Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Syria, Turkey rhetoric increases

Things are heating up between Turkey and Syria.

Xinhua starts off with:

Syria’s former ally, Turkey, has changed their diplomatic standing and has begun exerting pressure on the government as violence escalates.

For years Turkey has been Syria’s closest neighbour and largest trade partner. But things are changing.

Turkey has suspended energy cooperation with Syria and threatened to halt electricity supply.

The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has sternly asked Syria’s President Bashar Assad, to step down. And Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, met officially Syria’s rebel leaders.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkish FM, said, "Our attitude is very clear. We will take steps alongside the Arab League if Syria does not respond to the proposal."

Syria’s opposition army is in South of Turkey and the Syrian government has increased its troops on the border. Ankara accuses Syria of providing training bases for the the Kurdistan workers Party. Turkish Prime Minister has warned that if the PKK attacksTurkey, they will cross the border to fight.

Al Arabiya:

Foreign ministers from the Arab League and Turkey will meet in Cairo Sunday to discuss how to react to Syria’s failure to respond to an ultimatum for an observer mission, Turkey said Friday.

Anatolia news agency Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu quoted him as saying at Ankara airport that he would be attending, adding that Turkey already had some measures in hand against Damascus.

“We are going to harmonize them with those prepared by the Arab League,” he added.

A deadline set by the Arab League for Syria to sign a deal allowing monitors into the country expired on Friday without any Syrian response.

And, according to Iran's PressTV, Syria is responding this way:

Turkish sources say that Syria has turned its Russian-made SCUD missiles towards Turkey, Press TV reports.

The sources said that the missiles have been deployed in Syria's Kamisili and Ayn Diwar regions, Press TV's Ankara correspondent reported on Saturday.

The two regions are close to the borders of Turkey and Iraq.

This comes as Turkey has recently stepped up its rhetoric against the Syrian government. Reports have also emerged suggesting that Turkey is harboring Syrian armed opposition groups.

Iran is throwing in its own two cents against Turkey:

Iran will target NATO's missile defense installations in Turkey if the U.S. or Israel attacks the Islamic Republic, a senior commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saturday.

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guards' aerospace division, said the warning is part of a new defense strategy to counter what he described as an increase in threats from the U.S. and Israel.

And Libya is joining the party:

Syrian rebels held secret talks with Libya's new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested "assistance" from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers.

"There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria," said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see."

The Telegraph has also learned that preliminary discussions about arms supplies took place when members of the Turkish-based Syrian National Council [SNC] — the country's main opposition movement — visited Libya earlier this month.

"The Libyans are offering money, training and weapons to the Syrian National Council," added Wisam Tariff, a human rights campaigner with links to the SNC. The disclosure came as rebels raided an air force base outside the city of Homs and killed six pilots, according to a statement by the country's military.

"The [Libyan] council's offer is serious," said Tariff.

It's getting to be a bumpy ride to the Arab Spring Festival.

(h/t Yoel)

The UAE offered $50 million to Palau to vote against Israel at UN

Ynet (print edition, Hebrew) reports:

"The Arabs offered us $50 million under one condition: that we stop our support for Israel and our votes in their favor at the UN. We told them: 'Forget it. We will not vote against Israel for anything in the world' " - So said the president of Palau, one of the Pacific Island states, Johnson Toribiong.

Last night the President concluded a week-long state visit to Israel along with the two other Pacific state leaders: the president of Vanuatu, Iolu Johnson Abil, and the speaker of the parliament of Tonga, Lord Lasike.

The article goes on the say that the UAE offered $50 million over five years to Palau, and another $50 million afterwards, to secure their vote against Israel.

Palau along with Vanuatu and other Pacific microstates have traditionally supported Israel at the UN.

Entire article:

(h/t Dan)

UPDATE: This 2010 UAE initiative might be the same thing. See also here.

WARNING: HASBARA COMING TO FLORIDA TV!

I feel duty bound to inform my readers that a prime example of that dreaded H-word is coming this Tuesday to TV viewers in South Florida.

It will cause anger, angst, and maybe even aneurysms from the "progressive" crowd. This film violates their fiat where every mention of Israel must be combined with "apartheid," "illegal," "illegitimate" or "genocidal."

Called Israel Inside, It was created by JerusalemOnlineU which is already on the radar of anti-Zionist Jews as being way too supportive of the Jewish state.

And the worst part?

