Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

The window of opportunity for peace is closing, said the US Sec'y of State. In 1991. And 2003.

From JPost:

In his first address to an American Jewish audience as secretary of state on Monday, John Kerry made a passionate case for renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, calling on both sides to "summon the courage" to negotiate.

"We are running out of time," Kerry said. "We are running out of possibilities."

While reassuring the pro-Israel crowd that America would always support and defend the Jewish State, Kerry warned the American Jewish Committee that the status quo in the region was unsustainable.

"A stalemate today will not remain tomorrow," Kerry said. "In this conflict, the simple fact is tomorrow is not guaranteed to look like today."

"Let’s be clear: If we do not succeed now – and I know I’m raising those stakes – but if we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance. So we can’t let the disappointments of the past hold the future prisoner."

Of course, tomorrow's Arab leaders are also not guaranteed to fulfill the obligations of today's Arab leaders. But why worry about that? The goal is signing a paper, not peace!

Anyway, here is today's déjà vu:

"The reason for the trip, quite frankly, was because we don't know how long this window of opportunity might last," Mr. Baker told reporters on his plane before landing here at the outset of the trip for talks in Israel, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan,

"We don't think things should be permitted to simply drift," Mr. Baker said. "It's been over three weeks since we were in Israel and almost four since we were in Riyadh, and the President felt, and I felt, that it's time to try and push the envelope a little further if we can and see whether or not we can make some progress."

During Mr. Baker's peacemaking swing three weeks ago, he gently explored with Arab and Israeli leaders whether they might be willing to take some "confidence building" steps to reduce mutual suspicions and pave the way for direct negotiations at some kind of international meeting.

There is one big difference between Baker and Kerry, however. Baker didn't really believe the nonsense he was spouting about the urgency for a solution, but Kerry seems to believe it completely:

At his joint news conference with Mr. Bush in Houston, Mr. Baker seemed to inadvertently reveal his own deep ambivalence about the real prospects for peace. It came through in his tortured answer to a question about what justified his assessment that after the gulf war there was now a "window of opportunity" to settle the Arab-Israel issue.

Mr. Baker answered: "Well, the new factors are generated, of course, by what happened as a consequence of the gulf war. I'm not suggesting that there are any new factors. I'm not suggesting new factors -- there may be some -- that have occasioned this trip."

Pressed by reporters as to why he insists on pursuing such an incremental, step-by-step approach, Mr. Baker said: "Neither the United States nor anybody else can impose peace in the Middle East. And you are not going to get peace in the Middle East unless the parties themselves really want it, and at the most the United States can only serve as a catalyst."

For all of Baker's problems, he at least knew the difference between rhetoric and reality. Kerry does not seem to, and as a result he is digging himself into a credibility hole that he will inevitably topple into.

But he wasn't the most recent Secretary of State to warn that the "window of opportunity" was closing:

Colin L. Powell insisted tonight that this was the right moment to act.

"The president turned his attention to this issue because he sees that there are these new dynamics in the equation," Mr. Powell said on ABC tonight. "And everybody knows we can't stay where we are. The Palestinian economy has been destroyed. The Israeli economy is in difficulty. Israel doesn't want to keep its troops deployed forever in the cities and towns. So I think all the pieces have come together, and we are here at Sharm el Sheik to take advantage of the new elements in the equation and this window of opportunity that has opened."

The funny thing is that things are better now for both the Israelis and Palestinian Arabs than they were ten years ago. All without the "peace process" moving forward an inch.

Palestinian Arab parents - and teachers - beat their kids. Men beat and rape their wives. No one reports it.

Buried in the middle of an April report "Palestinian Children –Issues and Statistics" by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, we see:

Children Exposed to Violence in Educational Institutions

More than one fifth of students aged 12-17 years were exposed to psychological violence at school during the 12 months that preceded July 2011: 21.6% in the West Bank compared to 22.7% in the Gaza Strip. The results indicated that psychological violence was the most common abuse against students by their colleagues or teachers: 25.0% by friends and 27.6% by teachers. Physical violence by teachers was reported by 21.4% compared to 14.2% who reported fellow students.

