When a mid-level government official in Israel insults the White House without the knowledge of the Israeli prime minister, it is a major international incident that is escalated by the administration even after a series of apologies. The Bulletin has learned that Vice President Biden, now on an official visit to the Middle East, made a direct request that the P.A. cancel the ceremony that honors a terrorist.And as soon as Biden was back on the plane, the ceremony was held anyway, with officials from the ruling Fatah party in attendance. (To distinguish between the PA and Fatah is an exercise in splitting hairs. Mahmoud Abbas is the leader of Fatah as well as the PA.) People are wondering why Israel and other US allies are being publicly treated worse than Iran, Russia and Arab thugocracies by the Obama administration. It is not because the US is aligned more with Arab interests, although the president is making worrying moves in that direction. The reason is simply because President Obama fears confrontation with those whom he does not understand. He (thinks he) knows that Great Britain and Israel are not going to make a stink, because they value their relationship with the US. Above all, he knows that they are not going to do anything rash. But to Obama, the Second and Third Worlds are still a mystery. It is filled with scary characters who are not guaranteed to behave rationally. Deep down he knows that they don't think nor act like us. Yet to admit that fact aloud sounds too close to bigotry in a mindset where everyone must be fundamentally the same. It is a taboo subject. I once described this dichotomy as "Your Crazy Uncle Ned:" Geopolitics is partially based on the idea that Arabs and Muslims are completely irrational. Instead of treating them like normal adults who need to take responsibility for their actions, we treat them like your crazy Uncle Ned who makes a scene every Thanksgiving. We smile nervously, say whatever we need to say to calm him down for now, lock up the liquor cabinet and hope he doesn't drive into a crowd. And when he acts sort-of rationally, we fall all over ourselves complimenting him on not setting the table on fire. This is Obama's thought process towards Arabs and Muslims in a nutshell - but it is only half the story in understanding Obama. When Obama was running for president, the impression he gave was that he was surprised as anyone that he became the frontrunner. I believe that he ran for office as a setup for a more serious 2012 run, or at best to be picked as a vice president by Hillary. He was, simply, not ready to lead. He had less experience in governing than practically all presidents in history. Even with all his rhetorical skills, it never felt like he was a man who wanted to dedicate his life to serving and leading his nation; it always seemed like someone who wanted to act like a leader rather than be a leader. He had some vague, New Age-y ideas of how the world could be a better place through mutual respect, and enough yes-men who could convince him that he was the man of the hour, but it never seemed like he truly believed it himself. He is, far more than any president in recent memory, an actor trying to learn a role. Obama believes that a president, the leader of the free world, must act strong. But the problem is he cannot act that way when he cannot predict how the other parties will react to his show of strength. As in the movie Galaxy Quest, he may be acting but the other side is dead serious, and in such circumstances he is over his head. Upsetting a billion people or another nuclear power is something to be avoided at all costs. So he acts like a parody of a strong leader - against his friends. He knows they won't start a war or a terror spree against American interests. He calculates that by acting tough with his friends, there is little downside while he builds up his street cred as a resolute but fair leader. He hopes that Iran and Syria (and Russia and China) will interpret his actions as a message for them, avoiding actually making decisions that could set a course from which the US cannot go back. But what he cannot do is actually make any real foreign policy decisions. If he did, he would be burning a bridge and opening himself up to the chance that he is making a mistake. Worse yet, he would be revealing to the world that he doesn't have a clue. For an actor playing the role of President, changing the status quo is scary. Taking a real stand is frightening. Instead,the emphasis is to make it through your term without blowing up the world. You buy time and hope and pray for the best. You rely on your advisors to guide you and you hope they are not acting the way you are. And you continue to act how you think a President would act, hoping that your charade is not exposed. |
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Obama the actor
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 9:40 PM | Links to this post
Nuclear disarmament conference to be held - in Iran
In another transparent attempt to deceive the West (which already has plenty of people who are anxious to be deceived,) Iran will be hosting a conference next month: The Islamic Republic of Iran is scheduled to hold an international conference on nuclear disarmament in mid April.A lot of well-meaning but ultimately idiotic Westerners strongly feel that as long as Iran is negotiating, it is not going to do anything dangerous. In truth, Iran has shown over the years that it will pretend to negotiate while completely undermining its public statements in private. Here is an especially telling example where Iran is cynically pretending to put on a public face against nuclear weaponry deliberately to take international pressure off of its aggressive nuclear program. There are enough credulous wishful thinkers in the West who will desperately grab at this straw, because the alternative is too scary for them to contemplate. For each Westerner who opines or argues that Iran is not a threat, it makes it that much harder for the clear-thinking Westerners, who see through Iran's act, to do anything effective. While it is true that Iran's leaders do not have the same mindset as the West, they understand the West much better than the West understands them, and this conference is proof. (h/t dd via email) |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 8:29 PM | Links to this post
Labels: iran, nuclear war
You know how Muslims say they respect religions?
