יום שלישי, 13 בספטמבר 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

"Friend Request Pending" - nice video

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 10:30 PM PDT

From Hasbara Fellowships:

J-Street seeking rabbinic cover for anti-Israel activities

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 06:04 PM PDT

J-Street is looking to hire a new Rabbinic Organizer:
J Street has a Rabbinic Cabinet of more than 650 rabbis, cantors and seminary students. Rabbinic leadership is vital to J Street's advocacy work. Rabbis help on a local and national level to shape J Street policy, communicate J Street's message publicly, lead rabbinic actions, organize events, and expand our rabbinic community, as well as serve as validators for the pro-Israel pro-peace movement.

 J Street is seeking a rabbinic organizer to build and cultivate rabbinic leadership within the pro-Israel pro-peace movement. The rabbinic organizer will work with the JSEF Vice President, J Street's rabbinic leaders and J Street's field team to develop and implement a strategy for rabbinic outreach and organizing within J Street's strategic framework.
Rabbis are being recruited to put the J in J-Street - to pretend that their anti-Israel advocacy has rabbinic certification. Since their positions are so evidently against what the Israeli public wants, and completely out of step with what most American Jews want, they are bending over backwards to pretend that there is something vaguely "Jewish" about J-Street.

This allows Jews who desperately want to believe that they are not abandoning the Jewish state when they join J-Street to feel better about themselves; if a supposed rabbi (or cantor! or seminary student!)  agrees with J-Street, then critical thinking about the religious aspects of J-Street go out the window.

This also helps fool credulous low-level politicians who are not aware of how badly J-Street has already shown itself to be anything but pro-Israel.

After all, when it comes down to it, the entire purpose of J-Street is to put forth the pretense that there is a large number of American Jews who believe that the best thing for Israel is to abandon its democratically elected officials and to replace them with more liberal-friendly alternatives. They want to pretend that pro-Israel groups like AIPAC are not in sync with American Jewry - and J-Street is. How better to further the charade than to organize a tiny minority of rabbis for whom politics is more important than religion? What can be more effective than to give a kosher seal of approval to acts that make the average Israeli - and involved American Jew - blanch?

Do you want to know how J-Street is using its rabbis to prepare for giving up Judaism's holiest places? Read this sickening pseudo-d'var Torah on the J-Street site by Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum, Congregation String of Pearls, a Reconstructionist congregation in Princeton, NJ that hold services in a Unitarian church. This is the most intricate pilpul on J-Street's site:
[T]he Torah itself places our textual tradition squarely in the realm of a literary, rather than a literal, tradition. The need for a lively symbolism trumps the need for historical accuracy.

But throughout this literary masterpiece, perhaps most clearly in Deuteronomy, its fifth book, we can discern a political stance that takes the form of an arc toward justice, especially distributive justice. The Torah claims that justice and peace can not exist without economic parity. And we also find in it the radical notion... that land does not belong to any of us, that we are all its tenants. As the narrative's protagonist, God, says in parshat Yitro: indeed all the earth is Mine, ki li kol ha'aretz.

...Right now we need to bring these resilient foundations of our tradition to bear on a seemingly intractable problem. Of course a sovereign state needs clear and verifiable boundaries, but let us remind ourselves that we come from a literary tradition in which land has long been revered for its symbolic value at least as much as its economic or strategic value; we do not come from a literal tradition. A literal interpretation would claim land ownership, down to the last hectare and dunam, based on our ancient ancestors' understanding of what God wanted from them and from their descendants.
Yes - Reb Donna (which is what her temple's website calls her) takes God's words of "all the Earth is Mine" and applies it literally.

But the eighth verse in Deuteronomy, the book she praises for its political stance, says quite clearly: Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.

That explicit promise, and many similar promises that God made to the Israelites in the Torah, we are told, are literary.

And Reb Donna is just the person to understand what parts of the Torah are literal - the ones she believes in - and which parts are disposable.


When God says to treat widows and orphans well, that is of course literal. When He says to circumcise Jewish males, well, we have to ask Reb Donna if it fits in with her personal political feelings at the moment to decide what exactly it is. Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe it will change next year depending on the political climate or what Jeremy Ben Ami decides.


This is the type of rabbinic approval that J-Street needs so badly - personal interpretations of Torah texts by dilettante "rabbis" to give a sheen of quasi-Judaism to its thoroughly political, anti-Israel (and anti-religious) positions.

It is a well-paying job, commensurate with experience, as well it should be. Putting lipstick on a pig and declaring it kosher is no small accomplishment.

