Saudi foreign minister declares Syria "occupied territory"

From Al Arabiya:

Syria can only be considered as an “occupied land,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Tuesday during a press meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Al-Faisal described the intervention of Iran and Hezbollah in Syria as dangerous, saying the opposition forces must be offered military help to defend themselves.

Saudi Arabia "cannot be silent" about Iranian intervention, al-Faisal added and called for a resolution to ban arms flows to the Syrian government.

Don't you get the impression that Faisal is just looking for the biggest insult he can use against Iran, and (short of labeling them "Zionist") the phrase "occupied territory" fits the bill?

Keep in mind that many of Syria's rebels come from outside Syria as well, so we might see this argument being used by the Syrians soon!

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Benny Morris schools author of another anti-Zionist book

At Jewish Review of Books, Benny Morris takes apart another anti-Israel screed masquerading  as a serious book.

In this case, the target is "Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country—and Why They Can’t Make Peace"
by Patrick Tyler.

The review is long but here are some excerpts:

Tyler’s book is a gossipy overlong pseudo-history of Israel, which is noteworthy mainly for what it indicates about the standing of Israel among the chattering classes. For Patrick Tyler is the former chief correspondent of The New York Times and the former Middle East bureau chief of The Washington Post, and his book comes festooned with blurbs from former Times executive editor Howell Raines, CNN’s national security analyst Peter L. Bergen, and others lauding its scholarship as “meticulous” and describing it as “the definitive historical and analytical account” of the role of the military in Israel. Incidentally, Tyler does not know Hebrew or Arabic, and the only archive he appears to have visited is the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in his home state of Texas.

In his Prologue, Tyler asserts that “militarism” is the ruling spirit in Israeli society:

Once in the military system, Israelis never fully exit. They carry the military identity for life . . . through lifelong expectations of loyalty and secrecy. Many Israeli officers carry their “top secret” clearances after retirement, reporting back to superiors or intelligence officers items of interest gleaned from their involvement in business, finance, and interactions with foreigners.

On the next page, he writes, “the specter of the security state remains a dominant aspect of life,” and a little later, “The military is the country to a great extent.” This is all nonsense. Had Tyler been writing about Israel during the late 1940s and 1950s, perhaps he would have had a point. Perhaps. But the Israel of the past several decades, Israel today, is another animal altogether. For most Israelis, individual achievement and interests trump the old collectivist Zionist ethic. Indeed, fewer and fewer Israelis actually serve in the army or do reserve duty (as the few who carry the burden are constantly complaining). It is true that among eleventh and twelfth graders, there is still great competitiveness to get a slot, once inducted, in one of the IDF’s elite units or in pilot training, but this has more to do with adolescent competition and machismo than militaristic ideology. Indeed, a good argument can be made for depicting the Israeli army as one of the world’s least “military.” Since its inception in 1948, the IDF has abjured saluting (the practice exists only in formal parades), and the men, after completing basic training, generally address their non-coms and officers on a first-name basis. The dress code in the army ranges from informal to sloppy and always has (except in the Armored Corps), and breaches of discipline tend to be punished lightly. While females are still kept out of combat units, women non-coms and officers are playing a major role in training combat troops (in armor and artillery, for example), and there are growing numbers of women pilots and navigators, also flying combat aircraft. All of this points to a liberal rather than “militarist” military.

As with poker players, books have tells. At one point in Fortress Israel Tyler writes that Israel’s paratroops wear black berets. Had he interviewed any Israeli, even a child (even an Israeli Arab child), he would have known that, as in Britain and France, paratroopers wear red berets. Sadly, Tyler knows nothing about the nuts and bolts of Israel or its military.

Israel is, in sober fact, a small, flawed, and embattled democracy, with a strong and unusually egalitarian military that has produced an extraordinary stream of writers, academics, and artists, supported by world-class academic and artistic institutions. In short, it is more Athenian than Spartan.

Tyler is as weak on the history of Israel as he is on its sociology, though he is chock-full of opinions and judgments, all of them anti-Zionist. ...

One other point Tyler makes about the [Six Day] war’s aftermath is worth quoting because it is so blatantly untrue: “It seemed that with few exceptions, everyone in Israel had embraced a creed that envisioned a Greater Israel, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. There were differences [only] about how to achieve it.” It is true that a semi-messianic euphoria took hold, but post-1967 Israel was nonetheless a deeply divided society and remains so down to the present. Many opposed, or were uncomfortable with, retention of the Palestinian-populated territories. Tyler forgets to tell his readers that Ben-Gurion, whom he repeatedly brands an arch-expansionist and warmonger, immediately advised Eshkol to withdraw from the whole of the West Bank except East Jerusalem, nor does he mention that Labor Party minister Yigal Allon quickly formulated a plan which called for withdrawal from the bulk of the West Bank in exchange for peace with Jordan. The “Allon Plan” was never formally adopted as the Labor Party’s platform or Israeli government policy, but it guided Labor’s policies for a decade. (Settlements were not established in the areas earmarked for transfer to Arab sovereignty.) In the immediate post-1967 years, Israel’s leaders, in secret meetings, repeatedly proposed the plan to King Hussein as a basis for a bilateral peace settlement to no avail.

