יום שישי, 18 בנובמבר 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Israelis mapping every grave in Mount of Olives

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 11:00 PM PST

From AP:

A Jewish group in Jerusalem is using 21st-century technology to map every tombstone in the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, a sprawling, politically sensitive necropolis of 150,000 graves stretching back three millennia.

The goal is to photograph every grave, map it digitally, record every name, and make the information available online. That is supposed to allow visitors to find their way in the cemetery, long a bewildering jumble of crumbling gravestones and rubble surrounded by Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Beset for many years by neglect, it is among the oldest cemeteries in continuous use in the world.

Around 40,000 graves have been mapped so far by the team, which began work in 2008. They expect to finish recording all of the intact gravestones -- an estimated 100,000 in total -- by the end of next year. The rest are either so old they are unrecognizable or lie underneath later layers of burial.

Mappers look at aerial photographs, consult handwritten burial records dating back to the mid-1800s, walk along the rows of graves and dig through piles of dislocated tombstones, noting names and dates.

"This place has been used for burial since there have been signs of life in Jerusalem," said Moti Shamis, a member of the mapping team. "The cemetery is a mirror of the city -- in wartime, we see more graves. When new groups of Jews reach the city, the names on the graves change."

Like so much in Jerusalem, this project is linked to the city's fraught politics. The mappers are from an organization called Elad, affiliated with the settlement movement, which also works to move Jews into east Jerusalem in an attempt to prevent the city's division in any future peace deal.

Elad has made it its business to develop sites of Jewish importance in east Jerusalem, reinforcing the Israeli presence in the part of the city the Palestinians want as their capital.

Jews began burying their dead on the hill that later became known as the Mount of Olives about three millennia ago. It was a convenient site a short walk from the city walls. Over the centuries, burial here became linked to a prophecy in the Book of Zecharia according to which the Messiah would approach Jerusalem from the mount, splitting it in two. Those interred on the hill, this belief posited, would be the first to be resurrected.

The mount became, and remains, a sought-after place to be buried for Jews in Israel and abroad.

"As a place of burial it differs from almost every other on earth, in being, as no other is, a witness to a faith that is firm, decided and uncompromising until death," wrote Norman Macleod, a missionary, after a visit in 1864. "It is not therefore the vast multitude who sleep here, but the faith which they held in regard to their Messiah, that makes this spectacle so impressive."

The project is mapping only the Jewish cemetery, which includes several burial monuments from the time of the second Jewish Temple, about 2,000 years ago. Among the oldest graves that still bear names is one of a medieval scholar, Ovadia of Bartenura, an Italian who came to Jerusalem and died here around 1500.

The work of the mappers has solved several mysteries, one of them that of the missing grave of Shmuel Ben-Bassat.

Ben-Bassat was a soldier who died in combat in the war that surrounded Israel's creation in 1948. He was buried on Jan. 14 of that year, before Jewish forces lost the cemetery, along with the rest of east Jerusalem, to the Jordanian army.

For the next 19 years Jordan controlled the cemetery, paving over part of it to build a road, using gravestones to pave paths in a nearby military camp and abandoning the rest to disrepair. When Israel recaptured the Mount of Olives in 1967, the soldier's family could find no trace of him.

Going through old burial records as part of the new project, the mapping team discovered a note saying he had been interred "next to Gader Gurjis and in front of Deborah, the widow of Reuven Mirabi." Those graves still existed. Ben-Bassat now has a military gravestone.
...
Elsewhere in the cemetery lies Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the man responsible more than any other for reviving Hebrew as a spoken language, and a national hero in Israel. He was buried here in 1922. Nearby is Menahem Begin, buried in 1992 in a modest grave that makes no mention of the fact that he was Israel's prime minister.

Begin requested burial here, rather than in the country's national cemetery alongside other Israeli leaders, because he wanted to be close to two fighting comrades who killed themselves with grenades moments before they were to be hanged by the British in a Jerusalem prison in 1947.