Parents First to Practice Violence Against Children

In 2011, 51.0% of children aged 12-17 years were exposed to violence inside the household by an individual member of the household: 45.8% in the West Bank compared to 59.4% in the Gaza Strip. Of these children, 69.0% were exposed to psychological violence and 34.4% to physical violence by their parents compared to 66.4% exposed to psychological violence and 34.5% to physical violence by their mothers.

Where was the outcry?

In fact, these numbers are based on a 2011 report by the same source, that also said that

7.3% of the elderly 65 years and over were exposed to one form of violence by one individual of the household in the past 12 months, 8.5% in the West Bank compared to 4.5% in Gaza strip the percentage among males was 6.4% compared to 7.9% females.

Based on the forms of violence that were measured in the survey questionnaire, it became clear that health negligence was the most form of violence that the elderly are exposed to, 17.1%; 18.3% among females compared to 15.5% among males. 11.4% of these individuals were exposed to a psychological violence, 13.2% females compared to 9.3% males.

And:

37.0% of women who ever been married were exposed to one form of violence by their husbands in the past 12 months; 29.9% in the West Bank compared to 51.0% in Gaza Strip. The rate of those who were exposed to psychological violence “at least for one time” among those women out of violated women was 58.6%. 55.1% were exposed to economical violence, 54.8% were exposed to social violence, 23.5% were exposed to physical violence and 11.8% were exposed to sexual violence.

The highest percentage of violence that had been directed against wives by husbands was in Jericho & Al-Aghwar in the West Bank; 47.3% and the lowest percentage was in Ramallah & Al Bireh governorate 14.2% while in Gaza Strip, this percentage reached its highest in Gaza governorate; 58.1% while the lowest percentage was in Rafah governorate; 23.1%.

In contrast, the percentage of women in refugee camps whom had been subjected to violence by their husbands were the highest percentage compared to those women in urban and rural areas; 41.8%, 38.2% and 29.3% respectively.

So how many of the hundreds of NGOs that fill Gaza and the West Bank are concerned with domestic and school violence?

How many of the violent acts in schools occurred in UNRWA schools?

And if violence occurs most often in "refugee" camps that are in the boundaries of British Mandate Palestine - then why on earth haven't these camps been demolished? Why are people who live in their own land being treated as refugees in perpetuity - especially when these camps are breeding grounds for violence?

But it would be unfair to say the Western media ignores Palestinian Arab domestic violence completely. When they can find a way to blame Israel for it, it becomes a very popular topic.

(h/t Irene)

Egypt closes 5 NGOs, sentences 43 NGO workers to prison, including 19 Americans

From Al Ahram:

A Cairo criminal court has sentenced 43 people to between one and five years in prison for working for unregistered NGOs in Egypt.

Twenty-seven defendants, all of whom were tried in absentia, received five-year jail sentences. Eleven received one-year suspended sentences, and five received two-year sentences.

One of the defendants to receive a two-year sentence was Dar Al-Hilal publishing company CEO Yehia Ghanem, who was a consultant for the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ), one of the NGOs involved in the trial. He was also the managing editor of Al-Ahram International.

The court also ordered the closure of five foreign NGOs operating in Egypt and for their funds to be confiscated. These are the US-based Freedom House, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ), and Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS).

Forty-three staffers from NGOs, including 19 Americans, were referred to trial in December 2011 on charges of illegally obtaining foreign funds and failing to register their operations with the Egyptian government. The case sparked a crisis in relations between Cairo and Washington and threatened $1.3 billion in annual US military aid.

These are not fly-by-night NGOs, but some of the most respected human rights organizations around.

Remember - the current Egyptian government is moderate compared to the other Islamists in Egypt.

Morsi said dancing violates sharia law in 2005

From Al Arabiya:

A twirl, a two-step, a shimmy and a whirl. None are likely to win points with Egypt’s Mohammed Mursi.

The Egyptian president revealed an early dislike of dance even before he took office, a recently resurfaced video has revealed.

In an interview with Mursi, filmed eight years ago, the then MP said that dance “violates Shariah (Islamic) law.”

Mursi also belittled an Egyptian dance school, saying: “What is this school? What is its role? What are its goals?”

“This school, with the known concept of dancing, violates the constitution's article II,” Mursi told Egyptian presenter Wael Abrashi on Dream TV 8 years ago.