...The War of Attrition came to an end after the Soviets sent in thousands of their own personnel to man anti-aircraft missile batteries and fighter squadrons to counter the IAF. In one incident, Israeli Phantoms shot down five Soviet-piloted MiG-21s. At this point, both sides called it quits. The Egyptians were now thoroughly exhausted, and the Israelis feared an open-ended clash with the Russians. Tyler, as usual, has the story all wrong. He tells us that Soviet pilots “shot down half a dozen Israeli Phantoms.” This never happened.

...The subtitle of Tyler’s book carries a clear message: Bloodthirsty Spartan generals “run” Israel and that is why it has not achieved peace with its neighbors. The actual history of the various post-1967 Israeli-Arab peace processes gives the lie to this argument. IDF generals and ex-generals have actually loomed large in these peace processes, both those which succeeded and those which didn’t.

Israel so far has signed two peace treaties with Arab states, with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994, both of which are still in force (though how they will fare in the coming years, with fiercely anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic Islamists on the ascent in Arab politics, is anyone’s guess). Negotiations with Egypt were led by Menachem Begin, a civilian who had headed the pre-state right-wing Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL). But the two men who pressed and persuaded him to make the requisite concessions, including handing over to Egypt the whole of Sinai, were his foreign minister Moshe Dayan and his defense minister Ezer Weizman, both of whom had spent most of their lifetimes in the IDF. Dayan was a former chief of general staff, and Weizman was a past commander of the Israel Air Force. The peace treaty with Jordan, in which Israel ceded several hundred square kilometers of territory in the south, was negotiated and signed by Yitzhak Rabin, also a former IDF chief of general staff.

...The basic problem with Fortress Israel is that Tyler dismisses, or is simply unaware of, the pan-Arab desire to rid the Middle East of the Jewish state and its periodic efforts to do so. According to Tyler, Israel alone is to blame for the wars, for the absence of peace, for the hopelessness. Thus, he fails completely to deal with the 1948 War, about which all acknowledge that the Arabs—first the Palestinians and then the neighboring Arab states—were the aggressors; thus, he fails to come to grips with the very real Arab threats to Israel in 1956 and 1967 and, indeed, ever since. He pooh-poohs Saddam Hussein’s effort to achieve nuclear weaponry in the early 1980s and writes off Israel’s destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor outside Baghdad in 1981 as merely “a new phase of [Israeli] militarism.”

Indeed, Tyler kicks off the book with a description of how, in 2011-2012, Israeli agents “murdered” two top Iranian nuclear scientists on the streets of Tehran. “The astonishing thing,” Tyler writes, “was that Iran might not have been engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons development at all.” Rather, Israel’s “highly provocative” killing of the scientists pushed Iran into pursuing, or resuming the pursuit of, nuclear weaponry. All of this flies in the face of what almost all the world’s intelligence agencies believe, which is that Iran aims to build nuclear weapons and has been trying to do so for more than two decades.

...Tyler’s purpose in writing this book was not to offer his readers an honest history, it was to blacken Israel’s image. Fortress Israel is just the latest in a spate of venomous perversions of the record that have appeared in the past few years in the United States and Britain, all clearly designed to subvert Israel’s standing in the world. Deliberately or not, such books and articles are paving the way for a future abandonment of the Jewish state.

(h/t Mel)

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Khaybar update: Press Release issued, petitions being delivered today, Arab media notices

I created this press release today:



You can still sign the petition, because all comments get emailed to HRW and Amnesty. There are over 1100 signatures and 250 comments, including from places like Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco!

The Call to Action and supporting materials can be seen in this document:

Egyptian website Rassd reported on the Zionist Organization of America's condemnation of the series and their call for President Obama to pressure Egypt's president to have it stopped.

(Special thanks to Dian for delivering the petitions and working so hard on this material. All during her vacation in New York!)

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6/25 Links Part 1: Palestinians Say "No Jews Allowed!" and How Hamas Lost the Arab Spring

From Ian:

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Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: "No Jews Allowed!"

"We will approve the meeting on condition there are no Jews."
This is what you are likely to hear these days if you request a meeting with any senior Palestinian Authority official in the West Bank.
Palestinian journalists who try to arrange meetings or interviews with Palestinian Authority representatives for Western colleagues have become used to hearing such things almost on a daily basis.
Just last week, for example, a journalist who requested a meeting between Western journalists and a top Palestinian Authority official was told "to make sure there were no Jews or Israelis" among the visitors.
The official's aide went on to explain: "We are sorry, but we do not meet with Jews or Israelis."