It's all true!

It must be especially insulting that the "progressive" crowd has to see this on a network that they have long ago assumed was reflexively anti-Israel. Oooh, that hurts.

Their frothing protests will start right...about...now.

Lawsuit: Male nurse fired for treating Muslim women in Dearborn

From RT.com:

A former medic in Dearborn, Michigan is going after his old employers with a sex discrimination suit. According to John Benitez Jr, he lost his job with the city’s Department of Health because he provided medical care to Muslim patients.

Benitez, 63, has spent half his life as a registered nurse. In September 2010, he joined the ranks of Dearborn’s Health Department to assist patients in one of the largest Muslim communities in America. Even with a booming population of immigrants practicing Islam, the nurse says that his supervisor told him that they were off limits.

Benitez says that his former employer lectured him against providing care to female Muslim patients that sought help, and instead asked him to send them to her, a Muslim, for treatment. According to the suit recently filed, the Muslim supervisor told Benitez that “conservative” Muslims, specifically women garbed in hijab head scarves, would not want to be touched by a male nurse. Benitez followed the instruction until November 17, when according to the legal filing, a doctor questioned him "about the cumbersome and unusual practice of taking women wearing a head scarf to the nursing supervisor for care.” As a trained, licensed medical professional — and employee of the city — Benitez should have been providing care to anyone in need. After the doctor confronted him about it in November and said the supervisor’s instructions were “improper,” Benitez went back to treating everyone that came in.

Only two weeks later, Benitez was fired.

According to the legal papers, the nurse was explicitly told that the termination was "not because of any performance problem, but was instead carried out because the clinic's conservative male Muslim clientele did not want a male treating female patients." More than 30 years after entering the practice — a tenure which included a stint asVietnam war Army medic — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gave Benitez the go ahead to sue last month and on Wednesday he filed the discrimination suit in Detroit U.S. District Court.

City officials have not offered any comments to the media just yet, though Benitez’ attorney says that their client is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as his job reinstated and lost wages and benefits.

I would have no problem if the patients requested a woman nurse in non-life threatening situations, but this is simply a bigoted woman who is trying to push her own interpretation of Islamic law in a public heath facility.

(h/t Callie)

Anti-Zionist Christian ethicists never responded

I noted over a week ago about a pair of Christian ethicists who claimed that Genesis 15 and 17, both used as proof-texts by Christian Zionists that Jews were promised the Land of Israel (with nebulous borders), in fact were referring to all children of Abraham. I brought a number of texts besides those that showed otherwise, and wondered why they looked at those texts in a vacuum.

It turns out I violated my own rule for always looking at the source if possible, because it is clear that they cherry-picked their quotes, and other quotes in the same chapters show their interpretation is wrong.

They note:

[T]he promise looks very different if we take seriously all of the offspring of Abraham. Genesis 15:4-5 has God taking Abram outside and telling him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. Genesis 17:4, probably the pivotal text, has God saying to Abraham: “This is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Many nations, a multitude of nations; many offspring, many kings—read Genesis 17 again and see the plural nouns here.

Close readers of Scripture will know that in fact Abraham did become the father of many nations. With Sarah he became the father of Isaac and the ancestor of all in his line, via Jacob and Esau. With Hagar he became the father of Ishmael and all in his line. And with the long-forgotten Keturah (Gen. 25:1) he became the father of Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. The Old Testament clearly positions Abraham as the father/ancestor of not only the Jewish people but of a vast number of other peoples, all scattered through the territories promised in Genesis 15. Abraham becomes the father of dozens of peoples, exactly as the Bible says! It is certainly true that the Old Testament primarily tells the story of the line of Isaac and therefore of what became the Jewish people, but that cannot cancel the significance of the promises to Abraham and the many peoples credited to him in Genesis.

But Genesis 15 says:

And He said unto Abram: 'Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance. ...And in the fourth generation they shall come back hither; for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full.'

This is an obvious reference to the children of Israel in Egypt, using the same phrase "thy seed" that the authors refer to.

Likewise, Genesis 17 proves that the covenant goes only to Isaac, not Ishmael:

And God said: 'Nay, but Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son; and thou shalt call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee; behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant will I establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.'

Later, Isaac makes it clear that the covenant is passing only to Jacob, not Esau (Gen 28, today's Torah reading:)

And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a congregation of peoples; and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojournings, which God gave unto Abraham.'

