Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Gratuitous Yom Ha'Atzmaut Israeli Swimsuit Post

Israel21C has the list of the top ten Israeli swimsuits for this summer.

How can I not report such an important story?

The spike heels in the desert are a nice touch.

I know that when women go swimming, they love having a heavy blocky object around one of their wrists at all times.

I'm sorry, but I'm seeing dots in front of my eyes.

And for those who want more modest swimsuits - here's one for you as well:

Kampeas is wrong on one topic, right on another

JTA's Ron Kampeas writes:

I'm ancient enough to remember the younger Benjamin Netanyahu warning audiences to pay attention to what Yasser Arafat says in Arabic, as opposed to his relatively moderate pronouncements in English.

Such warnings are passe, with the onset of the Internet and a multilingual, wired world -- if a leader says something provocative/embarrassing/saber-rattling in his or her native language, it'll be out there in English, guaranteed, within minutes.

I wish this were true.

However, I've been using Google Translate for years now to see what Arabic sites are saying, and the vast majority of the things I uncovered were never reported in the mainstream media, or even by MEMRI or Palestinian Media Watch.

There is just too much stuff out there. MEMRI and PMW focus on the worst incidents, the stuff that can make headlines, the songs sung by little kids about killing Jews, anti-semitic cartoons andsimilar items. But the causal hate that pervades the Arabic media is not something that you can appreciate from just reading a couple of cherry-picked examples a day. If people knew how Hamas, day in and day out, praises terror attacks - even attacks from years ago - they would never believe the stupidity pushed by some that Hamas is moderating, or willing to be at peace with Israel, or willing to accept a two state solution.

But it is not reported.

A couple of weeks ago I searched for every mention of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Arabic news sites from the previous 30 days. While a couple of sites did refer to them as forgeries, most mentioned them - in asides - as if their veracity is unquestioned among the readership. This is a story that is current - but no media covered it besides me.

Also, what you will not see in Arabic sites is the complete absence of the other side of the story. We take it for granted that Jewish and Zionist media, like JTA, will have a variety of viewpoints on the subject of Israel and the Arabs. But that multiplicity of views is missing in Arabic media. Arabs are simply not exposed to anything besides anti-Israel propaganda, day in and day out. Tehy don't even have Arabic-language access to the truth. This is a story that is ignored - and it shouldn't be.

When reading the Arabic news sites, on first glance, it appears that they are similar to Western media. There are news items along with special interest stories, sports, ads, odd stories and so forth. It takes time to realize that most news sites have a sponsor and they faithfully report only one viewpoint. To see the truth about Fatah, you must read Islamic Jihad and Hamas sites (along with a very few maverick websites;) to see the truth about Hamas you must read the Fatah sites. Different Egyptian papers will cover different stories and ignore the ones that embarrass their sponsors.

None of this is obvious and practically none of it is reported. And that is a shame, because it is impossible to truly understand how Arabs think without reading their own words - about everything.

But Kampeas is right about one thing:

Bringing us back to Bibi and his two totally different Independence Day messages, one geared to Israelis and one to Americans. In the former he looks forward to hanging around the "mangal" or barbecue grill tomorrow, and he lists priorities for next year: A fence separating Israel and the Egypt, expanding Iron Dome, free education for kids from age 3 and reducing the cost of living (in that order.) He extols Israel's advances in high-tech.

For Americans and other English speakers, his cast is "Israel is unique." He emphasizes "restoring sovereignty" for a powerless people, and also becoming a "global technological power" (although here he qualifies that with a "despite threats"). He extols a "vibrant liberal democracy" where women are equal and says Israel is especially unique for the "tens of millions" of supporters it has, Jewish and non Jewish.

Nothing at all wrong with this: Two different constituencies, two different messages. Happens everywhere.

What throws me off, though, are the cat and the parrot singing "Hineh mah tov" at the end of the Hebrew version (which features Arabic subtitles). The cat is miserable, and apparently paw-cuffed; the parrot appears ready to hop into the blender standing alongside it.

What message are these unhappy creatures meant to convey?

Why are Israelis guided, unprepared, into this 20-second nightmare?

Indeed - that cartoon is creepy and bizarre, and I cannot come up with a single rational reason it was tacked onto the end of Bibi's Hebrew address.

British engineer in UAE on trial for saying "when will we finish the damn mosques?"

From The National, January 12:

An engineer told an appeals court yesterday that he did not mean to insult religious monuments when he said "damn mosques" during a meeting.

The British engineer, who works at the parks and recreation section of Abu Dhabi Municipality, was appealing against a one-month prison sentence imposed by the Court of Misdemeanours.

He was in charge of a project to create gardens around a mosque.

He lost his temper during a meeting because the project was progressing slowly. He was reported to the police by his work colleagues for saying: "When will we finish with the damn mosques?"

He explained to the judge that he did not mean to insult the mosque as a religious place and that he respected Islam and the UAE.

"I said it out of concern for the project because I wanted it to be ready as soon as possible," he said.

The judge asked him: "So your keenness on completion drove you to curse?"

The engineer reasserted his respect for mosques he works on and said he wanted them to be presented in the best way possible way.

A decision on the appeal will be announced on February 7.

He lost the case, and is now appealing. From Al Arabiya:

The lawyer of an engineer jailed in Abu Dhabi for insulting Islam by referring to “damn” mosques has insisted a UAE court look up the word in the Oxford English Dictionary.

“The first meaning for the word ‘damned’ says: ‘According to Christianity, a damned (person) is someone who God is angered with forever... the second meaning says ‘damn’ can be used for strong criticism in an unofficial way and is a way of expressing anger,” read out the translator at the Appeals Court, according to a report from The National.

The Appeals Court and will announce its new verdict on April 30, the newspaper stated.

I wonder what would have happened if he said "f--ing mosques." Would that have been considered worse or better than "damn mosques"?

Springtime in Egypt - for Islamists

From Bikya Masr:

One of Egypt’s best known actors, Adel Imam, has been handed a three-month hard labor sentence and a fine of about $170 for insulting Islam in roles he portrayed in film and on the stage.

The films include “The Terrorist,” “Terrorism and the Kabab,” among others.

Egyptian author Alaa al-Aswany, whose international best-seller “The Yacoubian Building,” was turned into a film co-starring Imam, said the court ruling sets Egypt back to the “darkness of the Middle Ages,” according to a report in Al Ahram.

“[The court's ruling] is an unimaginable crime of principle in developed nations,” he tweeted on his Twitter account.

The impetus behind this, and another case featuring the founder of Mobinil telecom, Naguib Sawiris (who tweeted an image of Mickey Mouse with a beard, and his lovely consort Minnie Mouse, wearing a face veil), are indicative of the growing draconian influence of the ultra-conservative Salafists in Egypt.

And:

Egyptian freedom of expression advocates are in an uproar over the banning of a play over its alleged use of “foul language.”

24 rights movements issued a joint statement condemning al-Sawy Cultural Center in Cairo for banning the play “Mono-drama Auto bus” from showing at the center’s 7th Mono-drama theater festival taking place this month.

According to the Sawy judging committee, the play featured a sentence that contains “foul language against religion.”

The play in question, directed by John Milad and acted by Mina Ezzat, was supposed to start with the actor throwing a fit and threatening to ruin the play, saying the disputed line, “I will ruin the damn show” or loosely translated from the Arabic, which uses a common swear word that many religious persons forbid, arguing it is “insulting religions.”

The rehearsal immediately came to a halt when the actor uttered the line. The play was removed from the program and all attempts to bring it back failed.

And:

Egypt’s liberal satellite channel ON TV received a threatening letter from an unknown group calling itself “The Jihadist Group to Cleanse the Country” warning they would kidnap some of the news presenters and inflict harm on companies that advertise with channel, if the channel “does not change its media policies.”

See? There was an Arab Spring in Egypt - for people who want Egyptians to have less freedom.

New NGO in Lebanon to fight for freedom of expression

From Now Lebanon:

“Yes to freedom of expression! Unless criticizing the state, God, the Prophet, Christ, the president, the Church, the Bible, the Quran, the martyrs, the Resistance, the Lebanese army, the civil war, sectarianism, the custodian of the two holy mosques, the pope, national unity, friendly countries and neighboring countries.” This is the text of the cartoon on the front page of the newsletter “FREE” which is currently being distributed around university campuses in Lebanon.

FREE, which stands for “Freedom and Right of Expression Event,” is the first issue of a series of uncensored newsletters produced by the Lebanese NGO March. It highlights censorship issues in Lebanon and focuses on the importance of freedom of expression following too many instances of censorship its producers say have been occurring recently in Lebanon.
“We started with the right of freedom of expression,” says Lea Baroudi, a co-founder of March, “because in a country like Lebanon, where there’s so much cultural diversity, if we do not accept the different opinions of one another, we cannot live together.”

In a country with 18 different religious communities that don’t think alike, there’s a need to “agree to disagree,” Baroudi says.

March is a civil movement that focuses on raising awareness about basic rights and civic duties. It aims at instilling these values at an individual level while simultaneously fostering dialogue and reconciliation between Lebanon’s diverse communities.

This isn't quite fair. Everyone in Lebanon agrees on one thing: that Zionism is evil.

That's a start, isn't it?

