Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 29, 2010

UK government minister attends terror-supporting conference

A GOVERNMENT minister spoke at an event where suicide bomber accessories and items glorifying terrorism were on open sale.

Andrew Stunell, the communities minister, addressed the controversial “Global Peace and Unity” (GPU) conference in East London on Sunday. The event’s programme says its official “supporters” include the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police.

A few yards from where Mr Stunell was speaking, a stall sold suicide bomber headbands and T-shirts promoting two banned terror groups.

One of the shirts showed a masked terrorist holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and the Quran in the other against a backdrop of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The Daily Telegraph bought one of the shirts.

The image is the official logo of the al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, a terrorist group banned across the EU and United States. Underneath, a slogan in Arabic read: “The conscripts of the martyr. Here in response, O Jerusalem.”

The al-Qassam Brigade has been responsible for at least 200 civilian deaths in suicide attacks since 2000.

Hooded tops with the flag of another proscribed terrorist organisation, Hezbollah – a clenched fist holding a Kalashnikov, and the slogan “Resistance” – were also on sale. Hezbollah has killed many Israelis in rocket attacks.

Also available were “shahada headbands” as worn by many Palestinian suicide bombers. “Shahada” in this context means martyrdom. The headbands contain the personal testimony of the suicide bombers.

Legal experts said the items could constitute glorification of terrorism, which is illegal under UK anti-terror laws. A senior City of London police officer was listed on the programme as speaking before Mr Stunell.

The items were on sale at a stall in the GPU’s exhibition area operated by a company called Wearaloud, based in a flat in a tower block in Bethnal Green. According to its website, it specialises in “Islamic,” “political” and “guns and military” items. However, it appears to have no Companies House or other registration. The website also offers for sale a garment described as an “AK47 militia fighter fun T-shirt.”

Other stalls at the exhibition distributed fundamentalist literature calling for the destruction of Israel and the subjugation of women.

The GPU is one of the most controversial events in the annual Muslim calendar. Organised by the Islam Channel, a digital TV station with a number of extremist and fundamentalist presenters, this year’s event was boycotted by the Conservative Party because of deep concerns about some of those taking part.

They included Sheikh Yasir Qadhi, a Holocaust denier who has said that the extermination of the Jews was a “hoax,” and Mohammed Ijaz ul Haq, who has said that the British government’s decision to knight the author Sir Salman Rushdie justified suicide attacks.

The Tory chairman, Baroness Warsi, was banned from attending by the Prime Minister, David Cameron. However, Lib Dems, including Mr Stunell and the party’s deputy leader, Simon Hughes, were not affected by the ban. Senior Labour figures, including the party’s candidate for mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, also spoke at the event.

The DCLG said that Mr Stunell’s speech “made clear that the Coalition Government will not tolerate extremism, hatred or intolerance in any form.”

Paul Goodman, the former Tory MP who shadowed Mr Stunell’s brief in opposition and has campaigned against GPU, said: “This evidence demonstrates why no minister should have gone. I hope that Andrew Stunell, the minister who did go, did deliver the robust renunciation we were promised.”

Jamal Uddeen Waitakarie, a spokesman for Wearaloud, said he thought his products were “acceptable,” adding: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” He described the suicide bomber headbands as “an identification of faith” and said: “I suppose suicide bombers wear them. But anybody wears them.”

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “There was no formal Met Police representation at GPU. The Commissioner was invited to attend or record a video message but did not. We understand a small delegation from the Association of Muslim Police attended. The Metropolitan Police Service does not support any extremist view or behaviour and would consider any allegations of criminality raised.”

A spokesman for City Police said: “We spoke at the event to raise awareness of we were doing to work with the Muslim community, and to raise awareness of fraud against hajj pilgrims.”

(h/t Eran Shayshon; top photo is his via Facebook - other photos from website of vendor)

How "humanitarians" spend their free time

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has put together a lot of information about the recent Viva Palestina trip to Gaza - and showing exactly what the self-proclaimed "humanitarians" did while they were there.

