Arab media roundup

I'm not going into all the details of today's massive air attack against Gaza - you can read all about that in the usual media - but here are some interesting tidbits from some Arabic sites.

Ma'an has a bulletin that Israel still plans to open up Kerem Shalom on Sunday to bring in medical supplies.

A cartoon from AlJazeera.net that indicates that Arab nations gave Israel the "green light" to attack Gaza.
Egypt promised to open the Rafah crossing for injured Gazans, but according to Ma'an changed its mind and decided to send medical supplies to Gaza instead. Palestine Press, however, reports that Hamas was stopping Egyptian aid from reaching Gaza - including 18 ambulances and much blood.

The terrorist who died on Friday, that Ma'an had reported was shooting rockets at Israel, is now referred to as a "journalist" in reporting his funeral.

A Gazan was killed and four injured when a smuggling tunnel collapsed.

Hamas' website refers to Israel's attacks as a "massive holocaust" even as it brags about shooting rockets and killing a civilian. Rockets made it as far as Kiryat Gat.

Islamic Jihad's leaders are comparing this to "Deir Yassin."

The "Free Galilee Brigades" that have claimed recent terror attacks in Israel say that they will start a new wave of terror. Hamas' Khaled Meshaal also threatens "martyrdom operations."

While Palestinian Arabs are claiming that one third of the dead are civilians, and the Free Gaza movement is putting out press releases claiming that Israel bombed playgrounds, so far the pictures of the dead make them all look to be young men in their 20s.

Apparently a "VIP" tunnel has been constructed for senior Hamas members to go to Egypt in style.

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A Palestinian Arab "journalist" dies

Palestine News Network writes:

Gaza / PNN – The latest victim of the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip is a journalist. Palestinian medical sources report that Hamza Shahin died on Friday from wounds sustained two weeks ago.

The local news photographer was hit during an Israeli air attack on the northern Gaza Strip in mid-December, medical sources said today.

Shahin had been seriously injured in an Israeli attack ostensibly targeting a group of armed resistance members. He died today in a Gaza hospital.

What a tragedy! An innocent journalist murdered by the evil Zionists!

Of course, even the other Palestinian Arab press adds other details. From Ma'an:

A Palestinian fighter affiliated with the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, was pronounced dead on Friday after sustaining wounds in an Israeli artillery strike in the northern Gaza Strip earlier in December.

Shaheen was reportedly injured in an Israeli airstrike, in which two missiles targeted a group of fighters in the Tal Az-Za’ater area of Jabaliyah Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip.

He was apparently firing a homemade projectile toward Sderot, his southern Israeli target, when the Apache helicopter fired toward him and others.

Hamas' own obituary doesn't mention his sterling journalistic credentials, only that he was a "mujahid."

Israel's record of only killing card-carrying terrorists in Gaza since the beginning of November is still intact.

Will Reporters Sans Frontieres condemn Israel for this?

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Empty threats lose effectiveness

Israel has been talking a lot about a major Gaza operation over the past few days. [This tough talk may have helped Kadima in the most recent polls.] Yet as we have seen, the Israeli leaders have a history of freely talking about doing something about Gaza and being very reluctant to actually do anything.

This all-talk, no action posturing has had its effects on the Palestinian Arab public as well. An on-line poll at Ma'an Arabic asks whether the current Israeli threats to invade Gaza next week are a bluff ("psychological war" or real. At the moment, 53% say it is bluff while only 43% are taking it seriously.

A couple of years of empty threats does make it hard to take them seriously.

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Qassam kills two girls - in Gaza

Yes, those rockets that were dismissed as "Christmas firecrackers" by PLO UN representative Mohammad Abu-Koash have killed again. Just this time, the victims were two Palestinian Arab girls:

A rocket apparently fired by Palestinians on Friday struck a house in the Gaza Strip, killing two Palestinian sisters aged five and 13, Palestinian medics said.

Hamas police said they were investigating the cause of the blast in Beit Lahiya village in northern Gaza, which medics said seemed to be due to a rocket aimed at Israel that had misfired.

Earlier in the day, a seriously wounded 35-year-old Palestinian man, hurt by a misfired rocket on Tuesday, was taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment.

Apparently, Christmas came a little late to Gaza this year.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now 226, with 28 of them being children.

And the number of Arabs seriously injured and killed by Qassams since the latest escalation is far higher than the number of Israelis, even though the number of rockets that fall short seem to be perhaps in the 5% range.

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Funhouse mirror news

JERUSALEM, December 26 (FMN) - The UN today stepped up its pressure on the Arab world to send humanitarian aid to the besieged residents of Sderot, suffering under years of constant rocket bombardment from Iranian-backed Arabs.

"The brave people of the Negev are being forced out of their homes, in what can only be called ethnic cleansing," stated UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann. "This slow genocide is being ignored by the world at large, and the Arab world is responsible."

The Arab world have been enforcing a siege on Israel for over sixty years. Basic humanitarian items are not allowed into Israel from most Arab countries, and Israel is likewise banned from selling its own goods to its neighboring states, hurting the economy of the tiny nation.

"Legally, Israel is suffering under occupation, as the Arab states control all of Israel's land borders," stated Brockmann. "In addition, there are hundreds of Arab settlements in Israel itself, which have been the major obstacle to peace for decades."

"The Arab treatment of Jews and Israelis can only be described as a form of apartheid," said former US president Jimmy Carter as he visited Ashkelon in a solidarity visit. "Israel, one of the most crowded nations in the world, has been forced to give more and more land to the expansionist Arabs over the past decades, and it gets nothing in return. Peace requires full normalization, and I am disappointed that even Egypt and Jordan continue to incite against Jewish national self-determination."