Arabs whining about Google Street View of Jerusalem

Firas Press has an article about Google Street View in Jerusalem, where it claims that the Al Aqsa Mosque is not shown except for some high angles - but the Kotel can be seen. It looks like they are complaining that this is somehow discriminatory. I cannot imagine if the guards at the Moroccan Gate would have allowed Google employees with all that equipment to go up there.

I found this photo from outside the walls of the Old City that shows the Aqsa mosque:

And this from inside the gate which includes the Dome of the Rock:

It looks like Google abandoned the special car to make the photos and an employee walked around the Kotel plaza, but from most angles you can't easily see the Muslim structures that were built to show Islamic supremacy over the holiest Jewish site.

Street Maps is addictive for Jerusalem.

At the moment, at least in the Google Maps version (I didn't check Google Earth,) many of the streets of the Old City are photographed - but they aren't all linked to the satellite maps, so it is easy to get "lost."

Luckily, at least in the Jewish Quarter, there are signs to help you orient yourself!

If I don't blog the rest of the day, it's because I'm virtually walking through Jerusalem.

Someone should overlay a social component so people could get virtual guided tours.

Egyptian law to allow sex with dead wives??? (updated)

WTF?

Egypt’s National Council for Women (NCW) has appealed to the Islamist-dominated parliament not to approve two controversial laws on the minimum age of marriage and allowing a husband to have sex with his dead wife within six hours of her death according to a report in an Egyptian newspaper.

The appeal came in a message sent by Dr. Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker, Dr. Saad al-Katatni, addressing the woes of Egyptian women, especially after the popular uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

She was referring to two laws: one that would legalize the marriage of girls starting from the age of 14 and the other that permits a husband to have sex with his dead wife within the six hours following her death.

According to Egyptian columnist Amro Abdul Samea in al-Ahram, Talawi’s message included an appeal to parliament to avoid the controversial legislations that rid women of their rights of getting education and employment, under alleged religious interpretations.

“Talawi tried to underline in her message that marginalizing and undermining the status of women in future development plans would undoubtedly negatively affect the country’s human development, simply because women represent half the population,” Abdul Samea said in his article.

The controversy about a husband having sex with his dead wife came about after a Moroccan cleric spoke about the issue in May 2011.

Zamzami Abdul Bari said that marriage remains valid even after death adding that a woman also too had the same right to engage in sex with her dead husband.

Two years ago, Zamzami incited further controversy in Morocco when he said it was permissible for pregnant women to drink alcohol.

But it seems his view on partners having sex with their deceased partners has found its way to Egypt one year on.

Egyptian prominent journalist and TV anchor Jaber al-Qarmouty on Tuesday referred to Abdul Samea’s article in his daily show on Egyptian ON TV and criticized the whole notion of “permitting a husband to have sex with his wife after her death under a so-called ‘Farewell Intercourse’ draft law.”

“This is very serious. Could the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution possibly discuss such issues? Did Abdul Samea see by his own eyes the text of the message sent by Talawi to Katatni? This is unbelievable. It is a catastrophe to give the husband such a right! Has the Islamic trend reached that far? Is there really a draft law in this regard? Are there people thinking in this manner?”

I haven't seen this mentioned in other Egyptian media, but if Egypt's parliament even discussed a law like this - let alone the law to allow 14 year old girls to marry - then Egypt is in even worse shape than we thought.

Holy crap.

UPDATE: The story about the "farewell sex" is bogus, but the 14-year old age of consent is real.

Remembrance Day (video)

I found a lot of videos online that individual Israelis make, on their own, to commemorate Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror.

Here is one from 2010.

Egyptian youth plan to vandalize IDF memorial in Sinai today

From YNet, April 8:

The Sinai Revolutionaries Movement is planning to paint the colors of the Egyptian flag over an IDF memorial, spokesman Mohammed Hendy told the Palestinian Ma'an news agency on Sunday. The act of protest is set to take place on April 25, the day Egypt marks the liberation of the Sinai Peninsula.

The monument was created in memory of 10 Israeli soldiers killed in a helicopter crash when the Sinai was still under Israeli sovereignty. Egypt pledged to guard the memorial as part of the 1979 peace treaty.

Hendy said that the Sinai Revolutionaries Movement had tried to destroy the monument several times, only to be stopped by Egyptian army forces guarding the site.

He noted that there is a cemetery of Egyptian soldiers in Beersheba which he claims the "Jews had destroyed."

The movement decided to cover the monument in the colors of the Egyptian flag in order to "render the site an Egyptian symbol and not an Israeli one, to honor the memory of the Egyptian troops and serve as a warning to anyone who wants to hurt Sinai."

