Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Lunchtime Trumptime open thread

I'm having problems blogging on the train as my mobile provider wants to charge for using my phone as a hot-spot (or even tethering,) so I'm a little behind on blogging.

And since Donald Trump is in the news again, and I happened to pass by one of his buildings that I hadn't noticed had an interesting geometric pattern as well as a nice use of trees, I figured it is as good excuse as any for an open thread.

Iran tries to play the fauxtography game with the BBC

From Iran's PressTV, by one of their reliable Western sycophants Peter Eyre:

As we have seen so many times before the BBC has shown a distinct lean towards Israel or in this case a clear distortion of facts when it released a picture of the recent Houla massacre in Syria.

Take a close look at their front page photograph and then compare it with the photograph taken by Marco Di Lauro 9 years earlier on 27th May 2003 in Al Musayyib Iraq and you can clearly see the lack of professionalism by the BBC.

I find it so unbelievable that the general public simply accept whatever is placed before them and in doing so accept this as being justification for going to war. Just by simply studying this photograph which are all children, you can see that each row consists of around 25 – 30 bodies and so one can assume that in this photograph we are looking at four rows amounting to at least 125 and yet there were only 49 children killed in Houla, Syria.

Can one ever imagine that this once very professional media outlet earned so much respect from the people of Britain and now it has fallen to below a sub quality standard!!

Indeed, the photo was taken in 2003, and the BBC erred. However, PressTV did not note the caption that the BBC used, and its photo is too fuzzy to read it.

Here is a better screenshot:

Apparently, anti-regime supporters in Syria circulated the photo and the BBC ran with it without confirming - something that happens a lot because of the difficulty of getting reporters into Syria. It was certainly sloppy on the BBC's part (there were far more bodies in this photo that the number of victims) but they made it very clear that they couldn't verify the photo. As soon as they found out the truth they took it down. (The original photographer is unhappy, though.)

In case you think that the PressTV article has any credibility, though, here's a small bit from later on:

I have reported before that when the Israelis attacked Lebanon in 2006 they also nuked themselves and again in 2008/9 when they hit Gaza………when will these maniacs understand that when they use the same weapons as were used in Libya the entire region becomes consumed in millions of radioactive nano particles that directly attack the human DNA.

Two articles about Zionism, from different angles

From Melanie Phillips:

Zionism is no more nor less than the self-determination of the Jewish people -- as a people, and not just as adherents of the Jewish religion. Jews are in fact the only people – as a people -- for whom Israel (ancient Judea and Samaria) was ever their national homeland. Those who deny Zionism thus deny Jewish peoplehood and the fundamental right of Jews to live as a people in their own ancestral homeland, Israel.

Unique in the world, Jews are both a people and adherents of a religion. Intrinsic to and inseparable from the religion of Judaism is the land of Israel; more specifically, the centrality of and longing for Jerusalem and its Temple. Deny that centrality and you rip the heart and soul out of Judaism. Those who deny the right of the Jews to Israel and Jerusalem deny the right of the Jews to their own religion.

Judaism is like a stool supported on three legs – the nation, the religion and the land. Saw off any of these legs and the stool collapses. Does this mean that all Jews are Zionists? Of course not, no more than it means that all Jews are religious. But just as the hatred of Jews on theological grounds has always threatened the lives and safety of all Jews including those who are not religious, so the anti-Zionist hatred of Jewish self-determination is a form of bigotry which threatens the lives and safety of all Jews, whether or not they are Zionists. And the fact that there are some anti-Zionist Jews who themselves hate the expression of Jewish self-determination in the form of the State of Israel is a manifestation of that same self-same bigotry no less for being such a tragically twisted example.

The anti-Zionist madness of our time is thus far more pernicious even than hatred of Israel, pathologically obsessive and malevolent as that is in itself. Bad enough that for so many people in Britain and the west, Israel has been successfully demonised as a pariah state on the basis of a unique systematic campaign of falsehoods, distortions and libels about its history and behaviour, untruths which have nevertheless become the unchallenged basis for public discussion.

But far worse even than this is the assumption underlying this lazy defamation, that Zionism is a creed that is itself a particularly aggressive kind of racism or colonialism. This vicious prejudice has turned truth, reason and decency inside out. The right of the Jews to their own historic national homeland has been recast, entirely falsely, as a usurpation of the ‘right’ to that land of ‘Palestinians’ – who never actually existed as a discrete people in the first place. Those Jews who are Zionists now find themselves as a result cast as racists and social pariahs – merely for asserting the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their own historic homeland.

