| Israel says it will defend Greek gas drilling from Turkey Posted: 23 Nov 2011 05:02 PM PST From JTA: Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in Greece that Israel will defend Greek oil drilling in Cyprus.
Asked at a news briefing Tuesday what Israel's reaction is to a threat by Turkey regarding drilling in Cyprus, Ayalon said, "If anyone tries to challenge these drillings, we will meet those challenges."
Ayalon, the first foreign official to visit Greece since the formation of its new government, added that he did not think that Turkey would challenge any drilling in the southeast Mediterranean. Turkey said last month it would send naval forces to protect its drilling rights. I cannot recall any previous time that Israel publicly offered to defend another state from potential third-party aggression. If true, this seems to be a very visible statement of defiance towards Turkey's aggressive rhetoric in recent months. Turkey started its own drilling off of the coast of Cyprus in September - escorted by naval boats. The story is not reported anywhere else I can find. Beyond that, Israel and Greece are strengthening their relationship in other spheres: Greece's deputy foreign minister, Dimitris Dollis, stressed in his meeting with Ayalon that Israel-Greece relations upgraded in the past year would continue and be strengthened in the near future. Dollis said the ties would not be affected by the change of government in Greece.
"These are not meetings that are held just so we can get together," he said. "They are meetings that will help us to jointly promote the issues we are dealing with and, naturally, provide an institutional framework -- and thus continuity -- for this conference."
The two officials agreed to convene in Greece members of the Jewish and Greek diasporas from countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, France and Britain. The meeting is planned to take place in the spring in Salonika.
Ayalon and Dollis discussed cooperation among Israel, Greece and Cyprus concerning the subject of natural gas. A trilateral memorandum of understanding on the issue, as well as the management of water resources, has been drafted and is due to be signed soon.
The deputy foreign ministers noted that Greece and Israel have common strategic interests in energy and energy security, and immense prospects for collaboration in that area.
On Wednesday, Ayalon met with the new Greek foreign minister, Stavros Dimas, and defense minister, Dimitris Avramopoulos, to discuss strengthening relations between the two countries.
Next week, the Greek minister for the environment, energy and climate change, Giorgos Papakonstantinou, will visit Israel. For some very good background on why Greece is a natural ally of Israel, with examples of specific historical and cultural similarities between the Jewish and Greek people, there is a nice article by Diana Muir Appelbaum in Jewish Ideas Daily from July. Also, check out an article in The Economist last week with a surprisingly optimistic quote by Cyprus' president. I don't know whether Israel's being close to Greece is strategically better from a geopolitical perspective than her former alliance with Turkey, but it sure feels better. (h/t D) 
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| Israelis saving the world, again Posted: 23 Nov 2011 12:45 PM PST From Israel21C: Psychotherapy, drug therapy, hypnosis, cold turkey -- whatever the remedy for addictions such as gambling, smoking, or narcotics, doctors agree there is no one quick fix.
However, a new tool from Israel promises to help alleviate addictions and at least a dozen other brain disorders, such as depression, Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, in a non-invasive way with no side effects.
Developed by the Israeli company Brainsway, the new medical device provides deep-brain electromagnetic stimulation.
Maps of our brain's cortex are already well known, says Dr. Avraham Zangen, Brainsway's neuro-consultant, and stimulating specific areas of the brain electromagnetically is easy. Brainsway's new technology, deep TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation), takes it to a new level.
"We invented the ability to reach deeper, to reach the relevant brain regions in psychiatric treatment," he tells ISRAEL21c.
Unlike electroshock therapy, which is still used extensively today on people with clinical depression who do not respond to other treatments, the more refined Brainsway stimulates only the area of the cortex related to depression, rather than the whole brain. "We gain the beneficial effect of shock therapy without the side effects," Zangen explains.
Trial patients in Los Angeles, New York and Dallas have already benefited from the treatment. Trials are taking place at 22 centers throughout Europe, the United States, Canada and Israel including Harvard and Columbia universities. Once the device receives US Food and Drug Administration approval, it will start being sold, probably at first to private clinics.
The ability to stimulate different brain regions is not equivalent to discovering a new medication, he says. It is equivalent to developing a whole new set of drugs.
