Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 24, 2014

Joke of the day from Iran

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif Friday denied his country had sent Hezbollah militants to fight in Syria, saying the Tehran-backed Shiite extremist group was making its own decisions.

The usually smiling Iranian diplomat, who has been seen as the new face of the Islamic republic since coming to office in August, was unusually combative in a tense panel session held in the Swiss mountain town of Davos.

Under constant questioning about Iran’s role in shoring up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Zarif said it was “preposterous” to suggest that Tehran was supporting extremist groups fighting in Syria.

“We are not sending people, Hezbollah has made its own decision,” Zarif told the audience, adding that Iran had also suffered at the hands of Sunni Al-Qaeda extremists.

No wonder the West loves these new, moderate Iranians - they have such a great sense of humor!

01/24 Links Pt1: Abbas celebrates the 10th Year of Four Year Term!, IAF sends a message to Hezbollah

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Mabrouk to Abbas on Tenth Year of His Four Year Term!

The only way to find out what Palestinians really want is by allowing them to head to the ballot boxes. Palestinians representing all groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, should be allowed to run in such an election.
A victory for the radicals would mean that a majority of Palestinians do not want peace and continue to dream about the destruction of Israel. If Abbas and his political allies win, that would be great news for the peace process and Kerry's efforts to achieve a two-state solution.
Yet Kerry does not seem to care whether Abbas is a "rightful" president or not. He is so desperate for a diplomatic achievement that he is prepared to ignore fundamental facts.
How can Kerry expect Abbas to sign any document declaring the end of the conflict with Israel when many Palestinians are already pointing out that their president does not even have a mandate to act or speak on their behalf?

Sarah Honig: Patent-medicine Messiah

In truth, though, we Israelis are capable like no other to take care of ourselves if would-be messiahs like Kerry – be he a credulous dupe or a grandstanding megalomaniac – would only let us be.
However, we’re often wary of using the force at our disposal. We’re deterred by our reputation as the universal killjoy who provokes global displeasure. When the world courted Saddam, we destroyed his nuclear reactor and were roundly condemned for our good deed. Invariably, the international community delights in restraining us and rescuing villains.
Those who genuinely wish to secure peace need only abstain from coercing Israel to appease aggressors – not to beguile us with promises of foreign troops and messianic tidings.
Our unwavering message to the wannabe messiah must be that we have had our fill of officious earthly redeemers. The hardly beneficent blessings he seeks to force on us are unwelcome and unwanted here. His unsolicited magnanimity would render us helpless. We’d rather not be in his debt and retain the ability to help ourselves.

Lebanese TV invited to Israel Air Force base to film a message to Hezbollah

In unique use of public media, IAF allows Lebanese TV network to film inside secure base and interview Air Force commander in bid to send Hezbollah a clear, direct threat.
The air force unit commander – who like all IAF pilots and commanders must remain unnamed and masked – said in the rare interview that “We are closely following attempts to smuggle arms from Syria to Lebanon and attempting to prevent it from reaching Hezbollah.” (h/t MtTB)

Swedish textbook asks "Why is the Arab girl going to blow herself and others up?"

Expressen shows us a page from a textbook that is being used in a ninth grade class on religions:

Translation:

Student Worksheet:
Judaism - was the first but is the least.
Who has the right to the land?

Imagine you ask a Jew and an Arab about who has right to the land now called Israel. Write what you think they would answer and how they would justify their opinion.
Why is the girl going to blow herself and others in the air?

With pictures of a "Jewish man" and "Arab girl."

The textbook, which was published in 2004, is asking kids to justify terrorism which hit its peak around the time it was written.

The person who found this was an Arab Swedish girl named Sara Bessa when she saw her younger brother bring this home from school.

She's upset because it stereotypes Arabs as terrorists.

"There is such Islamophobia here. It's almost like she'll defend her exploding with a Qur'anic quote that does not exist.... At the same time, they chose to use a girl instead of an Arab man. It says 'check out how dangerous Arabs are, even their small children are dangerous and satanic.' There is no room to discuss about how this girl might want peace."

