יום שישי, 19 באוגוסט 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

"We Love Syria and Its Leader"

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 07:06 PM PDT

Syria's official SANA "news" agency continues in the best tradition of Soviet-style propaganda:

A Russian popular delegation on Wednesday arrived in Damascus to take part in "We Love Syria and its Leader" campaign.

The delegation includes Russian political, academic, cultural and artistic personalities in addition to 6 Syrian residents in Russia.

In a statement to SANA, members of the delegation said the visit aims at seeing the reality of events in Syria on ground, adding that Syria is a country of great history and people and led by a wise leadership.

They also expressed that the Russian people rejects foreign interference in Syria's internal affairs, stressing that the Russian people supports Syria.
They don't just like Syria and its leader - they love them!

Saudi woman claims to have hacked into anti-Muslim websites

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 04:26 PM PDT

From Arab News:
An Alkhobar woman studying in the United States is taking credit for destroying 23 Danish websites that denigrated the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Al-Madinah newspaper reported on Thursday.

Nouf Rashid told the Arabic newspaper she was hacking into Danish websites having references to cartoons of the Prophet along with other sites that had questionable content in her view.

She said she had also destroyed a number of pornographic sites and hacked into the computer systems of young men who had tried to blackmail girls by threatening to publish their private photos. She gained expertise in the field out of a desire to learn new things in the IT field.

Nouf said she had hacked into some of the Danish websites that denigrated the Prophet and shut them down. "I also sent messages and articles about Islam and the Prophet to those who managed those sites," she pointed out.
A woman with that name from that same town in Saudi Arabia has a Facebook profile where she says she likes Grey's Anatomy and Friends - TV  shows that feature premarital sex.

But she obviously can determine and enforce what is holy and what is profane.


IDF responds, kills 2 PRC leaders and 3 more terrorists

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 12:33 PM PDT

From Ma'an:
An Israeli airstrike killed six Palestinians Thursday evening in southern Gaza, medics said, hours after a series of attacks left seven Israelis dead near Eilat.

Gaza medical official Adham Abu Salmiya said the airstrikes targeted a house in Rafah.

A Ma'an correspondent said the home belonged to Popular Resistance Committees official Khaled Shaath, who was killed instantly. His two-year-old son Malek later died of injuries sustained in the strike.

The attacks killed four others in Rafah. Among them were PRC military wing chief Abu Awad Nayrab and PRC operatives Imad Hamad, Abu Jamil Shaath and Khaled Masri, medical officials said.

The PRC confirmed the deaths in a statement posted to its website.
Earlier, government spokesperson Mark Regev said the Israeli intelligence was certain that the attacks originated in Gaza. "This is not speculation, not conjecture, not joining the dots. They are sure these terrorists left Gaza."

The PRC responded by saying "A martyr is born with his blood flowing, and the march of thousands of martyrs, body parts and blood would not stop until we achieve victory and God's promise of empowerment."

Terrorism is proof that the "peace process" has nothing to do with peace

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 09:35 AM PDT

Let's imagine that Israel and the PLO had agreed to the boundaries of a Palestinian Arab state back in 2008.

Would today's terror attack have still happened?

The answer can be seen by looking at where the attack occurred - in the "internationally recognized borders" of Israel.

Not in Gaza. Not in the area that the PLO officially claims they want for a state.

In fact, the attack was not even in a place that would have been called "Palestine" before the British Mandate.

People are so used to hearing the phrase "peace process" that they are conditioned to believe the biggest lie of all: that if only Israel would give up more territory, then there would be peace. An agreement, it is widely assumed, would mean no more claims against Israel and a chance for both nations to live side by side in harmony.

Today's attack - which included an RPG attack on a family in a car, killing two children - has nothing to do with "Palestine." The entire point of the attack is to kill Jews who enjoy their own national self-determination in the Middle East. As long as Jews live in freedom in the area, they will be attacked. It will simply never end.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the PRC are not going to disappear after a peace agreement is signed. They would continue to attack Israelis, they way that the fedayeen attacked before there was an "occupation." They will continue to find new claims as Hezbollah does with the Lebanese border after Israel withdrew behidn UN-drawn lines.

Pseudo-intellectuals will likewise keep finding ways to justify the terror by blaming Israel for the reprehensible deeds of the terrorists. They cannot accept the fact that not only would Israel's capitulation not stop terror, but it would probably increase it. Terrorists fired rockets from Gaza to Israel literally hours after Israel's last troops withdrew from Gaza - and they never stopped, even before the "siege."

Israeli actions are not what is preventing peace. Palestinian Arab actions are what makes peace impossible - their terrorism as well as their widespread support for terrorism, in the media and on the streets.