AP fails to mention that Arabs continue to vandalize Jewish graves at Har HaZeitim today. The most recent incident was on November 6 with at least five tombstones smashed. This website has photos and videos documenting the destruction of graves happening now (including Arabic graffiti.) Much of the recent desecration is documented in this video created by an organization dedicated to protecting the ancient holy site:



The Mount of Olives - Har HaZeitim - is one of those areas on the east side of the Green Line that must remain under Jewish control. We saw how Jordan desecrated it during the 19 anomalous years that part of Jerusalem was Judenrein, and we see how Arabs will go out of their way to desecrate it today, with the tacit encouragement of the PA.

The project to map the graves is very important. The project to protect it from Arab vandals is even more vital. But most important of all is to ensure that this hallowed ground where so many luminaries are buried remains, forever, in Jewish hands.

Saudi religious police may force women to cover their sexy eyes

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 07:42 PM PST

Bikya Masr reports:

Women with sexy eyes in Saudi Arabia may be forced to cover them up, according to the spokesperson of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) in the conservative Gulf kingdom.

Spokesman of the Ha'eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet said the committee has the right to stop a women whose eyes seem "tempting" and order her to cover them immediately.

Saudi women are already forced to wear a loose black dress and to cover their hair and in some areas, their face, while in public or face fines or sometimes worse, including public lashings.

The announcement came days after the Saudi newspaper al-Watan reported that a Saudi man was admitted to a hospital after a fight with a member of the committee when he ordered his wife to cover her eyes. The husband was then stabbed twice in the hand.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to just gouge their eyes out when they are born? It's not like they'll ever have to drive or anything....

Israel's (formerly) secret electronic war plans

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 03:30 PM PST

Eli Lake at the Daily Beast reports on Israel's ability to wage cyberwar and attack infrastructure electronically.

It's very interesting, but do we really want Iran to know this stuff?
For much of the last decade, as Iran methodically built its nuclear program, Israel has been assembling a multibillion-dollar array of high-tech weapons that would allow it to jam, blind, and deafen Tehran's defenses in the case of a pre-emptive aerial strike.

A U.S. intelligence assessment this summer, described to The Daily Beast by current and former U.S. intelligence officials, concluded that any Israeli attack on hardened nuclear sites in Iran would go far beyond airstrikes from F-15 and F-16 fighter planes and likely include electronic warfare against Iran's electric grid, Internet, cellphone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers.

For example, Israel has developed a weapon capable of mimicking a maintenance cellphone signal that commands a cell network to "sleep," effectively stopping transmissions, officials confirmed. The Israelis also have jammers capable of creating interference within Iran's emergency frequencies for first responders.

In a 2007 attack on a suspected nuclear site at al-Kibar, the Syrian military got a taste of this warfare when Israeli planes "spoofed" the country's air-defense radars, at first making it appear that no jets were in the sky and then in an instant making the radar believe the sky was filled with hundreds of planes.

Israel also likely would exploit a vulnerability that U.S. officials detected two years ago in Iran's big-city electric grids, which are not "air-gapped"—meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack—officials say.

A highly secretive research lab attached to the U.S. joint staff and combatant commands, known as the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), discovered the weakness in Iran's electrical grid in 2009, according to one retired senior military intelligence officer. This source also said the Israelis have the capability to bring a denial-of-service attack to nodes of Iran's command and control system that rely on the Internet.

Tony Decarbo, the executive officer for JWAC, declined comment for this story. The likely delivery method for the electronic elements of this attack would be an unmanned aerial vehicle the size of a jumbo jet. An earlier version of the bird was called the Heron, the latest version is known as the Eitan. According to the Israeli press, the Eitan can fly for 20 straight hours and carry a payload of one ton. Another version of the drone, however, can fly up to 45 straight hours, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

Unmanned drones have been an integral part of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, gathering intelligence and firing missiles at suspected insurgents. But Israel's fleet has been specially fitted for electronic warfare, according to officials.

The Eitans and Herons would also likely be working with a special Israeli air force unit known as the Sky Crows, which focuses only on electronic warfare. A 2010 piece in The Jerusalem Post quoted the commander of the electronic warfare unit as saying, "Our objective is to activate our systems and to disrupt and neutralize the enemy's systems."

Palestinian Arab welfare, 1958

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 01:10 PM PST

From AP, July 31, 1958:



This reporter only interviewed those in refugee camps. 