Douglas Murray: In Syria, Let Them Fight It Out

There are many people around the world who would like to fight jihad, and there are many al Qaeda affiliate groups who clearly hate what Hezbollah are doing. So if it weren't for the consequences for civilians, shouldn't we simply encourage both sides to go at each other full-tilt? If al Qaeda and Hezbollah want to fight each other to the death, then the West ought to support them every step of the way—and our hope must be that they both lose. This is one intervention that the West would be mad to get involved in.

PM: 'My Policy is to Strike at Those Who Try to Attack Us'

Evoking the memory of his father, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Israel would defend itself in all circumstances, and act against Gaza terrorists who disrupt the daily life of Israelis with rocket attacks. “My policy is to strike at those who try to attack us. We will allow no 'trickles,' no 'accumulations.' This is how we will operate against both near and distant threats,” the Prime Minister said.

Tonge wrong on BBC bias

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has just sent one of the most bizarre campaign e-mails I've ever received.
I've written before on how anti-Israel campaigners are trying to push BBC bias against Israel further by pretending the Beeb is actually biased in favour of Israel, but disgraced Baroness Tonge's latest mailout really takes the biscuit.
She claims, "Challenging the bias and inaccuracy of the BBC is an integral part of PSC’s work," which gives a punch line to the wider claims in the e-mail that the BBC is inherently biased in favour of Israel.

BBC’s ‘last-first’ reporting keeps audience attention focused on Israel

Significantly, the BBC chooses not to trouble its audiences with the question of why the sleeping residents of Israeli towns should come under missile attack due to a confrontation between two terrorist organisations in a territory from which Israel disengaged eight years ago.
Instead, in line with its prevailing narrative, the BBC focuses its audiences’ attentions on the Israeli response to those attacks on its civilians through the use of omission, language and ‘last-first’ reporting.

BBC ignores executions in Gaza Strip

As we know, the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Yolande Knell was very busy last Saturday in Gaza preparing no fewer than four reports on the subject of a TV talent show. Obviously, that pressing task prevented her from getting round to informing BBC audiences of the fact that on the same day the ruling Hamas terrorist organization executed two men by hanging for ‘collaboration’.

How Hamas Lost the Arab Spring

The Arab Spring years have been surprisingly unkind to Hamas. The falling out with Iran is just one example. The Islamist group has failed to benefit from the rise of other Islamist governments across the region. Instead, the faction finds itself at a strange inflection point, with more ideological allies but few true alliances.

Hamas: Ousting Assad More Important than 'Liberating Palestine'

Ousting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is more important than “liberating Palestine”, a senior member of the Hamas terror group has said, according to Arab affairs expert Dalit Halevi.
Abdel Aziz Dweik, the speaker of the Palestinian Authority's parliament, told an Algerian newspaper in an interview that the very existence of the Assad regime is a knife in the heart of the Palestinian problem. Removing Assad, he claimed, will start the road to victory for Palestinian Authority Arabs.

Gaza Illustrates Palestinian Statehood

The main obstacle to peace remains the inability of Fatah to do what Hamas and Islamic Jihad will not consider: recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn and to renounce the so-called right of return that would swamp Israel with the descendants of the 1948 Arab refugees. If they were ever able to do that and to convincingly promise that this ended the conflict rather than just pausing it, they’d find Israel ready to deal. After all, Israel has already offered the Palestinians a state three times only to find each one rejected. But so long as Palestinian independence is synonymous with terror groups and their infighting, Kerry will find few serious observers heeding his calls. Anyone who wants to know why Israelis are skeptical about a Palestinian state in the West Bank need only look at Gaza.

Dispute leaves wounded Syrians’ hospital bills unpaid

Israel has treated around 50 Syrians injured in the country’s civil war, but the question of how to pay the hospitals for their services remains uncertain, according to a Tuesday report.
Payment for emergency medical care in hospitals for non-citizens is generally provided through a Health Ministry fund. In the case of the Syrian wounded, the Health Ministry and the Defense Ministry have agreed with the hospitals to jointly fund the treatment.
With some NIS 3 million ($830,000) currently owed to hospitals in the north for services already rendered, though, the ministries have come to loggerheads over who will foot the bill, Maariv reported.

Top Iranian General Rejects Compromise With U.S.

Basij commander rejects compromise with US – Commander of Basij (Volunteer) Force said any compromise with Washington will repeat what happened in Afghanistan and Turkey. Today, the US is suffering from disgrace resulted from resistance of the Iranian nation and advocates of the Islamic Revolution in the entire world, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said while addressing a national gathering.

