house and court-yard were ransacked and plundered, and a large quantity of gold, money, silver, and other valuable articles were carried to the Pacha, the monster and parricide. The corpse of this martyr he did not even permit to be interred, but ordered it to be cast into the sea; and when, the day following, it was carried again on shore, he ordered it to be taken out far into the sea, and then to be thrown into the water. The pious widow of Pharchi fled in all haste towards Damascus, but died suddenly on the road, and was buried in Zafed; and suspicion was entertained that she had been poisoned by the furies who surrounded the Pacha.

Abdallah then compelled the Jews of Acre and Safed to pay in full all the back taxes they would have owed had they not been exempted, through Farhi's good offices, from paying over the years.

This deed of terror excited universal consternation and mortal fear in all Palestine, especially among the Israelites; and the parricide now showed himself openly as the persecutor of the Jews in the Holy Land, and exercised such acts of violence and abomination among them, as are not perpetrated by cannibals and savages.

Here, Schwartz details some more specific atrocities that Abdalla visited upon the Jewish community; read the original for details.

Already this is a gripping tale, showing great Jewish influence in the Ottoman Empire as well as great antipathy on the part of some leaders. The two stories of how Al Jazzar maimed Hayim Farhi while he was his adviser, and especially of how Abdallah almost immediately turned against his Jewish step-father as soon as he became Pasha, are fascinating and more than a little scary. It shows that even though Jews rose to political heights under Muslim rule, their hold on power was always tenuous and second-class.

But the next part is, in some ways, even more compelling:

In Damascus dwelt the three brothers of the martyr Pharchi; they were the most distinguished and honoured men of the whole surrounding country, not only through their wealth and their extensive commerce, which was carried on to all parts of the Orient, but also for their great influence in Constantinople and other large cities and towns, and they were likewise famed for their honest and noble conduct.* Their names were Seliman, Raphael, and the youngest Mosé Pharchi; the last mentioned died in 5600 (1840), through the torture inflicted by Serif Pacha, as one of the accused for the murder of Father Thomas, in which this excellent man was, among others, charged with having taken part in the slaughter of that old priest, to make use of his blood at the celebration of the Passover. When these men learned the deplorable death of their beloved brother, they resolved to be revenged on his murderer, even at the greatest sacrifices. Through their great influence at Constantinople they succeeded in obtaining a firman (a decree), signed by the Sheich al Aslam,† literally, the chief of the faith, authorizing them to take hostile measures against Abdalla. It was a small matter with them, on account of their immense wealth, to engage Seliman Pacha of Damascus, Mustapha Pacha of Aleppo, and two other minor Pachas, who were under the jurisdiction of these two principal ones, with their soldiers, to take the field against Abdalla. A large force having thus been collected, the expedition passed over the Jordan in the month of Nissan, 5581 (April, 1821). Abdalla marched out against the advancing Pachas; and a battle took place at the bridge over Jordan called Djisr abné Yacob, in which he was defeated, and he fled in haste, retreating to Akko. The brothers Pharchi now took possession of all Galilee, deposed the officers appointed by Abdalla, and appointed others in their place.

The victors next laid siege to Akko, where the famine rose to such a height, that a single egg was sold at 70 grush,‡ which at that time was near six dollars, and a sheep at 900 grush, or 78 dollars. The siege was continued for fourteen months, during which period the Pharchis supplied the place of the Pacha in the country, and acted as governors. But it was decreed that Abdalla should not yet meet his deserts, and he was permitted to have a few years more indulgence. He succeeded, through treachery, to have the worthy Seliman Pharchi poisoned, through which means he died suddenly in the month of Nissan, 5582 (April, 1822). Mustapha Pacha likewise showed, by his acts and conduct in battle, that he was not true to the cause in which he had embarked.

Raphael Pharchi was therefore induced, shortly after the decease of his elder brother, to withdraw with Seliman Pacha to Damascus. Mustapha, it is true, maintained the siege till the month of Sivan (June), when he also withdrew to his own government.

Three Jewish brothers gained permission from the Grand Mufti of Constantinople to lead an army to defeat the Muslim butcher of Acre! And, for a short time, Jews acted as governors over parts of what is now northern Israel!

The story shows the dichotomy of Jewish existence under Muslim rule. Certainly far better than under Christian Europe - yet the Muslim jealousy of Jewish influence helped start a series of Arab massacres of Jews that began with the Damascus blood libel of 1840, in which Mose Farhi was one of the accused.

(pictures from the farhi.org website)

Hundreds of breaches in Egypt's Gaza tunnel wall

From the WaPo:

The smugglers who sneak consumer goods, cash and weapons into the blockaded Gaza Strip have cut hundreds of holes in an underground steel wall Egypt is building along the border to try to stop them, two Egyptian security officials said Thursday.

