Friday, May 30, 2014
Elder of ZiyonSoon the Saudi religious police might open up their cyber division!A prominent Saudi cleric has declared that online conversations between men and women are religiously forbidden and has warned that they may lead to committing sin.
According to Saudi daily al-Eqitisadiya, Sheikh Abdullah al-Mutlaq, a member of the Saudi Committee of Senior Scholars, said that chatting online through social networks falls under the forbidden “khulwa” (a religious term describing a situation where a man and a woman are alone in a private area).
Sheikh al-Mutlaq, speaking on a local Saudi radio show, warned that “the devil would be present when women talk to men” and urged women not to talk to males, even if the purpose of the discussion is to obtain guidance and advice.
Saudi social media users took to the Internet to express mixed reactions regarding his statement.
Whilst some users praised the cleric and said that he was right, most other users ridiculed him and his views by saying things such as “why don’t they (religious clerics) just ban women all together?”
Meanwhile, others wondered if direct messages could cause accidental pregnancy.
Friday, May 30, 2014Elder of ZiyonTaibi also visited the Church of the Nativity during her trip. She didn't get nearly the same reaction to posing with Christian religious objects as she did in the photo above where she is holding a Hebrew book of Psalms.Ghislaine Taibi, who works for a French-speaking private Moroccan channel has been harshly criticized by many Moroccans for a recent visit she paid to Israel. A picture of her holding the Torah [sic] while standing adjacent to the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem has set social media ablaze.
The bulk of comments on the picture associate Taibi to the Zionist cause in a derogatory way and attack the private channel 2M. “Pigs go back to their origins,” read one of the comments. “Truth need be revealed about this filth,” read another comment referring to Moroccan channel 2M.
...Asked on how she reacted to some Moroccans’ negative reactions to her visit to Israel, Taibi answered, “I’ve never considered responding to these trivial and unjustified attacks, carried out by people who don’t even know the real reasons for my visit there, and who ignore the principles of my work as a journalist.”
Taibi explained that her very first motivation for visiting Israel was her job as a journalist, a job that consists of “hunting news regardless of where it is found.” The second reason for her visit to Israel, she further explained, is her intention to write a book about religions, which she intends to announce very soon.
“The reasons for my visits to Israel are only professional and scientific,” she told Febrayer.
“Supporting peace and coexistence between both sides (Palestinians and Israelis) is what matters most,” declared Taibi. “The two sides are yearning for peace, except for those extremists who are fighting against the willingness of their people,” she added.
Thursday, May 29, 2014Elder of Ziyon
As the authors elucidate, UNRWA’s steadfast espousal of the Palestinian “Right of Return” reveals both the degree to which it has been politically co-opted and compromised by its constituency, and that it is a position at odds with the United Nations’ own Charter; such a right “necessarily entails the dissolution of Israel as such… Jewish sovereignty as envisioned by the Zionist movement and the 1947 Partition Plan, would be ended and Jewish political and cultural rights necessarily curtailed.” In other words, for both AFSC and UNRWA, an initial commitment to humanitarian aid and relief became heavily politicized, reflecting the complexities of merging philanthropic (or religious) intention with geopolitics and regional conflict.Musings on the Subject of Nakba Day
Romirowsky and Joffe are exhaustive in their research and consistent in describing an aspect of the Palestinian refugee historical experience that has heretofore been neglected in the scholarly and policy literature.
The dilemma the global community faces – building social and economic progress along with a political resolution that brings stability (if not peace) – is ultimately hampered by an agency of its own creation that pursues its agenda at the expense of the greater goal. UNRWA bears culpability for enlarging, intensifying and prolonging a refugee calamity it was intended to ameliorate. AFSC’s pragmatic withdrawal from Palestine refugee relief five decades ago, juxtaposed with UNRWA’s persistent re-entrenchment even in the face of decades of the breakdown of agency operations and the collapse of its chartered goals, should be a clear signal that a different strategy is necessary in the pursuit of Palestine refugee relief and the question of the resolution of the refugees’ status.
It behooves us, then, to make a list of other apolitical and neutral examples of human suffering to demonstrate that there are no political agendas behind the choice of which events are selected to be commemorated and mourned.Judith Butler’s Mythologies: “Truthiness” in the Philosophy of BDS
First, a day of commemoration for the tragic losses in property values by white slave owners in the American south, stripped of their slave assets, as a result of the loss of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, would be a great step in the direction of neutral apolitical honoring of human rights and dignity.