The first diseases expected to be tackled by Brainsway will be those for which conventional treatments do not work well. The company is also investigating ways to target the "craving" areas of the brain, by stimulating them in a negative way so the brain no longer craves harmful substances or behaviors.
Obesity is another area the Brainsway coil could potentially address, as well as autism, stroke and Parkinson's disease. How will the hate-Israel crowd (many of whom are crowing about Sarah Schulman's incredibly unhinged op-ed in the NYT today, see here, here, and here) spin this to make Israel look as bad as possible? - Those money-grubbing "Zionists" making expensive machines that the third world cannot afford
- Barbaric Zionists are pushing "Cuckoo's Nest"-style electroshock therapy
- All the research and development behind this was just to distract the world from Israel's crimes
- Jewish Zionists are building mind control equipment to make Arabs want to leave
- "Brain"-washing
- American aid to Israel being wasted on useless Israeli research
- Israel blockades essential medical equipment from Gaza
- See? I told you that Israel uses Joo-Rays!
- Depression is a "Zionist" myth created by the "Zionist" Freud to make money for "Zionists"
- The knobs on the device are made in the Occupied West Bank, all profits must go to Palestinians
- Send angry letters to Harvard and Columbia to protest their partnering with an apartheid company
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| "Pinkwashing:" Visceral hate for Israel in a NYT op-ed Posted: 23 Nov 2011 10:45 AM PST The New York Times has an op-ed by Sarah Schulman, a professor of humanities at CUNY, that can only be described as pure, visceral hate for Israel under the veneer of fake liberalism. In 2005, with help from American marketing executives, the Israeli government began a marketing campaign, "Brand Israel," aimed at men ages 18 to 34. The campaign, as reported by The Jewish Daily Forward, sought to depict Israel as "relevant and modern." The government later expanded the marketing plan by harnessing the gay community to reposition its global image.
Last year, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the Tel Aviv tourism board had begun a campaign of around $90 million to brand the city as "an international gay vacation destination." The promotion, which received support from the Tourism Ministry and Israel's overseas consulates, includes depictions of young same-sex couples and financing for pro-Israeli movie screenings at lesbian and gay film festivals in the United States....
This message is being articulated at the highest levels. In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress that the Middle East was "a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted."
The growing global gay movement against the Israeli occupation has named these tactics "pinkwashing": a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians' human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life. Aeyal Gross, a professor of law at Tel Aviv University, argues that "gay rights have essentially become a public-relations tool," even though "conservative and especially religious politicians remain fiercely homophobic." Yes, a professor at a prestigious university is arguing that every positive Israeli action is not positive, but an immoral attempt to whitewash Israeli crimes. We've seen this same kind of thinking before, when Israel set up field hospitals in Japan and Haiti after natural disasters. Critics charge that the doctors and other volunteers who spend countless hours helping ordinary victims far away from Israel are really doing propaganda for the evil state of Israel, and their efforts are a transparent effort to distract the world from Israeli crimes. In both these cases, we have a pure manifestation of psychological projection at play. Strident critics of Israel look at the state through a single lens: one that shows Israel to be a purely evil entity whose entire raison d'etre is the subjugation and oppression of innocent Arabs. There are no shades of grey, no other issues at play - everything Israel does is somehow connected to its inherently evil nature. (Shulman's "proof" is that homophobia still exists in Israel, as if there is anywhere on the planet that it has been eradicated.) Since the critics define Israel this way, they assume that Israel defines itself this way as well. If Israel exhibits any whiff of charity, or liberalism, or kindness - it is nothing more than a smokescreen to cover for its genocidal, racist ways. The idea that Israel has both good and bad parts, or that different Israelis (outside the enlightened anti-Zionist variety) can ever do something different or orthogonal to their real goal of oppressing Arabs, is simply not possible. If some Israelis start a charitable organization it is not because they actually want to help people, but because they want to cover up their constant crimes. Kindness and morality are not possible, so any examples must really be sophisticated manifestations of Israel's inherent evil. To these sick people, it is literally impossible for Israel or Israelis