Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Nah, they're not anti-semitic

An email correspondent points me to the Wikipedia page of (as far as I can tell) the only Iranian-designed and manufactured assault rifle.

The rifle's name?

The Khaybar KH2002.

Yes, it is named after the Battle of Khaybar, whee Mohammed slaughtered some 10,000 Jews in 629 CE.

The Iranian military does not use the assault rifle, according to the article. Instead, they ship them to be used by - Hezbollah.

(h/t Ben)

What does the BDS movement want?

An excellent video, from StandWithUs:

(h/t sshender)

Arab American museum raising funds for Helen Thomas sculpture

From the Detroit Free Press:

The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn has launched a fund-raising drive to pay for a statue of legendary journalist Helen Thomas that concerns some in the Jewish community.

Thomas, a former White House correspondent and native Detroiter born to Lebanese immigrants, was forced to quit her job at Hearst Newspapers last month after saying Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine." She apologized.

On Tuesday, the museum started a 45-day campaign to raise the remaining $10,000 for the roughly $30,000 statue. Some in the Jewish community are wary of honoring Thomas.

"I just hope that the support for this memorial is there despite her anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views and not because of them," said Richard Nodel, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council.

Anan Ameri, director of the museum, said she disagrees with her comments, but Thomas "spent her life ... doing a lot of good things."

The campaign, which has a web site, has managed to raise $680 so far.

The museum has sought the sculpture for nearly a year.

If you are not eating, here's a picture. The statue is the one on the right.

Newest Saudi trend: "Daytime marriage"

A new alternative has come up to temporary "misyar" marriages, and this one is approved by Saudi authorities.

Called "Daytime Marriage," this allows a man to have two wives - one for the day shift and one for nighttime.

The advantages are said to be that with this sort of marriage, women who work at night can also enjoy the benefits of marriage. Or, at least, some of them.

Apparently, some older women are taking advantage of this arrangement, marrying younger men as second wives. Many of them are divorced or widowed, making them less than ideal for first marriages.

Men who are taking advantage of this system are being careful to hide the "daytime wives" from their first wives.

Unlike misyar marriages, these are meant to be permanent.

Saudi religious scholars are lauding the advantages of this system. It reduces promiscuity for women, especially night workers; plus it helps stem divorces for men who need more action (and who manage to hide their daytime wives from their first wives.)

I think that the English word for these women is "mistresses."

Egyptian journalist: "A sense of absolute prosperity prevails" in Gaza

MEMRI translates an article in Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper by journalist Ashraf Abu al-Houl:

I was last in Gaza in mid-February. Returning three weeks ago, I found it almost unrecognizable... and the greatest surprise was the nature of that change. I would have expected a change for the worse, considering the blockade – but the opposite was the case; it seemed as if it had emerged from the blockade.

A sense of absolute prosperity prevails, as manifested by the grand resorts along and near Gaza's coast. Further, the sight of the merchandise and luxuries filling the Gaza shops amazed me. Merchandise is sold more cheaply than in Egypt, although most of it is from the Egyptian market, and there are added shipping costs and costs for smuggling it via the tunnels – so that it could be expected to be more expensive.

Before I judge by appearances, which can be misleading... [I would like to point out that] I toured the new resorts, most of which are quite grand, as well as the commercial markets, to verify my hypothesis. The resorts and markets have come to symbolize prosperity, and prove that the siege is formal or political, not economic. The reality [in Gaza] proves that the siege was broken even before Israel's crime against the ships of the Freedom Flotilla in late May; everything already was coming into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. If this weren't the case, businessmen would not have been able to build so many resorts in under four months."

I] began my search for the truth regarding the siege in Rafah, at the Saturday market, which was loaded with large quantities of merchandise and products of various kinds – at prices mostly lower than in Egypt, particularly for food products. Nevertheless, there weren't many customers, and this for two reasons: One, supply is much greater than demand, and two, the workers were all waiting to get paid their wages.

Business owner Abu Yousuf stood at his shop surrounded by hundreds of cans of food. Their price had dropped significantly in the past two months; in some cases by as much as 50%. Clothing vendor Abu Muhammad Al-Masri noted that there was an unprecedented glut on the clothing market in the Gaza Strip. Clothing comes into Gaza from two sources: the tunnels, which provide large quantities, and the border crossings to Israel, via which even more goods arrive, most of which piled up at Ashdod port [and are now coming into the Strip]. He clarified that the merchants wanted to sell [lots of] goods to get back some of their money... and so had increased the supply in the markets, leading to lower prices.

During my tour of the Rafah and Khan Younis markets, I noticed that the merchants were drastically marking down their merchandise, so as to get rid of goods smuggled in through the tunnels, and to prevent heavy losses... after Israel has decided to allow in Israeli and imported goods, as part of Israeli government measures to ease the blockade following the Freedom Flotilla massacre.

