Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 11, 2014

04/11 Links Pt1: Pity the Palestinians? Count Me Out; White House’s Campaign to Scapegoat Israel

From Ian:

Nor, alas, is it only the leaders of the Palestinians who harbor this evil intent. As revealed by poll after poll, as well as by the elections that led the way for Hamas to take power in Gaza, a decisive majority of the Palestinian people does so as well. No doubt this is the fruit of relentless indoctrination from above, but the damage has been done, and the end result is what it is.
Indeed, the best that can be said of both Palestinian leaders and led is that many of them no longer imagine—as did Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former president of Egypt—that they have the power to drive the Jews of Israel into the sea. Therefore they are now willing to give up pursuing the goal of genocide and to settle for the more modest objective of politicide—that is, to get rid of the Jewish state by transforming it, through various "peaceful" means like the "right of return," into a state with a Palestinian majority.
I for one pray that a day will come when the Palestinians finally let go of the evil intent toward Israel that keeps me from having any sympathy for them, and that they will make their own inner peace with the existence of a Jewish state in their immediate neighborhood. But until that day arrives, the "peace process" will go on being as futile as it has been so many times before and as it has just proved once again to be. Another thing that never changes: When John Kerry testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, it was the Israelis he blamed for this latest diplomatic fiasco. (h/t Herb Glatter )

Alan Dershowitz: Palestinians must come to the table for peace

It is clear therefore that the Israelis and the Palestinians do not stand in equivalent positions — morally, legally, diplomatically or politically — when it comes to negotiating Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank.
Israel captured this territory in an entirely lawful defensive war.
The Palestinians want it.
Unless they are prepared to negotiate with the Israelis, they can’t get it.
The burden is on the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table, not as equal partners, but as claimants, seeking to obtain something that they do not have.
Possession is 9/10th of the law, and in this case, 9/10th of morality as well.
Those who seek a change in the status quo have the burden of coming forward and showing a willingness to negotiate.

Inside the White House’s Secret Campaign to Scapegoat Israel

Multiple sources told the Washington Free Beacon that top Obama administration officials have worked for the past several days to manufacture a crisis over the reissuing of housing permits in a Jerusalem neighborhood widely acknowledged as Israeli territory.
Senior State Department officials based in Israel have sought to lay the groundwork for Israel to take the blame for talks collapsing by peddling a narrative to the Israeli press claiming that the Palestinians were outraged over Israeli settlements, the Free Beacon has learned.
These administration officials have planted several stories in Israeli and U.S. newspapers blaming Israel for the collapse of peace talks and have additionally provided reporters with anonymous quotes slamming the Israeli government.

Down with the cisheteropatriarchy! (UPDATED)

People have looked a little more at the women who was screaming incoherently at the Cornell #BDSFail last night.

Her name is Kat-Yang Stevens, and she describes herself - no joke - this way:

Kat Yang-Stevens is a cisgender queer woman and first generation Asian American of Chinese ancestry. Kat grew up on and currently lives on occupied territories belonging to the Onondaga & Cayuga Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in so-called New York.

Full Time Unpaid Community Organizer
Shawn Greenwood Working Group
Marcellus Shale Earth First!
Youth Engagement & Empowerment Program!
Groundwork for Praxis
Shalefield Justice Spring Break Track Coordinator
No Diplomas. No Degrees.

Apparently, she is not even a Cornell student.

Anyway, all you need to know about her can be seen in this tweet she wrote last week:

My organzng 2 brng dwn colonialist whtsprmcst cisheteropatriarchy trancends the physical: #hashtagactivist @suey_park pic.twitter.com/BLzHAjWArE
— Kat Yang-Stevens (@greencircleas) April 3, 2014

The responses to this gibberish were awesome.

Check them out:

From Reuters:

Kicking up dust on the back roads of northern Gaza within sight of the Israeli fence that seals off the enclave, Olympic athlete Nader Al Masri is still training, despite being barred from competing in his people's largest sporting event.