to do anything admirable outside the context of the conflict. The conflict is everything. To them, Israel itself is defined by its own desire to rid itself of Arabs. Any counter-proof is readily dismissed as nothing more than PR. The concept that most Israelis are just trying to live their lives like everyone else, and that they might even be nice, normal, relatable people, must be combated. If Israelis are perceived by the world as human beings, their message of Israeli criminality gets diluted - and that must be fought. Anything that could blunt the demonization of the Jewish state is by definition as evil as the Jewish state itself is. This is hate, pure and simple. It is the exact opposite of the liberalism these haters profess. It is the bigoted stereotyping of an entire people and their democratically elected government in order to twist reality to reflect their own visceral loathing. And just as the bullying Israeli Jews cannot possibly do anything positive for gays, the eternal victims in "Palestine" cannot do anything wrong: Pinkwashing not only manipulates the hard-won gains of Israel's gay community, but it also ignores the existence of Palestinian gay-rights organizations. Homosexuality has been decriminalized in the West Bank since the 1950s, when anti-sodomy laws imposed under British colonial influence were removed from the Jordanian penal code, which Palestinians follow. More important is the emerging Palestinian gay movement with three major organizations: Aswat, Al Qaws and Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. So not only is Israel incomparably evil, but Palestinian Arabs are incomparably tolerant and liberal, according to this faux crusader for gay rights. A quick look through the websites of the three Palestinian Arab gay-rights groups she mentions reveals something interesting: it is nearly impossible to find the names of any of their members or leaders. And the reason is explained at the Awsat site: Most of Aswat members are "closeted" to some extent. Consequently, only one or two members can go public and identify themselves as Aswat members in our activities involving a certain amount of exposure i.e., advocacy & outreach, education etc. The 'closet' is an outcome of a homophobic and patriarchal society which has an undeniable impact on Aswat activities. Yet, group members develop different strategies in order to participate in various activities. For example, some members use nicknames when presenting themselves or reaching out to other community members, while others choose to promote activities which allow a reasonable degree of anonymity such as translations, Committee meetings, virtual support to others, information gathering, fundraising tasks etc. Thus, due to personal safety considerations, Aswat members have requested their names not to be disclosed. The cognitive dissonance that runs through Sarah Schulman's head must be overwhelming. According to their own activists, Palestinian Arab gays live under the constant fear of being physically harmed - a fear that the evil Israeli gay community simply does not have. Schulman is trying to give the impression that it is Israel that has the problems with gays, and Palestinian Arabs are the tolerant ones, even as this is shown to be a lie by the Palestinian Arab gay community itself! The only way to explain this self-contradictory thought process is that logic and simple facts fly out the window when you are dealing with a hater. Their hate is all-encompassing. They are consumed by it, and their brains are infected by it. We've seen the same hate and concomitant lack of rational thinking in the absurd ramblings all over the Internet from the KKK, from neo-Nazis, from Islamists, from the far-right as well as the far-left. This same laughable "logic" has been used to justify hate against Jews, blacks, gays and women. They also have only one lens through which they look at the world. Pure, unbridled hate is no more moral when it is against members of a nation than when it is against any other group. Being a professor does not inoculate one against infection with this virus of hate. Sarah Schulman is just another hater. And this op-ed proves it. 
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| Hamas warns Gazans that Zionists recruit spies with p0rn Posted: 23 Nov 2011 09:30 AM PST The Hamas-linked Palestine Times has a purported interview with a captured "collaborator" who describes how he got ensnared in doing the evil Zionists' bidding. "Khaled," a young man of 26, is sitting now in prison, on charges of treason and collaboration with hostile parties, and may be sentenced to death...
I lived in a regular family environment. Like many people here, one of my friends taught me how to use the Internet and research methods - I wish he never taught me that ... I used the Internet to search for vice and pornography sites ... And sit for long hours in front of the computer... I kept a lot of porn sites and shared them among my friends and acquaintances; I was nicknamed the "King of pornographic sites." Many of my friends would trying to get video clips ... And I would give them free of charge...