"Israel has turned into an open-air concentration camp," asserted peace activist Lauren Booth last month. "The Israeli economy is being constrained by the Arab boycott of Israel, which is still largely in force. The occasional 'peace' treaties and tiny trickle of trade is just a facade by the Arab world meant to cover up their humanitarian crimes against the peaceful people of Israel and their aims to shrink Israel's land area into nothingness."

While all of Israel suffers from the Arab blockade, it is the residents of Sderot who are suffering the most lately from indiscriminate rocket attacks by the Iranian-funded Arabs of Gaza.

UN Human Rights investigator Richard Falk called the rocket attacks "a crime against humanity" and demanded that "the Arab states, flush with oil money, must provide Sderot residents with basic needs, like rocket shelters, psychologists and medical professionals."

"For sixty years, the Arab nations have conspired to block Jews from being able to return to their land. They have started overt and covert wars against the only Jewish state. The few Jews who remain in Arab countries suffer from official and unofficial discrimination.

"Hundreds of resolutions against the systematic Arab attempts to destroy Israel have been ignored by these expansionist states, and Israel remains besieged even after so many years. How long will the world remain silent?"

Academics such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have also noted that world opinion tends to support the so-called "Arab Lobby" even as the genocidal intent of the Arab world is explicitly stated in their media and mosques. "The Arab influence on world governments is directly proportional to power of the Arab economy, which influences businesses and politicians in ways that can only be described as insidious. As a direct result, simple moral values become muddled as the Arab world works hard to influence the agendas of Western nations, to remarkable success," stated Walt in a lecture in Munich last Sunday.

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Pakistan Taliban threatens to kill schoolgirls

From the al-Arabiya:

Taliban leaders in Pakistan's troubled northwest Swat valley have banned girls from attending school, threatening to kill any female student, officials said Thursday.

The threat was delivered this week by local Taliban commander Shah Durran in an address carried on an illegally-run radio station in the area, local officials told AFP.

"You have until Jan. 15 to stop sending your girls to schools. If you do not pay any heed to this warning, we will kill such girls," one official quoted the commander as saying.

An official at the Pakistani education ministry said there are about 1,580 schools registered in Swat -- once known for its top-flight schools.

"Already Taliban militants have destroyed 252 schools, mainly those where girls and boys were studying together," official Naeem Khan said.

The Pakistan Daily Times adds:

Locals say they are helpless and have no other option but to accede to the Taliban’s pressure as the government has failed to provide them with securuty.

“This is terrible,” the principal of a private school in Mingora told Daily Times, requesting that the name of his school should not be mentioned as that would risk his life and property.

He said the Taliban decision had proved that the government had lost its writ in the valley. “This is the question of the future of our children. The Taliban decision will throw more than 40,000 girls out of schools,” he said.

Although AFP reported this a day ago, only a handful of Western media outlets have picked up on this - and, as far as I can tell, none in the United States.

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Hamas continues to claim it only targets military

Hamas' absurd claims that it only targets military targets get even more ridiculous in its latest broken-English press release:

Al Qassam Brigades announeced in statement issued About the expected agression on Gaza by the zionist forces sad "Thousands of the Zionists who lived in the military bases will be in the range of Qassam firing".

The palestinian Resistance resumed firing Qassam Rockets after relatively quiet night, the Zionist sources claimed that on Thursday morning a Qassam rocket fired at what so-called the military base "Sha'ar Hanegev".

As always, the Zionist sources clamied that there were no reports of injuries in the base, also the resistance managed to target the base in previouse tome, several mortar shells landed in the area without causing injuries as the Zionist sources claimed..

About two hours later, two additional blasts were heard in the Sa'ar Hanegev Regional Council, but the rockets' landing site was not located. The Salah al-Din Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committee's military wing, claimed responsibility for the rockets.

Yesterday, Al Qassam Brigades announced its responsibility on some operations, part of the operations were a the folowing:

Operation	Target
(3) mortars	Military base "Kfar Azza"
(3) mortars	Military base "Natif Etzra"
(3) mortars	Military base "Zikeem"
(5) mortars	Military base "Third Eye"
(7) mortars	Military base "Al-Ersal" [Erez crossing - EoZ]
(6) mortars	Military base "Nir Oz"
(19) mortars	"Karm Abu-Salim" [Kerem Shalom - EoZ]
(2) mortars	Military base "Malaka"

But if they happen to kill some kids, well, that's reason to celebrate as well!

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Free speech, PalArab-supporter style

I just saw another typical Israel-bashing website that masquerades as a Google News source called "Palestine Think Tank - Free Minds for a Free Palestine."

As can be expected, it celebrates previous terror attacks against Israel (calling it "resistance") but publicly claims that current "resistance" be non-violent - not because terrorism is immoral, but because at this point in time it looks really bad to the stupid Western nations who still abhor murdering Jews for no good reason.

For a site that uses the word "free" so freely, it has an interesting caveat in its comment policy:

Comments containing Zionist propaganda...will not be approved.

Apparently, the ediors of this "news" source are so afraid that some truth might leak out in the comments that they'd rather censor it ahead of time.

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Open thread!

Today's thread is red and green.

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"Nittel-nacht"

It was not that long ago that Jews who lived in Europe dreaded Christmas Eve.

That night was known as "nittel nacht," and traditionally local Christians would attack Jews during that night. As a result, the Chassidic communities of Europe came up with a set of customs for that night, mostly for self-protection.

Here is a very comprehensive article about it.

In 1905, a Cleveland writer named Martha Wolfenstein published a set of short stories, written for the general public, about various Jewish topics, and one of her stories seems to be a fairly accurate description of how nittel nacht was experienced in Bohemia in the mid-1800s. Although nothing tragic occurs in this story, some of its matter-of-fact depictions of daily anti-semitism that European Jews had to endure are jarring - as well as their dreams to return to Jerusalem, where they would no longer have to worry about such things.