Those who are driven by a vicious and bigoted hatred have thus been allowed to cast the victims of their hatred as themselves hateful people. Zionist Jews are thus defamed and victimised many times over – and by those who have the gall to claim the moral high ground in doing so, from luvvies Emma Thompson and Ken Loach to the boycotters and thugs who harass and bully Zionist Jews on campus.

Read the whole thing.

And from a completely different direction, from Michael Totten:

“Are you Zionists?”

My colleague Armin Rosen and I were supposed to be conducting the interview. Instead, we were put on the defensive before we could even ask our first question.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Nope,” Armin said. “I don’t have a Zionist bone in my body.”

We were at the headquarters for the UGGT, Tunisia’s biggest labor union, in the small city of Kasserine just down the road from Sidi Bouzid where the revolution—and the region-wide Arab Spring generally—began at the tail end of 2010 when fruit vendor Mohammad Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest crooked and onerous government regulation.

Four men sat in the union office with us. Armin and I wanted to hear about what happened in the early days of the revolt against Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s autocratic regime, but they were in no mood to share such information with Zionists.

Our translator Ahmed Medien, a young and—shall we say—more cosmopolitan journalist based in the capital, Tunis, sat with us.

“What if we were Zionists?” I said, directing my question to Ahmed as much as to our interlocutors.

“They wouldn’t talk to you,” he said.

I was annoyed and tempted to say, never mind then, we’re done here. How would they feel if I opened an interview by asking if they were terrorists? Part of me wanted to get thrown out of their office, not because I itch for fights on the job, but because I learn as much from one interview that goes off the rails as I do from six that are predictable. But I don’t sabotage interviews. That’s up to the folks on the other side of the table. And anyway, conversations like this one that merely go wobbly, rather than implode catastrophically, can also be more revealing than typical ones.

Did I lie when I said I wasn’t a Zionist? What’s a Zionist, anyway? A person who thinks Israel has a right to exist? If so, then, yes, I suppose I’m a Zionist, or perhaps just a Zionist sympathizer since I am not Jewish. But these working-class mustachios in Tunisia’s back-of-beyond have another, more phantasmagorical, definition of the notorious Z-word. I’m certainly not a Zionist as they define one. Neither is Armin Rosen.

“We are not against Jews,” said the man behind the desk in whose office we sat, “but Zionists didn’t go to Palestine to coexist peacefully with Arab nations. They went there to take land from Palestinians and kill them. This is not a country that wants to peacefully coexist. This is a country that wants war between Arab nations.”

This is nonsense on stilts, of course, and since he and his colleagues wanted to know if Armin and I support that, then, no, neither of us lied, not really, when we said we weren’t Zionists.

(h/t Mohammed the Teddy Bear)

Tunisia is moderate and even liberal compared with other Arabic-speaking countries, but the place still suffers from a heady case of Israel Derangement Syndrome. More than half the people I interviewed complained about Israel at least once even when I didn’t ask about it. Not a single one of these people—not a one—based their complaint in reality. They were jousting with a fantasy Israel that only exists in their minds.

"Human rights orgs" double-down on Tamimi

I noted last week that the EU and Amnesty International regard Bassem Tamimi as a "prisoner of conscience" and a "human rights defender" even though he was convicted of encouraging kids to throw stones at Israeli soldiers.

I mentioned that an Amnesty official visited the Tamimi family and reported, without a shred of verification, that the family's "curtains [are] burned from tear gas shot by the Israeli army into the house."

I emailed the IDF, asking if IDF allows firing tear gas into houses. The answer I received was "IDF regulations do not allow for the firing of tear gas into a house. Tear gas is used only for riot dispersal."

A reader sent my blog comments to both the EU and Amnesty's office in Amsterdam.

Amnesty's reply is priceless, as it defends itself without any evidence besides its own sterling record:

Dear Mr. XXXX.

Amnesty International regards mister Bassam Tamimi as a prisoner of conscience, who is imprisoned solely because of his role in organizing peaceful protests against the encroachement on Palestinian lands by Israeli colonists.

Therefore, in our view, he should be released immediately and unconditionally.

The underpinning of our work is solid and reliable information.

We attach much value to the checking and double-checking of all information we receive.

Hence, Amnesty reaches the above conclusions after extensive investigation of this case.

Amnesty’s strenghth is reliability.

Amnesty only acts after very thorough investigation.

