Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Hamas celebrates 10th anniversary of Netanya Passover massacre

Hamas' Palestine Times website has a glowing tribute to the Hamas terrorist who detonated the suitcase bomb at the Park Hotel in Netanya ten years ago.

Wikipedia describes the attack:

During the Jewish holiday of Passover in 2002, Park Hotel in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya held its traditional annual Passover seder (festive religious meal) for its 250 guests, in the hotel dining room located at the ground floor of the hotel. During this holiday the hotel consisted many elderly Jews who didn't have family and relatives in Israel.

In the evening of 27 March 2002, a Palestinian suicide bomber disguised as a woman approached the hotel carrying a suitcase which contained powerful explosives. The suicide bomber managed to pass the security guard at the entrance to a hotel, then he walked through the lobby passing the reception desk and entered the hotel's crowded dining room. At 19:30 pm (GMT+2) the suicide bomber detonated the explosive device he was carrying. The force of the explosion instantly killed 28 civilians and injured about 140 people, of whom 20 were injured severely. Two of the injured later died from their wounds. Some of the victims were Holocaust survivors. Most of the victims were senior citizens (70 and over). The oldest victim was 90 and the youngest was 20 years old. A number of married couples were killed, as well as a father together with his daughter. One of the victims was a Jewish tourist from Sweden who was visiting Israel for Passover.

Hamas for some reason doesn't note that 20 of the 30 victims were over 70 years old.

Shula Abramovitch, 63, of Holon

David Anichovitch, 70, of Netanya

Alter Britvich, 88, of Netanya

Frieda Britvich, 86, of Netanya

Andre Fried, 47, of Netanya

Idit Fried, 47, of Netanya

Dvora Karim, 73, of Netanya

Michael Karim, 78, of Netanya

Eliezer Korman, 74, of Ramat Hasharon

Yehudit Korman, 70, of Ramat Hasharon

St.-Sgt. Sivan Vider, 20, of Bekaot

Ze'ev Vider, 50, of Moshav Bekaot

Ernest Weiss, 80, of Petah Tikva

Eva Weiss, 75, of Petah Tikva

Anna Yakobovitch, 78, of Holon

George Yakobovitch, 76, of Holon

Sgt.-Maj. Avraham Beckerman, 25, of Ashdod

Shimon Ben-Aroya, 42, of Netanya

Miriam Gutenzgan, 82, Ramat Gan

Amiram Hamami, 44, of Netanya

Perla Hermele, 79, of Stockholm, Sweden

Marianne Myriam Lehmann Zaoui, 77, of Netanya

Lola Levkovitch, 70, of Jerusalem

Sarah Levy-Hoffman, 89, of Tel-Aviv

Furuk Na'imi, 62, of Netanya

Eliahu Nakash, 85, of Tel-Aviv

Chanah Rogan, 90, of Netanya

Irit Rashel, 45, of Moshav Herev La'et

Clara Rosenberger, 77, of Jerusalem

Yulia Talmi, 87, of Tel-Aviv

Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall seeing any Arabs protesting against this attack, or writing anguished op-eds about how a fellow Muslim could have done such a thing. No Arab groups popped up on college campuses calling for solidarity with Jews against terror. There were no UN resolutions condemning the massacre.

But there was a PA-sponsored soccer tournament in Tulkarem named after the suicide bomber.

Hamas' jihad against Gaza taxi drivers

When you already control the press, the schools, the mosques, the trade unions, and every public gathering, what is here left to do to stop any vestige of freedom of expression?

Why, the taxi drivers!

Police in Hamas-ruled Gaza have detained some 120 taxi drivers for allegedly spreading "rumors" about the Strip's worst power crisis in years.

Gaza's attorney general confirmed that the drivers have been taken into custody.

Residents in Gaza told the Associated Press that there is "growing talk" suggesting that the Islamic militant Hamas is keeping separate supplies of fuel for its loyalists.