Egypt’s defense chief warns of military intervention if Morsi, opponents don’t reconcile

Egypt’s top ranking defense official warned Sunday that the military was “ready to intervene to stop the violence” ahead of scheduled mass protests to mark the one-year anniversary this week of Mohammed Morsi’s inauguration as Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
Defense Minister Abdel-Fatah el Sissi’s comments were the most forceful to date by a senior official of Egypt’s revered military in response to months of unrest and seemed to threaten the possibility of a military coup if protests lead to bloodshed or, as el Sissi described it, “uncontrollable conflict.”
El Sissi gave Morsi and his opponents a week to reconcile.

Gas Pipeline Sabotage, Egyptian Cutoff Cost Israel $187 M

Sabotage of the natural gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt’s willingness to buckle to terrorism cost the State of Israel $187 million (NIS 677 million) in 2012, a new report shows.
The Finance Ministry’s accountant general, Michal Abadi-Boiangiu, pointed out that the cutoff of Egyptian natural gas sales to Israel following repeated sabotage of the pipeline forced Israel to use more costly diesel fuel.

Turkey, Amid Islamization and Anti-Semitism, Fit for EU Membership?

Should Turkey be admitted to the EU? One can see how membership of the EU would boost the fortunes of those courageous Turks who have risked life and limb in their confrontation with Erdogan. Equally, the Europe that emerged after the Second World War cannot, by its very nature, tolerate the kind of government that has hospitalized more than 7,000 of its own citizens simply for exercising their right to peacefully protest. And it certainly cannot tolerate the kind of anti-Semitic agitation that brings to mind the worst excesses of the 1930s.

Emir of Qatar Abdicates, Hands Power to Son

Home to the Al Jazeera news network, Qatar was one of the first Gulf states to establish relations with Israel, but the relationship soured a few years later, when Israel launched Operation Cast Lead to silence the constant Gaza-based rocket fire terrorizing residents of southern Israel. The country has also allowed Hamas terrorists to established headquarters there in Doha and is also home to a U.S. military command center, with the longest runway in the Persian Gulf.

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Report: Egypt won't allow El Al planes "offensive missile capabilities" to land

From the always amusing Middle East Monitor:

Egypt's Minister of Civil Aviation has said that Israeli passenger aircraft armed with offensive missiles will not be allowed to land at Cairo or other airports in the country. Engineer Wael El-Ma'dawi made his announcement after Israel's El Al Airline said that it plans to equip its aircraft with missiles to protect them from terrorist attacks.

In a press statement issued on Monday, the minister said, "This ban is not confined to Israeli aircraft but applies to all international airlines. Aircraft equipped with offensive missile capabilities will not be allowed to land in Egypt or enter Egyptian airspace." He did note, however, that aircraft armed with defensive missiles are different from those with offensive capabilities.

El Al suspended its flights to Egypt last year and has closed its office at Cairo International Airport. The move followed the drop in passenger numbers travelling between Israel and Egypt since the January 25 Revolution.

What are they talking about? Apparently, this:

Elbit Systems is presenting the newest member of the MUSIC Directional Infrared Countermeasure (DIRCM) systems at the 2013 Paris Airshow. Defense-Update reports.

The new, compact system dubbed ‘mini-MUSIC’ is designed to protect small rotary and fixed-wing aircraft against heat seeking Ground to Air Missiles (MANPADS) threats. In 2012 the company has demonstrated the C-MUSIC pod system in flight, mounted on a Boeing 707 flying testbed. More recently the system was installed on a Boeing 737 passenger jet to be used for type certification. The system has been selected for the Israeli national program for protection of Israel’s commercial fleet, installing MUSIC DIRCMs on Boeing B737, B747, B757, B767, B777 and Airbus A320 platforms. While all relevant aircraft will be fitted with the A-kit attachments, MUSIC DIRCM systems will be provided to those aircraft flying to high threat destinations or such locations reported to be high-risk, based on short-term assessments.

The proliferation of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, particularly with terrorist groups operation in Asia, Africa and Latin America has increased the demand for DIRCM, protection helicopters, medium and large transport planes, as well as VIP aircraft and heads of state transportation aircraft (VVIP). Several manufacturers are currently developing similar systems, including Northrop Grumman, Selex ES, BAE Systems and Raytheon – all developing lightweight DIRCM systems under the CIRCM . The Israeli system is considered the most mature of these systems.

...The system comprises a fiber-laser based DIRCM housed in a sealed turret for maximized reliability. A missile warning system provides the initial detection of incoming threats. When a threatening missile is detected, the warning is passed to the DIRCM that then directs a thermal tracker to acquire and track the threat. A powerful laser beam is then fired accurately at the missile causing it to be deflected away from the aircraft.

