Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

When is a dance worse than a massacre?

Binyomin Netanyahu has condemned the video that surfaced this week that apparently shows an Israeli soldier bellydancing near a blindfolded Arab woman:

Netanyahu's office said in a statement Wednesday that such videos cause "unacceptable harm to human dignity" of the Palestinians, embarrass the Israeli military and "cause serious international damage."

"The humiliation of prisoners and detainees is not the way of the state of Israel nor that of the Jewish people," Netanyahu said.

Here, in contrast, is the condemnation of the PA prime minister for the cold-blooded murder of four civilians in late August:

"What happened tonight in Hebron was timed to coincide with the PLO's decision to engage in negotiations to end the occupation and achieve freedom and independence for our people," Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said.

"We condemn this operation, which runs counter to Palestinian interests and against efforts of Palestinian leadership to mobilize international support for the rights of our people as well as with previously signed agreements."

And this is not from Mahmoud Abbas, but from that Western-educated darling of the free world, Salam Fayyad.

In fact, never has a Palestinian Arab leader condemned the most heinous terror attacks and massacres with language approaching that of Netanyahu to describe a dance that happened two years ago. Not once has a Palestinian Arab leader said that any act where Jews were killed was wrong from a moral perspective.

In fact, it is simply impossible to even imagine an attack that would be so depraved that Abbas or Erekat or Fayyad would call it disgusting, or reprehensible, or immoral, or shameful, if the victims would be Israelis.

Just more evidence of the light years of difference between the morality of the Jewish state and the visceral response it gives for events like these, and the sheer, disgusting immorality of the Palestinian Authority leaders.

The only time I am aware of that an Arab leader showed the level of regret for an attack that Netanyahu just did for a stupid (and clearly wrong) stunt was when King Hussein apologized for the Peace island massacre of seven Jewish schoolgirls by a Jordanian soldier. The late king called the act "heinous," said that the soldier should have been shot on the spot, and went to pay personal condolence calls to the families of the victims asking for forgiveness.

The contrast between King Hussein and every single Palestinian Arab leader could not be starker. Every condemnation of terror attacks from Arafat through Abbas and Fayyad have been utterly devoid of meaning, a mere mouthing of words to appease the West with the clear implication that the acts would be considered heroic under other political circumstances. The "hawkish, intransigent extremist" Netanyahu has made an apology that shames those of the "moderate, peace-loving" Palestinian Arab leadership.

The funny thing is, if PalArab leaders were like King Hussein, there would have been a peace agreement years ago. Israelis would fall over themselves to make peace with someone they perceive as being sincere and empathetic, no matter the cost. One major reason there is no peace - and why real peace is impossible - is simply because Israelis know, based on experience and the actions of PalArab leaders today, that any agreement they sign is meaningless and worthless.

Just like their "condemnations" are.

Dubai police clown tries to get back in the headlines

Back in March, Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim basked in his newfound fame in the wake of the Mabhouh assassination, and he held daily press conferences to feed his growing ego, each time saying something more ridiculous than the time before.

Eventually, the media got sick of him and he lost his audience.

But last week he came up with new, completely unverifiable information!

Dubai’s police commander Lt General Dahi Khalfan Tamim received two death threats from Israel over the assassination of a Palestinian Hamas leader in the emirate earlier this year, Al Ittihad reported Thursday.

Tamim disclosed that a new suspect believed to be among those involved in the murder of Mahmoud Mabhouh has been arrested in a Western country in the past two days, adding that Dubai is in touch with that country.

Tamim accused Israel’s Mossad of sending him death threats twice, a few days after he revealed the details of Mabhouh’s assassination at Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai on January 20.

Tamim said the contents of the letter he had received said ‘protect your back if you want to keep your mouth open’. Tamim told the paper that 'Dubai authorities have traced the source of that letter.'

Tamim also disclosed that he received the second death threat indirectly when one of his relatives received a phone call from a retired Mossad agent.

“The call came from a retired Mossad agent with Western-Israeli nationality. He asked my relative to advise me to keep silent,” Tamim was quoted in the newspaper.

Tamim revealed a new suspect in the Mabhouh assassination case had been arrested in a Western country but declined to identify the suspect or the country, according to Al Ittihad.

So we have learned that the Mossad sent him a letter that has been traced back to its source, but no details. Also that he was threatened by a retired Mossad agent, with no details. And that both of these events happened while he was still doing his daily ego boost press conferences, but he didn't say a word about it then. And that there has been a new arrest in some unnamed country of some unnamed suspect.

But it all must be true, because it has that aura of believability about it, since it accuses Israel of crimes, and as everyone knows, an accusation against Israel is as good as a conviction, and facts are not to be bothered with.

Well, I'm convinced!

I'm still wonderng why the Dubai police didn't release any tapes of Mabhouh's travels throughout the Emirate, nor why they didn't release any video from the hallway of Mabhouh's room - where there was a beautiful color camera.

Hamas and other groups threaten the PA

Yesterday:

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority has sentenced a Hamas fighter to 20 years in prison over a deadly 2009 shootout with Palestinian police, a court official said Tuesday.

The sentence infuriated Hamas and cast a shadow over plans to hold a second round of reconciliation talks in Syria with its Fatah rivals later this month.

Alaa Hisham Diab was sentenced by a military court on Sunday after having been arrested following a May 2009 battle in the West Bank town of Qalqilya that left three Palestinian security forces and two Hamas fighters dead.

Ahmad Mubaid, the head of the military court, said the conviction was a "criminal matter and not a political one," and that Diab received a military trial "because the crime was against the military establishment."

Then, today,

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups on Wednesday threatened the leaders of the Western-backed Fatah movement over the arrest of fighters in the West Bank.

Masked representatives of the groups gave a press conference in which they slammed the detention of militants by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which Hamas drove out of Gaza in June 2007.

"What is happening in the West Bank is a vicious attack on the sons of the resistance... it has taken a dangerous turn that requires a severe response," they said in a joint statement.

"This response will target the leaders of the Fatah movement in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

That might throw a monkey-wrench into the latest round of Hamas/Fatah unification talks.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the names of the "other Palestinian militant groups" that participated in the press conference.

But here's a picture of the event from the Hamas Al Qassam website, maybe you can recognize some of the representatives.

New T-Shirt available

Just for commenter Silke, a new EoZ T-shirt:

Available at the Elder of Ziyon CafePress store, in women's cap-sleeve or V-neck (shown) or women's V-neck.

Different international law standards for Israel and everyone else

Evelyn Gordon at Commentary notices an interesting NYT article from earlier this week about American soldiers killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan:

The majority of civilian-killing cases that have arisen until now have been connected to combat in some way: soldiers accused of using excessive force or firing indiscriminately when responding to an attack, or who killed prisoners shortly after a bombing or a firefight, when emotions were still raging.

The Haditha killings, for example, followed a bombing that killed one Marine and severely injured two others. Several defendants later claimed that they were shot at after the blast. (Though most of the case collapsed, one defendant still faces a trial on manslaughter charges.)

Similarly, in 2008, the military decided not to bring charges against two Marines who commanded a unit accused of indiscriminately firing on vehicles and pedestrians along a 10-mile stretch of road in Afghanistan. The shootings began after a suicide bomber attacked the unit’s convoy.

An Army investigation later concluded that 19 people were killed and 50 were injured. But the Marines said they had taken hostile gunfire after the explosion and had fired to defend themselves from perceived threats. The case was closed without any prosecution.

It can be difficult to win a conviction, specialists in military law said, when defendants can make a plausible claim that they believed, in the confusion of the “fog of war,” that their lives were in danger and they needed to defend themselves.

“You often see cases of kids who just make dumb decisions,” said Gary Solis, who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University. “But killings in the heat of the moment, they don’t usually try those guys. The guys you try are the ones who have an opportunity to consider what they are doing.”

...“The large majority of civilian harm in both Iraq and Afghanistan takes place during legitimate military operations,” said Sarah Holewinksi, executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. “But because of very poor record keeping on the part of all the warring parties, we really don’t know who has been harmed, how many have been harmed and how they have been harmed.”

So while there have been some convictions for killing civilians, they have tended to be cases where the evidence is overwhelming and not in the heat of battle. And the human rights activist quoted even acknowledges this, without complaint.

What a contrast to how the world judges Israeli soldiers' actions during war! Even though (and perhaps because) the Israeli system has so many checks and balances to protect civilians in the midst of battles against terrorists who are masquerading as civilians, even though there are lawyers embedded at all levels of the IDF and procedures are in place to absolutely minimize damage, even though essentially every civilian death at the hands of the IDF happens during military operations - the world judges Israel by a far different standard than US, or NATO, or any other Western army. Let alone how Arab armies act!

As Gordon notes,

When it comes to Israel, these factors are somehow dismissed as unimportant. That same day, the Times reported on an Israeli court’s conviction of two soldiers for crimes committed during last year’s Gaza war. Altogether, it noted, 48 cases have been opened. A third are “still in progress,” a few produced convictions, and the rest were closed, for the reasons cited above.

“But human rights groups say that the military’s criminal proceedings are insufficient” and that Israeli troops committed “atrocities that require outside investigation.”

The principle that the law applies equally to all is a cornerstone of modern Western civilization. Yet too many Westerners seem to reserve the protections granted by the laws of war for their own soldiers while denying them to Israel.

By so doing, they don’t just undermine Israel. They undermine their own civilization.

EoZ on Kindle

A reader asked if I could make my blog available as a subscription for the Amazon Kindle.

It turns out that it is pretty easy to do. Kindle fans can subscribe for $1.99 a month, some small percentage of which would go to me, maybe, eventually. I'm not sure why people want to pay Amazon to read a free blog, but apparently many do.

You get a free 14-day preview when you order.

By the way, if you want to receive the blog (or any other) as a daily email, I find that Feed My Inbox does a pretty nice job. It's free for the first 5 blogs subscribed and the only downside is that my hit count will decrease :)

Arabs freak over Egyptian food company selling products to Israel

The asymmetry between how much Israel wants peace and how much her neighbors desire peace can be seen by how each side regards trade with Israel.

Whenever Israel is found to have exported products to Arab countries, whether directly or indirectly, there are angry Arab protests at this Zionist economic invasion. We've seen it happen with Israeli dates, paper cups, and even a rumor about graduation gowns.

No one from Israel seems to have a problem with exporting goods to those evil, subhuman Arabs. In fact, they welcome it - because, more than anything else, Israelis want peace.

How about imports? Perhaps Arab anger at trade with Israel is simply the perception that Israeli products will take jobs away from local Arab workers?

No, not quite.

An Egyptian company that specializes in frozen vegetables is being pilloried in the Arab press for selling goods to Israel - which are openly being displayed in Israeli supermarkets,Arabic labels and all. Even worse, the articles say that the IDF bought goods from this company "during the Gaza war," although it is unclear how they know this.

Interestingly, the company's website offers to "white label" any of their brands that importers might desire. Those bigoted Israeli haters aren't even trying to hide that they are buying goods from the enemy!

Peace means normalization - two way trade and tourism, full political ties. Apparently, only one side really desires peace.

And all the anti-Israel propaganda in the world cannot erase that simple fact.

Haaretz vs. JPost on Nobel winner vs. Israel

Commenter Womble picks up on a very interesting contrast between Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post's coverage of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Here's how Ha'aretz describes him:

Nobel-winning IVF pioneer has little love for his No. 1 consumer - Israel

Despite his unpleasant memories and unfavorable view of the Zionist homeland, few countries have benefited more than Israel from the revolutionary method of reproduction introduced by British scientist Robert Edwards.

Yesterday, the Nobel Foundation recognized Edwards for his efforts, granting him the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Edwards has been long regarded as the man who pioneered in vitro fertilization. In 1978, Edwards, along with colleague Patrick Steptoe, engineered the birth of the first-ever test-tube baby, Louise Brown. Prior to Edwards' invention, 10 percent of all couples worldwide suffered from infertility.

...Edwards' connection to Israel dates back to just after World War II, when he served with the British army in pre-state Mandatory Palestine.

"In 1946, he began his service at the Tzrifin army base [near present-day Rishon Letzion], where he belonged to a special unit," said Professor Joseph Shenkar, an associate of Edwards and formerly the director of obstetrics and gynecology at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem.

"During a retaliatory operation carried out by the Etzel underground, five officers from his unit were kidnapped and executed near Netanya. Since then, he has not expressed a fondness for the Zionist homeland, and his attitude toward Israel became chilly."

That is the end of the article - with this quote from Shenkar.

The Jerusalem Post also interviewed Shenkar, and its account is roughly parallel to Ha'aretz' - until the end. Let's continue:

When the IVF conference was scheduled at the then-Hilton Hotel in Jerusalem (now the Crowne Plaza) in 1989, Schenker invited Edwards, who initially refused to come, claiming Israelis “persecuted” Arabs. But when international pressure built up, he “arrived on the second day.” Edwards refused to address the conference and kept to himself at the hotel.

But then Schenker’s wife, Kitty, volunteered to take Edwards on a tour in her car. She took him to the Old City, Abu Ghosh and elsewhere, where he saw how the Arabs lived well and were prospering.

“From then on, he had changed views of Israel,” Schenker recalled.

Edwards even invited Schenker to serve on the board of a medical journal he edited.

Ha'aretz seems to have missed the part of the story where Edwards' attitude towards Israel changed. Or, as seems likely given the interviewee, it decided to ignore that aspect of the story.

Also, Ha'aretz claims that the Irgun executed 5 British officers in the "Sergeant's Affair," while the JPost correctly says there were two killed. The British policemen reacted by killing 5 innocent Jews from the streets of Tel Aviv.

This complete disregard for facts and willful desire to cast Israel in a bad light in this one article should be enough to cement Ha'aretz' reputation as the Arab world's Hebrew-language newspaper.

Free Gaza ignores Viva Palestina

I find it interesting that the Free Gaza webpage is silent on George Galloway's Viva Palestina convoy that is now in Syria.

The group plans to sail to El Arish; Galloway is begging Egypt to allow the aid through, after Egypt banned the group's usual land convoys - and Galloway himself.

Yet Free Gaza, a group supposedly dedicated to helping Gazans, is silent!

The reason? Because Free Gaza is against humanitarian aid to Gaza. Their one and only goal is to allow Hamas to import whatever it feels like without restriction. The very thought that aid would be delivered through Egypt is anathema to the group.

Interestingly, however, Galloway is one of the people Free Gaza lists as an endorser of their organization.

If you want to know that latest on J-Street....

I generally stay away from the J-Street topic because so many other bloggers are far more familiar with the issues than I am.

However, a lot has happened in the past week with this purportedly "pro-Israel" organization whose policies are in perfect congruence with people who describe themselves as Israel's enemies. If you want to catch up on the latest, you can do no better than to read Omri's latest tour de force along with his many supporting links.

Including the fact that J-Street's co-founder Daniel Levy declared that Israel's creation was "an act that was wrong" in front of an audience of like-minded people.

Freedom of the Press, Egyptian-style

From Al Masry al-Youm:

In a move some suspect aims to both muzzle Mohamed ElBaradei’s campaign voice and restrict broader opposition dialogue in Egypt’s media landscape, the independent newspaper Al-Dostour on Tuesday said its mogul publisher has fired the daily's chief editor, an outspoken government critic.

Ibrahim Eissa's dismissal comes amid growing uncertainty over Egypt's political future, with parliamentary elections less than two months away and constant speculation over 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak's health.

Al-Dostour reported on its website early Tuesday that its publisher al-Sayed al-Badawy, who also heads the liberal opposition Wafd party, fired Eissa effective Monday. Eissa, however, claimed he is still in charge of the daily' online edition.

Abdel Monim Mahmoud, a senior editor at Al-Dostour, said the board of directors has been interfering in the editorial policy of the paper to downplay its criticism of the Egyptian regime.

“Reda Edward, who is one of the paper’s chief stockholders, met with the paper's editors and informed them of the decision which he said was prompted by Eissa’s editorial policy that has turned off advertisers who fear that posting their ads in al-Dostour may anger the government,” Mahmoud told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

He added that the daily’s owners were particularly resistant to an article written by ElBaradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, which was scheduled to run on Wednesday as Egypt marks the 37th anniversary of the 1973 October war with Israel.

Later, Eissa told the AFP news agency that his dismissal came shortly after he rejected a request from the owners to postpone publishing ElBaradei’s article.

What's wrong with this heartwarming story?

From UNRWA:

West Bank refugee invents engine that runs on air

A West Bank mechanic has harnessed the power of air with his invention of a new, greener motor engine that operates by air compression, without the need for fuel.

Imad Saleh Hassouneh, 37, who maintained truck engines for 22 years, said: “My invention was purely accidental. A truck moved forward when I was repairing its engine using compressed air. I realised that compressed air has the power to propel the engine so I started experimenting with a truck engine.”

Imad, a refugee from Jalazone in the West Bank, added: “I succeeded in inventing an engine that operates on air compression rather than fuel, and obtained a patent from the Palestinian Ministry of Economics. I also received support from Palestinian Prime Minister Mr Salam Fayyad who honoured me and granted me a car to experiment on.”

After he completed his 9th grade at UNRWA’s Jalazone boys’ school, the first Intifada started and he was obliged to assist his father in his mechanic shop in order to help support his younger brothers and sisters.

Smiling, Imad said: “I have 13 brothers and three sisters. In other words we are 17 people and my father wants to have more. I am the eldest, and apparently the cleverest in the family. We received our education at an UNRWA school, and we still get assistance and rations from UNRWA.

“My mother, father and uncles still live inside the camp. I moved with my wife and children to a house near the camp and near the mechanic shop my father established.”

Three cheers for Imad. He's being creative, inventive and working hard to support his family, and is without a doubt a credit to his people.

But - why is he still considered a "refugee" by UNRWA?

He doesn't live in a refugee camp - he moved out and lives in his own house, in his own land. He earns a living. He lives in, and is presumably a citizen of, the Palestinian Arab territories.

His father had, or has, a job as well.

If there was any desire for UNRWA to wean people off of their "refugee" status, Imad Hassouneh should be at the top of their list. He should be considered a success story, and could serve as a model of what Palestinian Arabs aspire to.

But instead, he still gets free food and education from UNRWA. Rather than help him gain his freedom from a welfare culture, UNRWA proudly keeps him and his family dependent. While real refugees around the globe are starving, people like Imad are happily accepting free food and services that they can afford to buy themselves.

This is not a success story. It is the story of how a UN agency is doing everything it can to treat millions of people like children, to shield them from responsibility for their own actions, and to raise their families with dignity.

UNRWA is constantly begging for more money to support the ever-growing "refugees" that they are responsible for. But are they doing anything to reduce the number of so-called refugees? Are they acting in any way as if they care about the donor nations who keep it afloat?

UNRWA has a 34-page document detailing exactly who is eligible for UNRWA services, what services they can apply for, and other information is great detail. It has one small section that describes the only way that a person can be removed from the UNRWA registration system: by dying.

Even if you support all of UNRWA's goals and you think that it does wonderful work, if you were a donor country, wouldn't you demand that UNRWA start working to reduce the number of people dependent on your aid?