Or you can review Vice News - in Gaza. (I didn't get to see it yet.)
Or discuss exactly what makes Pepsi a "Jewish drink."
(h/t JTA, jzaik)
Azzam al-Ahmad, the head of Fatah delegation to the reconciliation talks with Hamas, Tuesday told WAFA that Hamas continues to prevent the Central Elections Commission (CEC) resulted from reconciliation talks from working in the Gaza Strip.Hamas, for its part, isn't only blaming Fatah for the failure of unity talks. They are blaming the US and Israel.
“It has been agreed that CEC will start working in December 23, 2011…Two months and a week later, Hamas still prevents the commission from working in Gaza without reason,” said al-Ahmad.
He indicated that some Hamas leaders in Gaza don’t want to end the Palestinian division to benefit their personal agenda, as well as he expressed hope that Hamas will end its internal dispute and reach an agreement regarding the formation of the interim government.
Israeli Ambassador Yaacov Amitai on Monday, 27 February 2012, presented his credentials to Field Marshal Mohammad Hussein Tantawi, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces. At the official ceremony, during which other ambassadors also presented their credentials, the Israeli anthem was played, along with other national anthems, as is customary.
The presentation of credentials was held in a cordial atmosphere. Speaking at the ceremony, Ambassador Amitai and Field Marshal Tantawi emphasized the importance of the peace agreement and cooperation for both countries.
Ambassador Amitai said: "I will do everything I can to enhance understanding and to foster cooperation between Israel and Egypt."
Muslim-majority Malaysia on Tuesday banned a planned concert by Erykah Badu after a photograph appeared showing the Grammy-winning singer with the Arabic word for Allah written on her body.Here is the offending photo. The two "Allahs" are on her shoulders.
The American R&B singer was scheduled to perform Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur, but some Muslim groups said Badu was an unsuitable role model for young Malaysians after seeing a publicity photo of her with what appeared to be temporary tattoos of the word Allah on her bare shoulders.
A government committee that includes police and Islamic policy officials decided to forbid Badu's show because the body art was "an insult to Islam and a very serious offense," Information Minister Rais Yatim said in a statement.
The photo of Badu had "triggered public criticism that could jeopardize national security and cause a negative impact to the government's image," the statement added.
The 41-year-old, Dallas-born singer had already arrived in Malaysia. She can stay as a tourist but will not be allowed to perform, an Information Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements.
It was the first concert by a Western performer to be banned in Malaysia in recent years. Several other stars, including Gwen Stefani and Avril Lavigne, were told to dress modestly while performing.
The photograph of Badu, which also appears on her official fan website, attracted attention after Malaysia's most widely read English-language daily, The Star, published it Monday.
On Tuesday, the newspaper apologized to Muslims for what it called an "oversight," saying it deeply regretted any offense sparked by the photo, which was "inadvertently published." The Home Ministry summoned The Star's editors to explain the photograph, which caused some Muslim activists to demand the newspaper's suspension.
Egyptian security forces on Tuesday thwarted an attempt to smuggle large quantities of diesel fuel into the Gaza Strip via underground tunnels, Ma'an's correspondent said.So they'd rather rely on Egypt controlling the fuel supplies to Gaza. See how well that's working out?
Egyptian military and police forces stopped four trucks containing more than 7,000 liters of diesel fuel bound for the Gaza Strip.
Four Egyptian smugglers were arrested and are being questioned.
Egypt wants to stop the use of underground tunnels for delivery of Egyptian fuel purchased by Palestinian authorities, and has severely reduced supply through the tunnel network, prompting an energy crisis in the coastal enclave.
Egyptian and Gazan officials reached a deal last week which includes longer-term measures to increase the capacity of Gaza's sole power plant and link Gaza's electricity grid to Egyptian infrastructure.
On Sunday, as part of the first stage of the agreement, Egypt increased its power supply to the Gaza Strip from 17 to 22 megawatts.
The shorter-term requirement is the delivery of fuel into Gaza, but a disagreement on the route of the fuel still appeared to be pending agreement.
The Gaza government is pressing for the Rafah terminal between the countries to be equipped for fuel transfer, and is reluctant to accept fuel to be delivered via the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing.
The government fears Israel will use control of supplies to squeeze the coastal strip.
Hence the need to encourage all who can, especially our brothers from Arab and Islamic countries as well as our fellow Arabs and Muslims and Christians in Europe and America, to go to visit Jerusalem. This move will have political, moral, economic, and humanitarian repercussions. Jerusalem affects us all and no one can stop us from accessing it. The flow of the crowds to the congested streets and its holy sites will enhance the resilience of its citizens, and contribute to the protection and consolidation of identity, history and heritage of the city [where we are] targeted for eradication, and the occupiers will remember that the issue of Jerusalem is the cause of every Arab, Muslim and Christian. I emphasize here that a visit to a prisoner to support him does not mean by any means normalization with the warden.
"Palestinians have the right to enter Jerusalem as they please, but in relation to the non-Palestinians, they may not gain entry to it." He explained "that the prohibition of visiting is so as to not legitimize the occupation; a visit would confer legitimacy to the cruel entity occupying of Muslim lands" by getting an Israeli visa.The PA was not happy with Qaradawi.
He stressed in remarks published yesterday in Doha, "We should feel that we are deprived of Jerusalem and fight for it so that Jerusalem is ours, and that the responsibility to defeat the Zionist aggression is the responsibility of the Islamic nation as a whole and not the responsibility of the Palestinian people alone," he said, adding: "It is not reasonable to leave the Palestinians alone in the face of the Zionist state with a large military capabilities."
He said that "Jerusalem will not return except through resistance and jihad, and the combined efforts of the Arab and Islamic nation."
The Hamas movement has rejected a call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for Arabs and Muslims to visit Jerusalem, and described any visit as a normalization and recognition of Israel. (see also here)Two years ago, the Egyptian Olympic soccer team planned to have a friendly match with an PalArab team near Jerusalem to show solidarity with them. A firestorm of fatwas and pressure resulted and the team canceled the trip.
When I was invited to this conference, I took this as a sign that the Arab League wanted to capture the full complexity of the issues related to Jerusalem, including openly pro-Israel, pro-peace voices. However, it seems that virtually every conversation I am having here involves me, to a greater or lesser degree, having to defend the two-state solution and having to assert and defend the Jewish stake in Jerusalem. The fact that I am forced to do so points to what is clearly, from my point of view, a major flaw in this event. That flaw is the absence of more voices like mine, which represent the mainstream of American Jewish opinion and Israeli opinion. People who care about Israel and are committed to the two-state solution, including in Jerusalem. This solution is the only thing that will guarantee peace, security, and a future for either Israelis or Palestinians.Did Friedman come to this conference honestly thinking that the Arab League and Mahmoud Abbas are interested in peace? Where has she been the past few months as Abbas has been doing everything he could to avoid even talking with Israel? Where was she when he gave a speech to the UN last September, saying the exact same things about Jerusalem that he said in Doha?
I don’t know who else was invited to this conference and couldn’t (or chose not to) attend, but it seems to me that by not having more pro-two-state solution, Jewish voices here, the Arab League is doing a disservice to the cause it is ostensibly concerned with — the health and status of Jerusalem — and missing an opportunity. The Arab world, and activists around the globe concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do themselves no favors when they listen to voices that tell them only a piece of the story that is comfortable to their ears (just as Israel and the American Jewish community do themselves no favors when they choose not to hear unpleasant truths).
Speakers at Sunday’s opening session, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, one after another laid out laundry lists of criticisms of Israel — many of them regrettably marked with exaggerations. All also spoke a great deal about Muslim and Christian attachments to Jerusalem and the importance of defending the holy sites and communities associated with both religions. However, only one speaker, Michel Sabbah, formerly the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, mentioned any Jewish connection to the city. This is a serious problem. If President Abbas cannot acknowledge Jewish claims in Jerusalem, even as he asserts Palestinian claims (a problem Yasser Arafat suffered from), he should not be surprised if it is more difficult for Israelis and Jews, wherever they are, to believe that he can be trusted in a peace agreement that leaves Jerusalem sites precious to Jews under Palestinian control.
If representatives of the organization that sponsored the Arab Peace Initiative cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the legitimacy of Jewish equities in Jerusalem, they should know that they discredit their own professed interest in peace. Their framing of the future of Jerusalem as a zero-sum game only makes it more likely that Israel will continue asserting its current power over East Jerusalem to hinder the vision of two states living in peace with a Jerusalem as a shared capital.
All throughout the day, it was unfortunately the same story. Participants talked about Jerusalem as if Jewish history did not exist or was a fraud — as if all Jewish claims in the city were just a tactic to dispossess Palestinians.
...I regret that the conference so far has not taken the issues related to Jerusalem more seriously, and I am proud that I am here representing a truly pro-peace — and thus be definition pro-Israel — perspective. Much of the discourse here thus far has been personally objectionable and even painful to me, but I believe my presence here is important for the cause of peace.
As reported by telegram on April 18, the first factor contributing to the occurrence of the disturbances was the recrudescence of political high-way robbery by bands of Arabs. Although Sheikh Izz-ed-Din [al Qassam] had been captured and executed by the police, his spirit was reinvoked to inspire the Arabs to begin again their annoying practices on the highways. There was, however, a difference in the modus operandi of these bands as compared with those which operated under Sheikh Izz-ed-Din. The latter worked merely to annoy the Government, whereas the former operate on what can only be described as anti-Jewish lines. On one occasion busses were stopped on the Tulkarm—Nablus Road and all the passengers were forced to alight. The only three Jews in the busses were then segregated from their fellow pas-sengers and placed in the cab of a truck at the head of the stopped column of cars. The door of the cab was closed and the Jews were fired upon at point-blank range. Of the three, one was killed out-right, one died later of wounds, and the third was severely wounded. This incident was followed the next night by a revenge killing of two Arabs by Jews in a small hut on the Petah Tikva,—Ranaana Road. It is reported by the police in this respect that at 10 p.m. on April 16 a car stopped before the hut and one of its occupants knocked on the door. In response to the knock the door was opened and two persons believed by the police to be Jews entered and, finding two Arabs within, shot them both dead on sight. One was shot six times with a Browning automatic and the other five with a Parabellum. The car with its occupants then disappeared.
When these facts became known the following morning tension between Arabs and Jews reached a crucial point. The situation was rendered acute later in the morning when the Jew who had been murdered by the "terrorists" two days before was buried as a martyr in the cemetery on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The cortege following the body worked itself into a frenzy of righteous indignation and became disorderly. The efforts of the Jewish police of Tel Aviv to restore order and control the course of the procession were unavailing.
A clash ensued and the Jewish police were routed. Reserves of British police were immediately called and likewise were attacked. By this time the excitement had spread to the occupants of nearby houses who joined the fray by throwing flower pots, cement building blocks and even iron bedsteads upon the heads of the police below. At one moment it seemed as though the British police would likewise be routed and troops were ordered to stand by from the encampment at Sarafand. Fortunately, however, order was at length restored, but not until after the police had been forced to fire into the crowd and many casualties had occurred both among the police and the rioters. The authorities were particularly apprehensive during the course of these disturbances because at Ramleh, no more than ten miles away, crowds of excited Arabs were celebrating the local feast of Nebi Saleh, and had word of the riots in Tel Aviv reached them a most serious situation would almost certainly have developed.
The following day, Saturday, passed without incident, but in an atmosphere of extreme tension. The police and the military authorities prepared for serious trouble.
On Sunday their fears were justified. A large crowd of Arabs gathered in the morning before the offices of the District Commissioner in Jaffa to protest against the murder of the two Arabs killed on the 16th, and as they were milling about in the square and working themselves into a condition of frenzy two Jews appeared and were immediately set upon. The crowd of Arabs then went berserk and pursued every Jew they saw. Fortunately, not many were at hand. The crowd then turned its attention to the main Jaffa—Jerusalem highway, stopping all cars and inspecting them for Jewish passengers. Many cars were wrecked and many casualties took place, among them an official of the Public Works Department, the son of the honorary Swedish Consul, the son of a well-known British contractor and a member of the Royal Air Force. When order was finally restored at 3:30 in the afternoon total casualties amounted to
7 Jews killed ;
2 Arabs killed;
15 Arabs wounded;
39 Jews wounded.
Monday morning dawned on a Palestine prepared for disturbances of the most serious sort. All shops were closed and traffic was at a minimum on the roads. At about 9 a. m. the police received word of fresh outbreaks in Jaffa and, as a result traffic ceased on the Jerusalem—Jaffa road and was convoyed on the Jerusalem—Nazareth road. The disturbances remained localized in the no-man's-land between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, where a platoon of the Cameron Highlanders had been stationed the day before, but a few minor incidents of stoning automobiles occurred in the Northern District near Jenin. To combat this development the Air Officer Commanding despatched detachments of armored cars to Nablus, Tulkarm and Jenin and likewise ordered detachments of troops to support the police at Tulkarm in case of a clash between the Arabs of that district and the Jews of the neighboring colonies. Casualties in Jaffa on April 20 were as follows : 5 Jews killed and 26 wounded; 2 Arabs killed and 32 wounded; on that day also 2 Jews died of injuries received on the previous day. Outside of the fracas in Jaffa the only important items to note on April 20 are two incidents which occurred on the Jerusalem–Nazareth road: a convoy of cars carrying visiting French officers back to Syria was stoned near Jenin and windshields and windows were broken ; the French Consul General abandoned his car near Nablus because of a demonstration then in progress and returned to Jerusalem by train. Also on that day Consuls Lynch and Scott journeyed to Tel Aviv and back to Jerusalem after learning that no American individuals or property had been involved in the disturbances, and Consul Brent returned from Haifa—all without incident.
On April 21 the situation was reported as being "easier". Nineteen persons were wounded, 14 Arabs and 5 Jews, in "isolated assaults"; a Jewish lumber yard and other buildings were fired in Jaffa; traffic was resumed under convoy on the Jerusalem–Jaffa road ; a crowd of Arabs bent on invading an outlying quarter of Tel Aviv were repulsed by the police; a general strike, which in effect has been only partial, was begun by Arab shopkeepers and still continues on April 25. This strike, which is supposed to have been inspired by that of the Damascene merchants some weeks ago and which is scheduled to last "until Arab demands are met", is a most half-hearted affair unsupported by the Nashashibi element. (As far as can be determined the Arab "demands" are the traditional ones : cessation of Jewish immigration and termination of land sales to Jews.)
Hezbollah and its allies have “taken advantage” of their role in the government in order to force public schools and the Lebanese University to dedicate a one-hour session for teaching the history of Resistance, Lebanese University (LU) students affiliated with the Lebanese Forces party said on Monday.When will they cut out the middleman and just let Ayatollah Khamenei write the course materials for every class?
The students were referring to a decision that has been taken by Education Minister Hassan Diab.
In a written statement the students asked: “What Resistance are you talking about? Are you referring to the one which plunged Lebanon into futile wars and achieved illusory victories? Or is it the Resistance which violated Lebanon’s sovereignty through establishing [its own private] telecommunication networks on public properties?”
The term “Resistance” in Lebanon refers mainly to the Iranaian and Syrian backed Hezbollah militant group. Hezbollah declared victory at the end of the 2006 war with Israel and tried to bring down the government in 2008 over the issue of its private telecommunication network.
The students blasted the government for allowing Hezbollah to take advantage of its dominant role in the cabinet to achieve its own goals.
An Iranian filmmaker has won the country's first Oscar, taking the prize for the best foreign-language film at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, and Tehran has celebrated by touting it as a victory over its archenemy.So does this mean that "Zionists" don't own Hollywood, as Iran claims? I mean, how easy would it have been for those "Zionists" to ensure that Footnote won the award? It seems that there is no way to reconcile the two facts that "Zionists" run Hollywood and that they gave an award to their enemy.
Director Asghar Farhad's "A Separation," already the recipient of a number of high-profile international awards, was awarded an Oscar on February 26 over films from Belgium, Poland, Canada, and Israel.
But it was the win over the Israeli entry, "Footnote," that has garnered most of the attention.
"This is the beginning of the collapse of the influence of the Zionist lobby over American society," read a statement issued by Javad Shamaghdari, the head of Iran's Cinematic Agency. Describing the win as an "unusual reaction to the Zionist lobby," Shamaghdari said the Oscar marked the "beginning of the collapse" of Israeli influence.
(“The American judgment bowed before the Iranian culture and Oscar voters showed a different reaction to the Zionist lobby, which is escalating war,” he added.)
Iranian state television, meanwhile, reported that the Iranian movie had "left behind" a film from the "Zionist regime."
With the victory, according to a report by Iran's Student News Agency (ISNA), an "Iranian flag has been planted atop America."
Israeli Energy and Water Minister Uzi Landau has instructed the Israel Electric Corp. to advance a project that would connect the country to the European power grid by way of Cyprus and Greece. Officials of the state-owned power company are set to sign an agreement soon with DEI-Quantum Energy—an entity owned by Greece's largest utility, a Cypriot bank and private investors—for a feasibiilty study of the first 270-kilometer segment to connect with the Cyprus power network.
If the proposed EuroAsia Interconnector project is fully realized, it would be, at 998 km, one of the world's longest underwater power cables. According to the Israeli utility, it would have a capacity of up to 2000 MW.
The proposed line would extend from the Israeli city of Haifa on the Mediterranean coast to the southeastern coast of Cyprus, then to the northwestern coast of Crete and on to the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece.
Landau said the project would give Israel a much-needed power-source backup and connect the country's stand-alone network with Europe, significantly boosting its future energy security. "The project could have a tremendous positive impact on the Israeli economy," he said.
The overall cost of the project is estimated at 1.5 billion euros, with the Israel-Cyprus segment put at 500 million euros. Israel Electric officials said the investment would pay for itself within four years.
Other project components to be managed by DEI-Quantum Energy include construction of powerplants in Cyprus, Crete and the Peloponnese peninsula, with the cost to be covered by the firm, its partners and various Israeli investors.
"Considering Israel's and Cyprus' natural-gas discoveries, Greece's energy shortage and the massive demand for energy within Europe, for Cyprus, the sky is the limit," said Nasos Ktorides, DEI-Quantum Energy chairman. He said Israel is expected to exploit its natural-gas discoveries much sooner than Cyprus and that it would be prudent for Cyprus to find "decisive and productive ways to export the excess energy to an already established electricity grid."
The feasibility study is expected to be completed in 2012. DEI-Quantum said the project could be started in 2013 and completed within 36 months.
The proposed power cable and related projects were among "energy cooperation" issues dicussed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month during a one-day visit to Cyprus—the first such trip by any prime minister of the country.
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!