From Jordan's Al Gahd: |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 3:31 PM | Links to this post
Gold boom in Gaza (updated)
From Al Arabiya: Gaza's borders are closed and its economy in shambles, but the glittering alleys of the territory's centuries-old gold bazaar are packed with young brides to be. Zvi points out: Starving populations do not import and purchase large quantities of gold. All around the world and throughout history, starving populations have sold what jewelry they owned to food traders in exchange for food to feed their kids. People who are seriously worried about starving in the future import and hoard large quantities of canned goods and staple foods. They don't import gold, which cannot be eaten. For an example of a normal response, consider the Warsaw Ghetto. The Nazis issued the Jews ration books that allowed them only 200 Cal/day, which is a starvation diet. Jews who had a silver bracelet or a gold ring used it as currency to obtain extra food from outside the ghetto, or (if they could scrape together enough) to pay smugglers to hide their kids on the Christian side of the wall, where they were safer. Jewelry was rapidly flowing OUT, from the moment when the ghetto was reestablished until the Nazis liquidated the population. Gaza is importing gold through its smuggling tunnels. Gold is an expensive luxury, purchased with disposable income. The spokespeople of the Destroy Israel Movement frequently claim that Gaza is "worse than the Warsaw Ghetto." They claim that Israel is starving Gaza. They claim that this is why Gazan terrorists murder civilians across the border in Israel. Three things are clearly true: 1. The spokespeople of the Destroy Israel Movement don't understand the situation in Gaza at all. 2. They don't understand the Warsaw Ghetto at all, and don't want to. 3. They are happy to spout absolute ignorant nonsense as long as it's anti-Semitic ignorant nonsense. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 2:30 PM | Links to this post
Junk science used to claim Israel using WMD in Gaza
The "New Weapons Committee" has just released what appears, at first glance, to be a scientific study of Gaza children's exposure to dangerous contaminants during Operation Cast Lead. Many Palestinian children still living in precarious situations at ground level in Gaza after Israeli bombing during "Cast lead" have unusually high concentrations of metals in the hair, indicating environmental contamination, which can cause health and growth damages due to chronic exposure. This is the result of a pilot study conducted by the New Weapons Research Group (Nwrg), an independent committee of scientists and experts based in Italy, who is studying the use of unconventional weapons and their mid-term effects on the population of after-war areas.The research team is based out of Italy. One of the researchers is Paola Manduca. Manduca had already determined the results of the research while Cast Lead was still happening, as this press release from January 9, 2009 shows: Mounting evidence is emerging that Israel is experimenting new non-conventional weapons on civilian population in Gaza. "It is happening again what we saw in Lebanon two years ago", says Paola Manduca, genetics teacher and researcher at the University of Genoa and member of New Weapons Research Committee (NWRC), "where Israel used white phosphorus, Dense inert metal explosive (DIME), thermobaric bombs, cluster bombs and uranium ammunitions. Still today there are unexploded bombs and radioactivity on the ground".So we already have an indication that some of these scientists had an agenda. Now let's look at the methodology of the study itself. If one wanted to determine that some Gaza children were exposed to toxic metals from Israeli bombs, what would be a good control group? I can think of a few: * Compare the levels in children who live in heavily-bombed areas with those who do not. * Compare the levels of Gaza children with those in Egypt. * Compare the levels with those in Israel. * Compare with the West Bank. * Compare with hair samples from before Operation Cast lead. * Compare with people who left Gaza recently, for example, those who are in medical treatment in Israel or Egypt. The study, however, did no such thing. They compared the levels of Gazans with those of a single reference hair sample from China and a single control sample from Italy. A careful look at the data also shows that, while in general the levels in Gaza were higher than those of the single sample in Italy, they were not usually that much different (most are less than 2x the Italian sample.) The Italian sample was higher in many metals than for some of the Gazans. The variation within Gaza was high, and it would be instructive to see the natural variation between control samples. Even more interesting was the fact that the differences between the Chinese hair and the Italian hair were much larger than between Italy and Gaza, which would indicate that the Gaza data might not be that significant to begin with. Despite the control being a single sample, the press release represents the Italian sample as the "average," yet there is no indication that that sample is average in any way. Let's come up with alternative scenarios that could account for allegedly high concentrations of metals in Gazan hair: - Hamas weapons production probably does not have very good environmental controls. - Gaza metal shops and factories do not have adequate safeguards against toxic waste. - The water in Gaza might be contaminated for some other reason - and the aquifier is shared with Israel. Despite the big words that the study uses, there is no evidence that there was any scientific peer review or even that it was submitted to any scientific journal. The methodology seems to show that it would be laughed out of any serious scientific journal. On the contrary, the press release was released to the rabidly anti-Israel Uruknet. Furthermore, Human Rights Watch and the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons had already determined last July that there was no evidence that Israel used depleted uranium weapons or DIME weapons in Gaza (but they did find evidence of tungsten cubes as sleeves on Spike missiles.) The "New Weapons Committee" has already shown its bias from its previous press releases that convicted Israel without any evidence, their statements of Israel using DU in Lebanon with no evidence, and the very nature of the study itself. This is not research and this is not science: it is an attempt to smear Israel by hiding behind the fig-leaf of pseudo-science that the vast majority of readers will never bother to check. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 1:15 PM | Links to this post
Saudi cleric calls for destruction of Grand Mosque in Mecca
A hardline Saudi cleric, Youssef al-Ahmed, has called for the Grand Mosque in Mecca (which houses the Kaaba, the holiest site in Islam) to be destroyed! |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 12:30 PM | Links to this post
Arab unity - ain't it grand?
Libya is upset that some major Arab leaders may not attend an upcoming Arab Summit scheduled for the end of March. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 11:24 AM | Links to this post
Major Muslim religious group calls for jihad against Israel
The International Association of Muslim Scholars, an organization founded by Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a "moderate" alternate to Muslim extremism, has called on the entire Muslim world to start a jihad "in all its forms" to "defend" the Al Aqsa mosque from presumed desecration by the Zionists. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 10:32 AM | Links to this post
The Land of Milk and Homer
From JPost (h/t Bubbe): After 20 years of poking fun at American culture, the Simpsons are scheduled to land at Ben-Gurion Airport to target Israel. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 9:21 AM | Links to this post
Tamimi doesn't even pause in his lies and incitement
Sheikh Tamimi, the main architect of the lie that Israel was planning to lay the cornerstone of a new synagogue at on the Temple Mount last Tuesday and the man most responsible for the riots in Jerusalem, now has "revealed" the next fictional plan to take over the mosque. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 7:49 AM | Links to this post
Labels: incitement
Man murdered by Qassam
From YNet: A 30-year-old Thai foreign worker was killed Thursday after a Qassam rocket hit the hothouse area in Netiv Ha'asara in the Ashkelon Coast Regional Council, north of the Gaza Strip. Magen David Adom emergency units tried to resuscitate the man, however were eventually forced to pronounce him dead.The Al Qassam website is filled with articles that talk about how the opening of the Hurva synagogue is a great reason to kill Israeli Jews. The fact that there has been such an escalation of attacks from Gaza recently is no coincidence. Hamas maintains its hardly-plausible deniability by saying that it came from a splinter group but in fact all of the terror groups have a history of working together; not to mention that explosives cannot enter Gaza without Hamas knowing about it and approving it. The Palestine Today website calls the victim a "settler." (h/t Yehudit for headline) |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 6:39 AM | Links to this post
