יום חמישי, 2 ביוני 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Iranian media can't decide who controls whom: US or Israel?

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 07:47 PM PDT

A couple of days ago, Iran's FARS "news" agency reported "Zionist Lobbies Thwart Improvement of US Ties with Iran."

On Wednesday, however, Ahmadinejad said that

These elements (Zionists), which have … formed a government in occupied Palestine today, are marionettes that are playing their parts on stage while the actual politics and actual stage is in the control of the United States.
So who controls whom?

The answer, of course, is that we Elders control the leaders of the US who in turn control the Israeli marionette government.

But we also control Iran, mostly through our Shi'ite division. 

And Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood answers to our Sunni wing.

And the banks, of course, have always been controlled by us.

And the media, especially the FARS News Agency.

And professional bowling. (Well, Elders have to start somewhere!)

Afternoon links

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 12:21 PM PDT

Another good video for Jerusalem Day:


JPost has a video and story of a soldier returning to the Wall 44 years after an iconic photo was taken of him there.

Ben Dror Yemini takes apart Abbas' lies in his NYT op-ed.

Anti-semitism keeps increasing in Venezuela.

Melanie Phillips - The Floating Theatre of Jihad

Sultan Knish - The great error of Israeli normalization

The last surviving "righteous gentile" who saved Austrian Jews during the Holocaust

Having money problems? Jihad is the answer! Just kidnap people and ransom them - it is a wonderful Islamic money making machine!


(h/t Menachem, T34, Jed, Cheryl, Jack, Silke)

Seventy years ago: The Farhud

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 11:16 AM PDT

The BBC recalls the Farhud, the pogrom against Baghdad's Jews in 1941:

On 1 June 1941, a Nazi-inspired pogrom erupted in Baghdad, bringing to an end more than two millennia of peaceful existence for the city's Jewish minority. Some Jewish children witnessed the bloodshed, and retain vivid memories 70 years later.

Heskel Haddad, an 11-year-old boy was finishing a festive meal and preparing to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot, oblivious to the angry mob that was about to take over the city.

Thousands of armed Iraqi Muslims were on the rampage, with swords, knives and guns.

The two days of violence that followed have become known as the Farhud (Arabic for "violent dispossession"). About 800 Jews were killed, spelling the end for a Jewish community that dated from the time of Babylon.

"On the first night of Shavuot we usually go to synagogue and stay up all night studying Torah," says Haddad, now a veteran ophthalmologist in New York.

"Suddenly we heard screams, 'Allah Allah!' and shots were fired. We went out to the roof to see what's happening, we saw fires, we saw people on the roofs in the ghetto screaming, begging God to help them."

The violence continued through the night. A red hand sign, or hamsa, had been painted on Jewish homes, to mark them out. Families had to defend themselves by whatever means they could.

...In a nearby street in a mixed Jewish and Muslim quarter, Steve Acre lived with his widowed mother and eight siblings in a house owned by a Muslim.

Acre, now 79 and living in Montreal, climbed a palm tree in the courtyard when the violence began. He still remembers the cry "Cutal al yehud" which translates as "slaughter the Jews".

"Later lots of men came outside and set the house on fire. And the men were shouting like from joy, in jubilation holding up something that looked like a slab of meat in their hands.

"Then I found out, it was a woman's breast they were carrying - they cut her breast off and tortured her before they killed her, my mother's best friend, Sabicha."

The BBC still downplays the Jew-hatred that caused this event:

Until the Farhud, Baghdad had been a model of peaceful coexistence for Jews and Arabs. Jews made up about one in three of the city's population in 1941, and most saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second.

So what caused this terrible turn of events?

A month earlier, a pro-Nazi lawyer Rashid Ali al-Gilani, had overthrown Iraq's royal family, and started broadcasting Nazi propaganda on the radio.

But when an attack on a British Air Force base outside Baghdad ended in humiliating failure, he was forced to flee. The Farhud took place in the power vacuum that followed.
So whenever there is a temporary power vacuum, one must expect residents who lived peacefully with Jews for generations to rise up and massacre them?

Obviously, even though Jews had integrated into Iraqi life and even though there were some Iraqi Muslims who saved Jews, there was still a strong undercurrent of Muslim anti-semitism in Iraq. While the BBC calls it a "Nazi-inspired pogrom" it was enthusiastically performed by Muslims - not Nazis - the very neighbors of the Jews who they lived in harmony with.

