Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Hamas not keen on Fatah's Arafat commemorations
Egyptians accusing Israel of 1997 Luxor massacre
Brigadier General killed in major Iran blast
Latest Latma

Hamas not keen on Fatah's Arafat commemorations

Posted: 12 Nov 2011 09:10 PM PST

There are reports that Hamas gunmen were ripping down signs with Yasser Arafat's picture, and arresting those who were putting them up, in Gaza on Saturday.

Similarly, Hamas factions in Lebanese camps tried to stop Fatah celebrations of Arafat's death anniversary, and boycotted the events that Fatah did put together.

Meanwhile, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said that there has still not been a meeting scheduled between Haams and Fatah leaders, and said that even if the meetings take place no one should be optimistic that a breakthrough will come as a result. He said that Mahmoud Abbas still has not fulfilled the unity agreement from May and that Hamas will refuse any elections until that agreement is implemented. He also said that there is no way that Hamas would allow Salam Fayyad to remain prime minister.

Unity!

Egyptians accusing Israel of 1997 Luxor massacre

Posted: 12 Nov 2011 05:55 PM PST

From Wikipedia:

The Luxor Massacre refers to the killing of 62 people, mostly tourists, that took place on 17 November 1997, at Deir el-Bahri, an archaeological site and major tourist attraction located across the River Nile from Luxor in Egypt.

In the mid-morning attack, terrorists from the Islamic Group and Jihad Talaat al-Fath ("Holy War of the Vanguard of the Conquest") massacred 62 people at the attraction. The six assailants were armed with automatic firearms and knives, and disguised as members of the security forces. They descended on the Temple of Hatshepsut at around 08:45. With the tourists trapped inside the temple, the killing went on systematically for 45 minutes, during which many bodies, especially of women, were mutilated with machetes. A note praising Islam was found inside one disemboweled body.[4] The dead included a five-year-old British child and four Japanese couples on their honeymoons.[5][6]

The attackers then hijacked a bus, but ran into a checkpoint of armed Egyptian tourist police and military forces. One of the terrorists was wounded in the shootout and the rest fled into the hills where their bodies were found in a cave, apparently having committed suicide together.[7]

Now the leader of Egypt's Islamic-oriented Labor Party, Madgy Ahmed Hussein, is saying that he has discovered some secret information leaked by an unknown Egyptian official that the people behind the massacre were not Islamist. Oh, no. They were, of course, Israelis!

According to Hussein, who is running for president of Egypt, Israel was upset at Egypt's refusal to participate in the 1997 Doha economic conference, which it tied to progress in the Oslo process and somehow thought that its boycotting the conference would hurt Israel. Israel's anger at Egypt was behind the decision to massacre dozens of Egyptian tourists.

The ability to think clearly is an impediment to coming up with these sorts of theories.

He made these claims at a Labor party conference in Luxor Friday night.

Brigadier General killed in major Iran blast

Posted: 12 Nov 2011 03:32 PM PST

From YNet:

More details emerging following explosion near Tehran: A senior officer in Iran's weapons industry was killed in Saturday's blast outside Tehran, officials in the country said.

The officer, identified as Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, held a rank parallel to brigadier general in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, the Fars news agency said. He reportedly served as a researcher at a Tehran university and headed the "Jihad Self-Reliance" unit, mostly tasked with developing arms and missiles following the embargo imposed on Iran since 1979.

Saturday's blast killed at least 17 people and wounded 16 others, some of them gravely.

A former spokesman for the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, in Washington, citing reliable sources inside Iran, said Saturday that the explosion hit the Modarres Garrison of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps west of Tehran. Alireza Jafarzadeh said the garrison belongs to the IGRC's missile unit and the blasts "resulted from the explosion of IRGC missiles."

Although Iranian reports did not refer to the possibility that the base was struck from the air, some assessments indicate that the explosion may have been the result of a military operation based on intelligence information.

WaPo adds:

The blast followed a sharp increase in recent years in explosions at industrial sites, key gas pipelines and Revolutionary Guard bases, which some here attribute to sabotage by the United States.

In October 2010, 18 servicemen were killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot on a Guard Corps base near the western city of Khorramabad.

In May, a blast at an oil refinery during a visit by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad killed four people.

Either Iran's military procedures are embarrassingly sloppy, or there has been some very effective sabotage going on.