The detentions began over the weekend and signaled that Gaza’s Hamas rulers are increasingly concerned about the political backlash over the crippling shortages of fuel and electricity.

Hamas' Palestine Times site has two separate articles about the dangers of loose-lipped taxi drivers.

In one, police spokesman Maj. Ayman Batniji confirmed that the police arrested dozens of taxi driver "rumor mongers," saying "We launched a campaign through the media to warn drivers against circulating rumors about the crisis of electricity and fuel....These drivers triggered rumors among the passengers in an attempt to destabilize the home front in the Gaza Strip." He insinuated that many of the drivers were Fatah members, and he said that the police released those drivers after receiving personal pledges not to return to promoting "rumors," they also suspended their licenses for six months.

In the other article, a Hamas reporter enters a taxi and engages in conversation with the driver, and discovers that the driver engages in conversation about any topic! As the reporter said, he felt that he had a human version of Google and Wikipedia, but some of what the driver said was not true (according to Hamas, of course.)

Iran and Hamas agreeing to cooperate in case of war

Al Mustaqbal of Lebanon reports that the recent visit by Hamas' Mahmoud al Zahar to Iran was meant to strengthen ties between Hamas and Iran and to talk about specific tasks for Hamas in case Israel attacks Iran's nuclear program.

According to sources familiar with the details of the visits, there were meetings between the highest level Iranian political and security officials with leaders of Hamas. Zahar's visit to Tehran involved the following objectives:

1. Determine the role of Hamas in Gaza if Israel attacked Iran.
2. The introduction of missiles into the Gaza Strip to strengthen the Hamas arsenal that would be ready for any confrontation that could erupt between Israel and Iran. It is assumed that Gaza is one of the arenas of battle.
3. Increased financial support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran gave Ismail Haniyeh $33 million that was distributed immediately after his return to the sector to the staff of Hamas.
4. To thwart reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah in order to keep the Gaza Strip a reliable tool of Iranian influence.

The article goes on to say that Iran is encouraging al-Zahar's influence against Khaled Meshal within Hamas.

EoZ gets results! Turkish agency pulls Hitler shampoo ad (updated)

The sickening Turkish commercial for shampoo that included actual footage of Adolf Hitler has been pulled, after days of complaints worldwide triggered by my post about it last week.

Millyet reports that the cosmetics company Biomen announced "taking into consideration the sensitivity of the Jewish community, as of today, we stopped broadcasting the ad."

My YouTube video of the commercial has over 128,000 views, and the issue was reported in all major media including Reuters, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the Daily Mail and hundreds of other newspapers and media outlets.

(h/t Simonebilman)

UPDATE: Indeed, the advertising agency M.A.R.K.A. has removed the video from their site as well.

Al Jazeera has Merah murder video (updated)

From AFP:

The Al-Jazeera news network said Tuesday it was considering broadcasting videos shot by an Islamist extremist killer during a shooting spree in southern France that shocked the country.

French police said Monday they had copies of the videos, shot by Mohamed Merah during a series of killings that left seven dead, that had been sent on a USB memory stick to Al-Jazeera's office in Paris.

Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent, had previously boasted of filming his killings and witnesses had told police that he appeared to be wearing a video camera in a chest harness.

"We are not a sensationalist network. We are not looking to broadcast images without measuring the risks and consequences," Al-Jazeera's Paris bureau chief, Zied Tarrouche, told French news network BFM-TV.

"This is why management will decide today during a meeting in Qatar whether to broadcast this video or not," he said. "We should know in a few hours."

Tarrouche said the videos showed the attacks in chronological order and had been edited into a montage.

"There was a mixture of religious music and chants, lectures, and recitals of verses from the Koran," he said, adding that a letter was included with the USB key that claimed the attacks in the name of al-Qaida.

BBC adds:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged TV stations not to air video of the attacks by gunman Mohamed Merah as al-Jazeera discusses showing footage.

AP adds:

[Al Jazeera's] Tarrouche said the images appeared to have been taken from the point of view of the killer, perhaps from a camera hung around his neck. He said they were a bit shaky but of a high technical quality.

The video had clearly been manipulated after the fact, according to Tarrouche, with religious songs and recitations of Quranic verses laid over the footage.

"You can hear gunshots at the moment of the killings. You can hear the voice of this person who has committed these assassinations. You can hear also the cries of the victims, and the voices were distorted," Tarrouche said.

DPA adds:

The postage date on the parcel was March 21, according to France Info - the day on which the police siege of Merah's Toulouse apartment began. He was killed a day later in a shootout with police.

So French police need to figure out whether Merah or an accomplice mailed this video (as well as who edited it.)

AFP continues with Merah's father's threat to sue France:

French officials reacted with fury on Tuesday to threats from his father, Mohamed Benalel Merah, to sue France over his son's death.

"If I were the father of such a monster, I would shut my mouth in shame," Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told Radio Classique.

A senior adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, Henri Guaino, also lashed out at the lawsuit threat.

"It is his right, but only one word comes to mind: indecent," he told France Culture radio. "This guy was a monster who killed in cold blood."

Mohamed Benalel Merah told AFP on Monday he planned to sue French authorities for having shot his son instead of taking him alive.

"France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive. They could have knocked him out with gas and taken him in," he said. "They preferred to kill him.

"I will hire the biggest named lawyers and work for the rest of my life to pay their costs. I will sue France for having killing my son."

UPDATE: Al Jazeera decided not to release the video.

Anti-Israel idiots disrupt Brandeis event (video)

From "Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine:"

On Monday, March 26th 2012, members of Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine (BSJP), together with Waltham and Boston area Palestine solidarity activists, disrupted a Town Hall Meeting with 5 members of the Israeli Knesset (MKs) at Temple Emanuel in Newton, Massachusetts. The event, whose sponsors included Brandeis University, the Ruderman Foundation, and a number of Boston-area Zionist organizations, was aimed at strengthening relations between Israeli political leaders and the American Jewish community. The activists mic-checked the panel, protesting the undemocratic nature of the Israeli apartheid state and notified the offending officials that until their government ceased its discriminatory policies they were not welcome by students at Brandeis University community events. The activists were pushed outside the hall by police officers and private security guards. One Brandeis student was arrested and another was injured while being thrown to the floor by a police officer.

The panel included Knesset members Ofir Akunis (Likud), Lia Shemtov (Yisrael Beitenu) and Faina Kirshenbaum (Yisrael Beitenu).....

The activists wore blue T-shirts with the word “apartheid” written in Hebrew across the chest. They stood up before MK Ofir Akunis began speaking at the event and shouted:

Israel is an apartheid state and the Knesset is an apartheid parliament!

We will not welcome Israeli officials to any Brandeis University event until apartheid ends!

Notice that the BSJP press release (which seems to have been the source of the JPost coverage of the event) only mentions the names of 3 of the 5 MKs who visited.

The reason?

Because one of the others was Ilan Gilon, from the far left Meretz party.

And the other was Raleb Majadele, of Labor - who is an Arab!

Yes, the hypocritical protesters were yelling "Knesset is an apartheid parliament" in front of an Arab member of Knesset! (UPDATE: After I posted this, BSJP added the other two names.)

If you want to protest the Jewish state, just check your brain at the door.

It is to Brandeis' credit that they sponsored this event, and my understanding is that BJSP is a tiny fringe group that no one at Brandeis pays any attention to. Which is probably why they feel they must resort to hysterics like this. In the end, they just want to feel like they aren't irrelevant crybabies.

Here's a shaky video that BJSP proudly put up, showing the brilliant ability of a few college students to disrupt a roomful of mostly older Jews at a synagogue. It is the audio equivalent of graffiti. I'm sure their parents are so proud.