Here is their mock-up of how they want it to look:

According to this 2009 article in Masrawy, there are three monuments in the Sinai that Egypt pledged to protect under Camp David that have come under regular attack by Egyptian youths, including painting swastikas and anti-Israel slogans on them. They say that their very existence "negatively affects Egyptians psychologically."

Israeli relatives of the victims of the crash say that they have been stymied from visiting the site by Egyptian authorities. As a result, they have been trying to physically move the monuments to Israel.

For years, Egyptians have considered the very existence of the monument to be a huge insult to them, and they have shown disgust for Israelis who want to visit.

The "As-a-Jews" of the New York Times

Paul Krugman writes in his New York Times blog:

Something I’ve been meaning to do — and still don’t have the time to do properly — is say something about Peter Beinart’s brave book The Crisis of Zionism.

The truth is that like many liberal American Jews — and most American Jews are still liberal — I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide — and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world. But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.

But it’s only right to say something on behalf of Beinart, who has predictably run into that buzzsaw. As I said, a brave man, and he deserves better.

Also from the New York Times today, an op-ed from Stephen Robert:

How can a people persecuted for so long act so brutally when finally attaining power? Will we continuously see the world as 1938, or can we use the strength of our new power to forgive, while never forgetting the lessons of our past?

I guess he is "brave" too.

Last month, according to the monthly tally from Soccer Dad, the NYT printed 8 more "brave" anti-Israel op-eds, as opposed to 3 that were pro-Israel. Including one from that "brave" man, Peter Beinart.

In the last six months of 2011, the tally was even more lopsided: 39 anti-Israel op-eds, and 8 pro-Israel.

Any way you look at it, the New York Times doesn't seem to have any compunctions about publishing criticisms of Israel. But not only is the Times blatant about its anti-Israel bias, but its writers seem to feel that they are being remarkably bold by parroting the same arguments that have been published there scores of times in the past year.

Criticizing a tiny state surrounded by enemies hell-bent on its long-term destruction might not play in Peoria, but it plays very well in the salons of the Upper East Side. It is a false bravado, one where the people pushing their agendas know quite well that they have a large support group from the most influential ivory tower newspaper in the United States. Seriously, how have any of these critics been hurt by what they have written? They have been criticized to be sure, but they have also been praised. They are getting huge amounts of publicity and selling lots of books, giving lectures across the nation and having their faces plastered all over every Jewish periodical. Is that what NYT liberals consider "bravery" nowadays?

In fact, today's NYT op-ed is utterly boring. Stephen Robert rehashes the exact same arguments we have heard ad nauseum as he demands that Israel somehow overlook the fact that Palestinian Arabs keep demanding that it be destroyed demographically and politically. He is not an expert on Israel - a previous piece that he wrote for The Nation shows that he has gullibly believed outright lies from his Palestinian Arab friends. He has no real credentials, unless you believe heading a major mutual fund group makes one an expert on the Middle East.

So why did the New York Times choose to publish yet another op-ed bashing Israel when it breaks no new ground, makes no new arguments, and is quite tendentious to boot?

Because, like Krugman, the author is another "As-a-Jew." He says he grew up as a Zionist, coming from a family of committed Zionists, complete with experience with pogroms and fundraising for the UJA. He is pretending to be yet another recovering Zionist, someone who knows what is best for Israel far better than the people who live there and actually vote in elections. The only thing that makes his point of view interesting, to the NYT opinion editor, is that Robert is being "brave" by speaking out, as a Jew, just like the scores of other ignorant Jews who have been reading the New York Times' anti-Israel pieces over the years and believe them as the Jewish equivalent of gospel.

This is not bravery.

Bravery is to be an Arab and to criticize the PLO. Bravery is to be a Muslim woman and criticize how Muslims treat women. Bravery is to publicly protest in Syria. Bravery is to risk your life for your opinions.

It is not bravery to risk receiving some angry emails. And as awful as the Likud seems to be when you read these "brave" articles criticizing it, the authors aren't quite scared that the Mossad will come and take them out.

When someone like Krugman calls someone like Peter Beinart "brave" it illustrates how out of touch liberal New York Times "As-a-Jews" are. Their worldview is so skewed that they believe that Netanyahu - a man who accepts a two-state solution, who has all but said that he would throw tens of thousands of Jews out of their homes to make peace - is somehow a warmonger. Meanwhile, they believe that Mahmoud Abbas, a man who honors the most notorious terrorists and anti-semites, who arrests journalists who criticize him, and who would rather partner with Hamas terrorists than Israeli Jews, is perfectly reasonable and moderate.

How can such a complete reversal of reality even cross the mind of a sane person?

Well, it can easily happen, if your idea of reality comes from the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

(h/t Daniel)

UPDATE: To Beinart's credit, he doesn't consider himself brave. (h/t Martin Kramer)