Some highlights:

The de facto Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip conducted a media campaign to use the convoy as a lever to improve its image in international and Arab public opinion, defame Israel and exert pressure on it achieve a unilateral end to the so-called "siege" of the Gaza Strip. Convoy activists, especially those from the Arab-Muslim world, were included in ceremonies and events which were clearly Hamas-Islamist in character (On the other hand, the European members of the convoy, who were in the minority after the Middle East contingents arrived, made sure to keep a low media profile.)

The convoy activists met with senior Hamas figures, headed by Ismail Haniya, head of the de facto Hamas administration. During a sermon he called Israel ("the occupation") "a cancerous growth on the living body of the Arab nation" and emphasized that Palestine was and would remain Palestinian, Arab and Muslim.

On the evening October 22 a festive ceremony was held in honor of the convoy's participants at the Rashad al-Shawa Center in Gaza, attended by senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures. Convoy spokesman Zaher Birawi and Muhammad Sawalha (two Hamas activists living in Britain), as well as other activists, expressed their appreciation. The last speaker was Ismail Haniya, who welcomed the assembled audience and said that the arrival of the convoy was "a continuation of the Palestinian victory in Operation Cast Lead." He called it a historic moment, the end of the era in which Israel received international support. He appealed to members of the convoy and asked them to continue their actions until the "siege" was broken. He said it would be broken and that the "occupation" would end through the convoys and shaheeds (martyrs).

Members of the Turkish delegation, who did not reveal their organizational affiliations (in our assessment, most of them belonged to IHH), were taken by commanders of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to visit its positions. The PIJ's website posted pictures of the Turks, who joined PIJ operatives and were photographed with them holding weapons, wearing uniforms and decorated with PIJ headbands.

Solidarity meeting of Turkish activists with the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad

The visit to the Gaza Strip was used by the Turkish delegation to demonstrate solidarity with the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Delegation members were careful not to openly identify themselves to the media as belonging to IHH. However, before they left for the Middle East they were received by IHH head Bülent Yildirim, who during a ceremony in Istanbul called on Egypt to allow the convoy free entry.

Members of the Turkish delegation toured several Palestinian Islamic Jihad positions with commanders of the Jerusalem Battalions, the PIJ's military wing. During the tour one of the Turks said that Muslims (i.e., the PIJ) trusted them to struggle against "the criminal Zionist entity" and that he was proud to meet them. He said that the entire Turkish nation, like the Arabs and all Muslims, were praying for their victory and supported them (Jerusalem Battalions Ilam Ghaza forum, quoted by the official website of the Jerusalem Battalions, October 26,2010).

In addition to their statements, pictures were posted on the PIJ forum of members of the Turkish delegation wearing camouflage uniforms and headbands, and holding guns.

A ceremony to lay the corner stone for a hospital was held in the Jabaliya refugee camp, attended by senior Hamas figures and the Yemeni delegation (Hamas’ Paltoday website, October 24, 2010). One of the members of the Yemeni delegation was apparently Sheikh al-Idrisi, a member of the Al-Islah faction of the Yemeni Parliament and a Hamas supporter. He was aboard the Mavi Marmara and was photographed waving a large shabaria (dagger) (a picture which gained popularity). During his stay in the Gaza Strip he presented the shabaria, or a similar one, to Ismail Haniya.

Sheikh al-Idrisi waving the shabaria (dagger) aboard the Mavi Marmara.

It's really touching how much compassion these "humanitarians" show for would-be genocidal terrorists.

Massive Gaza rally planned today to celebrate a terrorist leader

All week, there have been a number of events in Gaza to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the death of Islamic Jihad co-founder Fathi Shiqaqi.

Shiqaqi was first Sunni terrorist leader to find Koranic justification for suicide terrorism.

He was assassinated in a Mossad operation in Malta on October 26, 1995.

The commemorations reach their peak today with a planned rally in Gaza, to be attended by all factions and not just Islamic Jihad members. It will be broadcast on satellite TV.

