| Overnight open thread Posted: 11 Sep 2011 05:45 PM PDT 9/11 is always a tough day. 
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| Send in the clowns: Durban III counter-protest September 22 Posted: 11 Sep 2011 11:34 AM PDT From HaOlam:  A StandWithUs-sponsored "circus" will expose the shocking hypocrisy of the United Nations when the UN puts on its third "Durban conference" against racism on September 22 in New York City. The circus and clowns StandWithUs is sponsoring will appear in front of UN headquarters on Sept. 22 from noon until 2 PM, just when the three-ring circus known as the Durban III conference is under way. Leading democratic nations have severely denounced the previous two Durban conferences, held in 2001 and 2009, for demonizing Israel and for flagrant anti-Semitism.
"One good way to counter the Durban conference's hypocritical travesty of human rights is with parody. Sometimes humor reveals the deepest truths. There is no possible rational response to the Durban conference's perverse distortions. They are too divorced from any reality. In fact, they turn reality upside down. We plan to fight the UN 'clowns' with actual clowns that expose their hypocrisy and perversity," explained Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs.
Durban I, the first conference against "racism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance," held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, was a travesty of its stated goals that shocked the world's democracies. The conference turned into an anti-Semitic hatefest that singled out democratic, multicultural Israel as the most racist country in the world, while ignoring discrimination and human rights crimes rampant in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere in the world. The conference allegedly against racism had turned into a hotbed of racism. Canada, the U.S., and Israel walked out of the conference and condemned Durban I for fomenting the world's oldest racism, anti-Semitism.
Indifferent to these widespread denunciations of Durban I, the UN attempted to reaffirm the Durban I declaration in a second conference in 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland. ...
At the demonstration in New York, clowns will wear Ahmadinejad masks and hold balloons that correctly label Durban III as a forum for hypocrisy, racism, and lies.
"The balloons are symbolic but accurate. The Durban conferences cast all decent values to the winds. Hopefully, our demonstration will encourage the world to demand that the UN finally live up to its original ideals," concluded Rothstein. You can join the protest yourself; just show up in a clown costume! StandWithUs is a partner of EoZ. 
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| Zionist pigs return to torture Palestinian Arab farmers! Posted: 11 Sep 2011 10:35 AM PDT It's been over a year since the last story about Zionist-bred and trained wild boars attacking poor Palestinian Arab farmers - but the Zionist Pigs are back! Farmers say Israeli settlers unleashed pigs overnight Saturday to destroy their land in Salfit in the northern West Bank. Farmers told Ma'an that the pigs destroyed a fence and broke branches of fig trees. They said they were afraid to remain on their land and appealed for help to protect their property. This has been a recurring theme since at least 2007. Ma'an used to routinely report the accusations that the Jews of Judea and Samaria were raising these pigs and releasing them to only attack Arab crops, often during prayer times, spreading swine flu, while leaving Jewish agriculture alone. At least now they are reporting it as "farmers say" than as fact. 
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| British Muslims burn American flag outside US embassy for 9/11 Posted: 11 Sep 2011 08:48 AM PDT From The Telegraph: A number of radical Islamic groups including Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) gathered outside the embassy on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.
 The group of around 100 men shouted "USA terrorists", brandished anti-American placards and chanted through a loudhailer.
Several members of the Muslim groups made anti-American speeches following the flag burning. One said: "You will always face suffering, you will always face humiliation, unless you withdraw your troops from Muslim lands."
Another declared that America had been "defeated in Iraq and defeated in Afghanistan".
However, a small opposing group of Muslims - some of whom had travelled hundreds of miles to rebut the extremists - staged a counter-demonstration nearby, holding up placards reading "Muslims Against Extremism" and "If You Want Sharia, Move To Saudi". (h/t SSR) 
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| Anti-Israel group encourages lying to security at Ben Gurion Airport Posted: 11 Sep 2011 07:30 AM PDT The Middle East Fellowship and Holy Land Trust have a booklet where they describe, among other things, how anti-Israel activists should act when they try to enter and leave Israel. It also describes Palestinian Arab bigotry against Westerners, women and Jews, but it contextualizes and minimizes it. Here are some of the interesting parts: Palestinians are very traditional when it comes to romantic relationships. We urge you to refrain from romantic relations with Palestinians or members of the program for the duration of your stay in Palestine.
Safety
Israel and Palestine have admittedly had a bad international profile when it comes to danger from within the country. Stories of bombings, shootings, demonstrations and uprisings are common enough through the images we see in the media. As a result many would-be visitors stay away from the region. The reality is much different from the perceptions that are manufactured on most media outlets.
Traveling within Palestine and Israel is essentially a safe venture. Bethlehem, where the summer program will take place, is a relatively safe place to reside in comparison to other parts of the West Bank. With the Holy Land Trust staff 's presence on the ground, traveling in and around Bethlehem can be very comfortable.
Visitors are never deliberately targeted within Palestinian areas in the West Bank. Many travelers frequent the West Bank throughout the year and rarely experience anything that suggests violent backlash. To avoid scrupulous attention from Israeli security and Israeli Occupational Forces (IOF), avoid wearing Palestinian keffiyahs in Jewish areas and, conversely, do not wear a Jewish kippa or other Jewish items of clothing in Palestinian areas. Use your common sense when traveling and stay safe.
Do Not Pack:
Any explicit materials about your travel plans or itinerary in the West Bank (including this orientation packet).
Materials that could be seen as inflammatory by Israeli security forces if they search your bags.
Addresses of friends, family or others in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Objects that are restricted by Israeli or airport security.
Female Travelers. Middle Easterners are generally conservative, especially about matters concerning sex and women. It is very important that female visitors make an attempt to be sensitive to local cultural norms. This does not necessarily mean that women are treated with disrespect, but expectations about how women should dress and behave in the Middle East differ from many Western countries. Unfortunately, some Middle Eastern men have a twisted view of Western women. Western movies and TV give them the impression that all Western women are promiscuous and will jump into bed at the drop of a hat. It doesn't actually take much on your part to perpetuate this belief– bare shoulders or shorts on a woman are "proof " enough, as well as, a little flirtation or even simple friendliness can quickly be misconstrued as something more.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Western women travelers are guaranteed to be free of harassment if they dress modestly or conduct themselves in a businesslike manner. Prepare yourself for little things to avoid harassment: for instance, we recommend female travelers not to sit in the front seat of a taxi. This might sound trite, but it can prevent a very uncomfortable moment. Politely but firmly turn down whispered invitations and completely ignore come-ons. Accepting the minimum of attention will usually invite more. If ignoring come-ons doesn't work and the attention starts to get out of hand, seek out a person of authority, or a local woman if possible, to intervene on your behalf. Usually the specter of community shame is enough to put someone back in line.
...Needless to say, many Palestinians have had traumatic experiences with Israeli settlers and soldiers. Because many believe that Israel's current military policies are supported by all or most Jews, you may, unfortunately, hear the terms "Jew," "Zionist," and "Israeli" used interchangeably.
Entry Approaches
Limit Information. By limiting information, you are just a tourist who stayed at a hotel or with friends or hostel within Israel; who didn't or doesn't plan to meet with Palestinians, didn't participate in our summer program in Bethlehem. Use this entry approach and your chances of getting through airport security will be higher and smoother, but never guaranteed.
Some things to keep in mind in using this approach:
- You are not indicating that you are participating in Palestine Summer Encounter.
- You are not mentioning either the Holy Land Trust or Middle East Fellowship organizations.
- You are not indicating that you plan on traveling to the West Bank or Gaza.
- You have not packed anything that could label you a "Palestinian sympathizer," in case you are singled out for a search.
- You have prepared a story for why you chose to travel to just Israel and you have contact information and material to support that story.
We often suggest people to "limit information" but the decision and what you feel comfortable with is ultimately yours. The booklet also talks about how to go to the media afterwards with everything the activists have learned about how awful Israel is - and presumably not to discuss any sexual advances or bigoted statements made by Arabs. (h/t Anne) 
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| Jordanians plan to mob Israel embassy in Amman this Thursday Posted: 11 Sep 2011 05:30 AM PDT  Arabic media is reporting that Jordanian groups plan to copy what happened in Egypt and break into and close down the Israel embassy in Amman, Jordan this Thursday evening. The Facebook invite page already has a thousand people who say they will attend. It appears that this is being organized by the Islamic Action Front, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is obliquely warning that any actions by Jordanian authorities to stop them will indicate their collusion with the hated Zionists and will result in their fall. YNet adds: Meanwhile, the official Egyptian news agency reported that Israel's embassy in Jordan was reinforcing security measures. Eye-witnesses claimed that they saw armored vehicles and a large number of security forces on the streets leading to the embassy. (h/t Dan) 
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| Details on the Egyptian riot: Embassy breached, journalists brutally attacked Posted: 11 Sep 2011 03:53 AM PDT Al Ahram reports that the Egyptian mob did manage to penetrate the Israel embassy and steal sensitive files: As I could not see exactly what was happening near that entrance because of crowd numbers, I had to rely on reports from those closer to the building to find out what happened then. Most reports confirmed that an army officer or two in charge of the unit did very little to stop the crowds.
I was able to confirm later that 100-200 people occupied the building and that tens managed to break into the embassy.
Suddenly, around 9pm or so, a small unit of Central Security Forces (CSF), the notorious Egyptian riot police, showed up in the area but did not head towards protesters and instead, made its way 50 metres away from the crowd, leaving soldiers in full riot gear to block the entrance of the Saudi Embassy just around the corner.
At this point, hundreds of young people clashed with riot police up and down the Saudi Embassy side street for about half an hour. Protesters most likely set ablaze two CSF trucks, while a couple of trees also caught fire.
Some walked back from the fresh clashes with several "Made in USA" canisters of tear gas that they snatched from soldiers, and displayed them to the larger crowds.
As a firetruck worked to put out the fire on the Saudi street, CSF soldiers disappeared from the scene and things seemed to calm down in that part of the arena.
Suddenly, at around 10pm or 10:30pm, the skies filled up to a saturation point with thousands of 8" by 11" sheets of paper coming down from the top of the embassy building.
As the papers made their way down slowly onto the pavement, the crowd and I included were first under the impression that the revolutionaries were sending us a photocopied political statement of some sort.
We caught the papers and examined them. It took hundreds of people a few minutes of sorting through them before we realised that we were looking at Israeli Embassy records in Arabic, Hebrew and English.
It began to slowly dawn on us that the people upstairs in the building managed to actually break into the embassy. At this moment the crowd went wild and started pushing and shoving to catch whatever papers were coming down from the heavens.
Those who could not catch fallen documents gathered in hundreds of small groups to read what others caught, and took pictures with mobile phones. I walked from one group of "examiners" to the other trying to look at as many documents as possible.
There were records of phone deals between major Egyptian private and public telecommunications firms and Israel. I also saw documents that listed names of business transactions between the embassy and all sorts of Egyptian authorities, from customs officials to CEOs of tourism firms, bringing Israeli travelers to Egypt, and on and on.
Much of the confetti that was dropping on us dated back to the 1990s and even the 1980s, as its typeset indicated.
The revolutionaries upstairs sent at least six or seven separate sets of documents on us every 10 minutes or so for a whole hour. TV cameras hustled to interview dozens of people with documents that they believed showed the depth of the embassy's penetration into the economic and political scene in Egypt.
... At this point I lucked out as a "journalist", you could say. A man in his early 20s, wearing a sleevless T-shirt, and drowned in sweat asked me for a cigarette. He listened to the conversation people were having about the documents and announced to us in a matter of fact manner that he had just come down from the 22nd floor.
He said that it took over two hours for a group made up of dozens of revolutionaries using hammers to demolish the walls and steel entrances to the embassy floor. I asked him to describe to me what the embassy looked like on the inside as a way of vetting the authenticity of his story. Instead, he pulled out a stack of 10 or so plastic-laminated Israeli embassy employee identification cards, with what appeared to be pictures and names of locals who worked in the compound, and said: "See this. That proves I was one of those who stormed the enemy's house."
Around midnight or so, as thousands were still poring over the documents, battles erupted in a few seconds between a group of protesters and CSF units around the Giza Security Directorate headquarters yards away.