This indicates that Islam itself is the problem, not the Nazis or the "power vacuum" or anything else. If in the absence of a strong government the Muslims could be easily incited to slaughter their Jewish neighbors, it means that it was anything but a "model of peaceful co-existence" - and by the BBC saying that, it implies that the natural order of the world is for people to want to slaughter Jews but they suppress that desire because of external factors.

More Farhud articles and links at the Point of No Return blog.

(h/t Aparatchik)

The fake Muslim pilgrimage festival to Jerusalem

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 09:58 AM PDT

There actually is a pilgrimage festival by Muslims to Jerusalem.

It is Nabi Musa, a seven-day festival celebrating Moses.

What is the date of the festival?

It turns out that the holiday is not pegged to the Muslim calendar, but to the Christian calendar. And it does not date back to antiquity, but to the 19th century.

Read this description from 1955:
As Wikipedia notes, the date for this "Muslim" holiday is "beginning on the Friday before Good Friday in the old Orthodox Greek calendar."

In other words, the holiday is fake. It was meant specifically to counter Christian pilgrims converging on Jerusalem during Holy Week.

It isn't a celebration - it is a veiled attack on another religion.

Jerusalem is 3000 years old. It was divided for 19 years.

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 08:51 AM PDT

So why exactly is that anomalous 19 years considered the "status quo" again?

And why are the succeeding 44 years of a  re-unified Jerusalem considered something that is somehow an obstacle to peace?

It isn't because of its legal status. It isn't because the world loves Palestinian Arabs. It isn't because the world accepted Jordan's annexation of half the city. It certainly isn't from any displays of love of the city shown by the Muslim world during those 19 years.

There is only one possible explanation: too many people do not like the idea of Jews controlling their own holiest city.

That is the issue of Jerusalem in a nutshell. And it just so happens to be the issue of Israel in a nutshell as well.

Jews visit Temple Mount on Jerusalem Day. Muslims unhappy.

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 08:22 AM PDT

Palestine Press Agency reports that groups of "ultra-orthodox" Jews are roaming the courtyards of the Temple Mount to celebrate Jerusalem Day.

The report says that they are causing "sporadic clashes."

Of course, they are not initiating any such clashes - if anything violent is happening, it is coming from Muslims who want the area to be Jew-free and are terribly offended that Jews want to actually visit their holiest site.

"Kol Hakavod": Israeli Arabs joining national service

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 07:17 AM PDT

From Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

"Anyone who volunteers for national service will be treated like a leper and will be vomited out of Arab society." These were the words of Jamal Zahalka at a rally in 2008. He's a lawmaker with Balad, an Israeli Arab political party. His harsh words were intended to stop young Israeli Arabs from volunteering in Israel's National Service program. But they are not working.

Israeli Arabs do not have to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Today, only about 300 Muslim and Christian Arabs (Muslim Arabs make up three-fourths of the Israeli-Arab sector) serve in a special unit of the IDF. But now they have the option of participating in National Service instead, along with Jewish Israelis who cannot go to the army for religious or medical reasons when facing mandatory conscription at age 18.

Despite the pressures in their communities and from Balad not to participate in National Service, gradually more young Israeli Arabs are going against the grain; this year, about 1,500 Israeli Arabs are enrolled in the program.

An alternative to the military

National Service became an option for Israelis as an alternative to the usual three years in the IDF for men and two years for women. Many different non-profit organizations coordinate the placements, typically in education and health facilities. About 90 percent of the volunteers are women. They serve for either one or two years, receiving a monthly stipend of about $200, and are rewarded afterward with benefits commensurate with time put in. Money earned can be used toward a new business, or higher education after their service.

Israeli Arabs have been joining National Service since an initiative of the Israeli government in 2007 to open Israeli national civic service to all populations. Now, as Israeli-Arab Muslims, Christians and Druze look to serve alongside their Jewish counterparts, they not only gain the concept of "giving back" to society, but also are entitled to the same attractive benefits - which also include better terms on a mortgage, good deals on eyeglasses and social benefits.

A success story

One of Israel's first-ever Arab volunteers is Nasra Hmod. Today she is a confident mother of three living in Ramle, not far from Tel Aviv. In 1994, when she graduated high school, she ran out of options. "I was looking for a framework to work within and couldn't find it. For Arabs, it's hard to find work and I didn't find the place where I wanted to study," she says.

Hmod heard about National Service and inquired at Shlomit, an NGO that helps coordinate placements. "I really wanted to volunteer for the Magen David Adom [the Israeli Red Cross] but didn't succeed. Then I heard about National Service, and contacted Chaya at Shlomit and told her I was an Arab." Almost right away, Shlomit had arranged a placement for Hmod in the emergency department of Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, where today she works as a receptionist - basically the same work she is did as a volunteer, but now she has more responsibilities.