Second, we should be holding special campus days of commemoration and empathy for male rapists who have been injured while violently raping women. Their bruised knees and knuckles and scratched faces are human tragedies that all compassionate members of society must honor and respect in the name of neutral human rights and apolitical dignity.
Although she denies being a spokesperson or leader of anything, few who have been following recent discussions concerning the BDS (Boycotts, Divestments, Sanctions) movement for restrictions aimed against Israeli academics on American college campuses would fail to recognize her name as one of its prime symbols. And it is in this case precisely the symbolic power of a name (since her books are unreadable for most non-specialists) that is at issue.
Butler lends credibility to an otherwise quirky, retrograde, and at least sometimes anti-Semitic push to reject Israel’s very right to exist in any conceivable two-state solution whatsoever to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (BDSers would prefer to liberate all of Palestine, “from the river to the sea”), because of her intellectual cache as one of today’s leading, trend-setting cultural “theorists.” The tribe of theorists, by the way, are supposed to be, like the extinct race of philosophers before them, lovers of wisdom–souls so drawn to the truth that they’re willing to run risks for it. Such at least is their reputation among the impressionable; when they aren’t, by contrast, being dismissed by cynics (like the philosophers before them) for pretensions to mere radical chic. Or worse.
Thursday, May 29, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, May 29, 2014Elder of Ziyon
BeituniaI responded:In the LARB article I quoted a doctor who treated both boys and who told me that their wounds were without question caused by live fire. Nuwara was shot in the chest, Abu Thaher in the back: both bullets passed through their bodies, leaving exit wounds. The rubber-coated steel bullets used by the IDF can and often do penetrate the skin and can be lethal, but they cannot pass entirely through a human torso even when fired from a relatively short distance. I interviewed four eyewitnesses to the killings, all of whom said live fire was used. (The concussion from a live shot sounds differently than that of a shot when rubber-coated bullets are fired. I have met 11-year-olds in the West Bank who can accurately tell what sort of munitions are being fired by ear alone. All four of the eyewitnesses I interviewed had witnessed many such clashes and knew the difference well.) Three of them testified that they saw Israeli commanders choosing targets and pointing them out to snipers just before each boy was killed.
One thing is worth noting: the bullet that killed Nadim Nuwara was almost certainly not fired by the soldier caught on the CNN video. It was almost certainly a coincidence that he fired his weapon at approximately the same moment that Nuwara was hit. And he almost certainly was shooting rubber-coated bullets: the video is hazy, but his rifle appears to be equipped with the sort of extension that is attached to the barrel of an M16 to allow it to fire rubber-coated bullets. Mohannad Darabee, one of the witnesses I interviewed, told me repeatedly that he was sure the shot that killed Nuwara did not come from the group of Border Police who had gathered on a driveway just uphill and slightly back from the road. Darabee walked me to the spot where Nuwara fell, and to the spot from which the Border Police (and the now-suspended soldier) had been firing. The corner of a building stood in the way: there was no line of fire that would have allowed those soldiers to hit Nuwara.
However, another, larger group of Israeli soldiers had gathered behind a concrete blast wall on the edge of a parking lot about 200 meters from the spot where Nuwara was hit. (See image above.) It was there, Darabee said, that he saw a commander choosing targets through binoculars. Those soldiers had an unimpeded shot at Nuwara. Forgive me if this is all a bit hard to visualize: The Guardian produced a graphic that maps it all out. But I want to make this very clear, because the waters have been muddied considerably, both through deliberate obfuscation and by speculation about a video that reveals less than it appears to: the fact that the soldier caught on video by CNN was apparently firing rubber-coated bullets only confirms the accounts of eyewitnesses who testified that the bullet that killed Nadim Nuwara was likely fired by another group of soldiers gathered at the edge of the parking lot. Abu Thaher, who was shot an hour earlier, and was standing in the middle of the road, easily visible from the Border Police officers’ perch, could have been killed by either group.
The CNN video doesn't only show two shots of rubber bullets - it has the sounds of the shots. The first two shots recorded sound the same and the first one corresponds with Nawara's falling down.
Are you saying that the Israeli police in the other area shot live fire at exactly the same time both times? That would be unbelievable.