Mursi can also be heard saying that dancing has a “negative influence on the viewer,” adding that the school “violates” Sharia law as well as the Egyptian constitution.

Mursi’s old interview has resurfaced almost a week after an Islamist lawmaker threatened to close a ballet school in the country.

The funny part is that YouTube is filled with parody videos of Morsi dancing:

The Sun wins this headline contest

By now you are probably aware of the story of some IDF women putting their photos on Facebook wearing fairly little.

The story has naturally been popular, but I think The Sun's photo-headline wins:

A little Jew-hatred from the "Palestine Scholars' Association"

Hamas' English-language Qassam website tells us:

Muslim Scholars Association called on the Arab and Islamic nation to place names of those who call for normalization with Israel in the wanted list on charges of treason.

The Association said in a statement that the normalization is a direct recognition of the Israeli state, and leads to the loss of the holy sites and the violation of sanctities.

It pointed that some officials are seeking to prepare a delegation that will participate in a conference to be held in Turkey and aims to establish normalizing relations with the Israeli rabbis, and that the second part of the conference will take place in the 1948-occupied territories under Israel's auspices.

The scholars asserted that: "The nation has unanimously agreed that normalization with the occupation and visiting the holy city under the occupation are taboo."

No big deal, right? Arabs from Morocco to Bahrain are against "normalization."

Except that the Arabic version of the Palestine Scholars' Association press release includes some Jew-hatred as well that didn't survive the translation process:

We say: There is no Muslim on earth who is pleased with establishing relations with the killers of the earlier prophets; it was Jews who killed Zacharia and who tried to kill Jesus son of Mary and Muhammad bin Abdullah (prayers of Allah and peace be upon them all,) are not these the same rabbis who issue fatwas for the army to kill the young and old, women and children?

Ah, so speaking to Israelis isn't the issue - it is speaking to Jews that get them all hot and bothered.

Glad they cleared that up.

Monday Links Part 2

From Ian:

World Council of Churches attacks Israel to no gain

The book is also pretty revealing. In her assessment of the WCC’s dialogue with Muslim leaders, Sperber gives the game away:
“The solution of the Palestinian problem in the sense of the West’s abandoning its pro-Israeli attitude became the criterion to judge the credibility of the Christian/Muslim dialogue, and indeed, of inter-religious dialogue in general. This attitude was not only adopted by Muslims but also by Arab Christians.”
In other words, if the WCC was going to have good relations with Muslim leaders, it needed to attack Israel’s supporters in the West.

The Al-Dura Affair and Its Implications for Morality and Ethics in France

It is, of course, regrettable that the report only appeared thirteen years after the affair, which caused grave damage to Israel’s image, but there is no early or late when it comes to the truth. We owe profound gratitude and esteem to all those who tirelessly pursued justice in this affair, with the whole French establishment supporting the Palestinian version. These activists contributed time, energy, and professional experience to the struggle for the supreme value of bringing the truth to light.

When your neighbor unfurls a Nazi flag

Memo to Middle East brokers – from the EU to Secretary of State Kerry: Diplomats may draft treaties but only people can make peace. Until Palestinians liberate themselves from their infatuation with the swastika and the dream of a Judenrein Palestine, there will be no hope for this generation of Palestinians and Israelis to live side-byside in peace and security.

British Ambassador: Parliament becoming More Anti-Israel

British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, said Sunday that Israel and Britain are engaged in “unprecedented” cooperation to make sure Iran does not acquire nuclear arms. He also warned, however, that Britain's parliament is becoming increasingly anti-Israel as time goes by.

Tutu Constantly Tooting His Tuneless Flute

It occurs to me that Desmond Tutu’s obsession with and hate of Israel, always couched in politically correct human rights jargon and clichés, might have its roots, amongst other things, in an essential lack of intellectual and cogitative ability having absorbed Replacement Theology completely without a single enquiring or discerning thought, thus finding a self-justification for his anti-Semitism and then having it reinforced when his monstrous and equally fragile ego was severely dented in 2008, when he was appointed by that well-known Israel loving body, the United Nations, as head of a “fact-finding” mission to Gaza. Israel refused to grant him the necessary travel clearance. Israeli officials wisely and correctly expressed concern that the report would be biased against Israel.