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Today's unreported Palestinian Arab news

But will they call it "homemade?": An apparent Qassam rocket fell short in Gaza, hitting the house of a journalist and seriously injuring his brother, a 37-year old lawyer.

Target rich environment: Islamic Jihad will hold a rally tomorrow to celebrate its part in terrorizing Jews. It will be held at Nuseirat, on Salah al Din Street, at 3 PM.

Paper threats: Israel is said to have dropped thousands of leaflets to Rafah, warning tunnel owners that Israel will start bombing them in 48 hours.

Cairo worries: The Governor of Northern Sinai warns that any Israeli actions in Gaza could trigger the flight of thousands of Gazans into Egypt. Nothing could be worse for a country than having to accept Palestinian Arabs in their midst, right?

Holy Shiites: As relations between Cairo and Tehran grow more strained, more Egyptians are criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood for their ties to Iranian Shiites.

Gleeful jihadist mathematics: Hamas claims to have shot 54 mortars, 24 Qassams and 2 Grad missiles in 24 hours, in what it is calling Operation Oil Stain. This does not include rockets and mortars from Islamic Jihad, the PRC and the other terror groups. Interestingly, I have not yet seen any Fatah faction claim responsibility for any rockets.

Strike back at capitalism: Hamas has set up a hotline number for Gazans to inform on their fellow residents if they charge "monopolist" prices on any smuggled goods. If there are any Gazans you want to see harassed by Hamas, just call the local number 282-5247.

We'll see if any media picks these stories up, as Arutz-7 apparently did yesterday an hour after I posted. They really should pay me.

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The Jewish Kabbalistic Festivus Santa Conspiracy

I just saw a long article, indexed in Google News, from some crackpot place called Gather.com, which attempts to ascribe magic Kabbalistic and Masonic rites to many famous people, as a precursor to (what else?) total world domination.

While the article itself is filled with the usual unintelligible anti-semitism and gibberish, I will point out only its Seinfeld sections.

Among the most notorious of cabalists are the TV comedy stars of the once #1rated "The Jerry Seinfeld Show." The producer of the Seinfeld show was Larry David, a Jew, all four of the cast were Jews, and cabalistic hand signs, occult language, and magic rituals were covertly planted in many episodes.

Michael Richards, who portrayed the klutzy "Kramer" in Seinfeld, also seems to relish giving cabalistic and Masonic hand signs and gestures. Richards was pictured on the front cover of the Scottish Rite Journal, and inside the publication, he told of how pleased he is to be a Freemason.

Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld strikes a decidedly cabalistic pose. It is well-known in entertainment circles that Jerry Seinfeld—indeed, all of the performers on TV's popular Seinfeld sitcom-practice cabala magic and ritual.

According to Forbes magazine in 1998, Jerry Seinfeld made a whopping total of $225 million on the comedy circuit. And that's no joke! (Photo and article: Austin American-Statesman, September 9, 1998, p. A14)

Again we discover the comedy team from Seinfeld teaming up to present cabalistic messages. [click on picture to see all the messages explained - EoZ]

Observe the V in Michael Richards' ("Kramer") leg and in Julia Louis-Dreyfuss' ("Elaine") arm; the circle that Richards makes with the fingers of his left hand, the "X" made by the intersecting hands and wrists of Richard and Louis-Dreyfuss; the descendant triangle sign of Jason Alexander's ("George") hands, and so on.

The entire article is unintentionally hilarious; in it we see that Yasir Arafat, Malcolm X, David Rockefeller and Ben Stiller, among many others, were all practitioners of Kabbalah because they were found photographed with their arms clasping each other, or one finger in the air, or pretty much any pose you can think of.

Which makes me think that Festivus is really a Masonic/Jewish conspiracy to co-opt Christmas, and Santa Claus himself is a Jewish Kabbalist Mason!

The evidence is clear if you carefully examine Santa's magic hand gestures:

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Hamas pretending that they only target soldiers

Hamas is publicly maintaining the fiction that it only fires rockets and mortars at military targets.

They claim responsibility for 26 Qassam rockets, two Grad missiles and 11 mortars today, yet even as the rockets are hitting near schools and shopping malls, Hamas is claiming that every single rocket and mortar is aimed at "military bases":

2008-12-24 Al Qassam Brigades fired seven mortars at the military base "Al Ersal"
2008-12-24 Al Qassam Brigades fired four mortars at the military base "Nir Oz"
2008-12-24 Al Qassam Brigades fired twenty four Qassam rockets at the military Bases near Gaza strip
2008-12-24 Al Qassam Brigades fired four Qassam rockets at the military site "Nitifot"
2008-12-20 Al Qassam Brigades targeted two military bases east of Rafah with (6) mortars
2008-12-13 Al Qassam Brigades targeted Zionist special force east of Khanyounis city
2008-12-08 Al Qassam Brigades targeted a military jeep east of Jabalya camp
2008-12-03 Al Qassam Brigades shelled the military site inside Nahal Oz base with two mortars
2008-12-03 Al Qassam Brigades shelled the Zionist military bases Huleet and Sofa with (6) mortars
2008-12-03 Al Qassam Brigades shelled the military base Nir Oz & the Third Eye with five mortars
2008-12-02 Al Qassam Brigades shelled Zionist soldiers east of Rafah city with (8) mortars
2008-12-02 Al Qassam Brigades shelled Zionist soldiers east of Rafah city with (5) mortars
2008-11-29 Al Qassam Brigades shelled Zionist military sites near Gaza with (10) mortars
2008-11-28 Al Qassam Brigades 5 mortars at the Zionist soldiers east of Khanyounis

This seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon. Earlier this year, Hamas was scolded by Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri (a medical doctor, Jimmy Carter would be gratified to hear) who was dismayed that "the blessed Qassam rockets don’t differentiate between a child and an adult, and moreover, perhaps [don’t differentiate] between the Jews and the Arabs and Muslims working in those colonies or in the streets and markets of Occupied Palestine, even though the Shari’ah forbids their killing."