Despite the drop in price due to the plethora of goods in the Gaza markets, the residents sense that even lower prices are on the way, due to the easing of the Israeli blockade. The consumers are carefully watching prices, [particularly for] smuggled electrical appliances and cars, and refrain from buying, expecting that merchandise will arrive via the border crossings [leading to a further drop in prices].

A Gaza car showroom salesman said that he hoped to sell off his inventory and that he was not bringing in any new vehicles for fear of heavy losses, because Israel had decided to allow vehicles into Gaza for the first time since 2006. Anyone walking in the Gaza streets will see hundreds, if not thousands, of cars that entered Gaza from Egypt via the tunnels, and some of them are stolen. At the home and kitchen appliance dealers, there is a tempting array of all kinds of smuggled goods that sellers want to get rid of, due to the ongoing information about new products that Israel has decided to allow into to the city... "

The Gaza resorts paint a picture of prosperity enjoyed by only a few groups, most of which have become rich from the blockade, because they either own tunnels or else work for the many international organizations in Gaza, headed by UNRWA.

The Gaza resorts are divided into several [categories], each of which has its own price range. This is not like it used to be, when all the tables on the beach were for the use of all the residents... I noticed that most of the resorts set a certain price for the tables near the sea, and a different price for tables farther away. This is in addition to high fees to enter the resort – no less than NIS 20 – and each activity within the [grounds] has its own fee. In short, a family visit, with a sandwich for each child, can cost up to NIS 500.

Several months ago, Gaza had only one luxury resort, Zahrat Al-Madain. Today, another one opens up every day, such as Crazy Water, Aqua Park, and Al-Bustan. Most of them are owned by members, or associates, of Hamas. In addition, the Hamas municipalities [also] charge high fees, in Gaza terms, for the use of public beaches.

'Aed Yaghi, senior official of the Al-Mubadara Al-Wataniyya party, which is headed by Palestinian Legislative Council member Mustafa Al-Barghouti, said, 'These resorts make you wonder. It is logical to invest when times are good – but when Gaza is suffering under siege and there is a possibility of renewed aggression [by Israel], no one knows what profitability there is in building resorts.'

Walid Al-'Awwad, a member of the Palestinian People's Party political bureau, said, 'In the past two years, money-laundering has flourished in Gaza, as reflected by the construction of numerous resorts – all of which belong to influential individuals who participate in trafficking via the tunnels. Compared to the tunnel owners' increasing wealth, the [status] of the [established] wealthy families has waned... The spread of the grand resorts reflects the emergence of a bourgeoisie. Some of the fluidity in the Gaza market stems from the activity of clandestine elements – distributors of drugs, arms, and tunnel merchandise.'

Human rights activist and political correspondent Mustafa Ibrahim said, 'Building resorts in the north [of the Strip] is contrary to the most fundamental principles of investment, because they are in regions exposed to shelling and destruction, due to the unceasing Israeli threats. Thus, veteran investors don't dare invest in this area. The elements behind the investment [in the north], who are sometimes hasty, rely on profits from trafficking via the tunnels for funding... This huge investment in the leisure industry is taking place today in Gaza at a time when 80% of the residents depend on aid from UNRWA and other organizations, and unemployment is at 45%. This creates a distorted picture, particularly when merchandise is piling up in the shops in a way that does not reflect the economic situation. Perhaps the current government created this distorted situation in order to show that it had succeeded in breaking the siege...

The Flotilla Farce (Danny Ayalon)

Danny Ayalon, writing in the Wall Street Journal, touches on many of my blog themes - the hypocrisy of the flotilla activists, the plight of Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon, and how Gaza's poverty is hugely exaggerated.

A couple of years ago, a Palestinian refugee camp was encircled and laid siege to by an army of tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers. Attacks initiated by Palestinian militants triggered an overwhelming response from the army that took the life of almost 500 people, including many civilians. International organizations struggled to send aid to the refugee camps, where the inhabitants were left without basic amenities like electricity and running water. During the conflict, six U.N. personnel were killed when their car was bombed.

While most will assume that the events described above took place in the West Bank or Gaza, they actually took place in Lebanon in the summer of 2007...

At the time, there was little international outcry. No world leader decried the "prison camps" in Lebanon. No demonstrations took place around the world; no U.N. investigation panels were created and little media attention was attracted. In fact, the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon garners very little attention internationally.

Today, there are more than 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon who are deprived of their most basic rights. ...Unlike all other foreign nationals in Lebanon, they are denied access to the health-care system. According to Amnesty international, the Palestinians in Lebanon suffer from "discrimination and marginalization" and are treated like "second class citizens" and "denied their full range of human rights."

