| Weekend open thread, with a Wall St. update Posted: 02 Dec 2011 01:05 PM PST I visited Wall Street yesterday, for the first time in a couple of months.  | | I always liked the tile art in New York subways | Last time, you may recall, I saw the first wave of Occupy Wall Street protesters, including this gentleman: I am happy to report that there were no protesters to be seen this time, at least not on Wall Street itself. (Well, I did see one guy telling people not to visit Thailand.) Also, while the barricades are still up, they are not nearly as suffocating as they were in September. And they are no longer in front of the kosher Milk Street Cafe at all, which was hurt badly by the loss of customers, forcing layoffs. The bad news is that I planned to go to Milk Street to pick up dinner for take out - but they changed their hours to close at 3:30 PM, probably because of the layoffs. So I didn't get to eat anything from there this time around. Anyway, here are a couple of links: Khaled Abu Toameh- Muslim Brotherhood: Extremist Islamic Group Richard Landes - Muslim anti-Semitism, Israel and the dynamics of self-destructive scapegoating Have a good weekend. 
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| The Jewish National Fund owns 53 square km of land - in Syria Posted: 02 Dec 2011 09:24 AM PST The Matson Collection of old photos from Palestine includes this interesting one, a photograph of a map, entitled "Map. Extent of Jewish landholdings, issued by Jewish Natl. [i.e., National] Foundation, Jerusalem", taken between 1934 and 1939: You can see some areas that are outside Israel's current borders that are highlighted as well. Blowing the image up, we can see details: With a little research I found this article from Globes in 2000: "Globes" has further learned that the documentation proving JNF ownership of 53,000 dunams on the Golan Heights deep inside Syria were submitted to Prime Minister Ehud Barak for presentation at the negotiations with Syria.
JNF chairman Shlomo Gravitz today confirmed that JNF owns 5,000 on the Golan Heights, and another 53,000 dunam deep inside Syria. He said, "It's important that the public be aware that there are lands on the Golan Heights and in Syria that belong to the Jewish nation, not to Syria. We transferred the material to the Prime Minister for use during the negotiations." Also, this 2001 paper on the JNF says: The JNF also owns land beyond the borders of Israel: a few thousand dunams in the Gaza Strip, which is currently under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and broad tracts of land and in Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria, which are also controlled by the PA. The Deheisheh refugee camp, for example, is situated entirely on land owned by the JNF. The JNF owns 53,000 dunams of land in Syria in a region located about 30 kilometers south of Damascus. These lands are registered in the name of the JNF in the Syrian land registry. Additional tracts of land owned by the JNF are located in Jordan, mainly in the area of Naharayim that was transferred to Jordan following the peace accords. These lands are registered in the JNF's name in the Jordanian land registry. All the land was purchased by the JNF before the demarcation of borders recognized today. Interesting! I wonder how many Syrians know they are living on land belonging to the Jewish National Fund. 
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| Saudi clerics warn of promiscuity and homosexuality when women drive (updated) Posted: 02 Dec 2011 08:30 AM PST From The Daily Mail: Repealing a ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia would result in 'no more virgins', the country's religious council has warned.
A 'scientific' report claims relaxing the ban would also see more Saudis - both men and women - turn to homosexuality and pornography.
The startling conclusions were drawn by Muslim scholars at the Majlis al-Ifta' al-A'ala, Saudi Arabia's highest religious council, working in conjunction with Kamal Subhi, a former professor at the King Fahd University.
Their report assessed the possible impact of repealing the ban in Saudi Arabia, the only country in the world where women are not allowed behind the wheel.
It was delivered to all 150 members of the Shura Council, the country's legislative body.
The report warns that allowing women to drive would 'provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce'.
Within ten years of the ban being lifted, the report's authors claim, there would be 'no more virgins' in the Islamic kingdom.
And it pointed out 'moral decline' could already be seen in other Muslim countries where women are allowed to drive.
In the report Professor Subhi described sitting in a coffee shop in an unnamed Arab state.
'All the women were looking at me,' he wrote. 'One made a gesture that made it clear she was available... this is what happens when women are allowed to drive.' In other words, to Saudi clerics, the following two photographs are indistinguishable: (h/t Jawa Report) UPDATE: The Shi'ites of Iran are using this report to make fun of the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia. 
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| Latest Latma Posted: 02 Dec 2011 07:45 AM PST |
| Toy guns that "insult Aisha" found in Gaza (UPDATED) Posted: 02 Dec 2011 06:30 AM PST Emirates 24/7 reported in late October: An Emirati social expert and activist shopping in a local market stumbled across Chinese-made toy guns that issue sounds mocking Islam and called on authorities to take action against such products.
 The discovery came a few days after Saudi authorities said they seized nearly 1,500 Chinese-made toy guns issuing sounds that mock and insult Aisha, the wife of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him).
Mariam Al Ahmadi, a well-known social activist in Abu Dhabi, said she found the toy guns at some shops in Bani Yas, just outside Abu Dhabi city.
Quoted by the Dubai-based 'Emarat Al Youm' Arabic language daily, Mariam said she had reported the guns to the police and called for immediate measures."I call upon the police and other competent authorities to investigate how these anti-Islam guns found their way into the UAE market and to take action against all those who had brought them in," she said.
In Saudi Arabia, police said on Sunday they had seized nearly 1,500 Chinese-made toy guns at a local market found to be issuing sounds that abuse Aisha, one of the most venerated women in Islam.Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most influential law enforcement authority in the country, seized the toys during a raid on a shopping centre in the western town of Jeddah.
"The guns were found to be issuing sounds which are considered mocking and offending against the Prophet's wife," newspapers said, quoting Commission spokesman in Jeddah, Turki Al Zahrani.He said sellers of those toys, mostly Asians, apparently do not know they offend Islam as the guns issue sounds in Arabic. Those Chinese toy guns sure get around. Palestine Press Agency reports that a shipment was found in Gaza yesterday. Gazans were shocked when kids started playing with the guns in a Gaza shop and they heard unspeakable things being said about Aisha. Unfortunately, we do not know the details. Hamas confiscated the offensive weapons and started an investigation as to how they were smuggled into Gaza. I did not see the guns on eBay yet. Only a matter of time.... UPDATE: Onion Tears News shows a MEMRI clip from September that shows what the guns really say: "Go, go, go. Pull over. Save the hostages." is being interpreted as "Shoot Aisha!" 
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| The annual UN hatefest against Israel Posted: 02 Dec 2011 05:00 AM PST While every day is "hate Israel" day at the UN, November 29th is special. It is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, held ironically on the day that the UN voted to create a Palestinian Arab state, a resolution rejected by the entire Arab world. This year's farce featured the passing of no fewer than 6 anti-Israel resolutions in one day. Iran voted for the resolutions, but with reservations - it did not recognize any reference to a "two state solution," a "peace process" or any other language that could be construed as accepting Israel's existence.  At the same time, the UN held an art exhibit called "A Palestinian Vista — Uprooted from our homeland… We rooted the homeland in ourselves." It featured crafts, performances and paintings of Jerusalem that have been scrubbed to ensure that no Jewish presence is acknowledged. The paintings were created by a Jordanian citizen who lives in Canada and who calls himself "Palestinian." Anne Bayefsky wrote a piece noting the hate and hypocrisy of this event: Speaking on behalf of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Mansour clearly relished his annual moment at UN center stage. He accused Israel of the alleged offense of "Judaization," in addition to "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid." Without batting an eye over the preposterous distortion, he claimed Israel's membership in the UN was "conditional" upon "Israel's commitment to the partition resolution" which he stressed gave it less area than it has now. He never mentioned that in 1947 Jews accepted the resolution and Arabs rejected it.