Hamas responded that "Hamas doesn't mean to kill children by its rockets."

So even though the Hamas statements last month doesn't pretend that Sderot or Ashkelon are military targets:

2008-11-14 Al Qassam Brigades fired eight rockets at Sderot settlement
2008-11-14 Al Qassam Brigades fired eight rockets at Sderot settlement
2008-11-05 Al-Qassam Fires Four Qassams at Asqalan

, and even though their statements from a year ago are explicit that they are targeting "settlements" or "occupied towns," today they have changed their wording and call Sderot a "base" rather than a "settlement" and pretend that they target an armaments factory in Ashkelon.

Hamas certainly does not want to be accused of violating Sharia law. If Muslims can credibly attack Hamas on purely theological basis, they are left with no reason to exist; they can no longer claim to be more moral than their rivals. So we see Hamas desperately spinning even their naked attacks on Israeli civilians as if they are Islamically halal.

Interestingly, as far as I can tell, every single Palestinian Arab killed by Israel in Gaza so far since November has been a member of either Hamas or Islamic Jihad - not a single civilian has been killed.

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Gaza children seriously injured - by Qassams!

The people that have been seriously injured the most by the most recent Qassam barrages have not been Israelis, but Palestinian Arab children!

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights details the circumstances of five recent injuries:

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 16:15 on Monday, 22 December, 2008, 3-year-old Myassar Mousa Wahdan, was injured in the abdomen and chest and her 5-year-old brother, Mohammed, was injured in the head by shrapnel from a locally produced rocket that was fired by members of the Palestinian resistance. The rocket fell on agricultural land near Beit Hanoun Agriculture College in the north to Beit Hanoun town in the northern Gaza Strip. The two children were immediately transferred to Beit Hanoun Hospital for treatment. Medical sources described the wounds of Myassar as serious and reported that she was admitted into the intensive care unit. The wounds of Mohammed were described as moderate.

In another incident, at approximately 17:30 on Sunday, 21 December, 2008, Hanan Sohwail, 32, was lightly wounded by shrapnel to the right hand when a locally produced rocket exploded near her house in al-Zaytoun quarter in the west of Beit Hanoun Town. She was immediately taken to Beit Hanoon Hospital for treatment.

At approximately 14:40 on Saturday, 20 December, 2008, a locally produced rocket fired by members of the Palestinian resistance fell near a group of children who were playing in a bystreet to the east of the industrial zone, west to Beit Hanoon town. Shrapnel from the rocket wounded two children. The two children were taken to Beit Hanoun Hospital for treatment and then transferred to the intensive care unit at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, since their wounds were serious. The two children were identified as Sari Mana’a al-Sama’ana, 9, and Safi 'Eid al-Sama’ana, 8.

Where are the bleeding hearts who cry over every Palestinian child injured by the heartless Zionist interlopers? Where are the journalists who even find out about these incidents?

The above episodes were not reported in any Arabic or English-language news source that I am aware of. The idea of Arab children being maimed by Palestinian Arab rockets is simply not considered newsworthy.

Qassam rockets meant to kill and injure Jewish children are more effective against the very people that terror groups insist to the world they are defending.

(I erroneously wrote 5 children injured at LGF, not four children and an adult, but I cannot edit it.)

UPDATE: Arutz-7 wrote about this an hour after I posted it, using the same terminology - that more Gaza children were hurt than Jews. What a coincidence!

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Gaza priest cancels Christmas mass, blames Israel

The ultimate dhimmi of Gaza, Father Manuel Musallam, plays the role of the Grinch in this year's heartwarming Christmas play - and predictably blames Israel:

Catholic priest, Father Manuel Musallam, who is in charge of the Holy Family Church in Gaza Strip, confirmed on Wednesday cancellation of the Midnight Mass in protest against the siege Israel imposes on the Gaza Strip and the recent Israeli threats and escalation.

Father Manuel told Ma’an, “Midnight Mass has been cancelled because Israel prevented Christian clerics from heading to Bethlehem. The Midnight Mass will be replaced with a silent gathering at the Holy Family School.” He called on Christians in the Gaza Strip to partake in a sit-in strike at the Holy Family School where normal prayers will be read.

Follow this logic: because Israel doesn't allow him to leave Gaza whenever he wants, he will punish Gazan Christians and cancel Christmas mass!

It will be recalled that Father Musallam made clear last year that for him, Palestinian Arab politics trumps Christianity:

"Of course, I am a Christian believer, but politically I am a Palestinian Muslim. I resist Israel's military occupation, obviously not with weapons.

"The Jihad can never be mine but with my words, my sermons, I am a Palestinian priest."

We see this year exactly what that means. Just like Hamas, Father Musallam will punish his own people to score political points against Israel.

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Another work accident!

The supposedly unbiased Palestinian Arab Ma'an newspaper has a curious article this morning:

Three Palestinians were killed during a military operation near the Israeli-Gaza border in the north of Gaza and another two during a separate mission in the south-central region.

A statement from Hamas confirmed the death of three activists from their Al-Qassam Brigades. A statement from the group said the three were on a mission near the Israeli town of Netiv Ha’asara on the northern border with the Gaza Strip. They were identified as Muhammad Ma’ruf, Ahmad Abu Al-Ma’azza and Raed Al-Masri.