Masri, who has participated in 40 international contests including the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, was denied a permit by Israeli authorities to travel to the occupied West Bank for the Palestine Marathon on Friday.

"I'm sad. This is a race for all Palestine and I wanted to participate, but unfortunately the Israeli side coldly rejected me," said the 34-year-old policeman.

Ah, having a consistent policy in who can enter your country is now considered "cold rejection."

The New York Times - in a front page story - gives a slightly more accurate account:

In denying Mr. Masri’s permit request — made through Gisha, an Israeli group advocating free movement — the Israeli government said in a March 30 letter that “the present diplomatic/security situation” meant that Gaza residents could cross into Israel only “in exceptional humanitarian cases.”

One of the organizers of the marathon disingenuously claims to the New York Times that the event is not political:

“It illustrates the whole concept,” said Lise Ring, one of the two Danish women who founded the Palestine Marathon, which is expected to draw 3,000 runners this year, half from the West Bank. “We want people from around the world to see a Palestine that’s not about the conflict,” she said. “But it’s hard to say ‘Palestine’ without talking politics.”

This is of course a lie.

The entire purpose of the marathon is meant to be a political weapon against Israel.

The very course of the marathon was chosen for political reasons - going past two refugee camps and the separation barrier with a turnaround at an Israeli military checkpoint.

Here is how the event is described in the "Right to Movement Palestine Marathon" site:

Running is a means of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. Having the right to move means that you have the choice, possibility, and right to move from A to B at any time and for any reason. The right to movement is a basic human right as stipulated in Article 13 of the UN Human Rights Charter: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement"

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement, but not everyone has the option. Restriction on movement is one of the major challenges for the Palestinian people living under occupation. Palestinians cannot move freely on roads, or from one city to another. The Palestinians right to move is controlled by their ID, permits, which city they live in, or who they are married to. The environment that Palestinians were supposed to move freely in is occupied and thus controlled by a foreign army. An army that controls their movement with roadblocks, checkpoints, military zones, an illegal wall and a complex set of discriminatory laws. Ever been through Qalandia? Then you know why we do this! The EU and the US talks about a two-state solution, an independent Palestine, but we cannot even find the 42 KMs needed for a marathon. This is why we do it.

The website doesn't quote the entire sentence in the UDHR, which says "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." If the PLO would have seriously negotiated a peace plan instead of using the pretence of talks to get the US to force Israel to make unilateral concessions, they would have had a state by now with no restrictions on movement.

But that nuance is lost on mainstream media reporters.

Also lost is the difference between Israel not allowing Gazans to enter its territory and "Israel barring Gaza runners from competing." Could, perhaps, Nader al Masri get to Bethlehem by going through Egypt and Jordan? If he did, would Israel "bar" him from the race? Is adhering to a policy that applies to everyone equally the same as a "bar" on a runner?

Speaking of Egypt, there was a marathon in Luxor, Egypt in January and a half-marathon in Cairo in February. Did al-Masri apply to run in those marathons? I don't know, but if he did I must have missed the stories about how Egypt "blocked" him by not allowing him to enter the country.

Those Egyptian marathons weren't political, so no one bothered to call the lazy media to hand-feed them a story tailor made for the front page.

Aish HaTorah's 2009 Temple model freaks out Muslims today

The Al Aqsa Foundation has a major article, picked up by many other Arabic language media outlets, about a model of the Second Temple on the roof of the Aish HaTorah center opposite the Kotel in Jerusalem.

Occupation authorities officially opened a model view of the temple built on the roof of the Jewish school Aish HaTorah, located a few meters west of the Aqsa Mosque.

According to the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage, the roof can accommodate hundreds of visitors, in addition to a large model of a monument to the alleged structure, as well as a vantage point from which to see the al-Aqsa mosque and the Old City and the periphery.

The organization described this as a serious step against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, pointing out that the occupation aims to accelerate the pace of work and support to build the temple, at the expense of Al-Aqsa mosque, and that the model of the structure and binoculars off the Al-Aqsa Mosque (was in support pf the plan.)