At Amnesty's headquarter in London, information on human rights abuses from around the world is collected and analyzed.

Amnesty also sends research teams to investigate the human rights situation on location. During such missions Amnesty talks to victims, lawyers, local human rights activists, the government and is present at court cases.

The research is done by a team of experts, supported by specialists in different areas like international justice, media and technology.

Only when our researchers are convinced about a case will Amnesty take action. This approach guarantees that our organisation is always capable of exposing human rights abuses without error.

Through this methodology our organisation is always capable of exposing human rights abuses in a reliable way.

With kind regards,

Wim Roelofsen,
Publieksvoorlichting

Twelve paragraphs of "proof by assertion." The vignette on the Amnesty site proves every one of these assertions wrong, as Amnesty did not follow up about the "tear gas" claim and reports it as fact.

As far as Tamimi goes, the EU did not respond to my reader's query. But HRW has now added itself to the gang of people who claim, falsely, that the conviction of Tamimi was based on the testimony of a child:

An Israeli military court’s conviction on May 20, 2012, of a Palestinian activist, Bassem Tamimi, of leading illegal demonstrations violates his right to freedom of assembly, while its conviction of him on a second charge of urging children to throw stones on the basis of a child’s coercively-obtained statement raises serious concerns about the fairness of his trial, Human Rights Watch said today. The court sentenced Tamimi on May 29 to 13 months in prison, which he has already served, as well as a 17-month suspended sentence.

“The Israeli military authorities seem to have known it would be hard to justify convicting an activist for only leading peaceful protests, so they apparently used oppressive methods to produce evidence that he also encouraged children to throw stones,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

[Tamimi] was further convicted of soliciting children and youths to throw stones on the basis of evidence that, the court said, rested to a decisive degree on a statement obtained by police interrogators from a 15-year-old Palestinian boy whom soldiers had arrested at gunpoint late at night. They questioned the boy for more than four hours the following morning, after he had not slept, without letting him have a parent or lawyer present. In that statement, the boy said that Tamimi had encouraged youths to throw stones, but in court the boy retracted his statement and said the police had instructed him to incriminate Tamimi.

As I noted last week, the judge specifically ignored most the testimony of a minor and a young adult because she did not believe their testimony and because of inconsistencies - yet HRW is saying that the conviction was based primarily on this evidence.

Reading further, Amnesty admits that the judge noted that the 14-year old's testimony (of a relative of Tamimi's) was not coerced based on the fact that he was laughing during the interrogation and that police asked him if he wanted to sleep and he declined. Amnesty also admits that the judge noted there was corroborating evidence that Tamimi was directing children to throw stones, as he was gesturing from a roof towards soldiers while on a cell phone. So even though the court proceedings were completely transparent, including the videotaping of the interrogations and the reasoning behind the conviction, Amnesty and the EU are flatly stating that the judge is acting politically and not according to legal standards.

HRW also admits that there is regularly stone throwing at these weekly demonstrations. Yet Tamimi is a "peace activist."

Arab Racism: The story the Left ignores

Here's a story about racism that was published three days ago, but that was ignored in the major leftist websites. Wonder why?

From The Economist:

THE multilingual, fashion-conscious residents of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, fancy their city to be cosmopolitan. But not everyone is welcome. Black people and foreigners from Asia and elsewhere in the third world who make up the bulk of migrant workers are often turned away from the city’s smarter venues. Conscious of the bad blood this can cause, Lebanon’s government has warned beach clubs against barring entry on the basis of race, nationality or disability.

But racism is unlikely to be erased overnight, either in Lebanon or in many other Middle Eastern countries where blacks are routinely looked down on. Racist taunts are often heard on Egypt’s streets, and in Yemen, darker-skinned people, known as al-akhdam (“the servants”), who make up perhaps 5% of the population, are confined to menial jobs and tend to dwell in slums. In Libya rebel militias often targeted darker-skinned people from nearby countries such as Chad and Mali and from countries further south, accusing them of being mercenaries of Muammar Qaddafi.

Filipinos, Sri Lankans and Chinese-Americans, among others, whisper of racist slurs both at work and on Lebanon’s streets. “When black or Asian friends visit,” says a young Lebanese professional, “I’m at the airport the moment they land to make sure immigration officers don’t ask inappropriate questions. It’s a disgrace.”

