Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 24, 2011

University of Johannesburg severs ties with Ben Gurion U

The University of Johannesburg (UJ) has officially severed ties with Israel's Ben-Gurion University (BGU), deputy vice chancellor Adam Habib said on Wednesday.

"It will happen as per protocol on 1 April," Habib told Sapa.

"We had a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with them and that will now be severed."

Ben-Gurion University, however, had been working with UJ on finding a method to clean algae that has infested South Africa's drinking water. The severing of ties meant the project was likely to come an end, leaving UJ without access to BGU's extensive water expertise.

"There has been quite a lot of scare mongering that if the partnership breaks, South Africa will be confined to bad water quality," Habib said.

"The quality of our water is suffering because we are not spending the type of money on cleaning water that we need to, and not employing skill sets required.

"We can deal with acid rain water in the region if we are prepared to spend money."

UJ's severing of ties with came amidst talk of steep water tariff increases and a warning South Africa could run out of water within the next ten years if nothing was done to supplement water resources.

The Environment and Conservation Association has said that by 2015, 80 percent of South Africa's fresh water would be so badly polluted that no purification process in the country would make it fit for consumption.

The impending disaster that would be created by acid mine drainage, as well as by sewerage and industrial pollution, had on many occasions been brought to the government's attention, with no positive results, the association said.

Ah, these UJ professors are so principled, to be able to set aside the health of their people just to express their hate for Israel! How admirable!

The petition itself is a wonderful example of what a sham academia has become. 400 professors signed onto a petition to sever ties with BGU without any of them actually noticing that much of what the petition claimed are lies.

The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories has had disastrous effects on access to education for Palestinians. While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation..

Let's see...before the "occupation" the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza had no access to Israeli schools. Now, they do (look at Omar Barghouti.)

And is Israel restricting access to West Bank Arab universities? Well, I know that Jews can't attend them. Maybe that's what they are referring to.

Wait, it gets better:

[BGU's] President, Rivka Carmi, describes the University as a ‘proudly Zionist institution’ [3], which effectively supports the official ideology of the Israeli state.

The signatories of the petition already know that Zionism is evil, so therefore what else needs to be said?

BGU aids and provides academic scholarships and has official protocols for providing
support to army reservist students.

And as everyone knows, the primary purpose of the Israel Defense Forces is to oppress the Palestinian Arabs, not to, you know, defend Israel.

While Palestinian citizens of Israel constitute more than 20% of the country’s population, only 9.5% of B.A. students, 4.8% of M.A. students, 3.2% of Ph.D. students and a mere 1% of the academic staff in Israeli academic institutions are Palestinians [10].

Hmmmm. In 2008, 31,527 whites graduated from South African universities, as opposed to 36,970 blacks - 46% of graduates are white. Yet the population in South Africa is only 10% white. Which means that South African universities are overwhelmingly preferential to white students compared to their proportion of the population! And I am willing to be that the majority of professors at UJ are white. Maybe the world should boycott the university until 90% of its staff and students are non-white!

Perhaps the most telling section of this academic petition are its footnotes. The very use of footnotes is meant to give an aura of scholarship to the factoids being given there. So, for example, we see:

• The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report detailing how Palestinian applicants are three times as likely to be rejected by Israeli academic institutions than Jewish applicants [11].

Footnote 11 refers to a 2005 article in Adalah which itself has lots of interesting statistics - but no citations whatsoever. And that article did not quote the UNCHR, but an Israeli group called Sikkuy, for this statistic.

Of course, that statistic, even if true, is meaningless out of context. Did the study look at equally-qualified students? Did it compare grades and the results of any standardized tests?

From a scholarship perspective, any decent professor would grade this petition a D. Yet 400 academics signed it!

Which just goes to show that hundreds of South African academics are self-righteous hypocrites, who cannot even be bothered to do basic fact checking on a petition before signing it - as long as it adheres to their already pre-existing prejudices.

This sham of a petition was signed by:

- 9 Vice Chancellors and Deputy Vice Chancellors

- 11 Deans and Vice Deans

- 21 Chairs and Heads of Department

- 170 University Professors

- 125 Academic Doctorates

South African academics are prejudiced? Yes, they are.