It noted in a statement that tens of thousands of visitors, both foreign tourists and Israelis, are expected to visit this overlook every year, and will listening to explanations about the building of the alleged temple.

According to the organization this is a strategic location overlooking the yard near the Wall and the Al Aqsa Mosque...

The Al-Aqsa Foundation warned of the risk of this and similar projects that the occupation is using for quickly Judaizing.

The model has been there since August 2009.

As the Jerusalem Post wrote then (copied from the Aish site:)

Some 50 people gathered on Wednesday to watch the installation of a Second Temple model on the roof of a yet-unfinished Aish HaTorah building, across from the Western Wall and just a few hundred meters from where the real thing once stood.

With the Dome of the Rock and the Aksa Mosque standing conspicuously in the background, a crane lowered the 1.2-ton model onto the roof.

It took about a year for Michael Osanis, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union who has built a number of other Temple models, including one in the Temple Institute, also in the capital's Jewish Quarter, to complete this model, which is made from gold, silver, wood and Jerusalem stone.

The model will sit on a new educational building for Aish HaTorah's short-term outreach programs, which is set to open in December. Aish, which provides a network of educational programs for Jews around the world, is also building a new "Explorium" - an interactive museum on Jewish history, which it expects will host 300,000 visitors annually after it opens in two years.

"What could be more appropriate than to have here, as people are standing looking out over our holiest place, the Temple Mount, a sense of what it was really like to have the Temple here?" asked Ephraim Shore, director of Aish's programs in Jerusalem.

Aish hopes that this model will help people to visualize the Temple and therefore forge a stronger connection with Judaism and Jewish history.

This is a pattern: the Al Aqsa Foundation puts out press releases that are often completely made up, they routinely get picked up by media throughout the Arab world, incitement spreads and no one bothers to check actual facts because, after all, facts aren't as important as propaganda and incitement.

The Arabic newspapers know this game very well, and they happily play their part.

Major #BDSFail as haters lose Cornell resolution 15-8-1

From Legal Insurrection:

The Cornell Student Assembly voted late this afternoon to table indefinitely a Resolution to Divest from companies doing business in Israel.

The decision foiled the last-minute stealth move on the eve of Passover to push the Resolution forward so that the vote would take place next week in the middle of Passover: ALERT: Sneak Passover Anti-Israel Divestment attack at Cornell.

Even getting to that vote to table required that the Assembly overrule the decision of the President of the Assembly not to allow the motion to table until the Resolution was presented. Under no circumstance was there to be a vote today on the substance of the Resolution, this was a procedural decision to take it off the agenda.

This is a crushing defeat for SJP — maybe one of the most decisive yet on any campus.

They tried to pull a fast one, and never even were able to present their Resolution.

This reflected widespread opposition not only to the substance, but also a resentment of students who see SJP tryig to usurp campus dialogue. As one Assembly member wrote to me:

[Resolution backer] wants to see 20 year old college students form firm opinions on an issue we know very little about and have no responsibility for.

Expect claims that speech was stifled. To the contrary, there is no “right” to take up Student Assembly time on a Resolution that had so little support it couldn’t even survive a procedural motion.

A member of the Cornell faculty who attended wrote to me:

The BDSers are physically intimidating and ugly the way they act as a group with all their finger clicking and so forth. I'm a tenured faculty member and I felt quite intimidated; I can't imagine what a young more vulnerable student feels when confronted by this crap, especially if he/she is not secure about his or her Jewish identity.

But the BDSers are claiming that the pro-Israel students are the ones who were intimidating. Check out this tweet:

Gutless @CornellSA refuses to debate students' #CornellDivest Res. @CIPAC_CU swamps meeting w/ blueshirt Zionist hoodlums #trolltheCornellSA
— Kevin (@Dr_Manhatten) April 11, 2014

So who were the hoodlums, the anti-Israel crowd or the Zionists? Who is lying?

Luckily, we have a video that shows the answer brilliantly:

Apparently, polite applause is the act of "blueshirt Zionist hoodlums" while repeatedly and profanely interrupting a student association meeting is simple manners.

