| Three million hits Posted: 03 Jul 2011 11:10 PM PDT On Sunday, EoZ registered its 3,000,000th hit since the blog started. So that's why I've been hearing so many fireworks outside! 
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| Other shoe to drop from Special Tribunal for Lebanon? Posted: 03 Jul 2011 07:43 PM PDT From Ya Libnan: The day the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) team delivered the indictment to Lebanon , several reports from Beirut indicated that the delegation will head to Syria to deliver the Syrian portion of the indictment in the 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former PM Rafik Hariri .
An STL delegation met June 30 with Lebanon's state prosecutor Said Mirza and handed him a copy of the Lebanon portion of the indictment and the arrest warrants. Two of the suspects Mustafa Badreddine and Salim Ayyash are reportedly senior members of the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah while the other two Hassan Aneissy, also known as Hassan Issa, and Assad Sabra played a supporting role in the execution of the assassination.
According to a report by Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot handing the indictment to Damascus was postponed due to the Syrian unrest.
According to the paper at least two prominent members of President Bashar Assad's family will be on the list, his younger brother Maher (Assad ) who has been commanding the crackdown against the protesters and his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat ( married to Assad's sister Bushra) , former head of Military Intelligence and current deputy chief-of-staff of the armed forces."
Der Spiegel magazine which was the first to leak details ( May2009) about Hezbollah's involvement in Hariri murder has reportedly leaked that "new indictments in the STL will include Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian suspects." Things might get very interesting if the STL hands down indictments for Assad's family. And the existence of Palestinian Arab complicity is intriguing as well. Meanwhile, if anyone had the slightest idea that Hezbollah worked for Lebanese interests instead of its Iranian masters, this reaction from Iran should show otherwise: Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani ( right) rejected the indictments against Hezbollah members in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.
"We know that the United States was opposed to the establishment of a government led by Najib Mikati, but they failed due to the vigilance of Lebanon's leaders. Now they created the tribunal, which they use as a tool to express their dissatisfaction with the new government," Larijani said during an official visit to Azerbaijan.
"The Americans feel they have been slapped in the face and they are seeking to make up a story" by indicting Hezbollah members, Larijani added.
According to observers Larijani's reaction was expected because if Hezbollah did in fact execute the murder , it could not have done so without the knowledge of the top Iranian leadership. When Hariri was assassinated Larijani was the security adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's ultimate authority. Larijani also is a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the group that created Hezbollah in 1982. 
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| PA facing financial crisis. But insists it is ready for statehood! Posted: 03 Jul 2011 02:00 PM PDT From Bloomberg: Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said his government has only enough money to pay half of salaries this month and appealed to "donors and our Arab brothers" to fulfill their pledges for funding.
"Today is a day of crisis," Fayyad said at a press conference today in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He said the Palestinian Authority had a deficit of $585 million and had reached the limit of its bank borrowing.
Fayyad said the financial crisis "shouldn't mean anything for the readiness for a Palestinian state." Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said he plans to ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state in September.
The World Bank said in an April report that the Palestinian Authority had increased bank borrowing to fund development projects for which designated aid hadn't been received and that arrears were accumulating at an unsustainable rate. At the end of 2010 total domestic debt was about $840 million, "which may be close to the PA's borrowing limits," the report said.
Donor countries have paid only $330 million of the $971 million pledged this year, Fayyad said. Roughly one-quarter of the authority's $3.7 billion budget comes from foreign aid.