Baker was a member of a panel headed by former High Court Judge Edmund Levy that in 2012 researched the question of Israel's “occupation” of Judea and Samaria and found that Israel could not be considered as such under international law. Baker said that it was impossible to dispute Israel's right to the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria, as ancient and modern history makes it clear that the land belongs to the Jewish people.Without Zionism, the Temple Mount would not be as holy to Islam
Ancient writings, from the Bible to Greek, Roman, and early European and Middle Eastern sources all attribute the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. In modern times, the defining documents of the current status of the Land of Israel, from the Balfour Declaration to the UN partition plan all recognized this historic connection as well. “This cannot be disputed,” Baker told the conference.
With that, he said, Israel could not ignore the fact that it had a large Muslim population. It was on this basis that the Oslo Accord was signed, with the final disposition of the land to be decided in negotiations. So far, Baker said, those negotiations have not gone very well, and Israel should use this fact to advance its own ideas on the matter.
In recent months, Baker said that the PA had committed significant violations of the Oslo Accords. “They changed their status, indicating to the United Nations that they wished to be regarded as a state, not an Authority as specified in Oslo. This was a fundamental violation of the Oslo Accords. In addition, they have been engaging in foreign policy-setting,” he said, by signing international agreements – also specifically forbidden under Oslo.
“Temple denial,” however, is a recent phenomenon that stands in stark contrast with Islamic tradition.Do they have a right to a state?
During the early Muslim period (between the 7th and 11th centuries), the Arabs used to call Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, interchangeably, Bayt Al-Maqdis, an Arabic transliteration of the Hebrew Beit Hamikdash (Temple). A 1924 tourist guidebook published by the Supreme Muslim Council says the Temple Mount is the site of the Jerusalem Temple. Araf al-Araf, a Palestinian Arab historian who, as a close friend of Haj Amin al-Husseini could hardly be suspected of pro-Zionist sympathies, wrote in his 1951 book "Tariah Al-Quds" that the Temple Mount “was bought by David to build the Temple, but it is Solomon who built it in 1007 BCE.”
Not only is “Temple denial” a recent phenomenon; so is Islam’s interest in the Temple Mount. Muhammad made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and of sanctifying only one place: the Kaaba in Mecca. In the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya ruled that sacred Islamic sites are to be found only in the Arabian Peninsula. The Koran does not mention Jerusalem, and Muslim Jerusalemites pray toward Mecca. They do not take off their shoes in the space between the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque.
Without Zionism, there would have been no Muslim sanctification of the Temple Mount and no Arab denial of the existence of the two Jerusalem Temples.
Israelis may still be divided about their reunited city; but their ideological divide is thankfully being narrowed by modern Palestinian mythology.
They lie about everything. The create fake atrocities to smear the IDF (one is in progress now). They have a made-up version of history that gets wilder every day. The Jewish Temple didn’t exist, they say. “Jesus was a Palestinian,” they say. Was he an Arab? A Muslim? A Canaanite? What Temple did he throw money-changers out of? This is so far beyond nonsense that it’s impossible to respond, but it’s used to justify both their crimes and their demands.
The culture, thanks mostly to Arafat’s educational and media systems, is obsessed with death, martyrdom, and revenge. Palestinians make it clear to anyone who is prepared to listen that their greatest aspiration is to destroy the state of Israel, kill or expel the Jews, and take the land that they believe they have a right to.
In a moral sense, then, are they ‘deserving’?
The Pope mentioned the “right to live with dignity and freedom of movement.” I presume he is referring to the security barrier. But the barrier was built because allowing Palestinians total freedom of movement led to hundreds of Israelis dead from bombings and shootings. Does the Pope think they have a ‘right’ to go where they want to kill whomever they want?
What does he think?
Thursday, May 29, 2014Elder of ZiyonBeitunia
CNN, laughably, showed Nawara's father and the supposed "bullet" that killed Madeem, something which Israeli experts showed was completely impossible. But neither CNN nor Robert Mackey bothered to contact any objective Western experts to easily identify the types of weapons used or the supposed bullet or to verify the story of the bullet hole in the backpack next to the bloodless exit wound.
Thursday, May 29, 2014Elder of Ziyon
In an unprecedented, three-year cyber espionage campaign, Iranian hackers created false social networking accounts and a fake news website to spy on military and political leaders in the United States, Israel and other countries, a cyber-intelligence firm said on Thursday.The easiest way to hack someone is to gain their trust, and in cyberspace this happens more easily than in the real world. Between installing malware and getting people to create accounts with passwords they are likely to have used elsewhere, this could have been a very effective operation.