I brought most of these to their attention in their blog, after their follow-up post where they said how "We are sincere in raising these biblical questions and hoping for a sincere answer. We are deeply serious about biblical authority."

But they never responded, not even on their own blog.

Now, I do not know if Christian Zionists are advocating that Israel conquer all land between the Nile and Euphrates; as the authors seem to imply. The boundaries of the land God is promising the Israelites seems to change in different chapters and I imagine that this is an issue that needs to be grappled with from a Christian perspective. But to facilely declare that God must have been talking about Arabs and dismiss everything else in those same chapters seems more an exercise in wishful thinking than in serious Biblical interpretation. I also do not believe that Israeli policy is made in response to Christian Zionist demands.

I may be completely wrong, as I am not a Christian and maybe there is a glaringly obvious error I am making in the literal interpretation of these verses. But if not, then based on their argument and the lack of adequate answers, the state of Christian Biblical scholarship has gone way downhill since the 19th century.

Stupid Arab rumor of the day: Mossad threatened to kill Abbas

Palestine Press Agency quotes Egypt's Moheet newspaper as saying that Arab League sources allege that Mahmoud Abbas received death threats from the Mossad - unless he scuttles his unity agreement with Hamas.

Sure. Spy agencies always send threats to their intended targets, like 1920's era mobsters.

Then again, in a world where even Israeli media give credibility to bizarre conspiracy theories floated by a pathetic anti-Israel blogger in Seattle who claims to have super-secret Mossad sources, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on Moheet.

Islamists win Morocco elections

From Al Arabiya:

The Moroccan government confirmed Saturday that the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (PJD) had won biggest share of seats in parliament.

The party captured 80 seats in the 395-seat assembly, the most of any party, in Friday's polls according to provisional results, Interior Minister Taib Cherkaoui told a news conference.

A party in Morocco's ruling coalition recognized the win PJD’s win in the parliamentary elections.

“I congratulate the PJD for this win and I would like to say as well that Morocco won in these legislative elections,” sports and youth minister Moncef Belkhayat and a leader of the National Rally of Independents party told AFP.

The PJD, supported largely by Morocco’s poor, would be the second moderate Islamist party to lead a North African government since the start of the region’s Arab Spring uprisings, following Tunisia.

But the party, which hopes to push Islamic finance but vows to steer clear of imposing a strict moral code on society, will have to join forces with others to form a government.

The king revived a reform process this year hoping to sap the momentum out of a protest movement and avoid the violence-ridden revolts in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria.

He has handed over more powers to the government, although he retains the final say on the economy, security and religion.

The king will pick the next prime minister from the party that wins the biggest number of seats. But whichever party or bloc comes first is unlikely to be able to form a government on its own.

PJD has said it aims to obtain a majority by joining forces with three parties in the current governing coalition, including the left-wing Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) and the nationalist Istiqlal of Prime Minister Abbas al-Fassi.

Well, that takes care of most of North Africa.

Ofir Gendelman is the Israeli Prime Minister's spokesperson to the Arab media. He was interviewed by pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat. It mentions that he is 40 years old and learned Arabic in Haifa, starting in primary school and going on through college.

Excerpts:

* Why do you enjoy your job?

- Communicating with the Arab world is critical for me... I serve my country and my people, and serve the cause of peace.

* How?

- I do not limit myself to dealing with the Arab world through traditional media, but also with forums and social networks as well. I try to probe the depth of Arab societies, by giving a true picture of Israel not one that is superficial. I want to [combat] the distortions and lies that are published about us.

* Give us an example of that.

- Arabs in general put the Israeli and in one of three categories: soldier, settler, or religious. As you know, and I'm neither of them. I am not religious and I'm not a settler and I'm not a soldier, and I'm trying to say is that Israel is a state where there is a plurality of other characters, and I try to give a true picture of it.

* How do you find in yourself the ability to defend the policy of Netanyahu. This man is a hate figure among the Arabs in the world; from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf. He is seen only negatively.

- I think that the perception in the Arab world of our Prime Minister Netanyahu is the wrong impression. Wrong and very distorted. He actually wants to make peace with the Palestinians and other Arabs. And his position is constantly moving towards peace, [he has] accepted the principle of two states for two peoples.

* It is natural to defend him, you are his spokesperson. But this talk does not convince any Arabs. They only understand the results. Here we are approaching three years of his reign he did not further the peace process at all. On the contrary, the settlement and Judaization [has accelerated].