The statement also detailed the death of two other Al-Qassam activists, who were performing a "mission of Jihad” east of Al-Qarara in the southern Gaza Strip. The two slain activists were named as Islam Jadallah and Muhammad Al-Halabi.

Does it sound like all five were killed by Israel? Both groups were on a Jihad mission when killed, so what else could it be?

Ma'an knows very well what happened. The first group was killed by the IDF while trying to plant explosives at the border fence, and the second group was killed when they accidentally blew themselves up.The Hamas statement is pretty clear to anyone who has ever read such statements. Ma'an is trying to pump up the number of "martyrs" to incite public opinion for Hamas and against Israel, and here was a convenient opportunity.

Another Hamas member was injured in a different "mysterious explosion" as well.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 224.

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Those Hamas scientists

A few days ago I mentioned that Jimmy Carter emphasized the secular nature of the Hamas leadership he met in Damascus, stressing that they were "scientists, medical doctors, or engineers – none trained in religion".

His point was to make Hamas terrorists seem more like Westerners, to show how much we have in common and to downplay the extremist Islamic aspects of the group - in other words, to deny their very raison d'etre in an attempt to legitimize them to his Western audience. The implication is that anyone who stresses the Islamic extremist nature of Hamas is somehow a bigoted Islamophobe.

To Western audiences, of course, Hamas will downplay their religious component as well. Carter is perhaps the most prominent of their useful idiots but hardly the only one - the entire Free Gaza movement and the ISM all firmly fall into the same category.

Which makes this morning's story from Al Hayat all the more interesting. As YNet reports:

Hamas has recently passed a radical Islamic bill ushering whipping, dismembering and execution as standard punitive action into the Gaza penal code, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat reported Wednesday.

The bill is made up of 214 subsections. Section 59 states that "any Palestinian found guilty of raising a weapon against Palestine in favor of the enemy; countering Palestine's interests in a negotiation with a foreign government; and placing Palestine's existence in danger by committing an act of aggression against a foreign country... will be sentenced to death."

A similar fate awaits anyone found guilty of the following: "Joining a foreign army fighting Palestine or facilitating such action; demoralizing the Palestinian people to any of its resistance movements; spying on Palestine or engaging in espionage during wartime."

Section 84 stipulates that anyone found guilty of "drinking to making wine will be subjected to 40 lashes… drinking and harassing the public will be punishable by 40 lashes and three months in jail."

The whip will be used on anyone "engaging in games of chance, offending religious beliefs and defaming others' character," as well.

The bill also calls for dismembering – mostly of the hands – of anyone convicted of theft.

Will Jimmy publicly criticize this? Of course not - that would be "Islamophobia" too!

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Saudi Vice, episode 22: A Hard Day's Night

A vigilant citizen of Saudi Arabia, who moonlights as an informant for the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, suspected something was amiss at his local pharmacy. Something was wrong.

Something was haraam.

The patriotic citizen suspected that the pharmacy was selling "unlicensed" anti-impotence drugs.

To make things even worse, these sales were occurring in the Holy City of Mecca (Makkah).

If these had been any other kinds of unlicensed drugs, no doubt the citizen would have reported it to the local police. But since these drugs are associated with behavior that could be considered immoral (if you have a particularly dirty mind,) he instead called the Religious Police.

Our heroes of the Muttawa wasted no time in rising to the challenge.

They arranged a "sting" operation that was sure to be painful for the violator.

A member of the religious police, no doubt whistling while trying to act nonchalant, asked the pharmacist is he had any medicines that could help his embarrassing erectile dysfunction problem.

The pharmacist insisted he had no such drugs.

But our undercover hero returned, whining about his inability to perform and begging for any help the druggist could provide to prevent this man's eternal shame and dishonor. When couched in such terms, the pharmacist had no choice but to try to accommodate the request, so he sent a trusted aide to fetch the magic pills from a warehouse.

Upon the assistant's return, the trap was sprung. A team of highly-trained religious police swooped down and arrested the pharmacist and his assistant. They also raided the warehouse and confiscated large quantities of similar contraband, so they can destroy it (or, perhaps, use them for purely scientific experiments - double blind studies and the like.)

Thanks to the Muttawa, the holy streets of Mecca are once again safe from horny Saudis.

All Saudi Vice episodes can be seen here. With this 22nd episode, we now have an entire season of SV!

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Great Moments in Sharia

From Australia's The Age:

After a life of spinsterhood, Setareh, an 80-year-old Iranian, assumed she was fated to see out her remaining days alone and was preparing to move into an old people's home for company.

When the boy-next-door from her youth suddenly reappeared and proposed, she thought her long-forgotten dreams of marriage were about to be fulfilled.

But Iran's laws require a father to give permission before a daughter can marry.

Now the lovestruck octogenarian has asked a Tehran court to establish whether her father, who abandoned her when she was two, is dead or alive so her wedding can go ahead.

The legal obstacle came to light when Setareh and her betrothed, Jamshid, tried to tie the knot at a registrar's office, only to be told she needed written agreement or proof of death of her father.

It was a cruel blow to the couple, who had been childhood sweethearts but were forced to scrap plans to wed after Setareh's mother protested that it would lead to her being left alone. Setareh resigned herself to living with her mother.

Judge Mahmoud Baghal Shirvan asked officials to examine the father's status and pronounce whether he is dead or alive. If he is found to have died, the court is expected to permit Setareh to marry.

Her plight is an example of what campaigners say is systematic discrimination against women under Iranian law.

But the state-linked Iranian Women's News Agency said women need their father's permission to protect them from "emotional" marriage decisions.