She has a point - the textbook was stereotyping Arabs, but it wasn't saying that Arab terrorism is wrong. It was sympathetic to their suicide bombings. It was not trying to demonize the Palestinian Arabs, but to understand and justify their hate!

I found what appears to be the textbook online, along with a similar section on Islam. That version does not appear to have this page in it, so maybe they took out the terrorism reference in newer editions. (Any Swedish speakers that want to analyze this textbook, please do so.)

I do not know exactly what is meant by "Judaism was the first but is the least." My guess is that it was the first of the major monotheistic religion but it has the least adherents nowadays. Maybe I'm being charitable, but textbooks do try to be politically correct.

(h/t aaahconcept)

John Kerry's wishful thinking vs. Middle East reality

Both these videos were released in the past day.

One is John Kerry on Al Arabiya saying why he is optimistic about peace talks. Gosh, he just can't imagine why people wouldn't want to live in peace with each other.Everyone wants the same thing, right?

The other is a MEMRI video of a Hamas youth camp graduation. These are the thousands of Gaza high school kids that underwent paramilitary training and anti-Israel brainwashing over the past several months.

I thought the two videos complement each other.

New poet laureate of Belgium is an antisemite (update)

From Philosémitisme Blog, translated by Antisemitism in Europe:

Charles Ducal is Belgium's new 'national poet'. In this position, he will be expected to write poems which concern Belgium. Which might be new to him. Ducal has not written one poem on the atrocities committed by Belgians in their former colonies. However, he had time to dwell on the crimes of the Jews.*

Together with Lucas Catherine, Ducal co-authored "Gaza - The History of the Palestinian tragedy". The book includes his poetry titled "After Auschwitz", a group of poems with names like "Tel Aviv 1948–2008", "Nakba" and "A Poet in Sderot". Lest you think he might actually be sympathizing with the Jews who are constantly being bombed by their Gazan neighbors, rest assured: the song has a little note that Sderot was "formerly Najd", and is all about how 'we' kicked out the rightful owners.

The poems do not mention Jews, Israel, Nazis or Holocaust, and yet they're full of accusations against the Jewish people.

His poems are reprehensible, and (like the antisemitic play Seven Jewish Children) they are written from a grotesque caricature of a "Jewish" point of view - how a twisted Jew-hater imagines that Jews think. So while the themes are the same lies that we are used to hearing from antisemites (Jews are bloodthirsty killers who use the Holocaust as an excuse to act as monsters, Jews are quite happy making Arabs suffer, Jews use the Torah to justify massacres and ethnic cleansing) - the faux first person perspective makes the poems that much more powerful, and that much more disgusting.

Here are some of them.

AFTER AUSCHWITZ
for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand;
and thou shalt drive them out before thee.
(Exodus 23:31)

THE WALL

One does not scrawl fate in the wind.
We seek sanctuary behind
the wall, full of words on our side,
stamped with the holy number, this

stubborn plurality of a faith, in search of a voice
that can unite us in a common song,
a hymn and history to which we belong,
from the ashes of a tongue we rejoice.

The other side of the wall is ours too,
though scarred by signs of enmity.
We simply wipe it clean, unread.
Those who find a hole are blown back

into the void.

LET US TALK
First, we will bury you in the sand,
with your head free to speak
about mutual understanding, about peace;

first, we will make your field our own,
station soldiers between mine and thine,
direct the camera from our side;

first, we will count our dead
from the past two thousand years
and justify the beating,

and wipe the spit from our hands
and declare – it's clear as day;
you want no peace in this land.

Most readers of poetry don't have the same filters they might have when reading or watching the news. Poems need to be interpreted and understood, and that extra effort makes it easier for the reader to trust that the poet - whom he learns to respect during the interpretation process - is being truthful.

Very few casual poetry readers would be able to distance themselves from these works enough to realize how bigoted it is for a man to put himself in the minds of people he hates and relay their supposedly disgusting thoughts. Ducal is an antisemite, and these works prove that beyond a doubt. Saying that Jews are religious fundamentalists who enjoy acting like Nazis is no less offensive and no less a lie when it is written as poetry.