Hmod is a big fan of National Service and encourages other young Arabs to join. "I lied," she says, when asked how her community accepted her decision to volunteer. It was only after her year of volunteering was over that she told her family she had been involved in National Service. They wouldn't have accepted it otherwise, she says. To cover up for her lack of money, she'd told her family that she was in school.

When she met Jews on the job, they would always tell her "kol hakavod", a Hebrew expression of admiration, which literally means "all the honor goes to you." Hmod encourages young Arabs to do national service, even though it delays their plans to study, travel or make some quick money.
(h/t Silke)

Fayyad again complains that Arabs are reneging on pledges

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 06:19 AM PDT

From Ma'an:
The Palestinian Authority is facing a financial crisis because funds pledged by donor nations are not arriving on time, Prime Minister of the West Bank government Salam Fayyad said Tuesday.

Speaking at a press conference with Japan's representative to the Palestinian Authority, Fayyad said the slow delivery of promised aid was putting pressure on the government.

"In 2011, we have been receiving $52.5 million dollars a month from the Arab countries, which is much less than the amount they committed to deliver," he said.
This may be a mistranslation; last year it was reported that Arab League had pledged $55 million a month and paid only a small percentage of that amount. I don't know if the Arabs have increased their payments this year, and I am not aware of any significant pledge increases.

Arab nations have also reneged on their generous one-time pledges to the PA as well as pledges to UNRWA.

"Moderate" Abbas meets with Islamic Jihad terrorist leader

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 05:14 AM PDT

Hamas is not the only terrorist group that Mahmoud Abbas is embracing. From JPost:

Under the auspices of Egyptian authorities, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Cairo on Monday with Ramadan Shallah, secretary- general of the Islamic Jihad organization, and his deputy, Ziad Nakhleh.

The meeting between Abbas and the Syrian-based Islamic Jihad leaders dealt with ways of consolidating Palestinian national reconciliation, a PA official said.

The two sides also discussed the PA security crackdown on Islamic Jihad operatives and supporters in the West Bank, the official said.

Islamic Jihad has condemned the ongoing crackdown and urged the PA to release all its members, especially in wake of the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation accord that was reached in Cairo three weeks ago.

Under the former regime of Hosni Mubarak, Islamic Jihad leaders and members were unwelcome in Egypt.

An Islamic Jihad official said the talks also focused on ways of "confronting future challenges and Israeli threats." He described the meeting with Abbas as positive and thorough.
Al Quds al Arabi notes that they met at Al Azhar University:
[Shallah praised] Al-Azhar's 'role in confronting the challenges of the Zionists as a beacon of Islamic research and knowledge'.

Shallah said that Al Azhar is the 'fence of the Islamic faith and the spearhead of the nation to defend its holy sites and the face of Israeli plans of Judaizing Jerusalem'.

The Sheikh of Al-Azhar stressed that Egypt is ready to support the Palestinian cause in the face of Israeli plans of 'land grabbing and [violating] Islamic sanctities'.

The Egyptian/Hamas siege of Gaza continues

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 03:18 AM PDT

It seems Rafah is not really open. Not even close. From Ma'an:

On the first day of full operations, 530 Palestinians used the terminal crossing both ways, while the second day say 845 Palestinians pass through the terminal. On Monday, the third day of operations, 722 Palestinians entered or exited Gaza.

The slow process and long lines frustrated officials, while a list of more than 5,000 Palestinians blacklisted from using the terminal sparked anger from Hamas.

Officials traded increasingly headed accusations over who failed in the creation of a mechanism to allow Palestinians to use Rafah, culminating in a late-night meeting between security personnel from both sides.

Following the meeting, the officials announced that a cap of 400 travelers per day would be set on the crossing, and the names of the permitted passengers would be posted one day ahead of travel.
The original agreement was for older people, kids and women to have unlimited access to the crossings. Now Hamas is agreeing to only 400 people a day.

The funny part is that there is really no difference between Rafah today and Rafah from June 2010-January 2011. Egypt opened the Rafah crossings right after the Mavi Marmara incident in June, and it remained open continuously until Eid in September when it was closed for three days. It re-opened after that continuously until January 25, 2011.

During the first month of its opening last year, some 600 people would cross daily - 300 in each direction.

So the current pseudo-opening of Rafah has absolutely nothing to do with Israel. It is pretty much going back to the situation before the Egyptian uprising, with roughly the same restrictions in place. And the current Egyptian authorities - as well as Hamas - are acting just as they did last year.

Of course, none of the news media is mentioning this.
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