ISight Partners, which uncovered the operation, said the hackers' targets include a four-star U.S. Navy admiral, U.S. lawmakers and ambassadors, members of the U.S.-Israeli lobby, and personnel from Britain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The firm declined to identify the victims and said it could not say what data had been stolen by the hackers, who were seeking credentials to access government and corporate networks, as well as infect machines with malicious software.
“If it's been going on for so long, clearly they have had success,” iSight Executive Vice President Tiffany Jones told Reuters. The privately held company is based in Dallas, Texas and provides intelligence on cyber threats.
ISight dubbed the operation “Newscaster” because it said the Iranian hackers created six “personas” who appeared to work for a fake news site, NewsOnAir.org, which used content from the Associated Press, BBC, Reuters and other media outlets. The hackers created another eight personas who purported to work for defense contractors and other organizations, iSight said.
The hackers set up false accounts on Facebook and other online social networks for these 14 personas, populated their profiles with fictitious personal content, and then tried to befriend target victims, according to iSight.
The operation has been active since at least 2011, iSight said, noting that it was the most elaborate cyber espionage campaign using “social engineering” that has been uncovered to date from any nation.
To build credibility, the hackers would approach high-value targets by first establishing ties with the victims' friends, classmates, colleagues, relatives and other connections over social networks run by Facebook Inc, Google Inc and its YouTube, LinkedIn Corp and Twitter Inc.
The hackers would initially send the targets content that was not malicious, such as links to news articles on NewsOnAir.org, in a bid to establish trust. Then they would send links that infected PCs with malicious software, or direct targets to web portals that ask for network log-in credentials, iSight said.
The hackers used the 14 personas to make connections with more than 2,000 people, the firm said, adding that it believed the group ultimately targeted several hundred individuals.
“This campaign is not loud. It is low and slow,” said Jones. “They want to be stealth. They want to be under the radar.”
Facebook Inc spokesman Jay Nancarrow said his company had discovered the hacking group while investigating suspicious friend requests and other activity on its website.
“We removed all of the offending profiles we found to be associated with the fake NewsOnAir organization and we have used this case to further refine our systems that catch fake accounts at various points of interaction on the site and block malware from spreading,” Nancarrow said.
LinkedIn spokesman Doug Madey said the site was investigating the report, though none of the 14 fake profiles uncovered by iSight were currently active.
The Israeli military suspended a soldier who was captured on video this month firing his rifle at protesters in the occupied West Bank. Video evidence showed that the soldier fired his weapon within seconds of a Palestinian boy’s collapsing to the ground with what proved to be a fatal gunshot wound.
As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Wednesday, the suspended soldier, seen in video recorded by a CNN producer, was a member of a communications unit assigned to document the work of combat troops and border police deployed to contain a demonstration in the West Bank town of Beitunia, near Israel’s Ofer Prison, on May 15. The CNN video appeared to show that another shot was fired by a police officer who was standing near the soldier on a hillside above the protesters.
Just seconds after those shots were fired, the CNN camera panned to show demonstrators and medics in a frantic scramble to evacuate the wounded protester, 17-year-old Nadeem Siam Nawara, who died a short time later.
...An Israeli security official who requested anonymity to comment on a continuing investigation told The Times that the soldier had been suspended from his position for firing his weapon without authorization. The official insisted, however, that the soldier had fired only rubber bullets, not live ammunition.
Doctors who examined the boys before their burials reported that they were both killed by gunshot wounds through their chests.
A probe into the deaths of two Palestinians killed in the West Bank village of Bitunia during a Nakba Day demonstration earlier this month took a dramatic turn on Wednesday, when a CNN video clip showed a non-combat soldier, who had accompanied his comrades on the mission, firing what appeared to be a rubber bullet during the incident.
The soldier, a member of an IDF communications division, apparently fired his bullet at around the same time that one of the Palestinians, Nadim Nuwara, 17, was killed. However, the IDF has found no evidence proving that this soldier's bullet caused Nuwara's death. The details of the case are under a military court gag order.
...The IDF has acknowledged that its troops fired rubber bullets during the incident – a fact confirmed by footage from both local security cameras and journalists. But the two Palestinians were apparently killed when they were relatively far away from the troops, which would seem to indicate that live fire was used. Yet the soldiers, officers and border policemen present at the scene have all denied that any live bullets were fired.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