EgyptAir erases Israel from its website

From YNet:

Egypt Air, the largest airline in Egypt, has removed Israel from the map – literally. On its website, Ynet has learned, Jordan's land reaches the Mediterranean Sea.

The airline's subsidiary, Air Sinai, flies to Israel regularly, but customers seeking flights to Ben Gurion National Airport will have a hard time finding them. On the map are the names of the Mideast capitals – Amman, Beirut, and Damascus – but Israel is nowhere to be found.

The omission is especially odd seeing as the company continues to fly to Israel four times a week. Cairo-Tel Aviv flights were temporarily halted following the recent uprising that overturned the government, but were then reinstated.

YNet is not quite right. The map does show Israel (weird boundaries, but it is there, between Jordan and the sea):

The problem is that EgyptAir erased Israel from its entire website.

In other words, even though EgyptAir flies from Cairo to Tel Aviv four times a week, it is impossible to book a flight:

You literally cannot input "Tel Aviv" or "Israel" in any fields to book a flight.

I could not see how to book a flight via EgyptAir from Cairo to Tel Aviv on Expedia or Orbitz either. So if YNet is correct and there are still flights, I have no idea how to find them. (All I could find are stopovers in Turkey or Jordan. El Al has direct flights that for some reason were not visible in my search on those travel sites either.)

Thanks to Sheila at SACH for the awesome photo.

Entire poster series here.

Palestinian Arabs quite happy about this terror attack

I had noted that Palestinian Arabs did not react to the Itamar attack with the joy that we are used to seeing from terror attacks, even though it was in a "settlement." In general, only Islamic Jihad praised the attack; other groups condemned it implicitly or explicitly, and the PalArab "man on the street" was ashamed.

I was speaking to some family members about it and my guess was that the main reason they distanced themselves from that attack was because it was so personal - to look in a baby's eyes and stab him, to butcher a three year old. I said that if it would have been a bomb or a shooting, there would have been far more celebrations.

Unfortunately, I can now be proven right.

The reaction in the Fatah-leaning Palestine Press Agency comments are uniformly ecstatic. (Autotranslation does not work as well for informal text like this, so I couldn't decode some of them.)

God is great and thankfully the hearts of Muslims in this jihadist operation and I ask God Almighty to be there to kill me in a similar operation in response to the continued crimes of the occupation in the Gaza Strip.

Praise be to God: Victory of the Mujahideen Lord Thy God is great, and thankfully

God bless these operations, And instill fear and terror in the hearts of the sons of Zion

God is great and thank God ......

Oh God, victory to the Mujahideen in Palestine and everywhere; God please make an earthquake beneath the feet of the Jews and destroy them the way they destroyed our homes in Gaza

And, from Jerusalem, what sounds like an Al Aqsa (Fatah) member taking credit, although there is no corroboration:

We are the sons of Al Aqsa Martyrs; we adopt [take credit for] the operation and with pride I go to the chapeau of the martyrs of Gaza.

Incredible interview with 12-year old Tamar Fogel (video)

Her parents must have been tremendous people to have raised such a courageous, principled young woman.

(But you just know that the J-Street and Mondoweiss crowd, if they deign to view this at all, would only see from this interview that evil settlers are brainwashing their children to, God forbid, love their land and the land of their forefathers.)

(h/t ks)

Reuters sickens us all again with its bias

It is most interesting to see how the mainstream media's initial breaking stories betray their inherent anti-Israel bias. Then when their attention is called to this, they quietly change their articles, without acknowledging the initial bias.

For the second time in three weeks, Reuters has shown what they really think of Israel.

On March 12, Reuters referred to the IDF as "Israel's occupation forces" - an anti-Israel term used by Arabs only. They silently corrected that.

This time, Reuters headlined its story about the terror attack today this way:

Jerusalem bombing kills woman after 7-year lull

And then it says:

Police said it was a "terrorist attack" -- Israel's term for a Palestinian strike. It was the first time Jerusalem had been hit by such a bomb since 2004.