(h/t Benjamin)

The bad news and the good news

The bad news:

ABC (Australia) decided to publish the incredibly offensive and sickening Tariq Ramadan article I noted before that effectively justified and excused Mohammed Merah's murderous spree as being really the fault of French society. The very idea that his words are worthy enough to be copied in a major media outlet is almost worse than the drivel he wrote to begin with, and it shows how sick the mainstream media often is in its pursuit of a far left agenda.

The good news:

Practically every commenter at the ABC site rips the article apart.

Ordinary people are sometimes quite a bit brighter than the self-declared intellectuals.

(h/t @ActForAustralia)

Why peace is impossible, reason #9243 (updated)

Ma'an reports:

Organizations supporting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are calling on the Arab League to include refugee rights in the agenda of Thursday's Arab League summit.

The petition to Secretary-General of the Arab League Nabil al-Arabi and other heads of state warns "the area will not have peace and quiet unless the Palestinian refugees’ right of return is implemented."

It is signed by 111 non governmental organizations supporting Palestinians in Lebanon.

"This issue threatens seven million Palestinian refugees and their right to go back to their homes from which they were uprooted forcefully in 1948," says a copy of the communique seen by Ma'an.

"It also has risks for Arab countries hosting Palestinian refugee populations due to immigration and residency issues," it continues.

The communication stresses that no Arab or Palestinian negotiator has the right to negotiate away refugees’ right of return.

These NGOs, many of which are probably no more than a post office box but some of whom probably include organizations like Norwegian People's Aid and Badil, are telling the world that there will be no peace without "return". They know that "return" means no more Israel, so they are really saying there will be no peace as long as Israel continues to exist.

To underscore the point that these NGOs are more interested in destroying Israel than in helping Palestinian Arabs, they explicitly say that they are against naturalization of Palestinian Arabs in their host countries. Anyone who cares about Palestinian Arabs would hold the opposite position and would do everything they could to ensure that Palestinians who desire to become citizens have that right. Their refusal to do so reveals their ugly goal.

Beyond that, they say that even if the issue is solved in peace negotiations between Israel and her Arab neighbors, they will never accept anything less than the total destruction of Israel.

So as J-Street issues speech after speech in Washington today about how much they want peace, perhaps they should tackle the issue of how peace is possible with people who say as explicitly as they can that there will never be peace while a Jewish state exists in the Middle East.

UPDATE: Commenter L. King adds:

Every often I like to see how a story would be reported if it spun like the media spins stories on Israel:

LEBANESE NGOS VOTE TO EXPEL PALESTINIAN REFUGEES

Proving that Lebanon is a racist apartheid state, representatives of over 100 NGO groups agreed that Palestinians were unfit to live anywhere in their country. Taking issue with the possibility of even residency in Lebanon, let alone immigration, spokemen noted that ethnic Palestinians posed "risks for Arab countries" and should they remain no peace would be possible.

The only possibility for hope would be if the model of a democratic and free Israel were followed, noting that Israel was a pluralistic society that had integrated a diverse population, including Jews and Arabs.

"No Palestinian or Arab has the right to negotiate" indicating the rigidly enforced group think of the Ummah, where individual rights and freedoms are regularly curtailed.

Single Saudi men not welcome at malls

Who says that only women are discriminated against in Saudi Arabia?

Men are too...because so many of them harass women!

Single men in Saudi Arabia claim they are still being barred from entering malls despite a recent directive from Riyadh Gov. Prince Sattam to ease the restrictions which were meant to prevent possible harassment of women shoppers.

According to reports in the local media on Thursday, Prince Sattam has approved a decision to lift the ban on single men visiting shopping malls in the city during peak hours, especially on weekends. The decision was made by a committee made up of local officials and representatives of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Previously, single men were only allowed into shopping centers at lunch time on weekdays, a move the authorities said was aimed at harassment of women.

Mohammed, 21, said security guards still bar him from going in.

“It is an issue of trust and the managements of some malls still feel it is their right to prevent us from visiting the malls,” he said.

Families were divided on the governor’s directive. Some said it could lead to trouble in malls and girls might be harassed. Other families said it would not be a problem because there are security guards and officers from the Haia to deal with any possible trouble.