Like fiction and film, poetry can be a powerful tool for brainwashing, and that is Ducal's goal in these examples. Belgium should withdraw this honor; Ducal should be shamed, not feted.

UPDATE:

Ducal, or his lawyer, wrote me a letter. A followup post on January 27. Link when it is available.

UPDATE: The Forward mentions this poster but says it is inaccurate.

In fact, the company’s own estimate of how many Palestinians it employs is now 500 out of some 1,300 total workers — up from 160 Palestinians in December 2010 as a result of the growth in sales.

And the poster’s grandiose claim that the company “built a mosque on site” appears to be based on a company video during which an Arab employee displays a room that he says is “dedicated to prayer.” The space shown is actually a locker area with a small eating table, some coat hooks on the wall, a coffee machine and a couple of large garbage cans. The workers are shown spreading thin prayer mats on the bare floor during their prayer times — far from a customized prayer room, much less a mosque.

However, I took all the information from a JTA article last year that The Forward published itself on February 10, 2013. It said:

"Some 500 West Bank Palestinians work at the site, in addition to 400 Arabs from eastern Jerusalem and a mix of 200 Israeli Jews and foreign workers, including refugees from Africa........The Maale Adumim factory has an on-site mosque and a synagogue."

An old joke

For some reason this joke, that I originally read in The Joys of Yiddish when I was a kid. popped into my head this morning. Here's a variation I found on the web:

A Texan was touring Israel, complete with his cowboy hat and cowboy boots. We all know about the tendency of Texans to brag. While driving down a great, flat desert, he spied a tiny house in the distance, with a neat picket fence. Coming closer, he saw an elderly man leaning against the fence.

"Shalom, you all," said the Texan.

"Shalom," replied the Israeli.

"Do you speak English?

"Sure I do."

"Do you own this little house?

"Yes."

"What on Earth do you do out here in this isolated area?

"I raise chickens."

"How large is your property?"

"Well, " answered the Israeli, "In the front, it's a good eighty feet. And in the back, it must be 100, 110 feet at least."

The Texan grinned. "I don't mean to brag, but back in Texas where I come from, I eat breakfast, get into my car around 9 am and drive and drive and drive and drive, and I don't reach the end of my property until about 6 o'clock at night."

And the Israeli sighed and said, "I once owned a car like that."

According to this article, a new film being produced in Syria will center on the Jewish community of Damascus between 1850 and 1860. It appears to be an episode in a historic TV series called "Concierge of the Wind."

In the film, the chief rabbi of Damascus, a fictional character named Rabbi Bashi "Badran Farhi," wants to move the community to Palestine but the community leader named Yusuf Copper is against it, and denies that Israel is the Promised Land. So the rabbi kills a few Jews and starts rumors to incite the Muslims against the Jews.

The director says that he was looking to dramatize the roots of the conflict in the region.

The setting for the movie is interesting, as in 1840 there was a famous blood libel against the Jews of Damascus, and in 1860 Jews were falsely accused of participating with Muslims in the massacre of Christians, and 200 Jews were almost executed but were saved by outside intervention.

The episode is apparently meant to set the stage for the story of the 1860 massacre, perhaps by saying that the Jews were responsible, not Muslims.

01/23 Links Pt2: UK MP again diminishes Holocaust Memorial Day, David Baddiel on the "Quenelle"

From Ian:

David Ward MP *again* diminishes Holocaust Memorial Day

This time last year, David Ward MP was censured by his own party, the Liberal Democrats, after claiming that, “the [liberated] Jews” were inflicting similar atrocities on the Palestinian people. Ward at the time continued to dig deeper, and has landed himself square in an anti-Semitic hole, having issued many statements over the course of the last year to similar effect.
His comments about Israel not lasting forever saw him suspended from his party, while recently, and bizarrely, he gave a brief history lesson on Twitter, stating as if it were a new fact, that the Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust.
So little wonder that today, Ward took a stand once again, in great offence to the memory of those millions killed during the Holocaust, to somehow juxtapose the political point of the Palestinian right of return, with Holocaust Memorial Day, officially observed in Britain on Monday 27th January this year.