There were actually tens of thousands who did get jobs in Iraq, Kuwait and other Gulf states, and have lived there for decades. But their Arab host countries refuse to give them citizenship even if they were born there and will die there. 

Hundreds of thousands were expelled from Kuwait after the first Gulf War and tens of thousands were chased out of Iraq after the second. 

And over a million more were stripped of their Jordanian citizenship in 1988. 

Because they are so useful as pawns against Israel, you can be sure that the intractable refugee problem of 1958 will never be solved as long as Arab nations refuse to grant the Arabs of Palestinian origin the same rights of naturalization they grant every other Arab. This apartheid system is part of the legal codes of these countries and no one is bothered by it because it serves the political purposes of Arab leaders.

The only people being screwed are the Palestinian Arabs themselves, and who cares about them? Certainly not their so-called leaders. Certainly not any of the NGOs that pretend to love them so much. Certainly not Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Certainly not the UN, and (at least since 1960) certainly not UNRWA. 

After all, only one nation welcomed their Palestinian Arab refugees as full citizens after 1948, and as we all know, that country is guilty of apartheid.

Hamas jails man for "cursing God"

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 11:50 AM PST

Ma'an Arabic reports that a man in Gaza was arrested for "cursing God" during an argument with his father in Qalqilya.

According to Article (273) of the Jordanian Penal Code No. 16 of 1960 that Gaza uses as the basis for its laws, this offense is punishable for 1 to 3 years in prison.

The entire code is interesting - it is the same one that is lenient for honor killings.

Other laws:

  • Breaking the fast during Ramadan - up to one month in prison.
  • Desecrating or destroying any place of worship with intent to insult that religious group (not only Islamic) - between one month and two years in prison.
  • Publishing something that insults religion - up to three months in prison.
  • Publicly insulting religion in speech - 1-6 months in prison.

Any Gaza lawyers want to go after the many insults to Judaism and Christianity we've seen there over the years?

A little anti-semitism from Belgium

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 10:40 AM PST

The secretary-general of the Belgian teacher's union wrote an interesting letter to the editor of the Jewish News:
The Palestinian people have just stirred. A small minority thought it could not. Fortunately [they became] a member of UNESCO. [In response, Israel] suddenly decided to expand the settlements.

If this is their response, I will be happy as a union leader ACOD to put the situation of Jewish schools in Antwerp under the spotlight. I fear you are going to be scared.

Hugo Deckers,
General Secretary ACOD
This prompted the Jewish News to remind Belgians that teachers in Jewish schools have nothing to do with Israeli policy and that they have the right to hold opinions that may be contrary to those of Mr. Deckers.

A Jewish organization in Belgium gave a sarcastic response:
Let us say immediately that in our view, Mr. Deckers certainly has nothing against the Jewish students. But, given his duties, what else could he do? Had he been in charge of agriculture he would have attacked the Jewish farmers. Nothing personal!

...If he was aware of wrongdoing [the Jewish schools] have committed, is he not guilty of waiting for Israel to increase its colonies before denouncing them?
The union distanced themselves from his comments and Decker ended up apologizing.

It seems a shame, though, that I did not see any comment from the Belgian Jewish community actually defending the right of Israel to build in its capital city. Both articles took pains to distance the Belgian Jews from Israeli actions, with the subtext being that the actions themselves are indeed embarrassing and problematic.

While this might indeed be the opinion of the Jewish leaders in Belgium, this could be a manifestation of a deeper fear that Belgian and other European Jews have in expressing their political opinions publicly. They know that they would be subject to anti-semitic attacks if they were too forthright in supporting Israel.

More recently, Belgium's Pax Christi called for the boycott of Israeli goods like Osem snacks - specifically in Jewish neighborhoods. 

(h/t Rudi)

The wonderful UN (video)

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 09:30 AM PST

The Land of Israel group has produced another entertaining video.


(h/t Mike)

"Avenue Jew" - Brooklyn's answer to J-Street?

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 08:20 AM PST


From Fox NY:

A vandal altered a sign at a subway station in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn to make it read "Avenue Jew," according to Assemblyman Dov Hikind. A subway rider saw the graffiti, photographed it, and contacted Hikind's office.
The photo shows the letters "e" and "w" in blue spray paintin at the end of the "J" in the Avenue J sign. The station is located at the intersection of Avenue J and East 16th Street.