Expert: Jewish Students Are on the Anti-Semitic Battlefront

The mission, according to Dr. Small, “has to be two-fold.” The first one is to deal with what is happening within the corridors of the university.
“I think it’s very important that leaders of the university and leaders of the Jewish community become aware of the issues and confront them. There should be no space for bigotry on campus,” he said.

'Anti-Semitic NGOs are Funded by Official Authorities'

Anti-Semitic NGOs, which receive funding from official authorities such as the United States and the European Union, use classic Christian blood libels in their claims against Israel, said Professor Gerald Steinberg, head of NGO Monitor.
Steinberg spoke to Arutz Sheva at the 4th conference of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism which was held in Jerusalem.

Irish Filmmaker: Jews are Own Worst Enemies

A featured speaker at a pro-Israel event in Sweden Sunday was a young Irish filmmaker who offered some fascinating insights about Israel and the Jewish people, following his own experiences in creating a documentary titled “40 Shades of Gray.”
Nicky Larkin told the audience that in screening his film in different parts of the world, he was “completely devastated” when some of the most anti-Israeli reactions he received came from Jews.

May Sees Explosion in ‘Carmel Fire Inspired’ Arson Terror Attacks – Jerusalem Fire Dept

Arson attacks have occurred with alarming frequency over the past month around Jerusalem, and police and fire department officials believe the acts are politically motivated.
Two of the most popular flash points are Hashalom Forest in southeast Jerusalem and the Ofrit army base on the Mount of Olives, near the Arab village of Issawiya, Israel police spokesperson Mickey Rosenfeld told The Algemeiner.

Police probing suspect for giving Toulouse killer guns

French authorities put a man under formal investigation Saturday, saying they suspected the 31-year-old of supporting Mohammed Merah, who gunned down a rabbi and three children outside a Jewish school in Toulouse last year.
The man is thought to have helped Merah plan the shooting spree, providing him with weapons and a bulletproof vest, a judicial source said, according to a Reuters.

Daniel Pipes: Islamism's Decade of Spreading Polio

The polio disease was on the verge of eradication when Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, president of the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria and a physician, suggested at about this time in 2003 that the vaccination program in his country was part of a Western conspiracy to render Muslim children infertile. His call for an end to the polio immunization campaign touched a nerve and spread to other Muslim religious leaders in Nigeria, causing the vaccination process to slow down and incidences of the disease to pick up.

Minimally Invasive Treatment May Soon Be Possible For People With Mitral Regurgitation Disorder

Israeli company MitrAssist is working on an implant which would be placed on top of the native valve and then anchored securely to work in unison with the body’s own valve. “Our ‘valve-in-valve’ approach is designed to prevent leakage and restore normal blood flow,” MitrAssist’s CEO, Gil Naor tells NoCamels. “Our valve works with the body rather than against it.”

Richard Millett Extremists fail to disrupt Closer To Israel 65 in London’s Trafalgar Square.

A group of 30 extremists failed to dampen spirits as some 3,000 Jewish and non-Jewish pro-Israel supporters came out to show their support and appreciation for the Jewish state at the Closer to Israel 65 event in London’s Trafalgar Square today. Even the sun finally shone!

In New York: Am Yisrael Chai

Video: thousands took part in the annual Israel Day Parade in the heart of New York.

3-year-old Israeli’s kidney saves Palestinian boy

Health minister praises Noam Naor’s ‘noble, inspirational’ family
When three-year-old Noam Naor fell out the window and was pronounced clinically dead 10 days ago, his parents decided to donate his organs. One kidney was given to another Israeli child. The other saved the life of a 10-year-old Palestinian.
The operation, carried out Sunday at the Schneider children’s ward at Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital, was deemed successful.

Transplant makes blood brothers of Arab and Jewish families

An extraordinary story that defies borders, religions and race recently unfolded at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa recently: Two patients who desperately needed kidney transplants, one Jewish and one Arab, received donations that saved their lives — with the Arab patient’s wife donating a kidney to the Jewish patient, and the Jewish patient’s son donating his kidney to the Arab patient.

Iran's latest imaginary Mossad plot

From Al Arabiya:

Iran has dismantled an alleged "terror network" backed by Israel's Mossad intelligence services that had a headquarters in Britain, the intelligence ministry said on Sunday.