It seems that when you have an irrational hatred of one of the world's most liberal and tolerant countries despite it being surrounded by tens of millions who want it to be destroyed, seeing things as exactly the opposite of truth becomes a habit.

Unfortunately for them, the tide is turning against BDS this year, quite decisively. There will be more angry, profanity-filled outbursts, and more humorous videos of Israel haters.

Rational people remain rational when they lose. Irrational haters become even more irrational when things don't go their way. Nothing I can say is more convincing than this video.

Press freedom in Turkey? Hahahaha!

From Kate O’Sullivan and Laura Benitez at Vice:

"Journalists wanted for international news agency," read the Guardian job ad. As an editor in an industry where legitimate opportunities are few and far between, you apply for pretty much any full-time job you see, so apply we did. A couple of months later, we arrived in Ankara, Turkey, ready to “write history” as the first international journalists to be welcomed into the Anadolu Agency (AA) family.

We joined the agency in January, supposedly to edit English-language news, but quickly found ourselves becoming English-language spin doctors. The AA’s editorial line on domestic politics—and Syria—was so intently pro-government that we might as well have been writing press releases. Two months into the job, we listened to Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç talking some shit about press freedom from an event at London's Chatham House, downplaying the number of imprisoned journalists in Turkey. Soon after that, we got the chance to visit London on business. We grabbed it and resigned as soon as we hit UK soil.

Established in 1920, the AA was once a point of national pride. Today, it's at the end of one of the many sets of strings in the ruling AK Party’s puppet parade. Most of Turkey’s TV stations are heavily influenced by the state, and the few opposition channels can expect to have their licenses revoked at any time or be banned from broadcasting key events, such as live election footage or anything that might detract from how fantastic the government is doing.

For example, Turkey’s media regulator, RTUK, fined the networks that aired footage of last year’s Gezi Park protests. Funnily enough, the watchdog is made up of nine “elected” members nominated by political parties—and the more seats in parliament a faction has, the more influence it possesses.

Media outlets that aren't being hounded by RTUK can always look forward to direct intervention from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan himself. In 2009, independent mogul Aydin Dogan’s media group—made up of various newspapers and TV channels, CNN Türk, and a news agency—was fined $2.5 billion for evading taxes. Incidentally, the audit came just after one of the group’s platforms published news on the Lighthouse charity scandal, which saw a German court convict three Turkish businessmen for funnelling $28.3 million into their personal accounts.

In one recent leaked recording, Erdogan is heard asking his former justice minister to ensure that Dogan be punished. Since then, the Dogan empire has been bound and gagged accordingly.

It is easy to see a slick, modern looking website and assume that it is a professional, independent site. One has nothing to do with the other.

04/10 Links Pt2: How UNRWA Contributes to Palestinian Incitement; Ayaan Hirsi Ali Speaks

From Ian:

How UNRWA Contributes to Palestinian Incitement

Bedein said he believes children at UNRWA schools are being told that the only end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be for them to resettle to the areas that are now part of Israel, which sets an unrealistic expectation. He said that his organization’s primary goal is to raise awareness of the issue among politicians, journalists, and diplomats worldwide, in order to get them to reassess their support of UNRWA.
“The important thing is that there is going to be an expiration of the UNRWA mandate at the end of June and we’re hoping to tack on some very important conditions for the renewal of UNRWA [funding],” he said. “Why should a United Nations agency, which is supposed to be promoting peace, have a curriculum which is basically a war curriculum?”
In a statement last fall, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness flatly denied the allegations in “Camp Jihad,” calling the claims “baseless” and “patently false.”