Islamic Jihad issues rare condemnation of Hamas for arrest

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 08:45 AM PDT

Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades has condemned Hamas for "kidnapping" one of their mujahadin.

According to their statement, Hamas raided an Islamic Jihad building on Monday morning and "arrested [the PIJ member] without regard for the sanctity of Ramadan and without respect for the [normal] coordination mechanisms used between Saraya [Islamic Jihad] and Gaza security forces."

PIJ added that Hamas "turned its back on all the efforts made for the release of the Mujahid, which led us to announce the incident, which we did not hope to reach this point."

The statement concluded that "this incident is strange and deplorable but will not affect the fraternal relations between the Quds Brigades of all the Palestinian factions and our brothers in the Gaza government. We express hope that the crisis ends soon ..and we return to the method of dialogue and understanding to resolve any problem that may happen in the future."

Although it is no surprise, this statement shows that the Hamas government normally coordinates activities with Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups, which makes the idea of  a peaceful "unity government" with Fatah even more of a joke.

Palestinian Arabs respond to terror attack with glee (updated)

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 07:16 AM PDT

The talkbacks on Palestinian Arab news sites are filled with happiness and glee at the murder of Israelis today near Eilat.

And not only the Hamas or Islamic Jihad oriented sites, but the Fatah-leaning sites as well.

Palestine Press Agency, which is a Fatah-leaning site, has commenters saying

"God praise the [Hamas] Al-Qassam Brigades" (they have not taken responsibility)

"Our Lord is with the heroes"

"[I] call for resistance in the Gaza with rocket fire and suicide bombings and the Glory of God and His Messenger"

"Tribute to the Heroes of each attack and no matter what their affiliation"

"God is great and victory is coming"

By far the most popular comment in the Hamas-oriented PalTimes is "God is great."

Firas Press has a numbr of "God is Great" comments as well as one referring to the victims as "monkeys."

The popular Paldf.net forum site has hundreds of messages of praise as well as digging up every possible scrap of rumor they can find.

I have yet to find a single expression of sadness or condemnation for the attack. One person thought that it was "suspicious" and implied it was a Zionist false flag attack to be a pretext for invading Egypt or Gaza; that's the closest I could find to a reservation about the attack. Everyone else is pouring out happiness and congratulations to the heroic terrorists.

UPDATE: A couple of people think it is unfair to generalize based on talkbackers, who are usually the most extreme idiots. However, there are usually extremists on both sides of the story. I cannot find a single Palestinian Arab who is an "extremist" in supporting peace or condemning terror. And that is a significant issue that is worthwhile to mention.

Links, snippets, video

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 06:40 AM PDT

Possible next leader of Labor Party does not see establishing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as a crime:
In its time, it was a completely consensual move. And it was the Labor Party that founded the settlement enterprise in the territories. That is a fact. A historical fact....I am familiar with the worldview that maintains that if we cut the defense budget in half there will be money for education. It's a worldview with no connection to reality....I reject it; it is simply not factually correct, even though it is now perceived as axiomatic. A school that is located in a settlement and has X number of students would be located inside the Green Line and have the same number of children at the same cost. I don't say that the settlements themselves did not cost more money. But even if the defense budget were cut in half, and even if the settlement costs were cut in half, the economic ideology that led us to them would not seek to divert the newly available funds to the service of the state.

The always excellent Richard Landes talks about the West's problem with criticizing Islam in a new blog in The Telegraph:
In an honour culture, it is legitimate, expected, even required to shed blood for the sake of honour, to save face, to redeem the dishonoured face. Public criticism is an assault on the very "face" of the person criticised. Thus, people in such cultures are careful to be "polite"; and a genuinely free press is impossible, no matter what the laws proclaim.

Modernity, however, is based on a free public discussion, on civility rather than politeness, but the benefits of this public self-criticism – sharp learning curves, advances in science and technology, economic development, democracy – make that pain worthwhile.

But such a system represents a crucible of humiliation for alpha males, especially those who believe that the social order depends on the honour of ruling elite, like the anti-Dreyfusards around 1900, ready to sacrifice a single man for the honour of Army and Church.

This is particularly true for Islamic religious culture. In Dar al Islam, a Muslim's contradiction/criticism of Islam was punishable by death, a fortiori did this hold true for infidels. Modernity has been a Nakba (psychological catastrophe) for Islam, and Islam in all its variegated currents has yet to successfully negotiate these demands of modernity.

On the contrary, the loudest voices in contemporary Islam reject vehemently the kind of self-criticism modernity requires. Criticism constitutes an unbearable assault on the manhood of Muslims.