Officials claimed that the network had planned to disrupt the upcoming presidential election in the Islamic republic, the state broadcaster said, according to AFP news agency.

"The intelligence ministry has identified and arrested the members of this terror network, and confiscated their weapons," IRIB said on its website, quoting a statement by the ministry.

The statement said the group had links to Israel's spy agency, the Mossad, through a unnamed "reactionary" Arab country in the region, but did not mention their nationality.

The statement said the arrested group was made up of 12 members, but did not say when it had been busted.

On June 14, Iran is to hold its first presidential election since massive street protests, stifled by a brutal state crackdown, marred the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.

The statement on Sunday said the group had been instructed "to conduct terrorist acts ahead of, and in particular, on election day" as well as "creating ethnic and religious divisions" in restive areas of Iran.

The Mossad trying to disrupt Iranian elections using a HQ in Britain and through an Arab country?

Narcotics might be illegal in Iran, but that doesn't seem to have reduced their paranoid fantasies.

World Council of Churches issues insane anti-Israel document

I just read a nice article by Dexter Van Zile about the World Council of Churches' statement at the end of their recent conference in Lebanon on the topic of "Christian Presence and Witness in the Middle East."

Unfortunately, the organization is particularly ill-equipped to address the problem of Islamic violence against Christians. It is, however, quite able to attack Israel and its supporters.

Over the course of its history, the WCC – an umbrella organization of 350 Protestant and Orthodox churches – has worked assiduously to demonize the Jewish state while remaining silent about the sins of its adversaries. It has also made bowing and scraping in the face of Islamic violence a central plank of modern-day ecumenism. Speaking up forcefully on behalf of the victims of such violence is simply beyond the ken of the WCC. The organization is simply incapable of speaking the truth about this problem.

The actual document that was issued is even worse than how Van Zile describes it.

Besides almost completely ignoring the biggest threat to Christianity in the Middle East - which is, simply, Islamic extremism - the WCC is singularly obsessed with Israel.

Palestine continues to be the central issue in the region. Resolving the conflict between Israel and Palestine in accordance with the UN resolutions and international law, will greatly help in resolving the other conflicts in the region. The persistence, after sixty-five years, of continuing dispossession of Palestinian people—Christian and Muslim alike—from their land by Israeli occupation, continuing settlement of land inside the 1967 borders by a nation empowered by overwhelming military strength and external alliances and influence, is central to the turmoil in the region and exacerbated by duplicity of policies of the western powers, especially the United States. Christians have been called to condemn and act against this continuing injustice, affirming the voice and demands of Palestinian Christians, including as heard in the Kairos Palestine document.

To assert, in 2013, from within Lebanon(!), that the central issue in the Middle East is still the Israeli-Arab conflict is to be willfully blind. Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Yemen - all the tectonic changes happening in the region - have nothing to do with Israel. Not only that, but these same upheavals are the ones that threaten Christians the most.

This is besides the lazy reference to "land inside 1967 borders" as if those borders ever existed and as if there was a "Palestine" on the West Bank before 1967. And besides the dig at the US, whose generally supportive stance of Jewish nationhood is considered "duplicitous." And besides the subtle reference to purported Jewish power ("external alliances and influence.")

Jerusalem today is an occupied city with a government which has adopted discriminatory policies against Christians and Muslims alike. ... Jerusalem must be an open, accessible, inclusive and shared city for two peoples and three religions, with careful protection of their holy places.

I'm sorry, but where exactly is the WCC condemnations of Jordanian rule over the holy places that completely excluded Jews for the "status quo" years of before 1967? I don't think there were any, certainly nothing in the titles of their archives that indicate that they gave a damn about the expulsion of Jews from their holy places in 1948.

This besides the small, possibly relevant fact that Israel does not discriminate against Christians!

Christians who promote “Christian Zionism” distort the interpretation of the Word of God and the historic connection of Palestinians—Christians and Muslims—to the Holy Land, enable the manipulation of public opinion by Zionist lobbies, and damage intra-Christian relations.

Yes, they spend more time talking about this topic - which has little to do with Christians in the Middle East - than they do on Muslim attacks on Christians.