The rally will emphasizes that the Palestinian Arabs support the approach of jihad and resistance, and reject any "defeatist" options or compromises that would waive what they consider their basic rights to all of Palestine.

Because the rally goes against all of Western conventional wisdom about how moderate most Palestinian Arabs are, it - and its themes - will be all but ignored by the media.

Here are some pictures from Islamic Jihad parades through Rafah and Khan Younis yesterday. (The last two pictures are dated from six months ago, so either the camera time was not set or Palestine Today is not quite telling the truth about the rallies....)

UPDATE: Here are pictures from the rally.

Egypt arrests group planning to bomb US ships in Damietta

Egyptian security authorities arrested 14 men from the city of Damietta last Tuesday, saying that they formed a terrorist cell called "Soldiers of Allah," and seized weapons and explosives, saying they 'were planned to be used in terrorist attacks'.

The group held meetings in the home of one of their leaders, 35-year old Subhi Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who is a pharmacist. They were planning to carry out terrorist operations against a number of commercial ships in the port of Damietta. Police secretly videotaped recorded a number of these meetings.

Police raided the home of the leader of the cell, and arrested its members, and seized weapons and explosives and a variety of books containing information on the manufacture of grenades, time-bombs and remote-controlled bombs, as well as cash and mobile phones.

The main target was to be U.S. ships in the port of Damietta.

Report: US plan for Israel to lease settlements from PA

Asharq al-Awsat reports that the US and Israel are in secret negotiations in Washington to define the borders between Israel and a future Palestinian Arab state.

According to the sources, the agreement that the US is pushing involves recognition of a Palestinian Arab state exactly along the 1949 armistice lines in return for Palestinian Arab agreement to lease parts of "Arab" eastern Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to Israel for somewhere between 40 and 99 years.

This is an American proposal, coming in response to Israeli insistence that the US adhere to the letter that George W. Bush sent to Ariel Sharon that large settlement blocs would remain under Israeli control.

The sources said that the idea of leasing land was floated during the 2001 Taba negotiations, but for 6-9 years and not for many decades.

The US and Israel declined to confirm or deny the report. A State Department spokesman said "We are in constant contact with Israel. This is part of our strong and solid commitment [to the peace process.] Some are public communications, and some are private, and of course we do not announce non-public communications."

Egyptian elections coming up

The Egyptian regime is having major problems trying to keep the elections legal, and yet marginalizing the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt has made the Muslim Brotherhood's slogan, "Islam is the Solution", illegal for use on campaign posters.

Even though the MB is not allowed to run, they back independent candidates who subscribe to their positions.

From The Canadian Press:

Egyptian security detained 65 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday while they were hanging election posters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria for next month's parliamentary vote, police said.

The arrests are the latest in the government's crackdown on the popular Islamist group, the strongest opposition to Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party.

Muslim Brotherhood lawmaker and candidate Hussein Ibrahim said the campaigners were arrested while hanging posters for one of the group's four female candidates.

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media, said the workers violated an election law banning the use of religious slogans.

Hussein said the posters contained the phrases "God is great" and "Praise be to God," common phrases not associated exclusively with the group. He accused the government of targeting the group.

"This is the beginning of a blatant election fraud since the ruling party candidates' posters were left untouched although they contained full verses of the Qur’an (Islam's holy book)," he said.

The ban on religious slogans by Egypt's Electoral Committee forced the group to forgo its longtime slogan "Islam is the Solution" in favour of substitutes like "Change Is Our Path."

Tuesday's arrests bring the number of Brotherhood members arrested to about 250 since the group announced on Oct. 9 its decision to participate in the elections. Police say they have detained 160 in the past week alone. Thirty remain in custody.

That's not the only drama in Egypt's election campaign, though:

Egypt's largest liberal opposition party Wafd threatened on Tuesday to boycott a parliamentary election next month after state television refused to air its political advertisements.

A spokesman for the party, Mohammed Sherdi, told a news conference Wafd would boycott the election "if the government's obstinacy towards the Wafd party and the refusal of its right to air political advertisements continues."