I grabbed this from the Reuters-UK feed, because the American version was quickly changed (and the UK version might be changed by the time I post this.). The headline is now

Bomb explodes near Jerusalem bus, 1 dead, 30 hurt

and the other sentence has been turned into a lie:

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion, which Israeli police termed a Palestinian "suicide attack."

No one said this was a suicide bombing!

But back to the initial headline. Reuters is saying that there has been a seven year lull in bombings in Jerusalem.

This is not only a lie, but it is intentionally misleading.

The last suicide attack in Jerusalem was in September, 2004. But there have been other suicide bombings in Israel since then, as recently as 2008 (Dimona.)

But let's say that Reuters is only talking about Jerusalem, for some reason, as if terror attacks there are different than those in the rest of Israel. The last fatal terror attack in Jerusalem was a man being knifed to death in October, 2008, and in July 2008 three Jerusalem Jews were killed by a terrorist who rammed into them with a bulldozer.

But let's say that Reuters is only referring to roadside bombs. There was a pipe-bomb in Gilo, Jerusalem only a couple of weeks ago, and a sanitation worker lost his arm in the explosion. Obviously the intent was to kill there as well.

So Reuters, by seemingly referring only to the lack of major, fatal bombings in Jerusalem itself as a "lull," was consciously trying to minimize the number of terror attacks in Jerusalem - in the headline of an article about the latest attack!

Not to mention that Reuters pooh-poohs the term "terrorist attack" as some sort of Israeli propaganda when a mere 38 people are injured and only one dead. Reuters instead refers to it in more military terms: a "Palestinian strike." No doubt the lady who was killed was a legitimate military target as well, in Reuters' writers' minds.

They say that you can find out how people really think when they are drunk or sleepy. In reuters' case, you can see how they really feel in the initial bulletins after Jews are killed.

(h/t Zach)

Real Liberals Love Israel #9: Israeli Wildlife Hospital

You can read the story about this ibex here.

Entire poster series here.

(h/t David G and Folderol)

Israel continues to send aid to Gaza while Israelis are under attack

While Gaza terror groups are showering rockets on Israeli communities in the south, Islamic Jihad's mouthpiece Palestine Today still reports, without irony, that Israel will today allow between 210 and 220 trucks to enter Gaza today, loaded with aid and items for agriculture and commercial factories. Also, cement and iron is being sent through Kerem Shalom, along with food and fuel.

A shipment of cherry tomatoes is also going to be exported today from Gaza.

All while tens of thousands of Israelis within Grad rocket range - and now, again, Jerusalem - live in fear.

Islamic Jihad admits the purpose of the rockets is terrorism

When they speak in English, the Gaza terror groups like to pretend that their shooting rockets at Israel are being done for purely military means, and that they target only soldiers and IDF bases.

In Arabic, though, they brag that the purpose of the rockets is to terrorize civilians.

Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today newspaper quotes a leader of the Al Quds Brigades, Abu Ahmed, as saying, "[We] are not standing idly by, but are responding at different intervals by shelling settlements with a number of Grad rockets, creating a state of terror in the ranks of the occupiers."

That's pretty much the textbook definition of terrorism.

The same newspaper loves publishing pictures of terrified Israelis, to show Islamic Jihad's might at being able to force Beersheva women in their pajamas to run out of their houses:

They are also very proud that classes in Beersheva schools are affected by the rocket fire.

From JPost:

An explosion took place on or near a bus in central Jerusalem Wednesday afternoon.

Police said that a bomb exploded outside Egged bus number 74 at a station in front of the Jerusalem Conference Center in the center of town.

Reports said that over 30 people were injured in the attack although the exact number was still unknown.

Magen David Adom said that no deaths were reported in the attack.

Police suspected that an explosive device inside a bag was left at the bus stop, which then exploded.

A source tells me that one person was killed, but this is not official by any means.

So far I cannot find anyone claiming credit for the explosion.

Israel Matzav and The Muqata are liveblogging. So is Challah Hu Akbar.

The Muqata has unconfirmed reports of 3 fatalities.