Christians must reject Islamophobia, which mischaracterizes Islam as an undifferentiated whole, and undermines decades of cultivation of co-operation with Muslims, and must refuse the temptation to amalgamation, generalization and sensationalization of our Muslim brothers and sisters.

But not a single word about Muslim and Christian antisemitism that is rampant in the Arab world.

The WCC is obsessed with the Jewish state, beyond all logic and facts. It is essentially willing to adopt a fully Islamic narrative and throw the Jews under the bus.

The Economist calls EoZ readers a "pro-settler group" in condescending response

CAMERA followed up on The Economist's article that stated, falsely, that "so far this year, Israel's army has evicted almost 400 Palestinians from the West Bank and dismantled over 200 homes, the fastest rate for two years, according to the UN." As I noted at the time, this - together with the tweet The Economist made of that sentence - was wrong, and should be corrected. Ialso noted that The Economist made apparently no effort to ask any Israeli officials their side of the story - the article was ridiculously biased.

The Economist sent emails to EoZ readers complaining about it by defending the article, but they did change the online version (without admitting a correction) because they seemed to realize that it could be "misinterpreted" to mean precisely what it says.

They never corrected the tweet, nor did they correct their online edition. Moreover, as I proved, the source for the statistics was not the UN but a large group of anti-Israel NGOs who were published on the UN website.

Now, when people continued to demand a full correction, The Economist's editors answer derisively:

I am sorry to disappoint you. We will be making no "correction" in our printed edition because there was nothing in our article that was factually wrong which we needed to correct. We have made a clarification online to remove the slightest ambiguity in the sentence to which you refer concerning evictions.

As we explained (below) in our comprehensive rebuttal of the various charges and unwarranted slurs in the letters we received that were orchestrated by a pro-settler group discomfited by our meticulously researched article, a reader would misunderstand that sentence only if it were taken out of context or wilfully misinterpreted.

Thus there will be no "correction" in our printed edition.

This correspondence is now closed.

With best wishes

John Micklethwait
Editor-in-Chief
The Economist

and

Xan Smiley
Middle East & Africa editor
The Economist

So my readers are now a "pro-settler group!" We really need a name. "Elderists"? "The Elderati?" "Zekenim"? "Ziyonists"?

The British Editors' Code of Practice requires that media are "not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information," and if they do it "must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published."

As CAMERA notes:

What emerges from this response is not only the contempt the editors hold for their readers, but their clear violation of the British Editors' Code of Practice. Far from fulfilling their duty "to maintain highest professional standards," The Economist's editors have stooped to the lowest standards.

Monday Links Part 1

From Ian:

Professor Robbie Sabel:Manipulating International Law as Part of Anti-Israeli “Lawfare”

Israel has a strong record of complying with international law and its judicial system ensures that it will continue to do so. The essence of any legal system, however, is that law applies equally to all. This principle is being undermined by the attempts of Israel’s foes and detractors to manipulate international law as part of their lawfare against Israel. Devising tailor-made rules of international law for application only where Israel is concerned undermines international law and can have an insidious and corrosive effect on the rule of law in general.

CAMERA: Economist Editors Flout Their "Editors' Code of Practice"

What emerges from this response is not only the contempt the editors hold for their readers, but their clear violation the British Editors' Code of Practice. Far from fulfilling their duty "to maintain highest professional standards," The Economist's editors have stooped to the lowest standards.

PMW: Song misrepresents Israeli cities as "Palestine" at Fatah event

Boy sings song defining Be'er Sheva as part of "Palestine," on PA TV (VIDEO)

Wikipedians most likely to war over ‘Israel,’ ‘God’

‘Israel” and “God,” along with “Adolf Hitler” and “Holocaust,” are among the most contested and controversial topics on Wikipedia, a new study has found.
A chapter in a book set for release in 2014, “The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis,” collates data on the number of edits each articles received on the user-written online encyclopedia across a variety of languages, according to a report in Wired.