There is Apartheid in Israel

Unfortunately though, the only Apartheid I see in Israel is against Jews. Here at the Mughrabi bridge (an intentionally temporary structure so as not to claim official permanent Jewish ties - EVERYTHING is symbolic in the Middle East), there is no dispute that it is a state of apart-hood, the literal translation of Apartheid. Is there any other reading of this? How can there be?
While talking to my new Dutch friends, and explaining the situation, they asked, "but, why are you treated differently?". How do I answer this so that it will make sense to them? I couldn't really find a plausible answer other than saying "Israel has become weak. in 1967 when Israel recaptured and reunified Jerusalem, they let the Waqf stay in power. Today, we are too weak to change anything. Everyone is afraid to upset the apple cart." "But why? Isn't this Israel?" they persisted. I answered with the only words I had left....I don't know!
At this point, the tourist line opened up again, and my new friends wished me well and said "don't worry, one day this will be different and you will be allowed to go up, and we will also be allowed to go up freely and see where it all began". WOW! the Dutch tourists are giving the Jewish guy Chizuk (spiritual uplifting) that it will be ok, you will return to Zion and once again Ascend the Holy Temple Mount where people of all Nations were once welcomed and will be so again, may it be speedily in our time. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

What Germany owes the Jews

This time next year, Israel and Germany will be gearing up to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties — a spectacularly sensitive relationship between the nation whose leadership set about annihilating the Jews and the nation-state whose revival, tragically, came too late to save six million of them.
The conventional wisdom is that the Israel-Germany “special relationship” remains both firm and delicate, marked by Germany’s extraordinary commitment to Israel’s well-being, as a consequence of that eternally unpayable historical debt owed by the Germans to the Jews.
The reality, however, is that while Germany has proved willing to some extent to bolster Israel’s defense militarily and diplomatically, much of its political and diplomatic leadership is as witheringly and ignorantly critical of Israel as the rest of the willfully blind European consensus. The only real difference is that German politicians and diplomats don’t generally make public their ill-informed critiques and their facile conclusions. In deference to that special relationship, they don’t put themselves openly at odds with the Jewish state.

Women's rights update: Hymenoplasties in Tunisia and harassment in Egypt

From Al Arabiya:

It happens every April ahead of the summer marriage season, says Tunisian gynecologist Faouzi Hajri - desperate brides-to-be beg for surgery to make them "virgins" again for their wedding night.

Fearing rejection as "used" women in a conservative Muslim country where premarital sex is nevertheless common, Tunisian women are increasingly opting for the sort of surgery offered by Doctor Hajri.

But it doesn't stop them regretting the need to convince new husbands of their purity.

"A woman's honor shouldn't be determined by a few drops of blood," says Salima, a 32-year-old who admits she had the operation so that her "honor" was not in question on her wedding night.

It is easy for a woman to have her hymen surgically reconstructed in Tunisia.

The routine hospital operation takes around 30 minutes and costs from 400 to 700 euros ($550 to $960), with a less permanent version needing to be done within a week of the wedding, while the stitches hold.

"The number of women resorting to hymenoplasty or hymenorrhaphy (as the operations are known) has gone up a lot in recent years," says Moncef Kamel, a doctor in the southern island of Djerba.

The women he operates on -- around 100 each year, aged between 18 and 45 -- come with their faces hidden behind a scarf and dark glasses, "have a normal, active sex life", and generally hail from working-class backgrounds.

"It's a taboo subject, which explains why there's a lack of official statistics," says Doctor Hajri.

The Tunis-based gynecologist says he also treats about 100 women annually, including from neighboring Libya and Algeria.

...

Research by psychoanalyst Nedra Ben Smail indicates that just five percent of Tunisian young women are not worried about losing their virginity before marriage, while more than 75 percent of women appearing to be virgins on their wedding night have had the operation.

Meanwhile...

Last December, Egyptian academic Mariz Tadros wrote that women’s human security was not on anyone’s agenda. According to her research, the security breakdown since the Arab uprisings has led to a dramatic rise in incidents of sexual harassment due to the sense among perpetrators that, in the absence of law and order, they can get away with anything. Women’s mobility, including their ability to go to work, has been severely curtailed. This is not only true in Egypt. Tadros found that women working night shifts—for example, as doctors and nurses—in the Libyan city of Benghazi could no longer carry out their jobs.