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Bizarro world: Herzl a terrorist, Arafat a statesman
From Arab News: Brazil's president placed a wreath on the tomb of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Wednesday and sharply criticized Israeli policies, leading Israeli officials to suggest he was not being evenhanded. JPost adds: |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 11:14 PM | Links to this post
Hamas puppet show shows its love
From MEMRI (h/t The Vicious Babushka):
Other people want their kids to ask questions, to learn, to have their own opinions. Hamas, on the other hand, warns their children not to stray from the party line at the risk of their very lives. This is the Islamic implementation of Orwellian newspeak. Limit what people can say and you therefore can control their thoughts. What a great message for children's TV! |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 3:37 PM | Links to this post
Register for NORPAC MIssion to Washington
For the past two years, I attended the NORPAC Mission to Washington, speaking with members of Congress and Senators and their aides about issues of vital importance to Israel and the US. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 3:03 PM | Links to this post
Convicted felon in Gaza - pretending to be a US congressman
From Ma'an: US Congressman Jack Shepherd entered the Gaza Strip on Wednesday through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, the de facto border commission said.Firas Press reports on this visit by this member of Congress as well. Unfortunately, there is no representative with that name in Congress. Thank God for the Internet, though, as I was able to find exactly who this important official is. In fact, Jack Shepard has run for the Senate in Minnesota, not to mention governor - and President! Jack Shepard (Italy / Minnesota)And now he is scamming Palestinian Arabs! |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 2:22 PM | Links to this post
The exaggerated refugees
I just came across this interesting article from the Milwaukee Sentinel, February 19, 1971. Click to enlarge. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 12:58 PM | Links to this post
BDS loses another one at Davis
From the Divest This! blog: On Monday evening, the forces of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) were handed a major defeat when the Davis Food Co-op, located in Davis California, turned down demands by BDS activists to put a boycott of Israeli goods to a Co-op wide vote.Read the whole thing. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 11:42 AM | Links to this post
Gunbattles, kidnappings, rocket fire in Gaza. The usual.
PCHR reports that there was a gunbattle in the Jabalya camp in Gaza yesterday, in which hand grenades were used. One was injured. At approximately 21:30 on Sunday, 14 March 2010, Salah al-Masri, an n employee in the Palestinian National Authority, was in a shop near his house in al-‘Oyoun Street in al-Nasser neighborhood in the north of Gaza city. In the meanwhile, a Golf car stopped, an three masked gunmen stepped down from it. At gunpoint, the gunmen forced al-Masri to get into the car. They blindfolded him with his sweater and drove him to an unknown destination. Al-Masri told PCHR that the gunmen took him into a building in an area that he does not know and questioned him about his relationship with the government in Ramallah. They tied his hands behind his back and forced him sit in a painful position, known as "Shabeh."They then violently beat him. They questioned him for several hours. During questioning, the beat him with an iron chain on his head and they tortured him with electrical shocks to his feet. At midnight, they drove him to the currency market in the east of Gaza city. They left him there and drove away.PCHR is loathe to accuse Hamas outright of these kidnappings, of course, but most of them indeed seem to be done by Hamas security forces. You know, those freedom fighters that people like George Galloway love so much. I don't know about the freedom part, but they sure love to fight! Also, a Qassam rocket exploded immediately after launch near Beit Lahiya today. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 10:44 AM | Links to this post
Abbas adopts a boy. Love or politics?