Rare footage filmed by AP Television News before dawn Thursday showed one smuggler cutting through the barrier with a blowtorch. The smuggler, his face covered by a scarf, said it took him five hours to breach the obstacle.

As I predicted in May, "in a few months things will be back to normal in Rafah." I was off by a month.

But...

Hundreds of tunnels running under the Egypt-Gaza border deliver consumer goods to the Hamas-run territory, bypassing a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt three years ago. In recent weeks, Israel has eased its blockade by allowing most consumer goods into Gaza again through land crossings, and smugglers say they are more concerned about the competition from legitimate imports than about the wall.

Capitalism wins!

(Notice that while this article does teach us something new, it still falls into the "romantic smuggler" meme we discussed yesterday. Rich Western capitalists are bad; rich Arab smuggler capitalists are good.)

(h/t Daily Inquisitor)

Israel a "strategic bonanza" to the US (Satloff)

Worth reading, assuming my embed code works. If not, just click here.

Those Zionist trousers

Ian O'Doherty, in the Irish Independent, takes note of the Gaza Mall:

Gaza is, we're (un)reliably informed, the world's largest open-air prison. Indeed, in some of the more excitable circles of the anti-Israeli lobby, it's often referred to as a concentration camp; an analogy so obnoxious that it doesn't even merit mention.

And in a flyer for a fundraising gig organised by the Irish Anti-War Movement (they're not really anti-war, just anything to do with the Yanks and Israel), they said: "Since the Israeli attack in December 2009, which killed over 1,400, the people of Gaza have been suffering the worst conditions ever. Israel's continuous siege of Gaza and blockade of humanitarian aid makes even the basic necessities such as school material for children, medical supplies etc an impossibility (sic)..."

How terrible. But the Gazans have one thing to look forward to -- they opened a giant, fully stocked shopping mall this week.

And among the delights on offer are, according to its website: "air conditioning, a parking lot, security guards, a full service supermarket and a food court."

It also boasts: "Israeli trousers at reasonable prices."

So, you can hate the evil Zionist pig-dog entity that will soon disappear if Allah has his way (praise be upon him) but, in fairness, the Jews make comfy chinos, so we'll make an exception.

But just this once, mind.

It is amusing that the BDS'ers have been silent about how Gazans are so happy to have Israeli goods available to them again, after years of being stuck with crap from their fellow Egyptian Arabs.

In 1947, Arabs from Palestine who dared break the Arab boycott against Palestinian Jews were subject to firebombs and murders. When will we see calls from some ideological moron from Olympia, WA to punish the Gazans for helping the Israeli economy?

Hamas investing in tourism instead of rebuilding

You know how the Gaza Strip is supposedly filled with destroyed houses and how there is no room to build anything new on account of how crowded it is?

Well, Hamas has somehow managed to find the money and space to build their own Islamic tourist traps that they subtly encourage Palestinian Arabs to visit.

And these places aren't public municipal parks. Rather, Hamas charges Gazans to come.

According to articles in Palestine Today and Palestine Press Agency, Hamas has recently opened a "tourist city" north of Beit Lahia that takes up 270 dunams (67 acres.) One park, 86 dunams large, it includes a zoo and pools (an Olympic-sized pool is under construction.) It also hosts religious seminars.

While admission fees are relatively modest - 3 shekels for adults - Hamas seems to be making its money off of the transportation fees, which seem to only come from buses coming from Hamas-sponsored mosques, and those fees can go as high as 50 shekels.

This park is supervised by Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hammad.

The article also implies that Hamas was one of the investors in the Gaza Mall, and while the mall's spokesman denies this, he refuses to publicize the names of the investors. Prominent Hamas ministers attended the mall opening on Saturday night.

Using language as a weapon against Israel (Zvi)

From Zvi:

There is a conscious strategy on the part of anti-Israel propagandists to misappropriate emotionally laden terms, distort and misapply them, and use them as weapons against Israel and Jews. Emotionally laden terms that normally are associated with hurting Jews are particularly favored, partly because these are emotion-laden words for Jewish supporters, and partly because the abuse causes both anger and real pain for many Jews - and as we've seen, hurting Jews is the objective.

Misappropriated, distorted and misapplied terms include:

* genocide - This is the ridiculous claim that Israel has committed "genocide" against the Palestinians, despite the latter's constantly increasing population.

* humanitarian crisis - misapplied to Gaza. We've been through this on this blog.

* massacre - as in "Jenin Massacre", the "massacre" that never happened;also used against Israel whenever Israel's enemies throw human shields at Israel during battle and the human shields get killed by accident.

* prison - misapplied to Gaza

* Holocaust - attempts to claim that it didn't happen, but at the same time to misappropriate it to represent things that bear absolutely no relationship to the Holocaust, such as fighting back against rocket-launching terrorists in Gaza, or the Naqba.