We can't have 80-year old women deciding to marry men on their own! It's a slippery slope - soon you will have 60-year old women demanding a similar right!

Much better to find the father who abandoned, or maybe abused, any of these women. He is much more capable of making a decision on behalf of his immature, emotional daughter.

h/t Dhimmi Watch

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Should I be offended?

For years, my workplace has displayed an electric menorah at the front desk this time of year, similar to this Lucite one:


This year, it looks like this:


Why does it bother me that a "trayf" menorah has been replaced with an even "trayfer" menorah?

I'm not sure. Maybe because it looks more like a Christmas tree than a real menorah.

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Mixing up importance and impotence

The Arab press, and the Arab world in general, cannot stop talking about the Great Shoe Revolution. Here are only some of the articles in the past day:

Arab News:

Al-Zeidi maybe one of the bravest men on this globe because not only did he defy and humiliate the emperor but also he knew very well what to expect at the hands of those who created Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and all the other secret prisons in every dark corner of the earth.

Arab News again:

Al-Zeidi has proved to be someone who can unite all factions and ethnicities.

Al Arabiya:

The alleged maker of the shoes that an Iraqi journalist hurled at U.S. President George W. Bush has had to take on 100 extra staff to cope with a surge in demand for his footwear, he said on Monday.

"Between the day of the incident and 1:00 pm today we have received orders totaling 370,000 pairs", Istanbul-based Serkan Turk, head of sales at Baydan Shoes, told AFP.

Saudi Gazette:

Shoe: A sign of insult, not freedom

Daily News Egypt:

Journalist Montazar Al-Zaidi’s name will not only be listed alongside kings and rulers, Shajarat Al-Durr and Nikita Khrushchev, but will be part of an infinitely more important list which includes thousands of Iraqis who resist the American occupation that violates all the human and legal values which Baghdad introduced to the world long before the United States of America ever came into being ranging from the Mesopotamian civilization to Islamic Baghdad./blockquote>

There are a few media outlets that are somewhat less happy with the incident.

The National (UAE) :

One of the saddest things about the incident involving the Iraqi thug who threw his shoes at President George Bush is that sometimes he is referred to as a journalist. The name of the noblest of professions has been dragged through the ditch into a dark place indeed.

Daily News Egypt 2:

Although I completely sympathize with this view and do not in any way detract from the tragedy of what has happened in Iraq, I still believe that even though the shoe attack was symbolically momentous, it also served to bring home more starkly than ever the complete impotence of the Arab world, whether on the mass public level or on the elite diplomatic one.

Adding to the tragicomic nature of the whole sorry affair is the fact that not a single one of our revered journalists or even activists has ever had the grit to hurl a size 10 reminder of the unpopularity of his own Arab leader — many of whom have been around for close to three decades and who have likely caused just as much damage, if not more, during their respective reigns of terror.

This last editorialist gets closer to the truth. The Arab world has a massive inferiority complex, after decades of coddling terror, mismanaging trillions of petrodollars, ruling by sloganeering and human rights abuses. Their only relevance come from the disparate but related issues of happening to sit on top of huge oil reserves and supporting terror, sometimes tacitly and sometimes explicitly. Terror itself is simply a means to get attention, another puerile but deadly gesture to get the hated but admired West to sit up and take notice, like a toddler's temper tantrums.

Without oil, the Arab world would sink back into complete irrelevance. For a short blip of time, fifty or so years, this society had the chance to build themselves into something much bigger than oil - and it failed. Princes get filthy rich while average Arabs are lucky to get a tiny percentage of trickle-down wealth. They have made no great gains, neither in politics nor in science, culture or industry. Since World War II we have seen amazing gains in nations like Japan and Hong Kong, Israel and India - but the Arab world continues, to a large extent, to be mired in ignorance and seventh-century thinking.

This is why the shoe incident strikes such a chord. For a tiny moment, Arabs feel like they have won a victory over the despised West. Although they are loathe to recall this, there was a very similar visceral reaction after 9/11 in the streets of Ramallah and Beirut and Cairo (and Paterson,) of spontaneous celebration that the pre-Iraq War US got its comeuppance on the world stage by a small band of Arabs. The exact same sense of pride is exhibited here, but the extreme emotion that results is more a reflection of longstanding Arab impotence than of newfound Arab importance.

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Correction: Israel holding up Egyptian aid at border

Yesterday I wrote that Israel had allowed aid into Gaza from Egypt via Kerem Shalom despite rocket attacks. Apparently, the trucks have not yet been allowed in, because of the rocket attacks, and are still waiting at the border.

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Work accident!

Too late for this year's Splodie Awards, we have a 21-year old man who was working on a top-secret religious jihad mission in his house east of Khan Younis. Unfortunately, the mission involved the use of high explosives, and the house blew up, killing the young man and injuring three others, including his own father.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now a symmetric 222.

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Sage WaPo advice: Give up, Israel!

The Washington Post has an editorial about Israel and Hamas that is, for the most part, factually accurate:

Neither side seems to want such an all-out fight -- particularly not Israel, whose defense minister has pointed out that an invasion could cost hundreds of lives and leave thousands of Israeli troops stranded in Gaza without an exit strategy. But neither Israel nor Hamas has been satisfied with the informal cease-fire they reached in June with the help of Egypt. During the summer and fall, the rocket fire from Gaza diminished but never entirely stopped. Israel, in turn, allowed only a modest increase in the flow of goods into Gaza, which has been under virtual siege since last year, and frequently sealed off the strip entirely in response to fresh attacks.

The cease-fire was also supposed to include no more Hamas weapons smuggling, and the "modest increase" of goods included cement that Hamas seized for itself to build an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers. The rocket fire did diminish, at least until early November.