... A 2013 survey conducted jointly by the United Nations, Egypt’s Demographic Centre and the National Planning Institute found that more than 99 percent of Egyptian women had experienced some form of sexual harassment. This is surely a fact that is unacceptable to all, regardless of where they fall in the harassment debate.

One way to begin to move the debate along and to restore women’s ability to go about their daily lives is to shift the focus onto the unacceptability of the sexual harassment of women full stop, and less on discussing the various justifications for it. This requires a social and political will to move towards a culture of mutual respect and acceptance between men and women. In a country still wrestling with itself over its future, it is unlikely that this will find itself at the top of a national agenda in the near future.

Download the EoZ Haggadah!

It has now been five years since I put together a bunch of rabbinic commentaries about Zionism and redemption with the text of the Haggadah.

The result was, IMHO, pretty good. I have printed it and use it at least one seder every year, and I still enjoy the insights.

Since the commentaries and translation are copied and pasted from various sources, I cannot sell a bound edition of this because of copyright issues. But you are free to download it and print it for your own sedarim!

Elder of Ziyon Haggadah 5769 by Eldad Tzioni

04/10 Links Pt1: The Crisis in the Peace Talks Was Pre-Planned by the Palestinians; Iran Fatigue?

From Ian:

The Crisis in the Peace Talks Was Pre-Planned by the Palestinians

Although Abbas repeats the mantra of a “peaceful struggle” in tandem with the diplomatic campaign, in practice terror continues, including attempts to murder both Israeli civilians and security forces. Furthermore, the PA signals unequivocal support for terror by demanding the immediate release of all the Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their role in terror attacks and the murder of Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings. These terrorists are treated as heroes by the PA, which also provides them a very generous basket of economic and social benefits; their average salary while in prison is even higher than that of members of the security forces.
The PA revealed its true face when it officially requested the Islamic terrorist organizations, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to participate in a meeting of the Palestinian National Council, which is supposed to elect a new Palestinian leadership to serve as a temporary government of the Palestinian state. The PA does not view Hamas and Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations but, rather, as legitimate political groups that can be part of the Palestinian government.
The PA is preparing the ground in stages for de facto international recognition of a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines that is under “Israeli occupation,” and all that will remain is the official declaration of the state’s establishment.
The demand for full Palestinian sovereignty along the 1967 lines also entails Palestinian control over the border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, with likely major implications for the stability of the Hashemite Kingdom, which has a Palestinian demographic majority. Paradoxically, Israel’s accommodation under the presence circumstances of the Palestinian demand for sovereignty over the border with Jordan would likely prompt U.S., European, and, of course, Jordanian pressures on Israel to avoid such a transfer of authority and maintain its military presence in the West Bank.

Respond Firmly to Palestinian Blackmail

Unilateral measures and threats should be answered in kind. After all, Israel is the stronger party and can inflict much greater pain on the Palestinians than the PA can inflict upon Israel. Perhaps the PA needs to be reminded of this. Raw power politics is what everybody understands in the Middle East. In this region, fear is a better political currency than compassion and fairness.
The Palestinian threats to challenge Israel at the UN and in international organizations are empty. Nothing can change the reality on the ground without the acquiescence of Israel. For example, the acceptance of Palestine by UNESCO did not change the lives of the Palestinians one iota. Israel should also stop fearing Palestinian accusations at the International Criminal Court. Regular concessions to the Palestinians for not taking this course of action expose Israel to continuous blackmail. It is time to call the Palestinian's bluff and make the PA face the consequences.
Hopefully, Israel's government will kick the habit of paying the Palestinians for their participation in sham peace talks. Rather it is high time to remind the Palestinians that decisions in Jerusalem, to a large extent, determine their fate, and that only real negotiations and compromise with Israel can give them the state they desire. (h/t Bob Knot)

Peace process peters out

Blessed are the peacemakers. But don't confuse peacemakers with peace processors. The latter think they can persuade the lion to lie down with the lamb. The former are realistic enough to grasp how perilous that is unless the lion has just had a big dinner and a couple of stiff drinks.
Sad to say, Secretary of State John Kerry has proven to be a peace processor, one loath to acknowledge that the latest round of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks have come to a very dead end. Actually, they never moved off the starting blocks.