In view of the worsening plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon, it is the height of irony that a Lebanese flotilla is organizing to leave the port of Tripoli in the next few days to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza. According to one of the organizers, the participants are "united by a feeling of stark injustice."

This attitude exposes the dishonesty of the whole flotilla exercise. Whether it is from Turkey, Ireland or Cyprus, those that participate in these flotillas reek of hypocrisy. There are currently 100 armed conflicts and dozens of territorial disputes around the world. There have been millions of people killed and hundreds of millions live in abject poverty without access to basic staples. And yet hundreds of high-minded "humanitarian activists" are spending millions of dollars to reach Gaza and hand money to Hamas that will never reach the innocent civilians of Gaza.

This is the same Gaza that just opened a sparkling new shopping mall that would not look out of place in any capital in Europe. Gaza, where a new Olympic-sized swimming pool was recently inaugurated and five-star hotels and restaurants offer luxurious fare.

Markets brimming with all manner of foods dot the landscape of Gaza, where Lauren Booth, journalist and "human rights activist," was pictured buying chocolate and luxurious items from a well-stocked supermarket before stating with a straight face that the "situation in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur."

...The latest flotilla preparing to leave from Lebanon fully exposes not only the hypocrisy but the danger of these provocative vigilante flotillas. The Lebanese flotilla, whose organizers claim injustice while ignoring the dire human rights situation of the Palestinians in Lebanon, amply demonstrate that these flotillas have nothing to do with humanitarian concerns and everything to do with delegitimizing Israel.

Read the whole thing.

Journalist hospitalized after Hamas detains him

In yet another story of Hamas repression that flies under the radar, a Gazan journalist Hossam al-Mughany was detained by Hamas and placed in solitary confinement for six hours. Since he has back problems, he had to go to Shifa hospital afterwards for treatment.

But Hamas arresting and intimidating journalists is a dog-bites-man story, and the media doesn't even bother to protect their own - because they are scared of Hamas as well.

Will the PA cabinet resign next week?

I've seen a couple of Arabic articles now saying that the PA ministers will resign next week and there will be a major re-shuffle.

A Fatah spokesman was quoted a couple of days ago as saying that "Next week we will form a new government representing the aspirations and ambitions of the Fatah movement."

It is unclear what Salam Fayyad's role will be in the new government, although everyone seems to agree that he would maintain his Finance Minister portfolio.

But from all appearances, it will involve a strengthening of Fatah's already serious grip on power - and Fayyad is not a member of Fatah.

How much agricultural Gaza land does Israel's buffer zone take?

One of the oft-repeated claims about Gaza is that about 30% of its farmland is eaten up by Israel's buffer zone. This claim has been made by many, including the UN, as in this quote from 2009:

"Bear in mind that 30% of Gaza's most productive land is within that buffer zone."

More often, the figure given is as a percentage of "arable land" - for example, this UN document says that "The area inside the Buffer Zone along the northern and eastern borders with Israel contains nearly a third (29%) of the Gaza Strip's arable land, and is inaccessible to farmers."

However, a recent conference in Gaza by the hardly impartial "Palestinian International Campaign To End The Siege On Gaza" claims that Israel's buffer zone takes up 22.5 km2, or 6.25% of Gaza's total land, and that it takes up 20% of Gaza's arable land.

Both these claims are absurd.

The second, smaller claim is easy to demolish. According to the CIA World Factbook, Gaza has 29% arable land, or 104.4 km2. Gaza's total area is 360 km2. If the buffer zone takes up 22.5 km2 - a debatable point itself - then that means that 100% of Israel's buffer zone is arable land, and zero percent is desert or unusable.

A quick glance at Google Satellite images shows that while there are many strips of green land at the border,

much of the southern half of Gaza has no such usable land (here is near the Gaza airport:)

Similarly, much of the northern border with Israel does not appear to be usable for agriculture, as parts are urban.

So even the claim that Israel takes up 20% of the arable land is nonsense, according to their own figures.

Now, how about the claim that Israel's buffer zone is 22.5 km2 to begin with?

Israel officially sets the buffer zone at 300 meters. Israel's border with Gaza is 51 km, so that multiplied by the 300 meters comes out to 15.3 km2, not 22.5. This is a little harder to argue because Israel's attackers claim that the buffer zone in reality extends as much as a full kilometer into Gaza at certain points, but without bringing too much hard evidence for this claim. Without seeing a map of the supposed real buffer zone I cannot check those claims.

There is another important fact to point out, however: Most people don't know what "arable land" means, and think that it is identical with "farmland." However, that is not the definition at all. The UN defines two important terms:

Arable land is the land under temporary crops, temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow (for less than five years).