Some people blame the legacy of the slave trade, which brought sub-Saharan Africans, as well as others, to the region from the 7th century onwards. But Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group says that racism persists in the region because governments have been lax about tackling it. “There are racists everywhere in the world, but in many countries it is now taboo to make comments, partly because there are laws against it,” he says. “Here, even when there is legislation, it is never applied.”

Snobbery makes things worse. Millions of foreigners in the Middle East do cleaning and building jobs which locals consider beneath them. Sponsorship schemes often deny such workers basic rights. “People just see us as cheap labour,” says a Filipino university graduate who makes $200 a month in a Beirut beauty parlour. Some beach clubs have already said they will ignore the new regulation. Their customers, they say, would not tolerate having to rub shoulders with the dark-skinned servant class.

Will there be any soul-searching in the Arab world about this explicit racism? Will the "pro-Palestinian" crowd notice that Arab racism makes the bigotry of some Israelis pale by comparison? Will there be follow-up stories in the media about this, which might shame some Arabs?

No, no and no.

(h/t D)

16 year old Copt gets 3 years in prison for cartoon on Facebook

From Egypt Independent:

An Egyptian court on Tuesday upheld a three year sentence against a 16-year-old Christian student for posting a drawing on his Facebook page that mocked Islam and the Prophet Mohamed.

The Assiut Court of Appeals said that it has found Gamal Abdu Massoud guilty of defaming religion, state-run news service MENA reported on Tuesday.

Massoud published the cartoons in December, then some Muslims reacted angrily by attacking Christians and burning houses in the Manqabad village in the southern city of Assiut, home to a large Christian population.

In April, Assiut juvenile court sentenced him to three years in prison.

According to Article 98(f) of the Penal Code, “Confinement for a period of not less than six months and not exceeding five years… shall be the penalty inflicted on whoever makes use of religion in propagating, either by words, in writing, or in any other means, extreme ideas for the purpose of inciting strife, ridiculing or insulting a heavenly religion or a sect following it, or damaging national unity.”

According to reports, this was the offensive cartoon, which makes this painfully ironic.

Naturally, most news outlets following the case refused to publish this cartoon.

Wall map excludes Israel

From the JC:

An interior design company has had to "re-draw" a wall world map which omitted Israel for being "too small."

Customer Joanna Koenigsberg, of Sidcup, planned to decorate walls in her new home with panels in different designs from online company Binary Box. But two of the company's map designs, one labelled with country names and one covered in different flags in the shapes of countries, each omitted Israel, giving Jordan a Mediterranean coastline.

Ms Koenigsberg said: "I was saddened because I really liked these designs, but I can't accept this fiddling with the truth."
After being contacted by the JC, the company said it was an "error" and was not politically motivated. Aidan Stonehouse, graphic designer at Binary Box, said the sticker panel had been redesigned to include Israel.

Ms Koenigsberg said she was pleased with the response, and said the company had sent her the new designs. "Of course we have no idea how many were sold of the old ones, or who designed them, but it was a decent response. I don't feel there was any political element to the oversight."

Here's part of the map; see if you agree it was an oversight. (Notice that Lebanon is missing as well.)

"Zionists using job ads to gather information"

Hamas newspaper Palestine Times reveals the Mossad's latest plan on recruiting informants: placing ads for fake jobs in Palestinian Arab media.

According to the article, Israel is placing ads for bogus jobs with attractive salaries attractive and good benefits, just to gather job applications and resumes. The applications ask for name, address, skills, achievements and personal qualities, e-mail addresses and phone number, all of which are valuable intelligence information.

The article admits that marketers use similar tactics to gather email addresses and phone numbers for spam and other marketing schemes.

One of the proofs the article gives that the Mossad is behind the ads is that one of the ads asked where the applicant lived - and mentioned Rafah separately from Gaza, indicating that the people who placed the ad were trying to gather information about smugglers in Rafah.

While I can believe that Israeli intelligence would use methods like this to gather information, it is equally plausible that Hamas would do the same, for example in order to discover any smuggling tunnels that are not yet being taxed.

"Israelis unfurled Zionist flag on Al Aqsa Mosque"

The latest rumor started by the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation is that Israelis who visited the Temple Mount yesterday unfurled a huge Israeli flag. This one reached AFP:

Soldiers on Monday violated the status quo on the esplanade of the mosques in east Jerusalem by raising Israel’s flag, the head of the Islamic Waqf organization that oversees the compound charged.

“More than 180 soldiers from a special Israeli army unit today raised a large Israeli flag opposite the mosque of the Rock, which is a grave provocation,” Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib told AFP.