A manager at one of the large malls in Riyadh, who spoke on condition of anonymity, claimed he and his colleagues have never been given clear directives regarding the policy concerning the entry of single men.

“Our management wanted to keep the mall a safe place for families and ensure it was harassment free,” said the source, admitting he personally found it unrealistic and unfair to prevent singles from entering malls. He also claimed single men always tried to sneak in because of this policy.

Sara, a young woman, admitted she had helped young single men enter malls by pretending she was related to them.

“The truth is, although there have been reports that girls are paid to do this, I wasn’t. I just did it because I felt sorry for them. They stand there like beggars and all they want is to shop or go to food courts,” she added.

Apparently, a girl in a tank top and shorts has a lower chance of being harassed at a mall in the West than a woman wearing a full burqa in Saudi Arabia.

The solution is obvious. The burqa is clearly too sexy, and must be banned.

Ammiel Hirsch's response to Beinart (video/text)

Here is the video and text of Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch's sermon last Shabbat at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, discussing Peter Beinart's NYT op-ed last week I had written about, as sent to me by the synagogue.

Peter Beinart’s Offense Against Liberalism

By: Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, Senior Rabbi, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue

Peter Beinart’s op-ed in The New York Times (March 19, 2012), entitled “To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements,” crossed a red line. More than that: it is an offense against liberalism, itself.

1. Boycott

The call to boycott Israel – even the lame effort to distinguish between boycotting Israel within the Green Line and boycotting Israel beyond the Green Line – is troubling, in and of itself.

It is also hopelessly naïve. How one would actually mount such a boycott; how one could limit it to products beyond the Green Line; how it would end at the Green Line and not become a boycott of Israel – these are interesting questions for an academic thesis. It is hardly a serious political proposal.

But it is even worse than that: It is immoral because it gives aid and comfort to Israel’s worst enemies – those who seek to destroy the Jewish state. By using the word “boycott” Beinart has granted legitimacy to the delegitimizers of Israel. “Boycott” is the language of Israel’s enemies. “Boycott” means to most people: destroy Israel through international diplomacy and economic strangulation. It is an extreme position.

While thousands are being butchered by the Syrian dictator as the world stands by impotently; at a time when Americans should be devoting as much attention as possible to ensuring a democratic Egypt; at a time when Iran is rapidly developing nuclear capability; and at a time when the Palestinian national movement shows no interest or desire to engage in peace talks, and they are hopelessly divided amongst themselves – now – at this moment - American liberal Jews should be devoting our financial and political resources to boycotting democratic Israel? Really?!

Peter Beinart wrote in his op-ed: “It is time for a counter-offensive…and that counter-offensive must begin with language.” And his solution is to use the language of the BDS (Boycott, Divesment, Sanctions) crowd – a group of extremists, Israel-bashers (and some anti-Semites) who spend their lives trying to persuade the world to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel?!

I much prefer George Orwell’s view on language to Peter Beinart’s. Orwell wrote: “If thought corrupts language, language also corrupts thought. Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful…and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

2. Settlements

Beinart is right to point out the risks to both Israeli democracy as well as its national security as long as the Israel-Palestinian dispute remains unresolved. But there are two grievous offenses in Beinart’s blanket “boycott-all-the-settlements” proposal:

First: What he calls a settlement – any Jewish apartment beyond the 1967 borders – is not understood as such by practically every Israeli and most fair-minded international observers. Many so-called settlements are considered neighborhoods of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Most of the people who live beyond the Green Line live in proximity to the Green Line, and all two-state solutions that have been discussed assume that these areas will be within the new borders of Israel proper.

Second: There is not one word in Beinart’s piece about the role and responsibility of the Palestinians. Many Israeli settlements are still there because the Palestinians have still not demonstrated a politically-realistic willingness for peace.

Even if you were to concede that Israel has made mistakes, surely it is not Israel’s fault alone that there is no peace. After all, it takes at least two to make peace. You cannot make peace only with yourself. Often people talk about how Israel should do this and Israel should do that as if it is in Israel’s power alone to shape events.