But the recommendation that the wise editors come to is predictable, and absurd:

But an increasing number of Israeli thinkers are pointing out that the prevailing strategy of trying to isolate and destroy Hamas while building up the rival Palestinian leadership in the West Bank hasn't worked.

The "unnamed expert" ruse of editorial writers as well as journalists is the time-honored way to put forth their own opinions as if they belong to a higher power, conveniently ignoring any other.

Some 200,000 Gazans recently turned out for a rally in support of Hamas; a war would only strengthen the movement's most radical factions.

The two parts of this sentence have nothing to do with each other. I recall the pro-Hamas rallies last year far exceeded 200,000 - and the pro-Fatah rallies did as well. The idea of pacifying the radicals by giving in to them is so extraordinarily wrongheaded that it could only have been written by an MSM editorialist.

Israeli officials rightly point out that no country should have to tolerate missile attacks on its cities; such attacks justify a military response. But Israel would be better positioned to defeat Hamas politically and diplomatically if it allowed the full resumption of food, medicine and fuel deliveries to Gaza and made clear its willingness to end other restrictions on civilian trade in exchange for a full cessation of rocket attacks and other hostilities.

Wow. Israel sent in daily deliveries of goods essentially every day from August through October, truckloads of food, medicine, fuel, clothing, building materials, and other goods. In return, Hamas built up an arsenal of more rockets, imported tons of explosives, gathered more money by taxing smuggled goods, didn't lift a finger to take administrative responsibility of Gazans' daily lives (leaving that to Western money filtered through Fatah institutions,) and created an infrastructure to kidnap more Israeli soldiers. And the wise old men of WaPo now say that Israel should do exactly the same thing again?

If Hamas is to be toppled, it will have to be through a political process led by Palestinians.

Every poll over the past year of Gazans shows that Fatah would get more votes in an election than Hamas. Yet Hamas still holds power. Perhaps it is because Hamas is a military dictatorship that has wiped out its political opposition in Gaza? Hamas' hold on power has only increased as its popularity has gone downhill. How, exactly, would more pro-Western Palestinian Arabs manage to seize power politically from ruthless Islamic extremists?

Which means that the Washington Post is counseling Israel to do nothing about a new terror statelet next door that is dedicated to murdering every Jew in rocket range - besides, of course, make sure that Hamas never takes any of the responsibilities of power by providing them with all their basic needs.

And similarly, Egypt gets off scot-free in this absurd editorial for its role in isolating Gaza. Arabs simply cannot be expected to be responsible for bad things happening to their brethren - only the would-be targets of Arab terror must turn the other cheek.

(h/t Soccer Dad via email)

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Kadima/Labor Qassam reaction quiz

Here's a nice Chanukah game to play at home: match the date on the left with the statement listed on the right:

1	11/27/06	A	Barak: “A solution to the Qassams will be found faster than what most people believe”
2	12/25/06	B	Olmert: “Israel cannot accept the incessant rocket fire or ignore the plans to set up a military base along its border."
3	2/21/07	C	Olmert: “Israel is close to launching an operation in Gaza".
4	4/29/07	D	Olmert "warned that the truce may be short-lived... Israel has warned against such breaches and will now consider the counter measures at its disposal."
5	5/16/07	E	Livni: “"I don't care who fired. There must be an immediate military response to every violation.”
6	5/21/07	F	Olmert: "Nobody will shy away from the need to retaliate harshly" for Qassam attacks
7	5/29/07	G	Olmert: “The Israeli government sees the firing of missiles and attacks from Gaza as a basic violation ... and we will not tolerate it”
8	2/28/08	H	Olmert: “We shall not tolerate the price tag the terror organizations are attempting to set. “
9	3/03/08	I	Olmert to Sderot residents: “We know what needs to be done, we also know when and how to do it so that you won't live in fear, you won't have to run short of breath. We know what to do, how, and when and we will do it.”
10	6/6/08	J	Barak to Sderot: “No country can accept the constant bombardment of its citizens from a foreign authority.”
11	6/24/08	K	Livni: “The Israeli government will do everything to protect its citizens. “
12	6/26/08	L	Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised a harsh response to the barrage of Qassam rockets that has hit the Negev city of Sderot over the past day.
13	7/1/08	M	Olmert: “"We will decide when, where, how and if we take action. It will not be dictated from outside.”
14	11/14/08	N	Olmert: “The continued attacks challenge Israel's patience. In the end, if the attacks continue, we will respond."
15	11/16/08	O	Olmert: Israel "cannot continue to ignore the Qassam launching and infiltration attempts of terrorist cells."
16	11/17/08	P	Israel's Foreign Ministry: "Israel is demonstrating restraint and has avoided retaliating at this stage, but warns the Security Council that this restraint cannot continue for much longer."
17	12/9/08	Q	Defense Minister Amir Peretz: “Any attempt to fire into Israeli territories would be considered a breach of the cease-fire and treated with severity. Israel is interested in quiet, but would not accept attacks on its citizens. “

Not so easy, is it? The Kadima government statements about Qassam attacks has been eerily the same for the past two years; lots of talk about "action" and "not tolerating the threat" but nothing that has discouraged the rocket attacks.

Oh, and today Olmert said "Israel cannot refrain from responding to the criminal fire on its citizens."

If you are morbidly curious, the answer key is here:
1Q
2P
3N
4O
5L
6K
7M
8A
9B
10C
11D
12E
13F
14G
15H
16J
17I

(based on an idea by EBoZ)

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Great stride forward for Muslim women

We all know that women are not allowed to travel alone, and must be accompanied by a mahram, who is usually a relative (like a brother) who can ensure that they arrive to their destination unmolested by the general Islamic public. This is, of course, for their own good.