Here is Mahmoud Abbas with his new adopted son: |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 9:05 AM | Links to this post
Hamas arrests counterfeiters in Rafah
Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas caught people counterfeiting US dollars near the Egyptian border. Apparently the counterfeiters dropped some of the bills from a window, causing a stir. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 7:52 AM | Links to this post
The problem with the PalArabs (guest post)
Guest post by Zvi, commenting on the stone-throwing rioters: The PA already has a lot of cash and could spend it putting these kids to work. Instead, the PA spends it on 1) lining the pockets of PA leaders and 2) inciting people (their own and others') against Jews, with results such as you see here. Some people claim that young Palestinian men hurl cinder blocks at Jewish civilians because they are poor. Other people claim that living under occupation not only makes it not only natural for these young men to do what they are doing, but also right and proper. Both claims are bogus. Economics The West Bank has a 7% annual GDP growth rate (which puts it 9th in the world; China's is only 8.7%). The West Bank now has a slightly lower GDP per capita than India ($2900 vs. India's $3100 in 2009; Kosovo's is $2500, Bangladesh's $1600 and Zimbabwe's only $200). The West Bank's unemployment rate is is 2/3 that of Libya and 1/2 that of Muslim Kosovo. Due to its continuing customs union with Israel, the West Bank uses the stable Israeli Shekel. Riots incited by political parties don't break out everywhere in the world. There are a small number of places where it happens - and where it keeps on happening, as long as these parties remain in power. Political Situation Like the Palestinians, the Kosovars remain in limbo. Most countries refuse to recognize the state that they have declared. A major difference is that while the Israelis have made offers that involve an independent Palestinian state, the Serbs adamantly refuse to contemplate the possibility of an independent Kosovo. The UN also spends only a small fraction of the money and personnel on Kosovo as it does on the Palestinians, and the descendants of Kosovar refugees are not automatically considered to be refugees, as is the case with Palestinian refugees. Kosovar leaders, despite having very strong reasons to fight, including very real fears of genocidal behavior founded in very recent Balkan history, consistently made efforts to achieve their goals without violence. Though there was ultimately a relatively minor war, it was a last resort rather than a first resort. Somehow, most Kurds and Uighurs, Tibetans and Basques, Dagestanis and Australian Aborigines, Quebecois and Northern Irish (today, anyway) manage to live in the real world, facing the fact that they are not in an ideal situation, without periodically engaging in violent riots sponsored by political parties. In the case of the Palestinians, the Palestinian leadership and their allies around the world saw violence not just as the first resort, but as the ONLY ACCEPTABLE APPROACH, for the first 30+ years of their existence. Fatah's right wing and all of Hamas still see it that way. Fatah's "moderates" see violence as the first resort, but are willing to fall back on negotiation when threats, intimidation and propaganda fail them. Unlike most of the groups on the world stage, the Palestinian leadership continue to resort FIRST to histrionic incitement and violence, and only as a very LAST resort, to negotiation and coexistence. The Real Reason The reason why idiots in the West Bank are using heavy slings to hurl chunks of concrete and glass at Israelis is not because they are unemployed. It is not because they are uneducated. It is not because they are occupied. The reason is because their leadership, and the media in much of the Arab world, has sold them a nonsensical, bogus, and romantic notion that they are the "Heroes of the Arab World." They are petted and primped for their "leading role" and told that they are responsible for obtaining "Justice" for Arabs for every setback in the last 100 years. They have been sold the idea that the ONLY way to do this is through "Resistance" (a.k.a. attack) against the Evil Jews. If Jews re-dedicate a synagogue bulldozed by the Jordanian soldiers during the 20th century, these young men have been taught that this is "Provocation" and that the Muslim world "cannot stand for it." They are told that it is their religious and national obligation to riot. Meanwhile, the organizers of this scene - the "moderates" of Fatah - threaten a "new Intifadah." Never mind that they gained nothing from the last intifadah, and that it cost them enormously. The leaders of Fatah tell these young men that they are the vanguard of this new Intifadah. One day, if they are very lucky, they'll succeed in killing a lot of Israeli civilians, and they'll have a square named after them, like Dalal Mughrabi. Ultimately, the reason why the leaders of Fatah are fomenting this violence is simply because they need headlines. They need burning. They need people to bleed. They need to be victims. Because the media only pays attention to them when they're victims, and because they know that certain western governments, who wish to keep up appearances in the region until they leave Iraq in 2011, will ignore the real situation and instead threaten the Israelis for "causing" this violence. Why is this happening? Because until they are held accountable for choosing violence over peaceful negotiation and coexistence, the leaders of Fatah will remain certain that they can get away with it. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 6:32 AM | Links to this post