Israeli song a hit in Yemen

A song from an Israeli singer with Yemenite roots – but who has never visited the country – has become a surprise hit in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, the Economist reported on Tuesday.
Zion Golan's song "Sana’a al-Yemen" is frequently heard blaring from stereos and minibus speakers. "Come with me to Sanaa," Golan sings in Yemeni Arabic. "Sanaa, my home, you'll like it."
But although the lyrics refer to Sana’a as home, Golan has never been there. As an Israeli Jew he is forbidden to travel to Yemen.

Saudi Columnist: The Number of Ariel Sharon’s Victims is Nowhere Near That of Arab Rulers

Saudi Arabian columnist Khalaf Al-Harbi recently published an article in the Saudi government daily Okaz, claiming that despite the “horrific acts of massacre” former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon carried out, the number of Arabs he killed is nowhere near that of those who died at the hands of Arab rulers, especially since the onset of the Arab Spring, according to MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, on Wednesday.
MEMRI said the article was published on January 13, on the occasion of Sharon’s funeral. In the article, as well as pointing out the great number of Arab deaths due to Arab rulers, in Syria and Lebanon, Al-Harbi said that Zionists who had once claimed “Arabs as a barbaric people” were proven right by “a reality that exceeds imagination,” including “decapitations, bombing houses with explosive barrels, the rape of women, and the expulsion of millions of innocent civilians.” (h/t dabney_c)

Fisking Jeff Halper's diatribe at St. James

A few weeks ago, when St. James Church in London held their wall stunt, I posted an eyewitness account by Amie of the debate that was held there between Alan Johnson of BICOM and Jeff Halper, extreme anti-Israel leftist:

Alan Johnson of Bicom spoke brilliantly; cogently articulating the case for the wall as a security issue. His rhetorical devices were masterly, as he spoke of the realities of the actual wall as against the never never world of the pretend wall, which in turn facilitated the calcification of the intellectual wall which refused to recognise the reality of the need for the real wall.

He cited famous harrowing instances of bombing and terror.

He showed graphs of how the level of terror decreased dramatically after the wall.

He cited last week's abortive bus bombing where the terrorists had got through a breach in the wall, from Bethlehem.

When he finished, (to a good round of applause from the substantial pro Israel presence there.)

Jeff Halper, the next speaker, opened his mouth wide and bellowed: This wall has NOTHING to do with security.

And without his having to say a single thing more to back up or verify this bellow, the hall erupted into cheers and applause.

Since then, Amie has gotten the recording of the session and of Halper's accusations against Israel and his frantic attempts to change the topic however he could.

Her fisking of Halper is at Harry's Place. Here are some highlights:

For starters, Halper was having none of Alan Johnson’s complexity: After his klaxoned opening that the wall “has nothing to do with security, he declared: there’s no both sides here, there’s no complexity”. What then, is his simple truth?

“I reject the idea of complexity, I think it is absolutely clear there is an occupation.. “

Alas for Alan Johnson’s warning against reductivism, Halper’s reductivism wows the crowd. But then comes something more insiduous than reductivism. It is what I once termed the Tonge manoeuvre. ... just to mention something is to establish something; provided it is the favoured person doing the mentioning. I now have Halper’s exact words, thanks to the transcript:

The wall – and if you want to talk about terrorism – you talk about cluster bombs used by Israel – you talk about anti-personnel weapons, you talk about tungsten based weapons that melt your insides, if you want to talk about Palestinian children with wounds that even doctors can’t figure out, talk about Flechettes – they’re like little razors like swords thousands of them going through the air and chopping limbs off. You wanna talk about terrorism, well let’s talk about terrorism, let’s talk about state terrorism..

Note the choice of “talk about” delivered in an unbroken demagogic outpouring, rather than facts in context. The mere enumeration of these dread weapons raises the spectre that Israel must have used them, and must have used them in the worst possible way. At best, crowds are unreceptive to critical thinking and this crowd, hothoused in a week of demonisation, greets this readily with untroubled cheers.