So the systems have no missiles! Egyptian authorities are so knowledgeable!

Previously, El Al has been using the Flight Guard which uses flares on some aircraft - and that is probably more dangerous.

(h/t JPMelamed)

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Honest Reporting slideshow on photo bias

I used to spend a lot of time in this blog looking at photo bias in the media, not sure why I haven't done it lately.

But here is a good primer on the issue from Honest Reporting:

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A lawyer rips Erekat to shreds

We've shown many times that PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat is a liar.

Here is a great article by lawyer Richard Horowitz that rips apart Erekat's claims at a recent conference that Israel is violating legal agreements in the Oslo framework:

On November 10, 1975, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3376creating the “UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,” and on May 20, 2013 it held its 352nd meeting, for which Saeb Erekat, Palestine’s chief negotiator with Israel, delivered the keynote address.

Erekat explained that the Palestinians will not resume negotiations with Israel, not because it has preconditions, but because Israel has to first satisfy its legal obligations.

“We have no conditions to resume negotiations. When we say Israel must stop settlement activity, this is not a condition, this is an Israeli obligation, emanating Article 31 the final clauses of the Interim Agreement 1995 and the Roadmap which specified stopping settlement activities including natural growth as an obligation on Israel.

When we speak about releasing prisoners, especially those who were arrested before the end of May 1994, we also stipulate Article 3 to the Sharm el Sheik Agreement of 1999; that’s an agreement signed with Israel.

And when we say two-state solution of 1967 the Roadmap specified that the objective of the peace process is to end the occupation that began in 1967. So Israel in its blame-game and finger pointing that we put conditions. Ladies and gentlemen, these are not conditions, these are Israeli obligations.”

A review of the documents Erekat cites shows no such Israeli obligations. Article 31 of the Interim Agreement of 1995 signed by both parties contains no requirement for Israel to cease settlement activity. This interim agreement mentions settlements only in the context of issues that will be determined through “permanent status negotiations,” along, for example, with Jerusalem, borders, and refugees (Article 31(5).  These issues, including settlements, are again listed in Article 17(1)(a) as “issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations.”

Erekat ignores paragraph six of Article 31, “neither party shall be deemed, by virtue of having entered into this Agreement, to have renounced or waived any of its existing rights, claims, or positions,” and paragraph seven, “neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations,” as the Palestinians did by presenting the issue of its statehood before the Security Council and General Assembly.

Erekat also relies on the 2003 Roadmap as proof of Israel’s obligation to “freeze[s] all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements),” as the document states. The Roadmap, however, is neither an agreement nor in any way a legally binding document. It is a recommendation proposed by the Quartet to the parties bearing no legal authority, similar to UN General Assembly resolutions, which are non-binding. For example, General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, a non-binding recommendation, “call[ed] upon the inhabitants of Palestine to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put this plan into effect,” meaning “independent Arab and Jewish States … shall come into existence in Palestine,” soon after the expiration of the Mandate for Palestine in May 1948, created by the League of Nations in 1922. This resolution was accepted only by Palestine’s Jewish community, which declared Israel’s independence in May 1948, not its Arab community.

The second Israeli obligation Erekat claims is that Article 3 of the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum (Erekat referred to this document as an agreement), also signed by both parties, requires Israel to release all Palestinian prisoners by stating that the article applies to “especially those who were arrested before the end of 1994.” Article 3 however, states that “Israel shall release Palestinian and other prisoners who committed their offences prior to September 13, 1993, and were arrested prior to May 4, 1994,” meaning the article refers onlyand not especially to prisoners in this category. Erekat ignored the implication of Israeli and Palestinian negotiations, pursuant to Article 3 of the Memorandum, which stated, “the two Sides shall establish a joint committee that shall follow up on matters related to the release of Palestinian prisoners.” The joint committee met numerous times to negotiate the prisoner release issue, with Erekat playing a leading role.

To prove Israel’s third obligation, to return to the 1967 line in order to create the two-state solution, Erekat again cited the Roadmap, which does state, “the settlement will resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that began in 1967.” As stated the Roadmap is a recommendation by the Quartet to the parties and not a binding legal document. As such, the Roadmap cannot create obligations on either party; rather, this language provides historical perspective. Moreover, that the issue of borders is included in the Interim Agreement of 1995 as a matter for final status negotiations negates the argument that a return to the 1967 line is an Israeli obligation. In fact, theSecurity Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967 submitted by UK ambassador, Lord Caradon, spoke of the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” and intentionally omitted the word "the" preceding the word terroritories, indicating the resolution did not have the intention of withdrawal from all territories.