Land under permanent crops is the land cultivated with crops that occupy the land for long periods and need not be replanted after each harvest.

For the purposes of calculating the amount of land available for agriculture, both those types of land must be included.

Guess what? While Gaza has 104 km2 of arable land, it also has over 75 km2 of land under permanent crops!

So, contrary to the UN quote above, Israel isn't taking up 30% of Gaza's "most productive land". It is, at most, using up loser to 12% - even assuming that 100% of that buffer zone land is arable. In fact, the percentage is probably one third less, from eyeballing the map, or perhaps 9% assuming the figure of 22.5 km2 is accurate.

If Israel's figures of 15.3 km2 is closer to the truth, again assuming that one third of that land is unusable, then Israel's buffer zone might be taking up closer to 5% of Gaza's potential and real agricultural land.

There is a big gap between the 30% quoted by the UN above and the reality of 5%-10%.

Oldie but goodie: IDF pilot lands F-15 with one wing

Fascinating video from The History Channel:

I looked up this incident. It happened in May, 1983, so I doubt that much of the video of the plane flying with one wing is real.

It's a great story, though.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

New battle: Hamas versus lingerie

From Ma'an:

Gaza police announced Wednesday restrictions on women's lingerie and dress stores across the Strip.

Among the prohibitions include displaying lingerie or pajamas in store windows, having fitting rooms or cubicles inside shops, and using tinted glass for store windows. Security cameras inside women's stores will also be banned.

Gaza police spokesman Brigadier Ayman Al-Batniji said the new restrictions will "protect morals and allow people to feel comfortable as they walk down the street."

They won't even allow the display of PaHamas Pajamas? Now, I'm upset!

Mecca bid to replace Greenwich as center of world time zones

Two years ago, Al Arabiya reported:

Muslim scientists and scholars have called for the world to replace Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) with Mecca time, press reports said Thursday.

Prominent scholar, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had provided evidence that Mecca was the true center of the Earth, the BBC reported.

One scientist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to the magnetic north, it added.

The scientist further went on to argue that GMT was imposed on the rest of the world by force during the times of the British Empire and said it was about time that changed.

The scholars were speaking at a conference held in Qatar titled 'Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice'.

It seems that a new skyscraper being built in Mecca is intended to further that claim.

The Abraj Al Bait Towers, which are due to be completed this year, will be 601 meters (1,972 ft) high. At the top will be four giant clocks facing each direction - the world's largest, and highest.

A new Al Arabiya article, in Arabic, is a light piece about a reporter visiting the British National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory in Greenwich and asking workers there whether they had ever heard of Mecca Time or of the Abraj Al Bait clock tower, which is challenging Greenwich to claim the title of the center of the world's time. None of them did.

One interesting vignette from the article:

On the actual meridian line is a long concrete strip which contains the names of major world cities, that tourists can stand upon. The Al Arabiya reporters was offended for two reasons. One was that the only Arab cities listed were Riyadh and Cairo; the other was that Jerusalem was listed there:

At the edges of the strip they etched the names of some famous capitals in every continent, including only two Arab capitals, namely Riyadh and Cairo, and in between there was a "capital" of other Middle East nation in Asia, which is Jerusalem capital of Israel.

I told an employee who was nearby that Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel, and Britain does not recognize it as such. He said: "I am not responsible for this section, but it seems that the name of the cities are there without any mention that they are capitals of Israel or any other nation, and as you can see there are cities such as Sydney, New York and Rio de Janeiro and others, that are not capitals. They seem to select the names of cities they consider famous asexamples. "

I said: "Mecca is also famous - its name is mentioned by more than a quarter of the world's population almost every day, is it not there?

I requested telephone contact information for the employee in charge of the names on the concrete strip, and I received a tactful and respectful answer:

They do not put the name of Mecca so it would not to be trampled underfoot.

A couple of observations from this story:

The Arab Muslim reporter saw the word "Jerusalem" and automatically assumed that this was a legitimization of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, when it could have been easily interpreted as capital of Palestine, had he really had such a bizarre notion. In other words, decades of Muslim indoctrination about "Al Quds" and "Palestine" has not made a dent in the fact that everyone knows that Jerusalem is the real capital of Israel!

And doesn't it look like this reporter is looking for reasons to seethe? He sees only two Arab cities listed, and is upset; he sees Mecca not listed, and he is upset; he sees Jerusalem, and he is upset; and only when he is told that Mecca's absence is for reasons of respect does he calm down.

By the way, the National Maritime Museum that the reporter was trying so hard to find offense at has a Ramadan webpage, a page on the Islamic calendar, and pictures of a number of Islamic timepieces and astronomy tools (such as a compass to find Mecca.) It does not have a separate page about the Jewish calendar.