There was also a possible murder of an Israeli in Revava.

UPDATE: One confirmed dead, an elderly lady.

J-Street in Congress: EPIC FAIL

Here's a letter written by Representatives Steve Rothman and Steve Austria to President Obama:

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

We live in an increasingly complex world. Recently, we have been bombarded by news and images from around the globe about the popular uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and throughout the Middle East. We have seen the effects of yet another devastating earthquake, which struck Japan just days ago, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without homes and countless others dead. And we continue to live with the constant threat posed by North Korea's and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons as well as the danger of nuclear proliferation at the hands of terrorists. We write to request that, while all of these events are consuming the daily news coverage, we not take our eye off of working toward a goal that is close to all of our hearts: a peaceful and secure Jewish State of Israel.

We are sure that you share our disappointment in President Mahmoud Abbas's decision to withdraw from peace talks in October of last year and his stubborn refusal to reengage as a willing partner for peace with Israel. The continued intransigence of the Palestinian leadership is both hurtful to the prospect for a two-state solution and to a final resolution of the conflict that still plagues the Israeli and Palestinian people. Unfortunately, we live in a time when the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will rush to take credit for the horrific, inhuman, and brutal attack in Itamar against the Fogel family, including three of their children, an 11-year-old, 4-year-old, and 3-month-old. This must serve as a wakeup call that the current state of affairs is dangerous and unacceptable. In that regard, we respectfully request that you do everything possible to urge President Abbas to root out terrorism, return to negotiations without preconditions, earnestly work toward peace with Israel, and slam the door on any effort to deal with final status issues at the United Nations.

As part of that, President Abbas must fully renounce any and all Palestinian incitement against Israel and the Jewish people. On March 8, 2009, a number of us sent President Abbas a letter calling on him ³to truly end anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement,´ but clearly there needs to be further pressure. However, Palestinian incitement continues and there is almost no effort by them to promote coexistence and peace. We would like to bring to your attention a report recently released by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office entitled ³Culture of Peace and Incitement Index,´ that unfortunately shows that Palestinian incitement continues. Television programs run by the Palestinian Authority and textbooks in government schools continue to praise martyrdom and terrorists and call for an armed struggle against the Israelis. Incitement,especially by official institutions, damages the prospects of reaching a peace agreement betweenthe Palestinians and America's strategic partner and indispensible ally, the Jewish State of Israel,and only encourages terrorism.

It is our hope that an independent Palestinian state can be realized, living in peace alongside the Jewish State of Israel. While the United States must not and cannot impose a solution, our country has an important role to play in encouraging the two parties to restart direct negotiations. We respectfully request that you and your administration do all in your power to insist that President Abbas reenters peace talks, without preconditions, and demand that President Abbas eliminate all vestiges of incitement coming from his government, Palestinian entities, or officials.

Sincerely

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN Member of Congress

STEVE AUSTRIA Member of Congress

The letter is perfectly accurate and reflects longstanding US policy.

Yet J-Street opposes it!

From JPost:

J Street’s opposition to a congressional letter criticizing Palestinian incitement has led more members to sign on, according to Hill sources tracking the issue.

The letter to US President Obama, written by Rep. Steve Rothman (D-New Jersey) and Rep. Steve Austria (R-Ohio) in the wake of the Itamar murders, charges that “Palestinian incitement continues and there is almost no effort by them to promote coexistence and peace.”

It calls for the White House to “do everything possible to urge [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas to root out terrorism, return to negotiations without preconditions, earnestly work toward peace with Israel, and slam the door on any effort to deal with final status issues at the United Nations.”

In response, J Street sent an email to members of the US House urging them not to sign it and issued a statement attacking the its contents as “containing material omissions and misrepresentations of fact and presenting a biased and inaccurate picture.”

The statement specifically criticizes the letter for not acknowledging the PA leadership’s efforts to end incitement and blaming incitement for the impasse in peace talks.

“Contrary to the letter’s accusations, the current Palestinian Authority leadership has taken great political risks and shown real willingness to end the conflict,” J Street states.

While the letter was originally circulated only among members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and House appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, J Street’s email was circulated more widely and prompted many additional representatives to express interest in the letter. A final count isn’t yet available because the deadline for signatures has not yet passed.

“J Street’s opposition to the Rothman-Austria letter has only increased the willingness of members to sign on. It begs the question of what are J Street’s goals,” said one congressional staffer. “If J Street’s goals are to have fewer people sign onto the letter, they’ve already failed.”

J-Street's opposition to the letter also shows how hypocritical the group is. They oppose the letter in part because it isn't balanced - it shows a "biased ...picture" and doesn't mention the other side of supposed PA moves to end incitement.

Yet J-Street supported the one-sided, anti-Israel Security Council resolution on the settlements. It had no problem with bias then! To J-Street, the only party that has to compromise, and the only party that needs to be pressured by the US, is Israel. Not exactly how friends of Israel act!

Not only that, but the letter is correct. The PA continues to incite through its own media, as abundantly documented by Palestinian Media Watch. J-Street's refusal to acknowledge that shows, once again, that it is not a "pro-Israel" organization.

The good news is that Congress has caught onto J-Street's facade.

(h/t My Right Word)

NYT reports fairly on yesterday's accident

The New York Times' coverage of yesterday's accidental deaths of four Gaza civilians, writeen by Fares Akram, is actually fair to Israel:

An Israeli attempt to hit Palestinian militants who had fired rockets at Israel went horribly wrong on Tuesday, with mortar shells killing three youths playing soccer and a 60-year-old grandfather leaving his house.

After rockets were fired from a citrus grove behind houses in eastern Gaza City on Tuesday afternoon, the Israelis fired mortar rounds at the source. Three shells landed on a sandy street in front of a home about half a mile from the border, killing three members of the Helou family and a neighbor.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed regret at the deaths of civilians, adding, “It is regrettable that Hamas continues to intentionally rain down dozens of rockets on Israeli civilians even as it uses civilians as human shields.”

The Israeli military also said it regretted the loss of civilian life and placed the blame on Hamas. “We do not target civilians,” Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman, said by telephone. “This was not our initiative. It was reactive.”

Relatives and neighbors were unusually open about the fact that the Israeli mortar attack was an attempt to hit militants firing rockets from the nearby grove.

“We heard the sound of four mortars being fired by militants from a grove just beyond our house,” said Hassan, the older brother of Mohammed Harrara. “A few minutes later, the Israeli shells landed in the area.”

But the Washington Post simply repeats Hamas lies:

Tahar al-Nounou, a spokesman for Hamas's government in Gaza, said that no one had fired rockets from the area targeted by Israel on Tuesday. "The Palestinian government condemns strongly the awful crime that was committed by the Zionist occupation this afternoon,'' he said in Gaza.

See also Meryl Yourish's excellent comparison of AP's reporting of this incident versus the Fogel massacre.

(h/t David G)

Reports that Gaza terrorists used anti-aircraft missiles

Palestine Press reports:

Media and witnesses in Gaza said that resistance fighters this morning fired a surface to air missile targeting an Israeli Apache [helicopter] over the central region [of Gaza.]

Witnesses said out that the helicopter left Gaza and went back to the Israeli border without being hit. Israeli sources did not confirm this news.

Syria kills 12 people - in a mosque

From Haaretz:

Syrian forces killed 12 people on Wednesday in an attack on a mosque in the southern city of Daraa, site of unprecedented protests challenging President Bashar Assad's Baathist rule, residents said.

Those killed included Ali Ghassab al-Mahamid, a doctor from a prominent Daraa family who went to the Omari mosque in the city's old quarter to help victims of the attack, which occurred just after midnight, said the residents, declining to be named.

Before the attack, electricity was cut off in the area and telephone services were severed. Cries of "Allahu Akbar [God is the greatest]" erupted across neighborhoods in Daraa when the shooting began.

Can't wait for the UN to condemn this.

Oh, I'm sure that Iran and Hezbollah will be on the condemnation bandwagon as well since they have been so outspoken about Arab government repression lately.

(updated with latest numbers, h/t Challah Hu Akbar)