Solidarity Day also featured Yahya Mahmassani, speaking for the League of Arab States, who explicitly rejected Israel's "insistence on recognition as a Jewish state." Only one representative of "civil society" was invited – Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights. The reasons for his invitation quickly became clear as he called Israel an "apartheid state," demanded "boycotts, divestment and sanctions," claimed Israel was guilty of "pogroms," and alleged that U.S. support for Israel resulted from our being "held hostage to domestic politics." Ambassador Mansour clapped when the rant finally ended.
At the conclusion of the speeches, the Senegalese Chair of the UN "Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People" encouraged everyone to attend the screening by the UN of the film "La Terre Parle Arabe" or "The Land Speaks Arabic" – "in order to show solidarity with the Palestinian people." Advertised in the UN daily journal,, the film draws parallels between the Nazis' final solution and the alleged Zionist "brutal plans" for Palestinians.
The script for this UN-promoted film included: "Christians and Muslims alike…unite in their hatred of Zionism…I preferred to die as a martyr rather than be governed by the Jews …We were against the Jews…The number of Jews increased constantly…They were Zionists!… The Jews were shooting at us…They started killing people who were asleep…[We]…found a poor woman…pregnant. They had killed her and the baby came out of the womb. They started slaughtering them until morning."  Iran's PressTV covered the art exhibit. Early on the video you can see a couple of Neturei Karta members attending. That organization has only one purpose - to destroy Israel. The fact that they come to attend a purportedly "Palestinian" art exhibit shows that they know what all haters of Israel know - the purpose of Palestinian Arab nationalism is not the creation of a state, but the destruction of one. If Israel didn't exist, the Arab world would never have even allowed the idea of an Arab Palestinian state. The slick packaging of "Palestine" at the UN is nothing less than the mainstreaming of the concept of destroying the Jewish state in politically-correct terms. 
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| Syria opposition leader would cut ties with Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas Posted: 02 Dec 2011 04:30 AM PST From Al Arabiya: A Syria run by the country's main opposition group would cut ties to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the group's leader told the Wall Street Journal in an article published Friday.
This would remove a crucial Iranian military ally believed to play a key role in supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian Hamas, potentially leading to a dramatic reordering of regional power.
The interview with Burhan Ghalioun, president of the Syrian National Council, came eight months into an increasingly violent uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with rebels seeking international support.
"There will be no special relationship with Iran," Ghalioun, a 66-year-old university professor, told the Journal in an interview at his home in Paris.
"Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic, military alliance," he said, adding that "after the fall of the Syrian regime, (Hezbollah) won't be the same."
He also called for more robust international support for the rebels, including the possible establishment of a no-fly zone.
"Our main objective is finding mechanisms to protect civilians and stop the killing machine," Ghalioun said.
"We say it is imperative to use forceful measures to force the regime to respect human rights."
The rebels may well fail to topple the 40-year-old Assad regime established by Bashar's father Hafez, but a reorientation of Syria away from Iran and towards the West would have major implications across the region.
Ghalioun said an opposition-run Syria would be committed to recovering the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 war, but would pursue its return through negotiations rather than armed conflict.
He also said it would work to normalize relations with neighboring Lebanon after decades of tense relations. Meanwhile, the Syria/Turkey rift continues to wide. From Syria's SANA news: In response to the measures announced by the Turkish Foreign Minister at his press conference regarding Syria Wednesday, the Syrian government decided to suspend the Free Trade Zone agreement between Syria and Turkey, official Spokesman of the Syrian Foreign and Expatriate Ministry stated on Thursday.
The Syrian Government studies taking other procedures that match with what has been declared by the Turkish Minster.
Turkey's Foreign Minister announced yesterday halting a loan by the Turkish Import & Export Bank to finance Syrian infrastructure projects, suspending relations between the central banks in both countries, freezing the financial assets of the Syrian government and halting deals of financial credits in Syria in addition to suspending the Higher Strategic Cooperation with Syria. 
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| A devastating takedown of John Mearsheimer Posted: 02 Dec 2011 02:40 AM PST From Counterpoint, a conservative publication from the University of Chicago: When, after a long career built on a theory that domestic political relationships had a minimal impact on any state's foreign policy, John Mearsheimer co-wrote The Israel Lobby, a popular book alleging the maximal impact of a small cabal on American foreign policy, we were perplexed at the incoherence. When the book was written without accompanying scholarship on the Turkish lobby which has had a hand in the failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide or push for a Kurdish state, the Irish lobby which greatly influenced the American policy in Northern Ireland for decades, or Arab, Chinese, Tibetan, Greek, Indian, or Pakistani lobbies that have all made their mark on American foreign policy, we were left wondering at the motives of his focus. When the book was finally read and its narrative of the Israeli-Arab conflict rested on shoddy history, a mix of long-ago refuted facts (whose falsehood was easily available over Google) and stark errors of omission, we began to question the animus of Professor Mearsheimer.
He built a robust theory of states seeking security through regional hegemony, no matter their domestic politics. Yet this theory could not explain many of the adventures of the United States in the Middle East. There had to be an exogenous factor. He labeled this factor "The Israel Lobby." But he did not use this factor to complicate the original model; he did not further examine the role of domestic constituencies in international relations. He left "The Israel Lobby" an outlier, an asterisk. It was a strange Jewish exceptionalism he propagated: only the Jews had dual loyalties. He was attacked. He dug in. More and more of his output was devoted to the dealings of the Jewish State. He began to speak at the events of Palestinian nationalists, groups whose assumptions would have seemed so contrary to realism. He would speak recklessly and accuse Israel of awful motives. This was a different John Mearsheimer. Something was going on.
John Mearsheimer is now in the denouement of a tragedy of a great academic. Too stubborn to revise his long-time model, Professor Mearsheimer has instead endorsed the theories of a long-standing anti-Semitic conspiracy. We cannot say whether Professor Mearsheimer is an honest-to-goodness anti-Semite; we do not know his heart. We can only say that he has, from the perch of an endowed chair at our university, endorsed a grotesque theory of the doings of the modern Jew.
There are no reports of Professor Mearsheimer being anything less than cordial to his Jewish colleagues or reducing the grades of Jewish students. This is nothing like the anti-Semitism that bars Jews from country clubs; it is, indeed, an adaptation of an older anti-Semitism: a belief that old adages hold true, that the Jews are loyal only to one another and are not to be trusted with power. It is revealed, not in statements about usurers or admonishments about "kikes," but in an unwitting animus against the prominent Jews in public life and the ascribing of much too much to their effect. This comes out in speeches segregating "Righteous Jews" (marginalized radicals) from bad Jews, "New Afrikaners" (all the heads of major Jewish organizations). It comes out in paranoid blog-posts about the potential ability of the Israel Lobby to cover-up his own assassination. It comes out in reading lists for classes featuring the most absurd rendering of Israeli-Arab revisionism (Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) and a work of historical psychoanalysis that leaves the impression that Jewish dreams of self-determination are very near a mental disorder (Jacqueline Rose's The Question of Zion). And it comes out in John Mearsheimer's recent endorsement of a work by an undeniable anti-Semite, Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who?.
...Professor Mearsheimer's contribution to the study of powers regional and global will last, may even become canonical, but he has in recent years attracted a very sorry stain upon himself, his scholarship, and the University which enabled his many achievements. The charge of anti-Semitism is a durable one, especially when actions repeatedly fail to contradict it. Professor Mearsheimer is certainly entitled to study, author, and speak whatever he will (we do not think the approval of hateful ideas a fireable offense), but it will refract upon an institution that has done more for him than he has done for it. It lately refracts the most bigoted ravings of a British madman and the questionable animus of his endorsing professor. If Professor Mearsheimer is to retain any of the grace of an accomplished scholar and do right by his home for nearly thirty years, there is but a single option: retirement. Read the whole thing. (h/t Noah) 
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At the same time, the UN held an art exhibit called "A Palestinian Vista — Uprooted from our homeland… We rooted the homeland in ourselves." 
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