Yemenite Jews with Shimon Peres - photo in Yemen media

A couple of Yemen news sites have published a relatively honest history of the Jews of Yemen.

In general, the tone is positive, describing the Jews who lived there more than 2000 years ago. Perhaps most surprising is that the article admits:

With the rise of Islam [the Jews were in an] unstable situation, although they enjoyed the status of dhimmis. ..What we know is that during the Middle Ages, the Jews of Yemen were under very difficult conditions. A king in that period named Abdul Nabi issued harsh judgments on the Jews. But Jewish philosophy and thought flourished in that period in Yemen more than ever before.

While they don't go into the details of the decrees of the king - he insisted that they convert to Islam or be killed - this is still a remarkable admission.

It also mentions a 1678 decree to expel all Jews from Yemen, that was later rescinded.

The article does skip other cases of persecution of Jews; as Wikipedia notes:

Active Muslim persecution of the Jews did not gain full force until the Zaydi clan seized power, from the more tolerant Sunni Muslims, early in the 10th century.

The Zaydi enforced a statute known as the Orphan's Decree, anchored in their own 18th century legal interpretations and enforced at the end of that century. It obligated the Zaydi state to take under its protection and to educate in Islamic ways any dhimmi (i.e. non-Muslim) child whose parents had died when he or she was a minor. The Orphan's Decree was ignored during the Ottoman rule (1872–1918), but was renewed during the period of Imam Yahya (1918–1948).[18]

Under the Zaydi rule, the Jews were considered to be impure, and therefore forbidden to touch a Muslim or a Muslim's food. They were obligated to humble themselves before a Muslim, to walk to the left side, and greet him first. They could not build houses higher than a Muslim's or ride a camel or horse, and when riding on a mule or a donkey, they had to sit sideways. Upon entering the Muslim quarter a Jew had to take off his foot-gear and walk barefoot. If attacked with stones or fists by Islamic youth, a Jew was not allowed to defend himself. In such situations he had the option of fleeing or seeking intervention by a merciful Muslim passerby

Still, this is about as positive an article as I've ever seen in Arabic media. It mentions the very real problems that Yemenite Jews had in the 1950s in Israel but it doesn't dwell on them.

The article ends with brief profiles of famous Israeli singers who are of Yemenite origin!

With all the explicit antisemitism in the Arab media, articles like this are rare but when they are published they need to be highlighted.

Hezbollah brags about violating UNSC 1701. The UN doesn't care.

From Naharnet:

Israel has asked the United Nations to take action against Hizbullah after the party's secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said that his group was behind a blast that targeted Israeli troops last month.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor said in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council that Nasrallah’s admission is further evidence that Hizbullah continues to operate south of the Litani River in violation of Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war between the two sides.

"Yes, the explosion in the Shebaa Farms that Hizbullah has not claimed until now was the work of the resistance, which means the work of Hizbullah," Nasrallah told As Safir daily earlier this week.

"This was not the reply, but this was part of the reply," Nasrallah said.

The chances that the UN will issue a statement condemning Hezbollah is close to zero.

UNIFIL's mandate in South Lebanon includes to ensure Hezbollah has no weapons between the Litani River and the Blue Line. They have done nothing of the sort.

But they still congratulate themselves, as Officer-in-Charge of UNIFIL, Mr. Karen Tchalian said last month at a celebration marking 36 years of them being in the area:

Today, more than ever, UNIFIL is recognized as a force for the stability of the entire region. In spite of so much surrounding conflict, instability and uncertainty, the situation in our area of operations has remained calm. Thanks to the great work of our military and civilian personnel and the effective cooperation with the LAF, we have so far been successful in maintaining the cessation of hostilities between the parties and promoting respect for the Blue Line.

The mandate to keep Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon is ignored, tens of thousands of rockets aimed at Israel have been smuggled in the area, Hezbollah attacks Israeli troops - and UNIFIL is bragging about how wonderful a job it is doing.