Soon I began to feel bored and wanted to find a new way to satisfy my desires, so I started to learn how to chat, not any chat but the pornography chat ... I bought a camera and mike in order to enter these sites and I was not sensitive to anything, and begun to recognize the girls and talk to them directly to video and audio ... One of the girls was called "JUNIEN" and chose to be my friend ...I began to sit with her for more than four hours a day in front of the camera .. "JUNIEN" said she lives in "Haifa" and was 22-years-old , and she likes pornography ... our relationship had continued for more than 4 days, and she asked me to take off my clothes and I imagine her in front of the camera doing so as well ... I did not hesitate much before the request and did what she asked me ... ...She asked for my mobile phone number ... I gave it her and she actually started calling me and talking in a way quite pornographic ... A few days later called me and told me that the director in the company which manages the pornography site will call me to coordinate a meeting with me ... so I was pleased and waited contact and he actually called me ...
He was disrespectful to me, laughing and telling me about some of the footage that I made in front of the camera and I'm naked, and told me that he will post it and it will bring many visitors and viewers ... I refused so strongly ... And here began the bargaining. He said to me, and I quote: "You are an Arab looking for pornography, and I need intelligence information on terrorists" ... I was struck by this sentence did not know what to do and closed the phone directly ... He contacted me again and said to me, "Khaled, We know a lot about you" .... He began to recall information about me and my family and my friends and my place of residence and some details of my life ... much to my surprise. He continued, "We do not want serious information from you ... You live in a border area and know that the terrorists come to shoot the rocket fire on us and this causes the killing of innocent people ... We want only when you see anyone approaching the area that you call me directly and we will take care of them ". .
I told him immediately, "You want me to become a spy" ... He was laughing and said "no .. you help us all and protect your family and friends of these terrorists," I answered him: "Find someone else, I will not be a spy", there was more laughing and he said "I will take you over" JUNIEN, "and I will post your video in half an hour" .. . Then I surrendered to him and told him will contact you ... then I could not find "JUNIEN," and I discovered that I became an agent and I can not go back ...
I started to contact an officer of intelligence with the nickname "Abu Musa," and told him about a movement of resistance fighters in the region, and I noticed "drone" reconnaissance planes at the same time ... I continued like this for more than 3 years and he was communicating with me always has sent me some money and an Orange chip... In a few days I called "Abu Musa," to tell him about people about to launch a rocket .. And moments later I heard a big explosion and knew then that it was from them targeting the insurgents and the death of a number of them and wounding others .. After this incident I have been arrested and now I reap what planted.... The article goes on to say that many pornography sites are run by Zionists for this purpose, and how evil they are, and how they can take over the webcams on the computers. Some of this rings true, although a couple of details seem unlikely (like immediately hearing a drone.) There is clearly a subtext here of Hamas trying to make Gaza a more moral Islamic society and using the fear of becoming a spy as a way to dissuade people from watching salacious videos. 
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| Israeli dancing group dropped from festival after refusing to change their name Posted: 23 Nov 2011 08:35 AM PST From Australia's J-Wire: A Melbourne Israeli Dancing group was dropped from participating in a Victorian dance festival after refusing organisers' moves to drop all references to Israel.
The Machol Israeli Dancing Club was scheduled to appear at Multicultural Folk Dance Festival of High Country in the Victorian country town of Mansfield earlier this month.
The festival was organised under the auspices of the Victorian Multicultural Commission and a grant had been awarded to Marta Balan who according to a submission to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission approved the performance of the Machol Group.
When the participants' names were released, Esther Blumenthal-Skop of Machol was surprised to learn that the name of the Machol Israeli Dancing Club had been truncated to Machol Group and all references to Israel had been removed with the club being described as a Jewish dance group.
No change had been made to other groups including Chinese, Hungarian, Armenaian and Ukrarnian Traditional Folk Dances and the Irish Reel and Jigs.
In her submission to VEOHRC, Blumenthal-Skop said she asked for an explanation and was told that the organiser would not be held responsible for consequences if the words "Israel" or "Israeli" were used to describe the group.
The submission states that Ms Balan agreed to the original wording but within hours Machol was told that choreographers had decided that the dance bracket was not suitable for the event…and that the artistic director was not made aware of this and was surprised at Machol's non-appearance at the final rehearsal.