In less than 10 minutes, smoke from tens of tear gas bombs and sounds of bullets filled the air and ended the festive atmosphere. Egypt's Berlin Wall moment did not last more than a few hours.
Long standing hatred between Egypt's still intact and widely despised CSF and Cairo's revolutionaries and poor ushered into one long bloody night of street fighting.
The night of 9 September will go down as the bloodiest few hours that Egypt witnessed since Mubarak's police rained hell on peaceful protesters on 28 January, three days after the outbreak of this unfinished revolution. And CNN tells a harrowing story of what happened afterwards: An angry crowd lingering near the Israeli embassy in Cairo after an attack on the building a day earlier turned on journalists reporting the incident Saturday, accusing at least one of being an Israeli spy.
As a CNN crew filmed the embassy from across the street, another crew from American public television -- led by Egyptian television producer Dina Amer -- approached the building. The crew's Russian cameraman was preparing to film the embassy when a woman in the crowd began hurling insults at the TV team, Amer said.
"There was this older lady who decided to follow me and rally people against me," Amer recalled. "She said 'you're a spy working with the Americans.' Then they swarmed me and I was a target." A growing crowd surrounded Amer and her colleagues, as they tried to leave the scene.
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, a producer working for CNN, rushed to help escort Amer through the angry crowd. But suddenly the two reporters were pinned against the railing of an overpass by young men who were accusing Amer of being an Israeli spy.
Yelling "I'm Egyptian," Fahmy managed to pull Amer another 10 meters down the road, until the pressure from the mob overwhelmed the pair.
Amer screamed as she and Fahmy were knocked to the ground and the crowd started to trample them. Other CNN journalists tried to reach in to help, but were pushed back by a wall of angry men. Fahmy lay on top of Amer, shielding her with his body.
"I was thinking, how powerless I was because there was no police to save us," Fahmy said. "I was worried that they were going to rape her."
At that moment, a student bystander named Mohammed el Banna called out to the journalists and pointed out a nearby car.
Somehow, Fahmy managed to carry Amer to the open door of the public television crew's car, where two of her female colleagues were waiting just a few feet away.
The mob pounded on the windows and tried to reach into the vehicle as the panicked reporters fumbled and struggled to get behind the steering wheel.
When Margaret Warner, a correspondent with the PBS program "Newshour" managed to get the vehicle moving away from the crowd, men threw stones at the departing vehicle.
Amer had few words to describe the terrifying ordeal.
"They were animals," she said.
Other Egyptian journalists told CNN they were also attacked Saturday while trying to report near the Israeli embassy.
Ahmed Aleiba, a correspondent with Egyptian state television, said he was pursued by civilians and soldiers.
"I had to run because obviously they were targeting journalists," Aleiba said in a phone call with CNN. "They attacked two other TV crews."
"I was in the car getting ready to film. A soldier knocked on the window with his stick and said 'if you don't leave by midnight your car will be destroyed,"" said Farah Saafan, a video journalist with the English-language newspaper Daily News Egypt. Nothing about journalists being attacked is being reported at The Daily News Egypt, or anywhere else as far as I can tell. (h/t Muqata) 
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| Large Belgian trade show disinvites Israeli diplomat after Saudi request Posted: 11 Sep 2011 12:18 AM PDT Accenta is a large annual trade fair held in Flanders, Belgium. Over 100,000 people are expected to attend this year's fair, running for the next week. The main sponsor this year is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And after they found out that the Israeli ambassador to Belgium, Tamar Shamash, was invited, they complained to the fair organizers. Accenta organizers gave in, and un-invited her. Kirsten Karlsson, the communications officer of Accenta confirmed to the Jewish News the withdrawal of the invitation: "That is true, the ambassador is not welcome ... Saudi Arabia is the host this year ... and her presence is too sensitive". Interestingly, however, the fair features Israeli company Soda Stream.Until the Saudis make another polite demand, I suppose. (h/t Philosemitism blog) 
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Arabic media is reporting that Jordanian groups plan to copy what happened in Egypt and break into and close down the Israel embassy in Amman, Jordan this Thursday evening.
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