Khaled Abu Toameh on the Arab uprisings:


Elliot Abrams: Will Ariel block peace?
If there is a single issue that explains the failure of Obama policy toward Israel, it is settlements. And this week the administration once again indulged itself in a knee-jerk reaction that displayed incomprehension in a way that harms U.S.-Israeli relations without doing the slightest bit of good for the Palestinians.

This week Israel announced a plan to construct 277 more housing units in Ariel, a settlement that is a town of 18,000. The new units are to be constructed in the center of the town, it was also announced. This is a significant fact, for construction of new units at the edges of the town would mean that the security perimeter would need to be extended to protect the new housing and the people in it. But this will not happen, and Ariel will expand in population but not in land area. It is not, in the usual Palestinian Authority parlance, "taking more Palestinian land."

When I worked on these issues in the Bush Administration, we discussed settlement expansion thoroughly with the government of Israel and (as I have explained elsewhere) reached agreement on some principles. These were that Israel would create no new settlements and that existing settlements would expand in population but not in land area. New construction, that is, would be in already-built-up areas, and the phrase we used was "build up and in, not out." The usual complaints about new construction in the settlements were that "it is making a final peace agreement impossible" or at least more and more difficult by "taking more Palestinian land" that would have to be bargained over in the end and whose taking would right now interfere with Palestinian life and livelihoods. We understood that there would never be a long construction freeze even if there might be some brief ones, for the settlements–especially the "major blocks" that Israel will keep–are living communities with growing families. So we reached that understanding with the Israelis: build up and in, not out. That way whatever the chances of a peace deal were, construction in the settlements would not reduce them.

This agreement the Obama Administration ignored or denounced, suggesting at various times that it never existed or that, anyway, it had been a bad idea and all construction must be frozen–even in Israel's capital, Jerusalem. (To be more accurate, construction by Israeli Jews was to be frozen; construction by Palestinians could continue). No Israeli government could long accept such terms and though the Netanyahu government did agree to a short and partial freeze, when that failed to bring the PLO back to the negotiating table the freeze was ended. This Obama fixation with a construction freeze proved disastrous because the president and his secretary of state took the view that it was a precondition for negotiations without which the Palestinians could not be expected to come to the table. Of course once that American position was announced the Palestinian leadership had to adopt it, lest they appear weaker in asserting Palestinian "rights" than Washington.

(h/t O, CHA, jzaik)

Egypt imprisons two for "insulting the military." Ah, spring!

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 05:30 AM PDT

From AFP:
Egypt's military, which faces growing condemnation for cracking down on critics, on Wednesday sentenced two men to six months in prison each for chanting anti-military slogans, a prosecution official said.

The military, in power since a popular revolt ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February, has promised to hand over government to civilians after a yet unscheduled presidential election.

The military this week decided to try an activist and blogger who posted a widely popular appeal to Egyptians to rise up against Mubarak days before the January 25 revolt.

Asmaa Mahfouz, who has become a vocal critic of the military, is charged with insulting the military on the Internet, in a step the New York-based Human Rights Watch described as an "escalation" against military opponents.
Egypt: A liberated nation run by a military dictatorship that hasn't scheduled elections yet. Isn't it wonderful?

Multiple terrorist attacks on buses, car near Egyptian border (updated)

Posted: 18 Aug 2011 03:03 AM PDT


From YNet/Reuters:

An Israeli bus traveling to the southern city of Eilat has come under fire on noon Thursday.

Police forces, as well as Magen David Adom emergency services teams have been dispatched to the scene.

Security forces have closed off all of the entrances to Eilat and are currently canvassing the area in search of three suspects.

Initial details said that five people have suffered moderate to mild injuries in the attack, which took place about 30km (18 miles) north of Eilat, near the Ein Netafim junction.

Defense establishment sources said that the fire originated from the Egyptian side of the border. Egyptian security forces have been alerted and are reportedly conducting a simultaneous manhunt.

Passengers on the 392 number bus headed from Eilat to Mitzpe Ramon reported seeing three figures wearing smocks open fire towards them. Security officials said the shooters, who managed to escape after the firing, were most likely carrying Kalashnikov guns.
The Muqata is liveblogging.

Apparently there were two separate bus attacks, and a car attack. One bus attacked by an RPG or anti-tank missile, other by Kalashnikovs. Reports of mortars and roadside bombs in the Negev as well. The car had children; five injured in that attack. Reportedly the first attack was carried out by men in Egyptian army uniforms.

Two children, ages 4 and 6, were killed in the car which was attacked by an RPG.

There are reports of seven Israelis killed, and three terrorists killed so far.
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