(h/t DJK and CHA)

Saudi Arabia threatens the US in an NYT op-ed

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 03:58 PM PDT

A threat by former Saudi ambassador to the US Turki Faisal, which no doubt reflects official Saudi policy, called "Veto a State, Lose an Ally":
The United States must support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations this month or risk losing the little credibility it has in the Arab world. If it does not, American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has. With most of the Arab world in upheaval, the "special relationship" between Saudi Arabia and the United States would increasingly be seen as toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who demand justice for the Palestinian people.

Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy. Like our recent military support for Bahrain's monarchy, which America opposed, Saudi Arabia would pursue other policies at odds with those of the United States, including opposing the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq and refusing to open an embassy there despite American pressure to do so. The Saudi government might part ways with Washington in Afghanistan and Yemen as well.

If the Saudis supported Bahrain's monarchy against American wishes before any UNSC vote, why would the vote make a difference? The fact is that every country will act in ways that are in their self-interest, and Saudi Arabia is no different. Otherwise, Faisal is admitting that his country is now an American puppet. Obviously that is not true.
Israel should see the Palestinian bid for statehood not as a threat, but as a chance to return to the negotiating table and prevent further conflict. Recent polls show that up to 70 percent of Palestinians say they believe there will be a new intifada if the deadlock is not broken shortly; this should encourage Israel to seek peace with the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
I didn't see that poll, but it shows that Palestinian Arabs will resort to violence whenever they don't get 100% of what they demand. This is not a reason to give in to 100% of their demands, and as we have seen, they have not changed their demands of Israel since 1988.
The Palestinian statehood initiative is a chance to replace Oslo with a new paradigm based on state-to-state negotiations — a win-win proposition that makes the conflict more manageable and lays the groundwork for a lasting solution.
Israel giving up the heartland of the historic Jewish state, including historic Jerusalem, makes it a "win-win"?
Today, there is a chance for the United States and Saudi Arabia to contain Iran and prevent it from destabilizing the region. But this opportunity will be squandered if the Obama administration's actions at the United Nations force a deepening split between our two countries.

Although Saudi Arabia is willing and able to chart a new and divergent course if America fails to act justly with regard to Palestine, the Middle East would be far better served by continuing cooperation and good will between these longstanding allies.
Is he saying that if the US vetoes the security council bid that Saudi Arabia will move under Iran's orbit? That its opposition to Iran is somehow dependent on US attitudes to Palestine? Because the two have nothing to do with each other, and if Faisal is making such a linkage, that means that the Saudis are no friends. Quite the contrary.

Faisal also fails to describe how exactly declaring a state helps real-life Palestinian Arabs.

Will the new state accept millions of so-called refugees in its borders? Not at all.

Will it help their economy? No, it will destroy it.

Will it pacify Hamas and Islamic Jihad? No, it will strengthen them.

If Saudi Arabia wants to help Palestinian Arabs, they can use their billions of petrodollars for good, and ask those who want to - voluntarily - to become citizens of Saudi Arabia. Only those who want to end their limbo that was imposed by most Arab governments for 63 years. These are the people that supposedly need "statehood" the most, yet no plan is being made to actually help them - on the contrary, they have been used as pawns for decades by self-righteous hypocrites like Saudi Arabia leaders. As well as Palestinian Arab leaders themselves.

Give them a choice. In the name of human rights, allow the many Palestinian Arabs who want to become normal citizens of Arab countries to have that right of citizenship.

Then, and only then, do hypocritical Arab states have the right to claim that they are trying to help the Palestinian Arab people.

Jews dancing in the Old City in Rosh Hashanah video

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 01:53 PM PDT

This ain't your grandfather's hora.

From Aish:

Iranian again forfeits wrestling match with Israeli

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 12:51 PM PDT

From Hurriyet Daily News:

More than 800 wrestlers from all over the world are ready for the big showdown, as the World Wrestling Championship starts in Istanbul on Monday.

Five Israeli wrestlers have been registered to participate in the world championships, which will start in Istanbul on Monday.

FILA President Raphael Martinetti said the Israeli federation did not contact the world wrestling's governing body to ask for increased security.

"Israel did not ask for special security," Martinetti said at a press conference last week. "Sometimes athletes can get last-minute injury reports to rule themselves out when an Iranian is set to meet an Israeli, but I don't think that will be the case here, since the organization is important for athletes who want to earn an Olympic berth."
It looks like Iran had one of those "last minute injuries."

YNet Hebrew reports that Robert Avinshin won when his Iranian opponent Hasam Golmarzeh did not appear.