* Warsaw Ghetto - misapplied to Gaza; people have done this even on this blog. Anyone who even remotely understands what happened during the Holocaust, and particularly in the Ghetto, will never make this claim unless doing so with malicious intent.

* concentration camp - misapplied to Gaza; people have done this even on this blog. Same comment as Warsaw Ghetto.

* Apartheid - misapplied to Israel. Here's the obnoxious Ahmed Tibi, who is a Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, doing something that is actually rather funny. No, I don't like the guy, but yes, I'm amused by this. So anyway, back to Apartheid: were there black deputy speakers in the South African parliament during the apartheid years? Anyone? No? I'm so shocked... . The "Apartheid" claim is another one of these misappropriated and demonstrably misapplied terms that is just ... entirely missing the facts.

* anti-Semitism - Ths is the "Arabs are Semites" argument, which is used to pretend that "Arab anti-Semitism can't exist because Arabs are Semites"

* Nazis - This is the attempt to equate Israel with Nazism, both because the Left hate Nazis and can be led by the nose, and because it hurts Jews to make this comparison.

* "activist" - implies Gandhi or MLK; applied to militants, rioters, gunmen and even outright terrorists in order to whitewash them.

* peace activist - See "Activist". Particularly applied to violent and nonviolent members of anti-Israel hate groups. The "massacre of the peace activists on the MM". Even Israeli governmental and military personnnel are often clueless enough to fall into the trap of using the incredibly distorted language concocted by Israel's enemies, language that automatically puts Israel in the emotional wrong.

* War crimes - mutated to mean "anything Israel does"

* Proportionality - mutated to mean "Israel must allow terrorists to kill its people, because responding to terrorist attacks in any effective manner is forbidden"

* Zionism - Reinterpreted as racism by the UN General Assembly. Sure, that got repealed. Eventually. The damage had already been done. [The term Zionism nowadays is used as a simple synonym for evil by the entire Arab world and a good proportion of the far left. -EoZ]

* Martyr - a person who murdered Jewish (or Western) civilians and was killed while fighting in the name of slaughtering the Jews.

This list is only the beginning, and this list is only the list for English.

The misappropriation, distortion and misuse of emotion-laden words appears to seek several objectives.

1. These emotion-laden terms encourage listeners to turn off intellect and reason and instead engage in strong emotional reactions. This makes it easier for propagandists to influence their dupes to hatred and violence. The distorted terms are supported by lies, distortions and ridiculously superficial similarities, and by the ignorance or misplaced trust of the listeners, and by intimidation of people who dare to speak out and correct the record. Eventually the lies are simply assumed, and the emotion-laden terms have been misappropriated. People who buy into the lies become enraged. The language makes people who are neutral feel a gut level disturbance. And people with short attention spans don't stick around to learn the truth. They just keep hearing the misapplied words over and over again, in conjunction with Jews and Israel. It eventually has a subconscious impact. The subconscious impact, rather than the conscious impact, is the goal of the distortion.

2. There is an attempt to shift the meanings of these terms through endless repetition, such that while carrying heavy emotional baggage, the words have been shifted such that they now mean whatever the propagandists want them to mean. Nasty dictatorships love this stuff, which is why they engage in this kind of thing all the time. It deprives legitimate human rights groups of important words that they need to describe what the dictatorships are doing. When you see a group of dictatorships trying to reinterpret "Islamophobia" as criticism or embarassing the regime or upsetting Muslims, you know that you are witnessing this strategy at work (though in this case it is being targeted at the west in general, not just Israel). This is quite a vicious and disgusting little strategy, and it does a lot of damage on a lot of different levels.

These attacks are tied to the Big Lie strategy.

I should add that Israel and Jews are not the only victim of this kind of propaganda. Western democratic society as a whole is frequently attacked in the same ways. Israel and the Jews are unusual in that we live under a constant, very intense barrage of high-profile attacks, and that we have relatively few allies who are willing to stand up and say, "no."

Scientific poll of Jew-haters agree - "Zionists" control the media

I found this amusing:

CNN's firing of a journalist for honoring the late Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah is a case of intellectual terrorism and Zionistic clout in western media, a poll finds.

Nearly two-thirds (65.99%) of respondents participating in the latest Press TV poll have described CNN's recent move to sack its Middle East senior editor Octavia Nasr as an instance of intellectual terrorism reflecting the influence of Zionists on mainstream western media outlets.

Meanwhile, over 20 percent of those polled believe that Zionists control the western media.

Less than ten percent of the participants maintain that CNN had the right to question Nasr's integrity.

The "poll," of course, was only of readers of Iran's PressTV, which means that it was already a wee bit weighted towards the antisemitic demographic.

Very open thread

Real world stuff is intruding on my blogging life. I might not be able to blog for a while.

Until I manage to get back on-line, here's an open thread.