Chairman of VEOHRC John Searle told J-Wire: "The matter is now in the hands of the Victorian Muliticultural Commission and we await their findings." Here is a perfect case of where anti-Zionism is just as ugly and disgraceful as traditional anti-semitism is - but it cannot be called anti-semitism. I really have to revive my attempt to get the word misoziony to be used for cases like this. I never liked " Zionophobia." It isn't fear of Israel - it is hate. (h/t IsraelAwareness) 
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| New Second Temple find causes Arabs to imply it was a myth Posted: 23 Nov 2011 07:28 AM PST From Israel's MFA: Who built the Temple Mount walls? Every tour guide and every student grounded in the history of Jerusalem will immediately reply that it was Herod. However, in the archaeological excavations alongside the ancient drainage channel of Jerusalem a very old ritual bath (miqwe) was recently discovered that challenges the conventional archaeological perception which regards Herod as being solely responsible for its construction.
In an excavation beneath the paved street near Robinson's Arch, sections of the Western Wall's foundation were revealed that is set on the bedrock - which is also the western foundation of Robinson's Arch - an enormous arch that bore a staircase that led from Jerusalem's main street to the entrance of the Temple Mount compound.
According to Professor Reich, "It became apparent during the course of the work that there are rock-hewn remains of different installations on the natural bedrock, including cisterns, ritual baths and cellars. These belonged to the dwellings of a residential neighborhood that existed there before King Herod decided to enlarge the Temple Mount compound. The Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of that period, writes that Herod embarked on the project of enlarging the compound in the eighteenth year of his reign (that is in 22 BCE) and described it as "the largest project the world has ever heard of".
When it was decided to expand the compound, the area was confiscated and the walls of the buildings were demolished down to the bedrock. The rock-cut installations were filled with earth and stones so as to be able to build on them. When the locations of the Temple Mount corners were determined and work was begun setting the first course of stone in place, it became apparent that one of the ritual baths was situated directly in line with the Western Wall. The builders filled in the bath with earth, placed three large flat stones on the soil and built the first course of the wall on top of this blockage.
While sifting the soil removed from inside the sealed ritual bath, three clay oil lamps were discovered of a type that was common in the first century CE. In addition, the sifting also yielded seventeen bronze coins that can be identified.
Dr. Donald Ariel, curator of the numismatic collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority, determined that the latest coins (4 in all) were struck by the Roman procurator of Judea, Valerius Gratus, in the year 17/18 CE. This means that Robinson's Arch, and possibly a longer part of the Western Wall, were constructed after this year - that is to say: at least twenty years after Herod's death (which is commonly thought to have occurred in the year 4 BCE).
This bit of archaeological information illustrates the fact that the construction of the Temple Mount walls and Robinson's Arch was an enormous project that lasted decades and was not completed during Herod's lifetime.
This dramatic find confirms Josephus' descriptions which state that it was only during the reign of King Agrippa II (Herod's great-grandson) that the work was finished, and upon its completion there were eight to ten thousand unemployed in Jerusalem. Palestine News Network had this as the top story. While the article is pretty accurate, here was their headline: New archeological discoveries undermine the narrative about the Jewish temple in Jerusalem
It will be recalled that the PA has said that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem at all. (h/t Yoel) 
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| Anti-semitic crimes so prevalent in US, they aren't reported Posted: 23 Nov 2011 06:11 AM PST From Bella at It's Complicated: When, almost two weeks ago, a particularly serious anti-Jewish hate crime was committed in Brooklyn, the NY Times first reported it only in it's Metro section blog and then sat on the story for a full weekend before doing a follow up. In the meantime both NY tabloids, The Daily News and The NY Post reported it throughout the weekend as a matter of urgency. But they're just tabloids. Coincidentally, I happened to be perusing the Southern Poverty Law Center's website and was surprised to discover that Antisemitism is not listed as a specific 'ideology' (apart from Holocaust Denial) in its Intelligence Files. I found that rather confusing and wrote to Mark Potok asking for an explanation. He very graciously responded with a phone call and explained that because Antisemitism is to be found among just about every hate group/ideology -- from Left to Right -- it cannot be made to fit into SPLC's morphology. What I heard was that Antisemitism is so ubiquitous in our society that somehow it defies categorization.
So prevalent, so expected is it in our society that the press barely mentions it when, as Jeffrey Goldberg posted today, the FBI reports that crimes against Jews qua Jews tops the list of all religion-based crimes in the US. That is, 65.4% are committed against Jews, as opposed to, for example, 13.2% against Muslims.