(h/t Dan)

Egyptians believe Israel's embassy flag is meant to show Israel's border on the Nile

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 11:52 AM PDT

A small, nutty detail among all the reporting from the Israel embassy over the weekend, from Al Ahram:

Many Egyptians have believed for 30 years that Israel chose to implant its embassy in this specific location in order to be able to fly its Star of David, blue and white flag over the Nile.
And why should Israel care so much to fly the flag over the Nile? Why, obviously, to demarcate Greater Israel - which takes up all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates!

And indeed that is what they think. This Facebook group talks about it, and the Egyptian who took down the Israeli flag from the embassy in August claims that he saw a banner on top of the building that said, in Hebrew and Arabic, "The Land of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates."

Even Al Ahram notes that most Egyptians are so irrational as to believe that Israel would choose a site for its embassy, not for security, but to engage in a symbolic annexation of a good portion of Egypt.

Ma'ariv reports that it took US threats to withdraw all aid to the Egyptian military and take away its own embassy personnel before the government decided to help out the Israeli guards who were facing a lynch mob. It also reports that Israel is looking for a new location for the embassy  - presumably not on the Nile.

(h/t Yoel)

Podcast interview with Max Brenner protesters in Australia

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 10:56 AM PDT



 Ben Fordham talks to protesters outside of Max Brenner chocolate shop. Some of them say that the Mossad and CIA were behind 9/11; others support Gaddafi against NATO.

Fordham asks many of they had ever been to Palestine; none had. When one challenges him saying it is irrelevant he mentions that he had worked in Palestinian Arab camps helping the residents there.

 (h/t Daphne Anson)

Poll: Arabs split between supporting, opposing 9/11 attacks

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 09:47 AM PDT

From Arutz-7 - original story in Arabic at Al Arabiya:
More than one-third of Arabs justify the 9/11 attacks, and only 23 percent believe Al Qaeda was behind the aerial suicide bombings.

The survey included 220,000 Arabs and was carried out by the Al-Arabia television channel in Dubai and a British research institute.

Thirty-six percent of the respondents justified the attacks, but only 38 percent took the opposite view, leaving another 16 percent undecided or with no opinion.

Only 23 percent believe that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks, while a large number – 26 percent – think that the terrorist organization did not plan and carry out the hijack-bombings.
The poll was done by Al Arabiya and YouGov Siraj, but the raw results are not available online.

Al Arabiya has not yet translated their analysis into English.

Meanwhile, International Business Times notes the prevalence of 9/11 conspiracy theories in the Muslim world:

Following 9/11 and despite Al-Qaeda claiming the attacks, conspiracy theories emerged rapidly, with many blaming a Zionist enterprise. While many claim a Zionist involvement, very few seem able to explain how Bin Laden, a symbol of the fight against the West and the infidels for many Islamist extremists, apparently worked hand in hand with the Jewish lobby groups to prepare the attacks.

Most of the conspiracy theories insisting the leadership behind the attacks was more Zionist than Islamist. However for such bizarre beliefs to be taken seriously one would have to assume that Osama Bin Laden himself was a secret pro-Zionist and was part of a Zionist plot aimed at world domination.

While some theories accuse Israeli army veterans, an Israeli spy ring or even the media, most fail to give even a walk on part to al-Qaeda, preferring instead to focus on Jews. The surge of such theories also angered al-Qaeda leader Al-Zawahri, who at the time accused Hezbollah and Iran of being behind the rumours saying "The purpose of this lie is clear - (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it," he said.

The intrafada continues

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 08:45 AM PDT

From Ma'an:
Unidentified assailants detonated an explosive device overnight Sunday in front of the home of a Palestinian Authority general intelligence officer in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, witnesses told Ma'an.

Residents said an explosion was heard at 4.15 a.m. by an outdoor parking lot where PA intelligence officer Muhammad Nayif Addiri parks his car.
PA leaders cannot walk around safely in Gaza, but, hey, the world will give them a state that they cannot control anyway.

Turkey sending boats to confront Israel? Plus, Israeli band in Turkey

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 07:41 AM PDT

From Today's Zaman:

The Turkish Navy is planning to dispatch three frigates to the Eastern Mediterranean to ensure freedom of navigation and to confront Israeli warships if necessary, a Turkish news report said on Monday.

The Turkish frigates, to be dispatched by the Navy's Southern Sea Area Command, will provide protection to civilian ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, blockaded by Israel since 2007, the Turkish daily Sabah reported. If the Turkish warships encounter an Israeli military ship outside Israel's 12-mile territorial waters, they will advance up to 100 meters close to the ship and disable its weapon system, in a confrontation that resembles dogfights in the Aegean Sea with Greek jet fighters, according to the report.