For what it’s worth, it is left to us keyboard Casaubons to sift drily through the chaff in search of facts. This we do, fully aware that this tuquoque tactic of Halper in no way addresses the barrage of assorted armaments, outlawed or otherwise, from Gaza which gave rise to the need for the security barrier.

Amie then looks at each of Halper's accusations and finds that he is lying about every single one. Read the post for details.

As for Halper’s actual arguments:

If the wall had been built for security first of all, .. they would have built on the border. No one can have a problem with the wall including the international court of justice in the Hague had it been built on the border....
...During Q&A he was asked by the chair: Is the wall not there to prevent terrorism?

Halper: “There is no internationally accepted definition of terrorism! I prefer to use Human Rights language. Terrorism is violence against civilians. What about State terror? You hear about Al Quada, Palestinians, Hamas: what about States? Human Rights language means it prohibits the killing of innocent civilians.”
He then spoke about how it was impossible to have a Jewish State. This seemed to discomfit the chair, who queried this assertion.

Halper: “You can’t have an ethnically Jewish state in the 21stC. There must be a One State solution. We need to reframe the discussion. The issue is not security and terror. The issue is: the wall is a border. That is really why they built a wall.”

He's even contradicting himself - at first he says that a wall at the Green Line would be OK, but then he tells the truth - he doesn't want Israel to exist altogether and for it to be replaced by yet another Arab state, wall or no wall, on the border or not.

It is worth reading the whole thing as a case study in how the Israel haters will throw out lies and half-truths to a crowd that eats it all up, truth be damned. Halper comes across as even more extreme and deceptive than I had thought he was - he isn't against house demolitions, he's against Israel defending itself - actually, against Israel existing altogether.

Bolivia working with Iran on nuclear program?

BBC reports:

Bolivian President Evo Morales has announced plans to build the country's first nuclear reactor.

Mr Morales said the development of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes has become a strategic priority for his country.

Speaking to members of the Bolivian Congress, he said that Iran, France and Argentina had volunteered to help with the development of the project.

In fact, Iran's vice chancellor for European and American affairs, Mayid Ravanchi, visited Bolivia right beforehand and praised the country for being "always being on the side of the revolutionaries".

This article notes that the nuclear issue was discussed between Morales and Ravanchi, and that Morales said that Bolivia "has enough raw material" for a nuclear plant, which confirms the existence of large mineable uranium deposits in the country.

Which Iran would no doubt be interested in.

(h/t Emmanuel)

01/23 Links Pt1: Glick discusses 2-state solution, Fatah threatens to bomb Tel Aviv into a "ball of fire"

From Ian:

Fatah publicizes threats to bomb Tel Aviv on its official Facebook page

Once again Fatah has chosen to post threats of terror against Israel on its official Facebook page. Yesterday, the movement posted a video in which Fatah's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, threatens to turn Tel Aviv into a "ball of fire":
"We swear to you that we will turn the beloved [Gaza] Strip into a graveyard for your soldiers, and we will turn Tel Aviv into a ball of fire."
These threats are made by a masked man in uniform standing in front of a group of other masked men, all of whom are holding weapons. The full video is eight minutes long and shows footage of masked men in military training, arsenals of weapons, missiles being launched, as well as footage of Israelis running for shelter during missile attacks.

Only the Jewish State survives

To close; Israel’s existence comes down to the need for a Jewish state. It is a need generated by years of persecution, pogroms, and hatred; The persecution of the Jewish people is an incredibly deep contrast to the purity of the Jewish veneration of life. The history of the Jewish people but also the land of Israel, is written and bound in blood- yet what is written in that blood reads ‘hope’. If the Palestinian people, if not least their elected representatives, cannot end their hope for a demographic annihalation of their Israeli neighbours, any peace created out of those circumstances is impure and bound to fail. Peace should be, and will be achieved only when Israel is accepted as what it has always been- the only Jewish state in the world. Then and only then, is the time that friendship can come from enmity, and the hope of peace can come alive.