Barry Rubin: Palestinian Authority Finds Perfect Prime Minister

Hamdullah is sort of the perfect compromise. He is a nobody, a technocrat, lacking all political experience so he won’t try to challenge the party bosses and cannot do so. Hamdullah will do what he is told.
But also Hamdullah, dean at al-Najah University, is a Fatah party member (plus 1), is British-educated (plus 2), and an English professor (plus 3). In other words, he knows how to deal with the West and will hopefully keep the money rolling in but cannot do anything and won’t try.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Why Abbas Chose This Prime Minister

As long as Fayyad was prime minister, it was almost impossible for Abbas and Fatah to lay their hands on the hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid. Unlike Fayyad, Hamdallah will serve as the obedient and faithful servant of Abbas, as well as the Fatah and PLO leadership. On the political arena, the appointment will have no impact whatsoever.

Why Iranian Elections Won’t Matter this Time (Thanks to Obama)

The only silver lining is that there will be no reformist candidate to serve as a fig leaf for Iranian nukes. Scholars may debate whether Mir Mousavi could have ultimately effected any serious change on the Iranian nuclear issue, but no candidate running this time will leave an already timid West confused about Iran’s nuclear intentions.

Irwin Cotler: Why I’m ‘Adopting’ an Iranian Prisoner

The week coincides with the fifth anniversary of the imprisonment of the Baha’i leadership in Iran, known as the Yaran; the 25th anniversary of the 1988 massacre of thousands of Iranian political dissidents; and a recent report of 2,600 political prisoners in Iran, including women, ethnic and religious leaders, journalists, bloggers, students, artists, and trade union leaders — simply put, the leadership of Iranian civil society. Indeed, the regime has only been ramping up its crackdown on dissent in advance of presidential elections next month, and many of those detained are under threat of execution.

The Dhimma Returns to Syria

In his report Janssen tells of his experience of a prayer walk in Amman, held on May 21 2013 for the two abducted Syrian clergy, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Paul Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim. These Archbishops have been captured by Syrian rebels.
After the prayer walk Janssen had the opportunity to meet with Syrian Christian refugees, who told him how they came to flee their homes and villages. Their village was occupied by rebel forces, who proceeded to announce that they were now under an Islamic emirate, and were subject to sharia law.

Al-Qaeda Sets Up 'Complaints Department' in Syria

Al-Qaeda has set up a complaints department after taking control of parts of the civilian administration in northern Syria, The Telegraph reported on Monday.
The group’s Arabian Peninsula offshoot posted a public notice in the the north-eastern Syrian city of Raqqa this week stating that it was open to receiving public complaints.

Barry Rubin: Massive Demonstrations Shake Turkey

Erdogan is very arrogant, has a strong base of support, and enjoys the full support of the Obama Administration. The Turkish economy is generally considered to be strong. Erdogan will have to decide whether to slow down the Islamization process—he has been clever at being patient—or perhaps will, on the contrary, speed it up claiming his regime is facing sabotage.

Analysis: Arab uprising spirit comes to Turkey

Have the Arab uprisings made their way to Turkey? It seems the Turkish people took a page out of the Arab peoples’ playbook, with large numbers demonstrating in the streets in order to bring about political change. The protesters seem to be made up of more secular Turks affiliated with the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924.

War-torn Syria issues travel warning for Turkey

‘Deteriorating security situation’ prompts Damascus to caution against visiting country where 370,000 Syrian refugees have found refuge

Egypt Seizes Explosives Meant for Sinai Smugglers

Egyptian authorities seized a ton of explosives destined for smugglers in the Sinai on Saturday, local police told the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency.
The explosives were earmarked for the destruction of rocky mountains to facilitate building smuggling tunnels into Gaza, police said.

Red Sea ‘porn stars’ released

Ten Georgian nationals who were arrested in Egypt on suspicion that they were conducting a porn shoot near a Red Sea resort town have been released, with authorities saying the incident was due to a misunderstanding.

Accused ex-Hezbollah member referred to as “god of death”

In the defense's version, Wissam Allouche was a former linguist for the U.S. Army who ran a gas station in Northeast San Antonio as he became an American citizen.
But to counterterrorism officials, Allouche, 44, belonged to Hezbollah, falsely claimed to be a U.S. special forces officer during visits to Fort Sam Houston, and even tried to hook up with women at the post, possibly to gain access to sensitive information.

Boston Bombings: Al Qaeda Chief In New Warning

Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen has said the Boston blasts revealed America's fragile security and showed making bombs was within "everyone's reach".
Qassim al Rimi, the military chief of the group, urged Muslims in America to "carry on with this way" and defend their religion in an audio message posted online.