This gets us back to Mark Potok of SPLC, who cited, in an Huffington Post article, a 50% increase in hate-crimes against Muslims, but, as Goldberg remarks, didn't mention anti-Jewish crimes. I guess that just doesn't rate a mention. I don't know the reason that anti-Muslim hate crimes spiked this year. I do have a couple of observations, though. In a "Caution to Users," the FBI warns against drawing conclusions about hate crimes from one year to the next: Some data in this publication may not be comparable to those in prior editions of Hate Crime Statistics because of differing levels of participation from year to year. When Muslims want to report hate crime or violations of civil rights, they can find a link off of the main page of the CAIR website to a form they can fill out. I assume that CAIR works pro-actively to report these to relevant law-enforcement agencies as bias crimes. I am not aware of any similarly widely-available method for Jews to report anti-semitic crimes. The ADL has reports on anti-Muslim hate crimes. CAIR has a few mentions of specific anti-semitic acts but it seems perfunctory. And the CAIR site has this interesting part about Islamophobia: Islamophobia has resulted in the general and unquestioned acceptance of the following:
- Islam is monolithic and cannot adapt to new realities.
- Islam does not share common values with other major faiths.
- Islam as a religion is inferior to the West. It is archaic, barbaric and irrational.
- Islam is a religion of violence and supports terrorism.
- Islam is a violent political ideology.[i]
As such any criticism by Muslims of American policy towards the Muslim world is dismissed as being "reactionary," "anti-Semitic" and "irrational." In this short section, CAIR shows that it has an even more simplistic and dismissive view of their critics than the critics have of Muslims! (h/t O) 
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| Rifts re-appearing between Hamas leadership Posted: 23 Nov 2011 04:47 AM PST AFP reports: President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal will meet in Cairo this week despite the unrest rocking Egypt, Hamas and Fatah officials said on Tuesday.
Egypt has been shaken in recent days by renewed protests calling for the ruling military council to step aside and allow an interim civilian government to take power.
But officials of the rival parties said the unrest would not derail a planned meeting between Mashaal and Abbas later this week.
The talks will go ahead "as scheduled on Thursday," Hamas official Ismail Radwan told AFP in Gaza, in remarks which were confirmed by senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad.
The two leaders are due to finalize details of a reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas which was signed in May but has yet to be implemented. There's one missing ingredient in this meeting - the Hamas leadership from Gaza! There has been friction for years between the Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and the Gaza-based Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud al-Zahar. And while the "unity" meeting between Meshal and Abbas is grabbing headlines, Gaza's Hamas leaders are making noises that could result in their effectively torpedoing any agreement. Palestine Press Agency reports that Zahar is questioning the possibility of a breakthrough in Cairo, and saying that Hamas in Gaza would insist on guarantees that a reconciliation agreement would be implemented. "Otherwise, the entire reconciliation will fail." "From my experience with Abu Mazen [Abbas], it would be wrong to be optimistic (...) He was forced to reconciliation when doors were slammed in his face and he had no choice but to reconcile," he said. He says that Abbas reneged on agreements made last May and he wants guarantees that it will not happen again, even if it means Egyptian and other observers on the scene. 
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| Two more unexplained explosions at terrorist sites Posted: 23 Nov 2011 02:46 AM PST First at a Popular Resistance Committees site: An explosion was reported late Tuesday at a site operated by the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades reported no injuries following the blast near Rafah, which locals blamed on Israeli aircraft. An Israeli military spokeswoman denied the reports. And later at a Hezbollah arms depot: A huge explosion shook a Hezbollah stronghold near Siddiqin in the southern coastal city of Tyre overnight, a security source told The Daily Star Wednesday.
The source said the cause of the blast, which was heard shortly before midnight, could not be determined due to the heavy security blanket by Hezbollah.
Lebanese security forces were unable to access the scene of the explosion after the resistance group set up a security perimeter around the blast site, which is located in a valley called Wadi Al-Jabal al-Kabir between Siddiqin and Deir Ames, the source added.
Local media said the explosion likely took place at a Hezbollah arms cache.
"There are no comments so far," Hezbollah's office said when contacted by The Daily Star. As Ehud Barak saud after the giant and mysterious Iranian blast last week - may these multiply. (h/t CHA) 
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