- I served under the three Israeli governments, led by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, and I bear witness that there are no fundamental differences among them.

* Do you want to tell me that Netanyahu, who does not move a muscle, is like Olmert, [who offered] the withdrawal of the majority of the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital Jerusalem?

- Netanyahu focuses more on security issues, terrorism and the Iranian threat, because these are the fundamental concerns of Israeli society.

* And when you say this to the Arabs in the media or in social networks, how do they react?

- Responses are varied, there are supporters and opponents and [also] attacks and insults.

* In general, do you get more negative responses than positive or vice versa?

- The majority of responses are negative. But this is due to the accumulation of hostility and influence of the anti-Israel propaganda for years. There are also positive responses from people who understand our positions or parts of them. It is an important beginning.

Q: What is the volume of interest in the Arab world to hear your positions or the positions of Netanyahu?

- In the Arab media, it is always there. In cases of hot events, I've conducted many interviews, as many as 15.; during the Shalit deal I conducted interviews with 22 media outlets. As for the Facebook, the page opened by Prime Minister Netanyahuhas almost 6000 people from the Arab world. In Twitter there are 36 thousand.. In my page there are about 3,200 people.

* From the Arab countries?

- The majority are from Egypt, but there are people who communicated with us throughout the Arab world, including Syria, Yemen and the Gulf States and all of the Maghreb.

* Where do the insults come from, in particular?

- From Egypt. I have read insults and curses I have not heard of before, so I told them thanks, I have learned new words in colloquial Egyptian dialect.

Get Pinkwashed! "Palestinian Queer Parties" are held in - Tel Aviv!

I have received a lot of feedback about my essay on the sheer hate that Sarah Schulman exhibited in the New York Times this week, where she downplayed Israel's gay rights achievements as mere "pinkwashing" of Israeli crimes, which she believes is the real reason Israelis are more accepting of gays than their neighbors.

One correspondent, Scott Piro, wrote another excellent response to her essay on Ray Cook's blog. He points out that one of the Palestinian Arab gay groups that Schulman extols, AlQaws, has held its parties in Tel Aviv.

Sure enough, a Google search of "AlQaws Palestinian Queer Party" finds that this is a bi-monthly event, and has been held for the past year at the Comfort 13 club in Tel Aviv. The next event is on December 2:

And they had the same party, at the same venue, in April, June , July and October.

In fact, alQaws' headquarters is in Jerusalem, on the western side of the Green Line.

Even so, they also argue against so-called "pinkwashing" and support Sarah Schulman's organization, "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. "

The hypocrisy is stunning. They are against events such as "Out in Israel," a celebration of Israeli LGBT culture in San Francisco last year, because they dislike the politicization of their cause in ways that make Israel look good. But QuAIA's entire reason for existing is as a politicization of their cause to demonize Israel! Their hate trumps any desire they have for gays to be treated equally worldwide.

Even their arguments are silly. This is the pinnacle of their logic, used by Schulman as well as at the alQaws site:

It doesn’t matter what the sexual orientation of the Soldier at a checkpoint is, whether he can serve openly or not....The apartheid wall was not created to keep Palestinian homophobes out of Gay Israel, and there is no magic door for gay Palestinians to pass through.

In other words, Israelis, as opposed to Palestinian Arabs, have a concept of equal rights. Terrorists are treated the same whether they are straight or gay, and so are soldiers.

Would Al Qaws prefer that such a discriminatory magic door exists? Are they saying that they should be treated better by Israel than their straight neighbors?

Apparently, they want to be treated as special, to use their cause specifically to demonize Israel. (Al Qaws at least tries to work to fix Palestinian Arab society, QuAIA has no interest in that.)

In a perfectly equal society, gays would not be considered more or less special than any group of people, like stamp collectors or fans of Twilight. If people created an organization called, for example, Quilters Against Israeli Apartheid, it would be blatantly obvious that the group is not pro-quilter but simply haters of Israel. And that is what QuAIA is, as they hijack the very real issues that gays face and try (very unconvincingly) to shoehorn them into their own loathing of the Jewish State.

(By the way, the Goldstone Report used the exact same bizarre logic in accusing Israel of violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women during Cast Lead - as if Israel was specifically targeting and discriminating against Gaza's women! When one wants to attack Israel, apparently no argument is too crazy.)