Most Israelis are desperate for peace. Is it that Israelis like sending their children to fight and die in wars? Surely, there is some fault on the other side as well, no? Are the Palestinians potted plants – mere decoration – as the Jews argue amongst ourselves how we should entice the Palestinians to do what we believe is in their national interest?

Maybe they don’t believe it. Half of the Palestinian national movement makes no effort to hide the fact that they don’t believe it. They say they want to destroy Israel. The other half has rejected three Israeli peace proposals in the past twelve years, and, at present, refuses even to sit down with Israeli negotiators.

The West Bank is the West Bank. It is not, as Beinart describes, “non-democratic Israel.” It is not Palestine. It is disputed territory. In the past four decades Jordan, Egypt (Gaza), Israel and the Palestinian national movement have all claimed parts of it. If anything, during the past two decades, Israel has relinquished control over ever-larger tracts of the West Bank. If peace can be achieved, many of the settlements will be absorbed into democratic Israel; the rest will be dismantled.

3. Liberalism

I am a liberal. I worry about liberals. Some in our camp have become unhinged when it comes to Israel. I worry about Reform rabbis too. And I worry about our rabbinical students who represent the future leadership of much of American Jewry.

It is fashionable in some liberal quarters today to bash Israel as the latest litmus test of liberalism. We see it on campus as well. “We’ll let you into the club but show us your anti-Israel credentials first.”

It is actually the opposite: Israel is the ultimate test of liberalism; the testing grounds of theory and practice. Can we develop a liberalism that relates to the world as it is, not as we would want it to be? Do we offer a compelling vision of the future or just stale liberation theories? Are we prepared to make hard moral choices or shall we be satisfied with easy moralizing slogans?

In our new world, where democracies engage insurgents who hide among civilian populations and use them as shields; where terrorists store weapons in, and fire from, hospitals, houses of worship, ambulances and universities – can we develop a liberalism that fights injustice justly? That is the question.

Peter Beinart was once at the vanguard of this school of liberalism that is so desperately needed today. But observing his dash to the extremes of liberal theory over the last decade, I worry about us. If, in less than a decade, Peter Beinart moved from centrist liberalism to calling for a boycott of Israelis, what does that portend for so many others in our camp? And what does that say about the future of liberalism in the United States and in the Jewish community?

Peter Beinart’s counter-offensive is morally offensive. Israel is a noisy, argumentative, thrillingly pluralistic society, an oasis of liberty within the unrelenting desert of Middle East oppression. It is not a perfect democracy. There are many fissures and unresolved constitutional questions that need to be addressed. But Israel is a thriving democracy, conceived and developing under the most adversarial conditions of war.

Have we become so befuddled in liberal circles that of all the authoritarian regimes and brutally anti-democratic groups operating in the Middle East, we should single out the one Western democracy - Israel - as a target of economic boycott?

I am reminded of the poem of Natan Alterman, one of Israel’s greatest poets, who was troubled by our propensity for excessive self-criticism of Israel. He wrote:

Then Satan said: How can I subdue him?
For he has the courage and the ability,
The weapons, the resourcefulness and the wisdom.
And he said: I will not weaken him,
Nor curb nor bridle him,
Nor inspire fear in him,
Nor soften him as in days gone by.
I will only do this:
I will dull his mind,
And he will forget that his is the just cause.

Also worth reading is this review of Beinart's book, The Crisis of Zionism, at Tablet Magazine:

Beinart’s habit of what is either inexplicable sloppiness or extreme interpretative elasticity turns out to be one of the defining characteristics of The Crisis of Zionism. In fact, one of the challenges of reviewing the book is that it practically demands a typology. Consider a few examples:

Elasticity of attribution:

Describing the effects of Israel’s policy toward Gaza after Hamas’s election in 2006, Beinart writes that “the blockade shattered [Gaza’s] economy. By 2008, 90 percent of Gaza’s industrial complex had closed.” The source of this claim is a study conducted by the IMF—in 2003.