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The settlements aren't the problem (Bret Stephens)
I'm reproducing the entire article because the WSJ will soon make it subscription-only: I once got an angry letter from Baruch Goldstein's father. Goldstein, remember, was an Israeli settler who in 1994 entered the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers. A decade later, I wrote a column for the Jerusalem Post in which I described Goldstein as personifying Israel's lunatic extreme. The father insisted that his son deserved to be celebrated as a hero. Indeed, his grave site was transformed into a shrine until the Israeli army eventually tore it down.I obviously don't agree with his opinion on the settlements and settlers, but Stephens makes some very good points that need to seep into the American and European consciousness. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 8:17 PM | Links to this post
No cornerstone? No matter, we'll riot anyway
The putative reason for five days of riots, which was the alleged threat by "right wing" Israelis to lay a cornerstone for the Third Temple, didn't materialize today. What a surprise. ...Police have declared they will not allow the Israeli rightists to go through with their plans to lay a cornerstone at the site.Unfortunately, these irresponsible journalists never quite managed to identify any such group that had announced those plans, essentially believing the rants of the lying Palestinian Muslim leaders who made up the story. YNet should have known better, because only two weeks ago Palestinian Arabs rioted over the exact same reason. From February 28th: Members of the Waqf and various Islamic organizations, including the Islamic Movement, urged Muslims over the weekend to flock to the Temple Mount, claiming that "radical Jewish organizations have called on their followers to arrive at the mount today and on Tuesday in an attempt to lay the cornerstone for the temple."So will the Islamic leaders look foolish to their people for their repeatedly false prophecies? Will Palestinian Arabs start being a bit more skeptical when these leaders make their wild claims against the Jews? Judging from history, the answer is clearly no. There will be new incitement and lies in the days and weeks and months ahead, and it will often succeed in getting young Palestinian men to riot on a moment's notice. And these lies will not have any consequences. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 7:08 PM | Links to this post
Test EoZ mobile site
I just found an alpha test of a service called Flurp that is meant to automatically make blogs mobile-friendly. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 2:37 PM | Links to this post
"Violence erupts" - all by itself!
When the media uses the passive voice concerning violence in Israel, you can be sure that the violence wasn't started by the Israelis: |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 12:14 PM | Links to this post
Two Malaysian pre-teens married to middle-aged men
From Al Arabiya: Two Malaysian girls aged 10 and 11 who were wed to middle-aged men have been separated from their husbands as their cases are investigated, religious officials said Monday. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 10:29 AM | Links to this post
Comment headache open thread
People have been having problems with the comment system and I don't know how to fix it without causing other problems. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 10:22 AM | Links to this post
So today is the day!
Today is the day that Palestinian Arabs have been convinced the Jews will start construction of the Third Temple. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 8:54 AM | Links to this post
WaPo slams Obama's Middle East missteps
When even the mainstream media starts calling the Obama administration on its mishandling of the Israeli Arab conflict, you know he is doing something wrong: The dispute's dramatic escalation since then seems to have come at the direct impetus of Mr. Obama. Officials said he outlined points for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to make in a searing, 45-minute phone call to Mr. Netanyahu on Friday. On Sunday senior Obama adviser David Axelrod heaped on more vitriol, saying in a television appearance that the settlement announcement had been an "affront" and an "insult" that had "undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region."Richard Cohen is no fan of settlements and doesn't have as much of a problem with the Obama team's language, but he can't avoid noticing the double standard (which for some reason he decides to ascribe more to Europe than the White House:) To my knowledge, there is no square in Israel named for the mass murderers of civilians. Palestinian society, in contrast, honors all sorts of terrorists. Leading Republicans poured it on: The second-ranking House Republican blasted the Obama administration as “irresponsible” in its dealings with Israel, accusing the White House of trying to curry favor with the Arab world by deriding America’s closest ally in the Middle East.(h/t Soccer Dad, who reads the MSM so I don't have to :) ) |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 6:12 AM | Links to this post