The fact that this makes it impossible for women to live lives as if they are normal, functioning adults. Which is pretty much the point.

Now, you may have noticed that eight year old children in the West sometimes travel on airplanes unaccompanied by an adult. Does this mean that eight-year olds have more maturity than the average Muslim 30 year old single woman?

Of course not, you Islamophobe!

Aafaq.com reports on a new Saudi fatwa that allows an adult woman to travel by herself in closed, safe environments like airplanes, as long as a mahram accompanies her to the plane and another one is with her when she gets off. The logic is that the crew members are trained to stop the good Muslim passengers from harassing or raping the defenseless woman, so therefore she is as safe as if she had her brother with her.

(Of course, this is not yet normative law in Saudi Arabia, but a brand new innovation that will take decades or centuries to take root.)

So it is clearly insulting to even imply that eight year old American or European boys have more maturity than adult Muslim women. As this fatwa shows, progressive Islamic clerics hold that their level of maturity is exactly the same!

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The etymology of "Jew Cooties"

Meryl claims initial use of the term "Jew Cooties," and chances are it creeped into my subconscious from reading her excellent blog.

However, I can say that the term was used earlier than her stated coining in February of 2005.

It was used in 2001 in a posting in an Atlanta newsgroup (in reference to a church that would not allow a rabbi to address the congregation.) It was also used in 2003 in another newsgroup article insulting an anti-semite who was railing against the "kosher tax" we are all horribly forced to pay when we buy our Oreos.

So, I'm sorry, Meryl, but chances are you will not get rich from copyrighting the term.

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Israel allows aid into Gaza

Almost completely unreported by anyone:

Convoys carrying food and medical aid worth six million pounds ($1 million) sent by the Egyptian Red Crescent to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Monday await inspection at the Israeli controlled Karam Abu-Salem [Kerem Shalom] border crossing.

Mohamed Orabi, the head of the organization in North Sinai, told AlArabiya.net that five trucks were loaded with 40 tons of flour, 20 tons of rice and some medical supplies and sent to Gaza Strip.

An Egyptian official at the Rafah border crossing said Egyptian authorities had agreed with Israel to allow the trucks in on Monday however through the Karam Abu-Salem border so that Israel could ascertain that no weapons were being smuggled into the Strip.

Remember that some 34 Qassams and 30 mortars were fired into Israel from Gaza over the past three days, including three rockets today.

Egypt was originally going to ship these goods through Rafah but appears to have decided that going through Israel would strengthen Egypt's claim that Israel is still legally occupying Gaza.

CORRECTION: The goods are still waiting at Kerem Shalom as of Tuesday morning.

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Saudi court upholds marriage of 8-year old to 58-year old man

From Al Arabiya:

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty, a lawyer involved told AFP.

"The judge has dismissed the plea—filed by the mother—because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty," lawyer Abdullah Jtili told AFP in a telephone interview after Saturday's court decision.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 220 kilometers (135 miles) north Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

"She doesn't know yet that she has been married," Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.

Relatives who did not wish to be named told AFP that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother. They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.

The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of 30,000 riyals ($8,000), as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.

The father was in court and he remained adamant in favor of the marriage, they added.

In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28, who forced the child to have sex with him.

A mother is not even allowed to protect her own daughter from being abused, thanks to the all-wise sharia law of Saudi Arabia.

Sick, sick, sick.

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Iran shuts down human rights center

From WaPo:

Iranian authorities on Sunday closed the office of the country's main human rights organization, headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

Dozens of plainclothes detectives and local police officers entered the Center for the Defense of Human Rights in Tehran and shut it down hours before a ceremony was to take place commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

An Interior Ministry commission that issues permits for political organizations said the center was carrying out illegal activities, such as publishing statements, writing letters to international organizations and holding news conferences, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported.

The commission, according to the news agency, accused Ebadi's center of distributing propaganda against the state. The report also cited repeated warnings delivered to the center and said the building had been sealed on the order of Tehran's top prosecutor.

Iran has a history of arresting and pressuring dissidents who question the country's record on human rights and democracy.

Nothing says "human rights" more than arresting people for "publishing statements, writing letters to international organizations and holding news conferences."

Iran will often claim to be in the vanguard of human rights, never failing to accuse the US and Israel of violating human rights. Of course, its own human rights record is horrible; violently breaking up peaceful demonstrations for women's rights, for example, and employing religious police to enforce "morality" laws.

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Today's Palestinian Arab news

An Al Jazeera reporter who was covering the latest Free Gaza publicity stunt accidentally shook hands with the far-left Israeli Channel Ten reporter who was on the same boat, and then said that had she known that the reporter was Israeli she would never have done so.

There are reports that Egypt asked Hamas to stop any rocket attacks for 24 hours so that Israel would continue to ship humanitarian aid to Gaza. This is plausible; there were no Qassams this morning although one landed in the afternoon so far. This means that Israel can expect huge rocket attacks one day and much fewer rockets the next, as Israel's policy has been to close the crossings for one day no matter how large or small the barrages are.

Gaza's electric company claims that they are down to 30% of their needs. Not that Israel is stopping sending electricity to Gaza, but the transformers have been burning out because of increased demand.

It appears that the technical hurdles to pumping natural gas from Egypt to Gaza through Rafah tunnels are being overcome; lead pipes from the UAE are being used to build these pipelines.

Refrigerators and washing machines are now being smuggled as well into Rafah.

Hamas is threatening to resume suicide attacks against Israel.

It appears that a Hamas-backed sheikh, during a Friday sermon, called Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh a "caliph", which upset the worshippers so much that they threw shoes at him.

PA security forces arrested a Hamas leader who had been thought to have been dead for years.

Another tunnel death. The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now 221.

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