If the rules can't be used to hurt Israel, just change the rules (Kimberley Process)

What is The Kimberley Process?

The Kimberley Process started when Southern African diamond-producing states met in Kimberley, South Africa, in May 2000, to discuss ways to stop the trade in ‘conflict diamonds' and ensure that diamond purchases were not financing violence by rebel movements and their allies seeking to undermine legitimate governments.

In December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution supporting the creation of an international certification scheme for rough diamonds. By November 2002, negotiations between governments, the international diamond industry and civil society organisations resulted in the creation of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) . The KPCS document sets out the requirements for controlling rough diamond production and trade. The KPCS entered into force in 2003, when participating countries started to implement its rules.
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The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) imposes extensive requirements on its members to enable them to certify shipments of rough diamonds as ‘conflict-free' and prevent conflict diamonds from entering the legitimate trade.... Participants can only legally trade with other participants who have also met the minimum requirements of the scheme, and international shipments of rough diamonds must be accompanied by a KP certificate guaranteeing that they are conflict-free.

The Kimberley Process is chaired, on a rotating basis, by participating countries. So far, South Africa, Canada, Russia, Botswana, the European Union, India, Namibia, Israel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the United States of America have chaired the KP, and South Africa is the Chair in 2013.

The KP has had some problems but it has gone a long way to ensure that the source of each rough diamond can be traced back to its origin to ensure that it wasn't used to fund terror groups.

Now, anti-Israel groups in South Africa are attempting to completely redefine the KP to destroy Israel's diamond polishing and cutting business.

Here is how the BDSM bizarrely tries to justify this initiative:

According to the UN based Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), only “rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments” can be classed as conflict or blood diamonds.

The KPCS classifies all other diamonds as “conflict free” regardless of what human rights violations they may be funding. Israel is the world’s leading exporter of diamonds, where approximately 50% of all gem-quality diamonds in dollar terms are processed.

Israeli companies import rough diamonds from around the world, and then process them for cutting and polishing, adding significantly to their value. The diamonds are then exported globally via distribution hubs in Antwerp, London, Hong Kong, New York and Mumbai.

Israel is the world’s leading diamond exporter, with exports valued at nearly $20 billion in 2008, accounting for over 30% of Israel’s exports.

These de facto blood diamonds are sold worldwide as conflict free diamonds to unsuspecting consumers who are unaware that their purchase is funding gross human rights violations in Palestine.

Israel helps fund the atrocities and human rights abuses that Kimberly Process is supposed to prevent being funded by revenue from diamonds.

Of course, Israel is not a producer of rough diamonds, so their initiative would completely change the very foundation of the KP and effectively destroy any good it has done. If their initiative would succeed, many more lives would be lost in Africa.

But their hate for Israel is so all-consuming that to them, destroying the Jewish state justifies any number of human rights abuses.

(From their tweets, it is also apparent that South Africa wants a piece of the diamond cutting and polishing trade, so hurting Israel would have presumed economic benefits for SA. The free market doesn't work for inferior work, so a pretense to care about human rights is the next best thing.)

Beyond that, this initiative reveals how sick the minds of anti-Israel activists are. If existing rules (or crazed misinterpretations of existing rules) do not do enough to marginalize Israel for their tastes, then they must change the rules.

But only for Israel!

The logic, that somehow Israel's diamond industry funds the IDF and therefore must be destroyed, would also mean that any service or product from any country that does anything that can be construed as unpalatable must be stopped.

Let's pretend for a moment that someone would start a campaign to stop Gaza exports of strawberries to Europe, because taxes paid for the product helps fund Hamas human rights violations (which they undoubtedly do.)

These same BDSMers would be the first to say that this is "collective punishment" against all Gazans.

However, there is no such thing as "collective punishment" for Israelis. They all deserve punishment, when you are an Israel-hater. The rules for Israel are unique and cannot apply to any other country or entity.

That's how twisted the haters of Israel are.

Israel-hatred is truly a psychosis. And when it is this single-minded, this divorced from reality, it resembles nothing so much as traditional antisemitism.

(h/t Steven Z)