Wafd was the first to announce it would contest the November election after Egyptian dissident and former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaradei called for a boycott.

Sherdi said state television refused to air the advertisement because it was not approved by the election committee.

"But this campaign has nothing to do with the election. It is a political advertisement for the group that has been in the works for five months," he said.

The head of the state broadcaster, Osama al-Sheik, said on Monday that television would air such advertisements only if they were approved by the election committee.

And to add to the mess, inject Jimmy Carter.

Carter offered to monitor the elections. The Muslim Brotherhood was enthusiastic about the idea, but Mofid Shehab, Minister of Legal Affairs and Parliamentary Councils, said that any outside observers would prejudice the sovereignty of the Egypt.

It is a really ugly situation. If true, free elections were held, the extremists would do well - but it does not appear that they can win, because they are running for less than half the available offices.

However, the government seems to be running roughshod over all possible candidates, not just Islamists.

Any way you look at it, Egyptians have no freedom and no democracy. But before free elections can be held, a few years of true freedom needs to come first, so the people can make truly informed decisions. This means freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, not to mention freedom of religion.

The government might be better than some of the alternatives but it is sacrificing freedom altogether, and the result is that all Egyptians are losing.

Autumn open thread

My cell phone camera might not be nearly as good as a dedicated camera, but in the right conditions it can do OK. I took this shot this morning.

Who does the AP consider an "extremist"?

Here are all the recent stories I could find by AP that used the word "extremist" as a factual statement, not as a quote:

October 19: A northern Virginia man who warned the creators of the animated TV show "South Park" that they risked death for mocking the prophet Muhammad is scheduled to plead guilty to supporting an al-Qaida linked terrorist group, according to court records....Prosecutors say that Chesser tried twice in the last year to travel to Somalia and join al-Shabab as a foreign fighter. ...After his latest attempt to leave the country, Chesser apparently tried convincing FBI agents he had renounced his extremist views and said he would work for the FBI if the government helped him travel to Africa, according to the affidavit.

October 21: Radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki lunched at the Pentagon as part of a program to reach out to moderate Muslims in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a military official said Thursday....The report said he had also been investigated by the FBI in 1999 and 2000 for having been "contacted by a possible procurement agent for (Osama) bin Laden" and for connections to extremist fundraising groups.

October 23: A U.S.-born spokesman for al-Qaida on Saturday urged Muslims living in the United States and Europe to carry out attacks there, calling it a duty and an obligation....He spoke in Arabic in the video, which was made available by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity.

October 27: US drone strikes killed up to six militants in Pakistan's tribal belt on Wednesday, targeting the extremist Haqqani network and a compound harbouring foreign fighters, officials said.

October 27: An American who was arrested on suspicion of having links with al-Qaida has been charged with the murder of a Yemeni soldier and the wounding of another during a failed escape attempt....U.S. officials say Mobley, who grew up in Buena, N.J., traveled to Yemen more than two years ago with the goal of joining a terror group and that the U.S. government was aware of his potential extremist ties long before his arrest.

In all of these cases, the word "extremist" is used to refer to murderers and/or supporters of terror groups with a long track record of murders and terror attacks.

(AP also uses the word in quotes when referring to, say Democrats accusing Republican candidates of "extremism.")

But one other group in the world also gains that title in AP's world: right-wing Jews:

October 20: In the West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinians said Jewish settlers set fire to a girls school near the northern city of Nablus. The school was found vandalized with Hebrew graffiti on the wall reading "regards from the hills." The fire caused minor damage. The incident appears to be the latest action in a campaign extremist Jewish settlers call the "price tag."

Admittedly, arson is not something to belittle - but why is it called "extremist"?

Even more glaring was this report from yesterday:

Israeli police and stone-throwing Arabs clashed in northern Israel on Wednesday as a group of extreme right-wing Israelis tried to march through the Arab Israeli town of Umm al-Fahm.
Hundreds of police clad in riot gear fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse angry Arab youths, many with scarves wrapped around their faces, who burned tyres and hurled stones in protest ahead of an extremist rally in their town.

Tensions were high as around 20 Israeli demonstrators from a group called "Our Land of Israel" turned up for a march calling for a ban on the radical wing of the Israeli Islamic Movement, which is led by the firebrand preacher Sheikh Raed Salah.

"Death to terrorists!" they shouted, waving banners reading: "Make the Islamic Movement illegal," and "Death to Raed Salah," although they were prevented from marching by police who hemmed them in with three coaches, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

While some may disagree with these protesters, they hardly have a track record of political assassinations or mass murders. Their protest was peaceful, if provocative. Their targets are terrorists and those who incite terror (like Raed Salah, who constantly makes up stories about Israeli plans to desecrate the Al Aqsa Mosque and has more that a bit of anti-semitism.)

Here we have a planned, legal, peaceful rally. Arabs who opposed it burned tires and threw stones. By any sane standard, the violent protesters should be labeled "extremist," not the Jewish protesters.

But in AP's worldview, nationalist Jews who claim disputed land and who protest Islamic terror incitement within their own country are regarded the same way as Al Qaeda.

(h/t Zach, also see Meryl Yourish)

UPDATE: After I wrote this I see that Just Journalism, the British media watchdog, caught The Independent and the BBC also using far more pejorative terms for right-wing Jews than for extremist Arabs.

Iran and Saudis likely joining UN women's rights agency

From AP:

Iran, where a woman convicted of adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning, is likely to become a member of the board of the new U.N. agency to promote equality for women, prompting outrage from the U.S. and human rights groups.

Some rights groups are also upset that Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive and are barred from many facilities used by men, is also vying to join the governing body of UN Women.

The General Assembly resolution adopted in July that merged four U.N. bodies dealing with women's issues into a single agency with greater clout to represent half the world's population calls for a 41-member executive board, with 35 members chosen by regional groups and six representing donor nations.

The Asian group has put forward an uncontested 10-nation slate that includes Iran, U.N. diplomats said, and Saudi Arabia has been selected for one of two slots for emerging donor nations.

Robin Shepard comments:

This is as big a farce as the dictatorship-ridden UN Human Rights Council. But, more than that, it provides yet another illustration of the impossibility of squaring notions of multilateralist, global governance with liberal-democratic principles. Whatever one’s views of the Bush administration, which pulled out of the Human Rights Council, this is one point they understood with complete clarity. Sadly, that is something one can’t necessarily say of their successors who seem almost as bemused as the hapless Europeans.

Zvi notes in the comments:

The western world insists on pretending that the UN - which due to its inclusion of non-democratic and brutal regimes is fundamentally a non-democratic organization - is able to advance human rights. It insists on granting undue influence to blocs of dictatorships. But the fact that dictators protect themselves and their allies from even modest censure by holding seats on the UNHRC, while turning the UNHRC into a political weapon against Israel, shows that this insistence is not only unhelpful, but actually kills people.

Now Islamist regimes are applying the same lesson with regard to UN Women.

The stench of hypocrisy is overpowering.

Egyptian Christians in trouble

Israel Today, a Christian Zionist publication, refers to Raymond Ibrahim's recent piece in writing an update on the dangers facing Egypt's Coptic minority:

Egypt has parliamentary elections coming up next month and an important presidential election next year. As with similar regimes throughout history, the current rulers of Egypt need a scapegoat to take the voters’ attention off its disastrous social and economic policies (after all, rigging elections is so tedious).

Unfortunately for Egypt’s 10 million Christians, they are the perfect scapegoat in an increasingly radicalized Muslim society.

To stir up the public against the Christians, Egyptian Muslim clerics and media outlets have circulated a claim that the nation’s Coptic Christian minority is importing weapons from Israel in preparation for an assault on Egypt’s Muslims.

The claim originated on the pan-Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera, which ensured that just about every Egyptian Muslim, if not ever Middle East Muslim, was aware of the unfounded assertion that Egypt’s Christians were preparing for war with the aid of the hated “Zionist entity.”