Police removed the sign and are investigating it as a possible bias incident, according to a news release from Hikind's office. But the NYPD has not confirmed that information.

"Education and vigilance are our only weapons in fighting against this blatant hatred," the Brooklyn Democrat said in a statement. "We must send a message to those who perpetrate these vile acts that we will not tolerate their behavior. These cowards need to know that we will find them wherever they lurk, and when we do, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law."

The station is in Midwood, the same section of Brooklyn where someone torched several cars and scrawled anti-Semitic and racist graffiti last week.

Midwood has a large Jewish population and is home to several orthodox synagogues.

I don't find this so offensive; actually I think it is kind of funny. The word "Jew" is not an epithet. When people like Dov Hikind (who certainly tirelessly fights for the Jewish community in Brooklyn) start acting as if the word Jew without any context is automatically offensive, that is a much bigger problem to me.

Put it this way: a proud but misguided Jewish kid could have done this, too.

This is not to minimize the recent, horrific anti-semitic attacks in Midwood (attacks that the "progressive Jewish left" like MJ Rosenberg, Max Blumenthal and the 972mag crowd were silent about, as they instead tweeted endlessly about their anarchist heroes at Occupy Wall Street.) There is a definite problem that needs to be addressed.

But this graffito* is not necessarily it.

*Yes, I couldn't resist being pedantic.

(h/t DoZ)

Amnesty support for a kangaroo court

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 07:10 AM PST

The "Russell Tribunal for Palestine" is a publicity stunt where handpicked anti-Israel "jurists" listen to "testimony" from handpicked anti-Israel "witnesses" to come to foregone conclusions blaming Israel for everything under the sun.


To maximize their ability to promote their Ziophobia, the people behind it just came out with a book called "Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation" based on "evidence" collected at the London session of the "tribunal" last year. Naturally, none of the corporations they decided to slam in this book appeared to testify at this joke of a "tribunal" but that doesn't stop these pursuers of justice, who include anti-Zionist luminaries such as Cynthia McKinney.

The book, put out by the far-left Pluto Press, is being launched tonight in London.

At the Amnesty International Human Rights Center.

One cannot even detect the slightest bit of embarrassment at the unqualified support being given to anti-Israel bigots and their stunts.

Then again - the London session of the "tribunal" was held at the exact same venue. 

PLO now saying no to "land swaps"

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 06:00 AM PST

From Gulf News:
The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) announced on Monday that it will very soon drop the "land swap" formula, which the it branded as a grave mistake that was included in any agreement with Israel.

Speaking to Gulf News, Tayseer Khalid, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that the formula was only mere talk by Israelis and mediators. "We have never signed an agreement with Israel, which states any shape of land swap formula," he added. "Land swap formula is a heresay [sic] in the track of negotiations," he said.

The Palestinians should have reached agreements on the borders and arranged for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and handled the other core issues before the land swap formula is addressed, he said. "It is time for this mistake to get corrected," he stressed.
As Daled Amos points out, the official PLO position had indeed included land swaps - as recently as June:
The Palestinian Authority passed on four official demands to the Mideast Quartet for discussion in upcoming meetings, PLO official Saeb Erekat told Saudi newspaper Al-Watan on Friday.

Erekat said the demands included a complete halt to all Israeli settlement activity, 1967 borders as the basis for peace negotiations with mutually agreed land swaps, EU support for reconciliation talks "which will strengthen peace opportunities" and EU support for a Palestinian UN statehood bid in September.
How many lies must the PLO utter before the world realizes that they are nothing but a bunch of liars?

This looks like a trial balloon. Abbas and his cronies have been repeatedly emphasizing the 1949 armistice lines  lately without any mention of land swaps, pretending that international law supports the entire area seized by Jordan and Egypt at that time as somehow being inherently "Palestinian." The UN stunt can be interpreted minimally as the PLO claiming all of the territories, and plausibly as their claiming the 1947 partition lines.

It seems that the PLO, feeling that they are in a strong political position, is abandoning the pretense of being interested in negotiations and is pushing for the world community to award them everything without any penalty.