Of omission:

Beinart quotes former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami telling Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman that “If I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well.” Yet Ben-Ami said in the same interview that Yasser Arafat “was morally, psychologically, physically incapable of accepting the moral legitimacy of a Jewish state, regardless of its borders or whatever.” This goes unquoted. I suspect that’s because Beinart found it in The Israel Lobby by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which also quotes the first part of Ben-Ami’s statement but not the second.

Of consistency:

Beinart acknowledges that “the populism sweeping the Middle East has unleashed frightening hostility against the Jewish state.” Yet in the same paragraph he writes: “The Egyptian leaders who have emerged in Hosni Mubarak’s wake are not calling for Israel’s destruction, let alone promising to take up arms in the cause.” Maybe Beinart should acquaint himself with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Essam El-Erian, currently head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Egyptian Parliament. “The earthquake of the Arab Spring will mark the end of the Zionist entity,” El-Erian said recently.

Of fact:

Returning to the subject of Gaza, Beinart writes that the Strip “remains a place of brutal suffering.” This, he adds, is the case even after Israel eased its blockade following the Turkish flotilla business in 2010.

Really? Here’s what New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (whose politics track Beinart’s, but who also visits the places he writes about) had to say on that score in a July 2010 column: “Visiting Gaza persuaded me, to my surprise, that Israel is correct when it denies that there is any full-fledged humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The tunnels have so undermined the Israeli blockade that shops are filled and daily life is considerably easier than when I last visited here two years.”

There’s more of this. Much more. In fact, the errors in Beinart’s book pile up at such a rate that they become almost impossible to track.

Still, the deeper problem isn’t that there’s so much in Beinart’s book that is untrue, but rather so much that is half-true: the accurate quote used in a misleading way; the treatment of highly partisan sources as objective and unobjectionable; the settlement of ferocious debates among historians in a single, dismissive sentence; the one-sided giving—and withholding—of the benefit of the doubt; the “to be sure” and “of course” clauses that do more to erase balance than introduce it. It’s a cheap kind of slipperiness that’s hard to detect but leaves its stain on nearly every page.

Gaza youth call for strike, protests Thursday

Palestine Press Agency reports that a Facebook initiative has been launched to hold a general strike and protest in Gaza against the electricity and fuel shortages this Thursday. While it is not explicitly against Hamas, it is clear that Hamas is the target.

One can never know in advance if these things will snowball, as in Egypt, or quietly go bust.

The group that called the strike has 1600 members but so far only 60 have accepted the invitation. Then again, I'm sure many would not want Hamas to know who they are.

Palestine Press Agency is notoriously anti-Hamas so they will push even half-baked anti-Hamas initiatives. But from recent events we see that Hamas is very sensitive to any protest, so this bears watching.

Tunisia rally: "Fight the Jews, enter Paradise"

From At Tounissia and other Arabic media:

Tunisian youth should "train" to "Fight the Jews" and enter "paradise".

This call came during a demonstration in downtown Tunis called for by Islamists who want Islamic Sharia to be "the main source of legislation" in the Constitution of Tunisia.

Thousands of supporters of different Islamic groups participated in the demonstration.

Speeches were led by bearded young men with hundreds of loudspeaker, saying: "Prepare yourselves ... train yourselves in fighting the Jews, fighting for the sake of Allah ... paradise .. paradise.... paradise ... paradise. " The young people responded to the Salafi leader by singing "God is great."

A video clip with the sermon by the Salafi leader has been viewed widely in Facebook.

The activists said on Facebook: "This is the first time in Tunisia there was incitement to kill Jews in the street in broad daylight."

Russia Today (Arabic) adds that Hizb ut-Tahrir was one of the groups at the rally.

Watan reports that Roger Bismuth, leader of the 2000 member Tunisian Jewish community, denounced the incitement and called on Tunisian authorities to respond.