The report comes days after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkish warships will escort civilian aid ships headed to Gaza to prevent a repetition of last year's Israeli raid on a Turkish-owned ship that killed eight Turks and a Turkish-American, setting the stage for a potential naval confrontation with its former ally.
The Jerusalem Post picked up on this as well.

This report does not ring true.

First of all, Turkey has somewhat distanced itself from the warlike remarks Erdogan gave last week about accompanying humanitarian aid vessels to Gaza with warships:
According to official sources in Turkey, reporters artificially combined two different remarks made by the Turkish prime minister, creating one sentence perceived as a threat of a military clash in high seas.

The new version, sent to the media from Erdogan's office, attempts to clarify the statement.

"We stressed the principle that we will ensure the safe movement of Gaza's aid vessel," said a senior Turkish government source. "The eastern Mediterranean Sea is not Israel's private playground. As long as it avoids intervening in the freedom of movement in the region, we won't send any warships to escort the vessels."

The source dismissed the published quotes as a bad translation which failed to understand Erdogan's intention. "It appeared as if we were offering to have warships escort every aid vessel. This is not true. Turkey will defend the rights of its citizens only when Israel chooses to intervene and prevent free movement in international waters."
Secondly, what humanitarian aid ship? No one announced any aid ship I am aware of.

I don't know the political affiliation or editorial stance of the Sabah newspaper, but given the testosterone-driven culture of Turkey is seems pretty easy to imagine the media prodding the government towards war and inflaming the masses. In some ways, the Turkish media may be a bigger issue than the statements coming from the government, which still appear to be more bluster and posturing.

Until there is confirmation, I think that jumping on this story as fact is premature - and might play into the hands of warmongers.

Meanwhile, the English version of Sabah reported Israeli heavy meta band Orphaned Land performed last night in Istanbul:
Israeli heavy metal is rocking Turkey despite deep discord between the Jewish state and its Muslim former ally as hundreds of fans turned out to hear a group called Orphaned Land play a concert in Istanbul.

The group played to Turkish fans and others who came from countries across the Arab world on Saturday. Because the Israeli musicians can't enter many Arab states, they perform several times a year in Turkey, a hub for their fans.
...
The group initiated a brand of music it called "Jewish-Muslim metal" that is derived from heavy metal. Many of the band's songs include prayer lyrics from Jewish liturgy, the Koran and other religious texts.

Farhi said there are hundreds of groups who play a similar genre operating out of sight of the authorities, mainly in more moderate Arab countries. Later this year Orphaned Land will tour Europe with metal bands from Algeria and Tunisia, he said.

The group is also considering holding a concert in Egypt after a Facebook poll showed that 83 percent of their fans said they should.

In Istanbul on Saturday, Orphaned Land's fans were not disappointed. Some came all the way from Iran and Lebanon, waving their national flags.

"Music doesn't recognize closed doors. Once again, this has proven to be true. I believe all people here are supporting them and their performance is really good," one Turkish fan told Reuters.

"It takes courage to do what they are doing, coming here and performing for us. We will always be here with them and sing with them," another said.
(h/t Yoel)

UN: Syrian death toll at 2600

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 06:41 AM PDT

From YNet:

The United Nations' top human rights official says the death toll from six months of unrest in Syria has reached at least 2,600.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says the figure is based on "reliable sources on the ground."

Meanwhile, Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to President Bashar Assad, said that a total of 1,400 people have died in the unrest: 700 opposition activists and 700 police dead.

Pillay spoke Monday at the opening of a three-week meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Meanwhile, France spoke up:
Alain Juppe, France's foreign minister, has stepped up pressure on veto-wielding Russia to support a UN Security Council resolution against the Syrian government's violent crackdown on protests.

Speaking during a visit to Australia on Sunday, Juppe said the UN's failure to condemn the actions of Syrian security forces against anti-government protesters was a "scandal".

He said that France and Russia remained divided over Syria after talks between French and other foreign ministers in Moscow last week.

"We think the regime has lost its legitimacy, that it's too late to implement a programme of reform," Juppe told reporters.

"Now we should adopt in New York the resolution condemning the violence and supporting the dialogue with the opposition," he said.

"It's a scandal not to have a clearer position of the UN on such a terrible crisis".
About 18 more were killed over the weekend.

World Bank: Cash crisis threatens PalArab state; it's Israel's fault (updated)

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 05:31 AM PDT

The World Bank came out with a report saying that the current financial crisis in the PA, the result of world donors not paying up their pledges, is really Israel's fault. Here's the executive summary:
The September 2011 meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee coincides with the completion the Palestinian Authority's ambitious two-year program "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State", presented on August 25, 2009. There has been substantial progress in implementing the program's goals and policies, centering on the objective of building strong state institutions. However, the onset of an acute fiscal crisis, accompanied by declining economic growth, may undermine the promise of these institution-building achievements.

In areas where government effectiveness matters most – security and justice; revenue and expenditure management; economic development; and service delivery – Palestinian public institutions compare favorably to other countries in the region and beyond. These institutions have played a crucial role in enabling the positive economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza in recent years.

Though significant, this growth has been unsustainable, driven primarily by donor aid rather than a rebounding private sector, which remains stifled by Israeli restrictions on access to natural resources and markets. Under these conditions, lower-than-expected aid flows in the first half of 2011 had an immediate impact on the Palestinian economy. Real GDP growth, steadily increasing in 2009-2010 and previously projected to reach 10 percent in 2011, is now expected to be 5 percent. The shortfall in external financial support in the first half of 2011 has also contributed to the current fiscal crisis facing the Palestinian Authority.

The situation underscores the interdependence of institution-building and sustainable economic growth in laying the economic underpinnings of a future state. To date, the Palestinian Authority has continued to implement its reform agenda, but a protracted fiscal crisis risks jeopardizing the gains in institution-building made painstakingly over the past years.

Ultimately, in order for the Palestinian Authority to sustain the reform momentum and its achievements in institution-building, remaining Israeli restrictions must be lifted. The resulting revival of the private sector can be expected to grow the tax base and gradually reduce dependence on external assistance. Until then, however, West Bank and Gaza will remain vulnerable to reductions in aid flow, and these will need to be managed carefully.
I don't know specifically what restrictions Israel has still puts on the Palestinian Arab private sector. Certainly, the current government has done more to encourage the Palestinian Arab private sector to grow than any other. It is PA policy that makes so many dependent on government jobs. The World Bank is silent.

Israel exports Palestinian Arab agricultural goods to Europe. Boycotters specifically target these goods. The World Bank is silent.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs work in Israel or for Israelis in Judea and Samaria. The PA has been trying to stop them from holding on to the jobs near their homes without providing any alternative. The World Bank is silent.

One reason the private sector cannot thrive is because the Palestinian Arab economy is dependent on NGO money where workers get much better salaries writing anti-Israel reports rather than doing productive work. The World Bank is silent.

There is nothing Israel could possibly do to stop the PA from pushing internet-based goods and services as a cornerstone of a private sector that is not tied to any geographic or export restrictions that may exist. Yet they have done nothing to build a 21st century economy. The World Bank is silent.

The donor nations that have not fulfilled their pledges are all Arab nations who apparently have gotten sick and tired of the Palestinian Authority refusing to talk with Israel and move forward, even though they cannot say so publicly. So they are saying so with their wallets. The World Bank is silent.

Even before this year's shortfall in donor aid, the PA was refusing to pay contractors for work they had done. The World Bank is silent.

The memo somehow gives credit to the Palestinian Authority for the economic growth in Gaza, even though their entire contribution there is to spend some 60% of their budget to Gaza where their workers are paid to do nothing while Hamas runs the entire sector. The World Bank is silent.

In fact, it is inconceivable that the memo does not mention the biggest obstacle to having an independent Palestinian Arab state - the fact that much of that state has a separate and hostile terrorist government. The World Bank is silent.

The earlier World Bank study that praises the PA's institution building has been heavily criticized with many specific examples showing that the PA was not doing nearly as much as they claim. The World Bank is silent.

No, the World Bank chooses to ignore all of these facts and blame Israel alone for the serious problems with the Palestinian Authority and the economy in the territories.  Now, why might that be?

Update: Challah Hu Akbar found the entire report; I had originally thought that the executive summary was all the WB released.

The report is stunning in how it ignores Hamas, and (when it is convenient) how it ignores Gaza altogether. When it wants to blame Israel for problems, it brings up Gaza; when it wants to praise the PA (security, justice, institution building), all of a sudden its statistics ignore Gaza where 40% of Palestinian Arabs live. The report simply does not acknowledge that Gaza is run by a different government. Amazing.

Morning links

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 03:01 AM PDT

The first hero of 9/11 was an Israeli (YNet video)

Netanyahu's speech yesterday on 9/11 (video, speech starts at 4:00)

Asaf Romirowsky on The UNRWA Anomaly

Why the Muslim beard bodes trouble (MEF)

I'm getting lots of hits from the Ben Dror Yemini piece in Maariv (Hebrew)

New political ads from Not Pro-Israel

Belgian trade show manager denies that he dis-invited Israeli ambassador (story here)

(h/t Richie Miller, Noah, Yerushalimey, Rudi)
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