Oman, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates are the only Arab countries that have so far paid funds that they pledged for this year, Fayyad said, adding that the U.S. and European Union have been making regular contributions. It's been nearly a year since Fayyad declared that the PA would be "financially independent" by the end of 2013. I'm sure this is all going according to plan. The World Bank report from earlier this year warned about this crisis, but the report buried this information on page 12 in its overly rosy view of the future of the PA and how ready it was for statehood. Notice also how it is always the Arabs who don't pay their commitments to the PA. But don't be to hard on them - they are very good at shipping burial shrouds to Gaza. (h/t NormanF) 
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| Newest Free Gaza publicity stunt Posted: 03 Jul 2011 11:00 AM PDT As the flotilla gets shakier by the day, the Free Gaza/ISM and sister movements are planning a new stunt: having activists fly to Israel and protest at Ben Gurion Airport. Here's a video of Paul Larudee, from Free Gaza, describing the plan: I particularly like what he says around the 4 minute mark. While he wants the trip to be taken by the usual D-list celebrities and token self-hating Jews, he particularly wants Palestinian Arabs who can trace their families to within the Green Line, and who now live in the West, to participate in this "return" - but he warns that only people who really don't want to return should join, because Israel is likely to ban them from future trips. Apparently, the action is planned for this coming Friday. While a couple of prominent activists say they will go, I'm certain that the number will be much smaller than the hundreds they are pretending will go. And almost certainly the number of Palestinian Arabs who now have citizenship in Western countries that go will be minuscule. Last year, Free Gaza announced an initiative of flying to Gaza with a private plane. That intended stunt went exactly nowhere. Chances are, so will this one, and a few dozen people will have wasted hundred of dollars apiece on - nothing. (h/t Israel Matzav, Daled Amos and others) 
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| Bibi answers the first YouTube question Posted: 03 Jul 2011 07:51 AM PDT |
| PINGO!: A Flotidiot Bingo/drinking game Posted: 03 Jul 2011 04:47 AM PDT Jake sent me this wonder variation of Bingo he created that can be played by everyone! It can be played like traditional Bingo. In this case, when you read an anti-Israel argument (for the purposes of this game, let's limit them to those published on the Web since June 15), highlight it here and hyperlink it to the URL. The first to get five in a row wins, as does the first to fill out the entire board. Or it can be a drinking game - take a shot whenever a Flotidiot makes one of these arguments. Either way, it looks like a fun summer! | P | I | N | G | O | | | You're using the anti-Semitism card to silence my legitimate criticism of the devious, Christ-killing Jewish financiers who run all the governments with their Israel lobbies! | The UN doesn't spend enough time criticising Israel... This is because the USA, which is run by Zionists, controls it! | Checkpoints are a violation of human rights! How would you feel if, say, you had to go through a metal detector before boarding a flight? Humiliated! | Hamas want peace. Their charter is just an outdated relic they don't really believe in. All those rockets are just really sophisticated fireworks celebrating the fact that they have such lovely Jewish neighbours. | Ilan Pappe is a serious, credible historian, whereas Benny Morris is just a racist. (Karsh? Who's Karsh?) | | | Sometimes I can't help but feel that the American Empire is the real threat to the world and Israel is just a distraction. Ahmedinejad talks a lot of sense. | Israel was created on the backs of imperialist settlers and violence. No other state was created through violence! | Jewish settlements are the real threat to peace. Imagine how Palestinians feel having to live next to Jews! If they get their own state, Jews should be forced to leave. | Israel are just like the Nazis. In fact they're worse! Except for the death toll, the lebensraum policy, the systematic genocide and the desire to control the world, Israel is essentially the Fourth Reich. | Boycotting Israel is a great idea! Let me just bin my computer, my camera phone, my Kindle, a great deal of my medicine, my solar panels and my cherry tomatoes, to name a few. | | | Israel purposefully targets civilians and schools. Totally nothing to do with Hamas using schools as launching pads. | The IDF want to decimate Gaza. It's amazing that an army as powerful and as eeevil as Israel hasn't done it yet... | Calling Israel an apartheid state is an insult to South African apartheid. (If you believe otherwise then the Israeli government must be paying you to say so.) | Secular? How can a secular democracy have a religious symbol on its flag? | Turkey is a secular democracy. | | | Zionists use outdated Biblical fantasies to justify Israel's existence, but Israel shouldn't exist because according to the Torah we have to wait for the Messiah!!! Nurny nur nur! | Arabs can't buy land in Israel. Forget the fact that most land is government-owned and leased out, and that Jews are also forbidden from buying land... let's just focus on the Arabs. | The Law of Return is racist. No other countries (apart from most European countries and a lot of other ones – most countries, in fact) use the racist jus sanguinis policy. | Jews are a race when we're calling them racial supremacists. They're a nation when we're highlighting how they're different to us. But they're not distinctive at all when they start claiming the right to a country of their own. | Real Jews oppose Israel. Real Jews, like Chomsky, don't think Holocaust denial is wrong at all. In fact, real Jews stand up for Holocaust deniers. Real Jews... real Jews... real Jews... real Jews... | | | The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Not one Palestinian supported Hitler... Nope, still can't think of any. You're just exploiting the Holocaust. | How dare you suggest the Palestinians could go to other Arab countries! They deserve one of their own. | Couldn't the persecuted Jews just have gone to New York/Europe instead of Palestine? | Hamas has legitimacy because they were democratically elected. All Israeli governments, however, have no legitimacy at all. How dare you even compare the Palestinian democracy with Israel's military dictatorship?! | I happen to think that Arabs are incapable of knowing freedom, therefore Israel is just an insult to them and should be destroyed. -or- The Arab Spring will inevitably spread to Israel, destroying it. | |
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