They have lots of photos of Israelis on the Mount, but not one shows any flag.

Sheikh Azzam al Khatib declared scenes like the ones above "catastrophic."

Last year they freaked out over a Photoshopped picture of an Israeli flag on top of the Dome of the Rock.

By the way, last week's rumor was that the Jews were planting fake graves all over the area of the Temple Mount, through Silwan and to the Mount of Olives, in a land-grab. That rumor has now reached the Arab League where they condemned this alleged practice.

Of course, Muslims have been known to place fake graves in areas in Jerusalem, so this looks like more projection.

Richard Millett's review of Habima's Merchant of Venice

Richard Millett does a great job reviewing the Habima Theater's production of The Merchant of Venice last night in London.

Two points he makes are worth noting here:

There was also a pen for Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists. One PSC man had donned a mask with a big nose, but swore it wasn’t an anti-Semitic gesture.

I asked some of the PSC lot whether they saw the recent production of Richard II by the Palestinian theatre company also at The Globe. They said they didn’t as it was a matinee and they had work commitments. They must have conveniently failed to spot the Saturday performance at 7.30pm then; proof, if ever it was needed, that PSC activists don’t give a damn about the Palestinians.

PA officials attend free Israeli agricultural training

From COGAT:

From May 21 to 23rd, twenty-four Palestinian officials, mostly agricultural engineers, attended a three-day seminar on agricultural technologies, plant protection, and fertilisers in Netanya. The lectures were delivered by Israeli experts, professors and officials from the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture.

“This workshop is intended to provide information about technologies that we use in Israel to protect and improve crops in open-fields and green houses”, said Ayman Assad, from the Agriculture Department at the Civil Administration.

The seminar is one of many Israeli-Palestinian workshops planned for 2012. “Through these workshops we are improving the relationship, cooperation and communication with the Palestinian Authority”, added Ayman Assad. The Civil Administration offers full board to the Palestinian guests, including travel and meal coverage.

Sitting by the hotel swimming pool during lunch break, Najud, a 23 year-old agricultural engineer from Jericho confides: “I’m happy to learn here, the lectures are very intense and I wish we had more time to visit!”

The Agriculture Department of the Civil Administration works with Palestinian farmers in the field to find out more about problems affecting their trade. Based on this, the Ministry of Agriculture organizes seminars, lectures and training in Israel to increase the quality and output of Palestinian crops, explained Shlomo Ekaïam from the Ministry.

“Palestinians and Israeli consumers eat fruit and vegetables coming from Israel and the West Bank, so we collectively strive for the best agricultural standards”, he added.

Muhammad Saïd Lahan, Director of the Flower and Vegetable Protection and Preservation Department at the Palestinian Authority knows Netanya well: “I came here many times, maybe 8 or 10 times. It is important for our team to come because 16 of us are young engineers who need experience and more field-training.”

On Wednesday, the Palestinian delegation was taken to Beit Shean for training on open-fields.

“We also organize seminars in Ramallah in our own Ministry or abroad where we are often invited”, added Mr. Lahan.

Agriwashing, again! Those Israelis have no shame!

"McDonald's Happy Meal toy insults Mohammed"

From Raymond Ibrahim at Gatestone Institute:

Saudi Arabians are angry at a McDonald's toy which they say mocks their prophet Muhammad. According to a report appearing today (5/27/12) on the Arabic news website, Kermalkom.com, the McDonald's fast food restaurant "abused the Prophet Muhammad by placing his name at the base of a toy that is being distributed as part of the Happy Meal, a toy which steps on the name 'Muhammad.'"

The toy consists of a blue superhero figurine (apparently a Power Ranger Samurai. It stands on one leg, and, when the lever is pressed, it pounds on the base with the other leg. According to the Saudis, the designs that appear all around the base, where the figurine stomps its foot, is really the name "Muhammad" written several times in circles.

The toy had been distributed a few days before Saudi children and their parents began to take note of the name. Soon thereafter, Saudi Muslims launched several campaigns against McDonald's in "response to the savage attacks on the noble Prophet," under banners like "Help your Prophet!" and "Together in support of the Prophet."

Saudis, "demanding the strongest possible punishment for the restaurant" and insisting that "they will not be silent until this is realized," further complained how such an obvious insult could pass the supervision of the management at McDonalds.

In response, "Saudi McDonald's" has withdrawn the toy from all its restaurants, "in order to safeguard against any accusations or misunderstandings."

Get ready to seethe: