יום רביעי, 14 בספטמבר 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Facebook group causes Gazans to start family feuds

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 10:30 PM PDT

Palestine Press Agency and other Arabic media report that while Facebook is helping Arabs rise up against their rulers in other parts of the Middle East, in Gaza it is helping tear families apart.

A Facebook page called "Secretary of the Devil,"  that is currently blank, supposedly started indecent rumors about Gazans, especially Gazan women and girls in the Nuseirat camp.

According to reports, it caused some knife fights in the camp between families.

Hamas police arrested a number of young men and extracted some confessions.

The truth about the peace process (video)

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 05:31 PM PDT

Another good video hosted by Danny Ayalon:

The fake child artists of Gaza

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 12:10 PM PDT

From HuffPo:
Bowing to pressure from the Bay Area's Jewish community, Oakland's Museum of Children's Art has decided to cancel its planned exhibition of drawings by Palestinian children documenting their experiences during the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Organized by the Middle East Children's Alliance, "A Child's View of Gaza" was supposed to run from September 24th through mid-November; however, the public reaction against displaying the pictures convinced the museum's board of directors to halt its plan.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

It had become a distraction to the main objective of bringing arts education to all children, said museum board member Randolph Bell.

"We were getting calls from constituents that were concerned about the situation," Bell said.

"We don't have any political stake in this thing. It just became apparent that we needed to rethink this."

"We understand all too well the enormous pressure that the museum came under. But who wins?" asked Middle East Children's Alliance president Barbara Lubin in a press release. "The museum doesn't win. MECA doesn't win. The people of the Bay Area don't win. Our basic constitutional freedom of speech loses. The children in Gaza lose."

Pictures from the exhibit, which were culled from art therapy sessions at a number of Gaza children's centers, show images like a bomb painted with American and Israeli flags crashing into a street filled with dead bodies, helicopters destroying a city and a boot decorated with a Star of David stomping on a Palestinian flag.
Well, we wouldn't want to be considered censors, so let's look at the artwork that is available online. Here is every one I could find.













Now, let's compare these to those from a similar story from 2002.
A display of pictures in a State Street coffee house drawn by Palestinian children has stirred commotion among the UW-Madison community.

The 4-day pictures display that began Sunday, entitled \Innocence Under Siege: Palestinian Children's Perspectives of the World Around Them," is presented by the Palestinian Humanities and Arts Now, a Chicago-based group, in conjunction with Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition. The pictures were along the wall at Espresso Royale Caffe, 650 State St., until last evening.

Images were drawn by middle school aged Palestinian children and focus predominantly on violence in the Middle East. One picture, for example, shows a woman cradling the bloody body of a man, probably her husband, with a person holding a gun in the background. Other pictures show Israeli tanks and Palestinian towns and children surrendering.

"Our organization put the pictures up because they present a reality and experiences that are completely silenced in the United States media," said UW-Madison senior Sarah Kaiksow, co-chair of the UW-Madison chapter of Al-Awda. "I feel like for any true peace to be negotiated between any two parties in any conflict, the reality of what those people are facing needs to be negotiated."

But members of Madison's Jewish community, including those of UW-Madison's Hillel, say they are offended by some of the artwork, including pictures on which a child wrote things like "Death for Israel," "From North to South it's only Palestine" and "Bloodshed is the language of Israel." That particular picture was drawn by an eighth-grader.




I am not an art expert, but the second set of pictures from 2002 look like they were actually done by grade-schoolers - and the newer ones look like they were done by adults trying to draw in a childish style.

The symbolism, the coloring and the motifs seem, at the very least, to have been heavily prompted by adults. Kids don't come up with this stuff on their own.

FresnoZionism asked an art professor for an opinion on these pieces. Here's what she said:
The paintings (color drawings) are highly sophisticated especially in relationship to detail. Did you see the barbed wire? Also, there is a carefully drawn Star of David in each work. The authenticity of the painting is remarkable for a child's hand. The drawing of the planes and helicopters, the man in the tower, the dynamic brushstrokes that are well conceived and controlled all seem to project a more mature approach to art. Could these "children" be in their late teens, college age, or young adults [MECA says they were 9 to 11 years old]? According to the the quote, "much of the artwork was produced by children." I wonder how "much"? Also, it is possible that the "children" were directed by an adult who supervised and perhaps completed the initial drawing?
In fact, the last picture from the first set above is clearly based on an image by anti-semitic artist Latuff:

An artistic acquaintance wrote this about the artwork:

I've been an avocational artist my entire life and have some experience with the styles of amateurs. The sureness of the color application -- especially in the dense, complicated scenes (which are obviously all done by the same person) -- is at variance with the primitive (faux-primitve, frankly) nature of the sketching. It's the use of color especially that gives it away to me as the product of an older person. But the complexity of the composition in the big scenes is uncharacteristic of 9-11-year-olds as well. Certainly the politicized content is atypical.

The sureness of stroke in these pictures is something you almost never find from a very young artist. The biggest giveaway I see in this regard is not actually in the complex, refined drawings, but in the more primitive ones. For example, the confidence with which the concertina wire is sketched in, in one of the primitive crayon drawings, is just not characteristic of the young. I was accounted an exceptional artist in my K-12 years, and I couldn't have achieved that confident, bold, rapid-stroking effect until I was at least 16. It's one of the hardest things to do, and you really do lack the coordination and focus for it when you're younger. A kid would draw that laboriously, with a lot of short, stubby strokes strung together -- or he would simply achieve a cruder, less symmetrical and more tentative effect.

These drawings don't look like those of unusually accomplished children. They look like trained artists imitating the style of a child.
Moreover, what do child artists do immediately after they finish their work? They sign them. I cannot find one signature in the new set of images, although each of the older ones have them.

Even more interesting, one would think that a children's art exhibit showing such precocious examples of drawing would want to publicize the names of the artists - and elaborate on their own personal stories from which sprung such eloquence and experience. The artist's story is often more compelling than the art. But, for some bizarre reason,  we are deprived of this information. Could it be that the organizers don't want the children to be interviewed?

Ultimately, it is up to the exhibitors to prove the authenticity of provenance of the works. Identify these young savants.
And if this is a hoax, well, what museum would want to be associated with something like that?

The Middle East Children's Alliance is trying to pressure MOCHA to change their mind and show these questionable pieces. You may want to contact the museum and support their decision, and also ask them the provenance of the drawings.

Saudis keep enforcing their illegal boycott against Israel

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 11:10 AM PDT

Al Arabiya reports that the Saudi Interior Ministry has, over the past few months, managed to discover a few companies that were trying to sell Israeli-made products in the Kingdom.

Some were joint ventures between Israel and foreign companies, and others were set up by Israeli Arabs. The products were agricultural - seeds and fertilizers.

The Saudis allege that some of the products were laundered through other Arab countries, and that Saudi Arabia is reviewing their relationships with them.

The interior minister stressed that the Kingdom will not turn a blind eye on this phenomenon, and will develop the necessary controls to prevent the entry of Israeli products and goods to the land and the Saudi markets.

The interesting part?

Saudi Arabia pledged back in 2005 to end its boycott of Israel as a condition of joining the World Trade Organization.

In the six years since, the Saudis have continued to publicly enforce that boycott - and suffered no consequences in the WTO.

The kingdom even continued to publicly flout its promise after Congress passed a unanimous resolution calling on the Saudis to drop the boycott as they had promised.

And in 2009 members of Congress were again angered to find out that nothing had changed.

So it goes. The WTO will never expel Saudi Arabia for breaking its pledge, the President will not bring the issue up in international bodies (just as his predecessor didn't) and an Arab nation can flout the law with no consequences.

Arab media has the best videos

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 10:00 AM PDT

Recently, Israel opened to the public an amazing tunnel that was originally a drainage ditch that goes from Kfar HaShiloach (Silwan) to the Temple Mount. Ha'aretz reported on this in January.

 The Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation recently started making a fuss over this, and released a great video of the tunnel that I couldn't find the original of:

Here, for contrast, is a video of the tunnel  made in June by a Christian:

Egypt foreign ministry: Don't say peace with Israel is "forever"

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 08:55 AM PDT

Al Masry al Youm says that there were some media reports quoting Egyptian ambassador to Israel, Yasser Reda, as saying that Egypt's diplomatic relationship with Israel is "eternal."

Egypt's Foreign Minister, Mohamed Kamel Amr, worked quickly to say that this is simply not true.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that "these expressions or descriptions are contrary from known diplomatic phrasing. There is no such things "eternal relations" between countries. In addition, it is impossible that a career diplomat and veteran ambassador such as Ambassador Yasser Reda, known for his patriotism and efficiency, would make such a statement."

Notice that the Foreign Ministry didn't say anything like "Of course, we want our relations with Israel to continue and to be strengthened." No, their reaction to the idea of a permanent peace with Israel is more akin to...horror.

Glad they cleared that up in such a diplomatic way.

Sometimes, the enemy of my enemy is just freaking crazy

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 07:45 AM PDT

From Al Arabiya:
The head of al-Qa'im district, in Iraq's western province of al-Anbar, has confirmed that about 160 families have had their Iraqi citizenships revoked, citing their Syrian origin as the reason for the action, DPA reported on Sunday.

Farhan Aftikhan said that among the people who had their citizenship revoked were government employees and army and police personnel, all of whom had their nationality certificates, food-ration cards, and citizenships annulled by the Iraqi government.

He added that these families have been Iraqi citizens for years and hail from the tribes in Anbar province.

While the district's chief official said the government did not cite a "real" reason for the cancellation of the citizenships, the affected families cited "sectarianism" and pointed out that other Iraqi families are classified as Iranian, Pakistani and Afghani citizens.

One former Iraqi citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, said when he went to Baghdad to renew his 61-year-old father's citizenship, and during the process an officer with the rank of a lieutenant in the nationality department destroyed his father's papers and revoked the entire family's citizenship.

He added that he doesn't own papers to prove that he is Syrian, and is now stateless.
In an unrelated but similar story:
Forces on both sides of the Libyan war have committed war crimes and the country risks descending into a bloody cycle of attacks and reprisals unless order can be established, human rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday, as Muammar Qaddafi's forces launched surprise attacks on three fronts.

Qaddafi's actions against civilian protesters were a crime against humanity, while arbitrary detentions, torture of prisoners and widespread abductions were war crimes, the London-based charity said in a report.

Amnesty also criticized Libya's opposition forces and said Qaddafi's fall from power after 42 years had left a "security and institutional vacuum" that they exploited to carry out revenge killings and torture.
Arabs treat Arabs worse than dirt and no one gives a damn. The "good guys" are little better than the ones they replaced.

Arabs were never one people; they were always divided - whether it was into tribes or nations. And they've always killed each other.

But Arabs are unified on one topic and one topic only: hating Israel. That wouldn't change one tiny bit no matter what Israel does.  Anyone who claims otherwise is simply lying  (often to themselves.)

Morning links

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 06:40 AM PDT

Video of clueless anti-Israel marchers in Berkeley on 9/11

Another video of Islamic terrorist rally in London on 9/11

Good news! Al Qaeda is grabbing Libyan missiles - including surface to air missiles! See, they aren't all going to Gaza!

Islamic nations continue to refuse to adhere to a universal definition of terrorism

WaPo editorial - Once again, Israel is scapegoated

WaPo op-ed - Israel's hostile neighborhood


(h/t jzaik, David G, Yoel, Yigal)

Iranian F-5 crash - video

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 05:33 AM PDT

An Iranian F-5 crashed on Friday in Tabriz. It was practically unreported in English anywhere:


This one post in Stop Fundamentalism claims that Iranian fighter planes have been intimidating anti-government protesters:
Despite Iranian government's military and security preparations to prevent further protests from taking place in the Azerbaijan province of Iran, last Saturday many cities in this northern province including Tabriz, Orumieh, Khoy, Salmas witnessed massive street demonstrations by Iranian people.

Eyewitnesses report of heavy use of violence by the security forces. Some eyewitnesses indicate that military fighter planes, flying low on top cities, have been used to intimidate protesters. The crash of a military plane in Tabriz has been associated to the efforts by government to use its fighter jets to crackdown on Iranian people.

At the same time a football match in Tehran Azadi Stadium turns to be another excuse for Iranian youth to show dissent.

Sporadic breakout of protests in Iran show how the opposition to the regime of Ayatollahs still exists despite 2009-2010 clampdowns.
There are a number of Persian language articles about the crash.

(h/t Dan)

Turkey changing military software to allow it to fire at IDF?

Posted: 13 Sep 2011 02:59 AM PDT

From YNet:
Turkey has developed a new radar system for its US-made F-16 fighter jets that will allow them to fire at Israeli targets, Ankara's Star Gazete reported on Tuesday.

The new radar system – Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) – is a defensive command and control system developed by Turkey's Military Electronics Industry (ASELSAN) for the nation's air force and navy. It is slated to replace a similar US version which is in use today.

The US system is comprised of lists of "friends" and "foes." The system's settings are designed to prevent pilot error as well, to an extent, disabling the ability to fire at "friendly" targets even by mistake. The US system identified Israel as a 'friend,' thus preventing Turkish fighter jets from firing at them automatically.

The new system, however, allows Turkey control the "friend or foe" list independently.

The orders to modify the IFF system reportedly came directly from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office.

The Turkish IFF system is scheduled to be mounted on all Turkish fighter jets, military vessels and submarines in the near future.
There are two parts to this story that YNet is conflating: Turkey deciding to rewrite the software, and Turkey deciding to classify Israel as an enemy in the software.

As the original Star Gazete article indicates, the decision to rewrite the software occurred over two years ago - prior to the Mavi Marmara.

This post on Strategy Page indicates that Turkey's original decision to rewrite the software came after there were rumors that the US installed a kind of "kill switch" to disable the planes if Turkey should decide to use them in ways that are against US interests.

Whether the other part of the story is true, that Turkey is now programming these systems to consider Israel an enemy, it is possible - but, as with yesterday's news from Turkey about sending boats to the Mediterranean to confront Israel, it could be Turkish media whipping up an anti-Israel frenzy.

(h/t Joel)
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