The implication of Erekat’s claim that a return to the 1967 line is an Israeli legal obligation and not a Palestinian condition to resume negotiations becomes evident when he stated, “we have also entertained that if Israel accepts two states on 1967, and Palestine becomes independent we are willing to entertain the idea of minor modifications.” Erekat in effect is saying that only after Palestine achieves statehood on the 1967 line will it entertain minor modifications on its sovereign land.

The parties agreed in the Interim Agreement of 1995 that settlements, refugees, and borders are to be left for final status negotiations, which will not occur if the Palestinians consider these issues unsatisfied Israeli legal obligations.

You literally cannot trust anything that comes out of Erekat's mouth.

(h/t Lauri)

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Egypt will run out of strategic fuel reserves within a week (updated)

From Al Ahram last Friday 6/21:

Egypt's strategic reserves of three vital fuel products will run out by end of this month, Turkish news agency Anadulo reported on Thursday, citing Petroleum Minister Sherif Haddara.

According to Haddara, Egypt has enough diesel fuel to last eight days, butane enough for ten days and petrol enough for 14 days.

Ministry officials declined to comment on the Anadolu report when contacted by Ahram Online.

The news agency stated that the government was currently providing the nation's gas stations with 18,000 tonnes of octane per day and 37,000 tonnes of diesel fuel, while also providing the country's power stations with 23,000 tonnes of low-quality mazut fuel.

In recent weeks and months, Egypt has seen a spate of intermittent power blackouts, which government officials have attributed to chronic fuel shortages.

Haddara said that the current fuel quantities were meant to meet national demand, attributing ongoing shortages to hoarding and smuggling activities.

Former petroleum minister Osama Kamal recently estimated that smuggling and black market activity accounted for as much as 20 percent of all fuel the ministry provides to the local market.

He also blamed bad public energy-consumption habits. "Fuel isn't consumed rationally because it's sold at very cheap prices," he said.

According to Anadolu, the Egyptian government has requested a $265 million loan from the Islamic Development Bank to finance the import of diesel in the first quarter of 2013/14.

The news website of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party quoted Supply Minister Bassem Ouda on Thursday as saying that the state's current reserves of diesel fuel were "sufficient."

In August, the government intends to introduce a smart-card fuel allocation system aimed at reducing energy subsidies. The new system will allow consumers to purchase limited amounts of subsidised fuel, beyond which they will have to pay market prices.

Daily News Egypt adds:

According to Reuters, Egypt, which owes more than $5 billion to fuel suppliers, has shifted to large Swiss trading houses after small firms stopped delivering to the financially crippled nation, fearing that it will fail to pay.

The Egyptian government has been struggling with a shortage of fuel, a predicament symptomatic of an ailing economy stuck in a downward spiral since the revolution in 2011. While some attribute this crisis, which has hit the country’s industrial sector, power plants and fuel stations, to smugglers and bootleg markets, the American Chamber of Commerce said it’s the result of “the government’s recent inability to pay its fuel suppliers.”

Litasco, Glencore, Gunvor, Trafigura, Vitol and Mercuria are currently Egypt’s main suppliers; smaller firms such as BB Energy, AOT Trading, Eminent, Augusta and Sahara have stopped selling it fuel, Reuters reported earlier this week.

Egypt is doomed.

(h/t Missing Peace)

UPDATE: Commenter Niklas points to this new video on YouTube showing a line to get fuel in Egypt that takes over four minutes to drive past:

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Hamas now preventing its own people from leaving Gaza!

Whose siege is it anyway?

From the virulently anti-Israel IMEMC site:

Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip have reported that the Hamas government in the coastal region prevented Mahmoud Zahar, one of the political leaders of Hamas, from travelling, as he and a delegation he heads were trying to cross into Egypt on their way to Lebanon and Iran.

The sources said that Zahar, and 22 Hamas officials, were stopped by the Palestinian Security Forces of Hamas at the Palestinian side of the Rafah Border terminal between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, the Radio Bethlehem 2000 have reported.

Zahar wanted to visit Iran to congratulate the new president-elect, Hasan Rohani.

Last week, the Political Bureau of the Hamas movement issued a statement “demanding the Lebanon-based Hezbollah party to withdraw its fighters from Syria”.

Zahar said that the statement was not issued by the Hamas movement in Gaza, and added that the Hamas leadership in exile, led by Khaled Mashal, was behind it.

This is so great on so many levels.

It shows that Hamas infighting is reaching a new peak.

It shows that Hamas is the party that is controlling entry and exit from Gaza, not Israel.

It shows that the "siege" is enforced by none other than Hamas!

Right now in Gaza we have Hamas vs. Salafists, Hamas vs. Islamic Jihad, Hamas vs. the PFLP, Hamas vs. Fatah, and now pro-Iran Hamas vs. pro-Al Qaeda Hamas.

"Pro-Gaza" activists must be very confused, not knowing which branch of a murderous terror organization to back in this intra-Hamas spat. Their anti-Israel message is being drowned out by the infighting.