This means that the entire negotiations track documented in the Palestine Papers was nothing but a sham - a sop to the Americans and the EU as they pretended that they were interested in peace when in fact they just wanted not to get on the bad side of the West. The goal remains the same as it was in 1974: grab what you can in stages and then position yourself to grab more.

And if that means to pretend to be moderate for a couple of decades, no problem. As we've seen, lying comes easy for Palestinian Arab leaders. And Western leaders can still not wrap their heads around the idea that people would lie directly to their faces.

(h/t David G)

The PA offers a deal that is no deal (updated)

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 04:00 AM PST

From Ha'aretz:

The Palestinian Authority has offered the United States a deal, saying it would freeze all moves to achieve full membership for "Palestine" in various UN agencies until the end of January, a European diplomat said, while the United States and Israel would resume transferring it funds.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's special envoy Isaac Molho met secretly in London on Tuesday with U.S. administration representatives David Hale and Dennis Ross to discuss the suggestion.

According to a European diplomat whom the PA had updated about the proposal, the PA plans to complete the process of trying to get full UN membership for Palestine recognized by the Security Council. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to ask for a vote by the end of December, although the move is doomed to defeat. Even if the Palestinians muster enough votes, the United States will veto it.

Other than that, however, the Palestinians are prepared to suspend their efforts to achieve full membership in such agencies as the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, the diplomat said. Nor will they ask the General Assembly to upgrade their observer status to non-member observer state.

Though the Palestinians offered to temporarily suspend these UN efforts, if a deal is struck that restores the PA's cash flow, it is thought such moves will be stopped for the foreseeable future.

Israeli sources confirmed that Molho had met with the U.S. officials in London, while a British source said Molcho also met with a senior Arab figure.

While the Americans view the PA proposal positively, it isn't clear whether Israel will agree to it. Israel is still refusing to transfer the approximately $100 million in taxes it collected for the PA in October.
This offer is a great example of how the PA does everything nowadays:

It is a stunt.

Every UN agency like WHO sees very well what happened to UNESCO after the US stopped funding it. They are not nearly as eager to accept the PLO as a member if it means that they lose tens of millions of dollars. I haven't seen any oil-rich Gulf nations step up to offer to make up the shortfall. And since the UNESCO vote, they have been forced to add a big yellow DONATE NOW button on their home page that wasn't there before.

The PLO knows this very well and they know that forcing other UN agencies to choose between their support for the cause that has obsessed the UN for decades and losing the US money that they so desperately need to continue their giant bureaucracy will end up alienating the PLO.

Beyond that, look at the timing being offered - to wait until January before starting a new UN push for membership.

In January, five members of the security council rotate out, and it is possible that the PLO's next attempt to push for full membership would get them the 9 votes they need for a symbolic victory, forcing a US veto. They have already said they would keep trying until they get it.

So they are offering literally nothing in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars. They are not offering to return to negotiations. They are not offering compromises.

The response should properly be that they get zero support until they are ready to act like grownups and stop relying on publicity stunts and political games to avoid making the decisions necessary for peace.

We have heard Israeli leaders from the right and the left all admit that they are willing to make "painful compromises" in order to achieve true peace with the Arabs. We have not heard the Palestinian Arab leaders ever say that phrase. Asking their people to give anything up for peace is utterly foreign to them, so instead we will keep seeing stunts - stunts that prove that the Palestinian Arabs have never been serious about a peace agreement and that today's leadership is just as intransigent as Arafat was.

(h/t CHA)

UPDATE: The PLO is now denying the story.

Too funny: Lebanese politicians get into fight on TV

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 01:30 AM PST

From AP:
Two prominent Lebanese politicians debating the unrest in neighboring Syria have exchanged blows on live television, in an indication of the deep divide between Lebanese factions over their relationship with Damascus.

Pro and anti-Syrian regime demonstrations are common in Lebanon, whose politics have long been heavily influenced by Damascus, now facing increasing isolation over its bloody crackdown on protestors.

The fight late Monday night broke out in a debate between anti-Syrian former legislator Mustafa Alloush and the head of the Lebanese branch of Syria's ruling Baath party Fayez Shukur.
The video:


MEMRI has the translated video (not embeddable, unfortunately), where it includes such gems as "My shoe commands more respect than you" and "Your sister..."
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