Monday, March 15, 2010
Another attack on police in Gaza
The bombing attacks targeting Gaza police that have escalated in recent months continue. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 11:06 PM | Links to this post
A little Jew-hatred from Hamas
YNet reports: Amid growing tensions in east Jerusalem, senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Zahar leveled scathing criticism, replete with anti-Semitic rhetoric, over the rededication of the Hurva Synagogue in the Old City's Jewish Quarter.The Arabic Hamas article about Zahar's talk also includes his accusation that Jews have ruined every country in which they have lived. (Reluctant, unofficial co-blogger) Zvi comments: Al-Zahar is not talking about settlers. He is not talking about Israelis. He is talking about Jews - all of us, everywhere. He repeats with relish the standard blood libels, the standard claims that Jews are simply and irretrievably evil and must therefore be destroyed. This is a clear and straightforward admission of Hamas's real program. The fact that Hamas is currently not strong enough to carry out that program is beside the point. Only a suicidal Israeli government would allow such a crazed enemy to become strong enough. And only people for whom the murder of Jews is unimportant - or even greatly desirable - can possibly support the strengthening of that crazed enemy.And don't forget that the front page of Islamic Jihad's Saraya.ps online paper still has a link to an article about how Jews are historically evil. The mask that Palestinian Arabs try to put on claiming that they are not anti-semitic, but only anti-Zionist, has fallen yet again. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 9:48 PM | Links to this post
Report: Iran tried to buy nuke from Pakistan in 1988
From Ha'aretz: Iran attempted to buy a nuclear bomb from Pakistan as early as 1987, a leading Middle East analyst has told Haaretz.But I thought Iran had a strictly peaceful nuclear program! |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 8:35 PM | Links to this post
"Unacceptable trousers"
From the Saudi Gazette: MADINA – A man here has accused the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the Hai’a) of assaulting him and holding him illegally inside a restaurant on Sultana Street on Saturday because they found his trousers unacceptable.Thank Allah that the man's trousers were not seen by more people! |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 8:16 PM | Links to this post
EgyptAir wipes Israel off the map
From The Z-Word: Visit the online route map of EgyptAir, the airline owned by the same state which signed an historic peace agreement with Israel in 1979, and you will see, once you click on the “Middle East & Gulf” section, that Israel has, well, disappeared. Here's the map: If they hadn't bothered to try to put in national borders, the obvious distortion could be chalked up to trying to make it more readable. But being that this is Egypt, the airline is probably more worried about riots that would break out if they would mention Israel, as nutjob anti-Zionists would accuse the airline of the worst insult that anyone can hurl in Egypt - that of supporting "normalization with the Zionist enemy." |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 2:54 PM | Links to this post
Algeria reveals the extent of its participation in 1967, 73 wars
Al Quds has an article about a new book written by former Algerian defense minister Major General Khalid Nizar where he details Algeria's participation in aiding the Egyptian army from 1967 to 1971, and from 1973 to 1975. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 12:31 PM | Links to this post
Goldberg slams Sullivan on PalArab propaganda map
Andrew Sullivan, in his Atlantic blog, reproduces a map used by rabidly anti-Jewish Palestinian Arabs (courtesy of Juan Cole!) to prove Israel's hunger for Arab land: Andrew Sullivan should be thankful that The Atlantic's fact-checking department has no purview over the magazine's website. The magazine's fact-checkers vet each word that appears in the print magazine for accuracy and context, but because they have no authority over blogs (or anything else produced for the web), Andrew is free to publish malicious nonsense, such as the series of maps he published yesterday, maps which purport to show how Jews stole Palestinian land. Andrew does not tell us the source of these maps (in a magazine with standards, the source would be identified), but they were drawn to cast Jews in the most terrible light possible.Goldberg could have pointed out that even if the map was relabeled "Jewish" and "Arab" land, it would still be a lie. The white parts show only the privately owned Jewish land, but the green part does not represent privately owned Arab land - it simply shows everything else. In fact, over 75% of the land in 1946 was publicly owned, and all of that land within the Green Line became Israeli after the War of Independence. And, although Goldberg mentions it in passing, the green sections of the third map do not show "Palestinian" land at all either, as there was no Palestine and the West Bank was annexed by Jordan - with full approval of the leaders of Palestinian Arabs - and Gaza was controlled by Egypt. I'm pretty sure the fourth map is equally false, but I cannot claim to know the geographic details of the areas controlled by the PA. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 11:15 AM | Links to this post