(Not to mention their sputtering anger at the "Zionist" World War Z movie. )

(h/t Jonathan Schanzer)

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6/24 Links Part 2: Boycott Turkey!, 75th Anniversary of Kindertransport and the Intel-Israeli Tablet

From Ian:

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A modest proposal for a new ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ campaign

There is a country in the Middle East which makes a great play of being a democracy and about espousing Western ideals regarding human rights, and is forever bragging how different this makes it to its despotic Arab neighbours. But this self-same Middle Eastern country for decades now has been occupying the lands of one of its neighbours and conducting apartheid-like discrimination against its internal minority community. Its charismatic right-wing leader has one message for its close ally the United States and for the EU, with which it seeks closer ties, but quite another for its internal allies.
Isn’t it time this so-called democracy was held to account, and was made to face up to its hypocrisy? Isn’t it time the international community as a whole, and the International Solidarity Movement in particular, launched a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Turkey?

Neturei Karta Rabbi Attacked in Amsterdam

A friend of the rabbi told Channel 2, "As he was walking down the street, a car stopped next to him, and a man who appeared to be a Muslim immigrant came out. The immigrant started shouting anti-Jewish slurs at the rabbi. Rabbi Antebi is anti-Zionist, he does not advocate for war in the Middle East but he was identified as a Zionist. The Muslim started yelling at him and threatening him, and the rabbi noticed that the immigrant was going to attack him."

Jewish Groups Slam Belgian Paper Over 'Demonization'

Prince Laurent visited Israel last week as part of a delegation sponsored by the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF). He received a diploma for his initiatives in the sector of environment and planted a tree in the "Forest of Belgium" near Jerusalem.
However, the visit sparked controversy in Belgium. In the article in Le Soir, KKL is described as "a Zionist group which is subject to criticism for exploiting the villages deserted by the Palestinians.”

Vatican newspaper defends ‘Italian Schindler’

The semi-official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano hit back Sunday at allegations that Italian police official and purported Holocaust rescuer Giovanni Palatucci was in fact a Nazi collaborator.
Palatucci, known as “the Italian Schindler,” has long been credited with saving thousands of Jews during the Holocaust while serving in the police department in the city of Fiume, and was designated by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

On 75th Anniversary, New Book Recounts a Father-Son Kindertransport Correspondence

A series of events are being hosted by, among others, former British Secretary of State David Milliband and the Prince of Wales, over the next two days in England to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the “kindertransport”—a clandestine program, enacted in the months preceding the Second World War, meant to save Jewish children. Thousands of children were whisked from near certain death at the hands of the Nazis and granted refuge in England.
Among the attendees at the events will be Henry Foner, nee Heini Lichtwitz, a benefactor of the program whose correspondence with his father during and following the “kindertransport” has now been published by Yad Vashem.

Surprise new UK trade minister is committed Jew, thinks Israel’s ‘amazing’

Livingston, 48, is one of Britain’s most visible business leaders, widely credited with steering telecom giant BT (formerly British Telecom) through the global downturn as its chief executive. Wednesday’s announcement of his departure from the company, which will take effect in September, immediately wiped £400 million ($618 million) off its market value.

Cybersecurity projects next on Israel-India agenda

To enhance that cooperation, Dharmadhikari organized a cybersecurity conference at Tel Aviv University. Held in the framework of the last month’s International Cybersecurity Conference of Tel Aviv University’s Yuval Ne’eman Workshop, Dharmadhikari’s event, called India-Israel Cybersecurity Connect, featured speakers from Israeli and Indian tech companies, as well as diplomats and cybersecurity experts

Shikun and Binui unit wins $580m Nigeria road contract

Shikun & Binui Holdings Ltd. (TASE: SKBN) subsidiary Solel Boneh International Infrastructures Ltd. has won a $580 million Nigerian government tender to rebuild and widen a section of the Ibadan-Lagos highway in southwest Nigeria.
Solel Boneh will rebuild an 84-kilometer section of the highway between Ibadan and Shagamu, widen the road, improve drainage, rebuild and maintain 14 bridges and overpasses to adapt it to current traffic. Payment for the project will made during the work.

6 Israeli Startups To Watch As Google Reportedly Buys Waze For $1.3 Billion

Now that Google has reportedly agreed to buy Israeli crowd-powered navigation app Waze for $1.3 billion, many other “Silicon Wadi” startups are daring to dream big. Below are six that could potentially follow in Waze’s footsteps.

TAU, Technion to offer free online courses

Tel Aviv University and the Technion announced on Sunday their partnership with the international education company Coursera, which provides free online courses.
The two institutions will soon offer especially developed classes in four study areas – including engineering, archeology, biology and cultural studies – on the company’s website.