Speaking on Al Jazeera on September 15, prominent Egyptian Muslim cleric Mohammed Salim al-Awwa declared that Egyptian Christians were “stocking arms and ammunition in their churches and monasteries - arms imported from Israel, no less, as Israel is at the heart of the Coptic Cause - and are preparing to wage war against Muslims.”

Other reports have included rumors that the Christian assault has already begun, and that Christian women who have converted to Islam are being kidnapped and tortured by the Copts.
Since those reports first started circulating last month, the Barnabas Fund, an organization that provides assistance to persecuted Christian communities, says that at least 10 large Muslim demonstrations against Christians have taken place in Egypt.

At least one Muslim group is calling for a “bloodbath” to be perpetrated against the Christian minority.

Further inflaming Muslim passions was an official Egyptian government body’s insistence that the Coptic Church formally apologize after one of its clergymen criticized a verse from the Koran that refers to Christians as “infidels.” The leader of the Coptic Church, Pope Shenouda III, promptly apologized, but the Muslim anger was not appeased.

It concludes:

Tellingly, the international media has almost completely ignored this story, while not failing to provide prime headline real estate whenever Israeli Jews build a few houses that upset the Palestinian Arabs.

That the construction of Jewish apartments can result in emergency UN meetings, official condemnations and weeks of front page news, but the persecution and potential slaughter of Egypt’s Christians cannot is evidence that the international community’s motives are not truly humanitarian in nature.

A new weapons route from Iran to Gaza?

From Ha'aretz:

Nigeria's secret service said on Tuesday it had intercepted 13 containers of weapons from Iran in what Israeli defense sources believe may be part of a new smuggling route from Iran to Hamas in Gaza.

Rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives camouflaged as building material were seized in the Nigerian port of Lagos after being unloaded from an Iranian ship.

Nigerian media reports said the ship, which came from Iran, docked in Lagos' port for a few hours only, unloaded 13 containers and sailed on.

The bill of lading said the shipment consisted of building materials, Nigerian State Security Service spokeswoman Marilyn Ogar said.

"On opening the first container, the service operatives discovered rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives," Ogar said, adding the weapons were concealed among crates of floor tiles.

A senior defense source said preliminary information suggests the weapons' seizure has exposed a possible new arms smuggling route from Iran to Hamas, via Africa. He said the Iranians may have run into difficulties sending arms to Hamas via the Red Sea to the Sudan region and from there to Gaza via Sinai, following the beefed up international supervision on the movement of Iranian ships.

"Perhaps the Iranians were planning to unload the weapons in Nigeria and transfer them by land to Sudan and Sinai," the senior source said.

Meanwhile, Arabic media quote Yediot Aharonot in Hebrew as saying that Hamas has tested a locally-manufactured rocket that has a range of 80 km, enough to reach the heavily-populated center of the country, as well as Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets with a 70 km range.

Hamas is also said to have anti-aircraft rockets.

Jordanian "honor killer" has sentence reduced

From Al Arabiya:

A Jordanian man was condemned to death on Wednesday for killing his raped teenage niece to "cleanse" the family's honor, but the sentence was later commuted to 10 years in jail.

"The victim's family has urged the court to reduce the sentence, and it was commuted to 10 years in prison," a criminal court official told AFP.

Murder is punishable by the death penalty in Jordan, but in the case of so-called "honor killings," a court usually commutes or reduces sentences, particularly if the victim's family urges leniency.

Last year, Jamil, 41, shot his 16-year-old niece Abir eight times in different parts of her body after she was raped in 2008. The court did not provide the surnames of the victim or her uncle.

"In his confession, he claimed that he killed the girl to cleanse his family's honor," the official said, citing court papers.

Abir gave birth to a baby boy two months before her murder, and her family kept the child, he added.

Between 15 and 20 women are murdered each year in Jordan in the name of honor, despite government efforts to fight such crimes. Parliament has refused to reform the penal code to ensure harsher penalties.