The importance of the ITIC report (guest post)
Zvi made a comment in response to the charge that the ITIC report on Goldstone I mentioned does not directly address the charges of war crimes against Israel, rather it concentrates on Hamas war crimes. When Hamas turns otherwise civilian structures into military operations centers, they become legitimate military targets. Bombing such targets is specifically NOT A WAR CRIME, even if a lot of legally ignorant and/or dishonest UNHRC, NGO, media, bloggers and other opinion shapers blather on endlessly about it being one. When Hamas terrorists pose as civilians, they endanger civilians. When they use civilian clothing, the soldiers fighting them fire back to protect their own lives; and if it is difficult to distinguish non-uniformed snipers shooting out of windows from non-uniformed civilians moving within the same part of a building, then even if 98% of the time the soldier avoids shooting, he may kill a noncombatant 2% of the time, EVEN THOUGH HE DOES NOT INTEND TO HURT NONCOMBATANTS. If he does not intend to hurt noncombatants, and has made an effort to distinguish them from gunmen, then the death of the civilian is an accident, and the soldier HAS NOT COMMITTED A WAR CRIME. Hamas, like Hezbollah, makes a consistent strategy out of firing rockets from civilian locales; using medical centers and mosques and schools as firing platforms; and fighting while wearing civilian clothing. The effect of this is to make it very difficult for Israelis, returning fire against the Hamas firing positions, to avoid hurting civilians by mistake. When Hamas rocket- and gunmen fire from areas near civilians or uses a metal shop as an armory, it makes it difficult for a drone pilot to distinguish civilians at that location from gunmen, when civilians appear to be participating in military operations. And we have only the word of Hamas that the other people were, in fact, civilians. It is NOT A WAR CRIME to kill a civilian BY ACCIDENT during a battle, no matter how much you dance around the truth, nor is it a war crime if Israel bombs a house that contains explosives, and the resulting secondary explosions engulf nearby houses; and when your enemy deliberately puts his rockets in a clinic or a mosque, it is NOT A WAR CRIME to bomb the clinic or the mosque. The reason why these things matter in the context of the report is NOT because "one bad turn deserves another." That's the kind of arrant nonsense that HAMAS trots out when faced with evidence of wrongdoing. Israel does not make that argument. Rather, it makes the argument that it is trying to avoid civilian casualties, but Hamas is deliberately placing its forces so as to create civilian casualties. There is ample video evidence, and evidence from Palestinian groups themselves, to back up this claim. One of the many problems with the Goldstone Travesty is that Goldstone's commission repeatedly and explicitly refused to deal with the question of whether Israeli soldiers' decisions were reasonable given the knowledge available to them at the time and given the standard tactics of the gunmen against whom they were fighting. The accuser bears the burden of proof; but Goldstone's commission explicitly rejected this basic principle and instead simply asserted that the Israelis were "guilty" of war crimes. The Goldstone commission simply assumed that all attacks in which civilians died represented malicious attempts by Israelis to massacre Palestinians and that the Israelis were guilty. They then waved their hands and used a rhetorical gimmick (that they had "no evidence", which given the fact that they persistently avoided receiving and investigating the evidence that was provided to them, is both sort of true and utterly meaningless) to avoid looking for the truth. In addition, because Goldstone repeatedly and persistently avoided any serious investigation of Hamas/PIJ/PRC/AAMB war crimes, there has been no comprehensive report that documents such war crimes. Advocates of understanding the truth should welcome this new report. As for the IDF's investigations, YES, the IDF is investigating incidents. Unlike Goldstone, it does this deliberately and with attention to facts and with investigation of sources. A second indictment has recently been issued against several soldiers, and a number of other "criminal investigations" - their words, not mine - are ongoing. |
Posted by Elder of Ziyon at 10:20 AM | Links to this post