Samsung’s new iPad challengers have ‘Intel Israel’ inside

Intel may have started out behind the eight ball in the tablet market, but Intel Israel’s team has helped the company catch up – in a hurry, said one of the company’s top engineers. Aviad Hevrony, the front end design manager for Intel Israel’s Cloverview team, Told the Times of Israel that Intel HQ counted on the 100-strong Israeli team to come up with a system on a chip (SoC) design that could be used in a lightweight tablet/convertible device — allowing use as a standard tablet, or attaching it to a keyboard for laptop-style use.

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Jews wanting to pray on their holiest site are branded "ultra rightist" by Reuters

Reuters published their latest article on the Temple Mount and it is just as bad as all the previous ones.

In this case, Reuters is hell-bent to describe any Jews who want to worship on their holiest site as crazed right-wing fanatics, while Muslims who want to ban Jews from their holiest site are simply reasonable people.

Look how many times Jews simply wanting to pray are given adjectives, while Arab rioters and those against freedom of worship are given no monikers whatsoever.

The headline says it all:

Far-right Israelis stir tensions over Jerusalem holy site

Far-right Israelis are pressing for an end to an effective ban on holding Jewish prayers at a Jerusalem holy compound once dominated by Biblical temples and now home to al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's most revered sites.

Palestinians (not right wing - but just "Palestinians") oppose Jewish worship at the vast stone plaza overlooking Judaism's Western Wall as a potential threat to access for Muslims.

...Israeli police accompany most visitors to the compound, where escorted tours are held frequently. They cross a wooden bridge to a gate where plastic police shields and other riot-control gear are stored, a ready display of how quickly the otherwise serene atmosphere can sometimes go awry. [And who does the rioting? Not the "far-right" visitors!]

Visitors are closely watched by both the police and the Muslim religious officials of the Waqf who administer the compound and keep an eye out to make sure no Jewish worship takes place. Anyone wearing Jewish religious garb is generally kept away from the Islamic holy tract. [Whoops, it is no longer a Jewish holy site.]

At the compound, one group of visitors walked past al-Aqsa, drawing shouting from Muslim women [not right wing fanatic Muslim women] sitting in the shade of tree and from Palestinian children attending a day camp. They ignored the catcalls and continued deeper into the plaza.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has denounced the Israeli visits as a part of a "dangerous and an evil plot to demolish al-Aqsa" and build what he calls "an alleged temple". [Not "right wing bigot Mahmoud Abbas, who is against the right of Jews to worship."]
...
In 2000, Palestinian protests over a visit to the site by then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon spiraled into deadly clashes and a five-year Palestinian uprising in which thousands died. [The riots were pre-planned but Reuters still wants to make it look like Sharon instigated them.]

Also in May, Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel, a Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank who is from the far-right Jewish Home Party, said in a largely tongue-in-cheek remark in parliament that he would "definitely be happy" to be assigned the job of rebuilding a new holy temple.

While some Jewish zealots advocate such construction, such a project has never been on the agenda of Israeli governments.

However, one member of Netanyahu's Likud party, legislator Tzipi Hotovely, visited the compound on the eve of her wedding last month. She said her pilgrimage was symbolic of a historic yearning "to rebuild on the ruins of Jerusalem". A Likud colleague, Miri Regev, has said the site should be shared between Islam and Judaism so that Jews could pray there openly.

Israeli police have barred further visits by another Likud lawmaker, Moshe Feiglin, an ultra-rightist who has been arrested in the past for what police said were attempts to worship on the plaza. Officials said they feared Feiglin's presence could stir violent Palestinian protests. [Jews praying are "ultra-rightist" but rioters get no adjectives whatsoever.]

Most of those campaigning for Jewish prayer in the compound represent a far-right minority, but many Muslims "see a provocation, and blame the (Israeli) government, so we have a big problem", said Israeli political scientist Yitzhak Reiter. [Again, "regular" Muslims against a "far-right" minority, whose freedom of religion just happens to be compromised by the "normal" Muslims.]

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A new synagogue opens in Morocco (updated)

I don't have a translation, but this story of a new synagogue being dedicated in Salé, Morocco is apparently being covered quite nicely in the Moroccan media:



The comments on the story do have some antisemitic elements, though, with some mention of "sons of monkeys and pigs" and some noises that Morocco is helping Jews while abandoning Islam.

The good news is that the remaining Moroccan Jewish community, reportedly numbering about 5000, appears to be vibrant and surprisingly young, unless the younger people were imported for the occasion.

UPDATE: Bataween of the Jewish Refugees blogspot believes that this is about the annual pilgrimage or Hiloula to the tomb of the venerated rabbi Raphael Encaoua at Sale a couple of weeks ago. Makes sense because the younger people are French pilgrims.

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