Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest |
- EoZ on your tablet and smartphone!
- Child terrorists in training at Hamas rally today
- Dutch will not ban kosher, halal slaughter of animals
- Lying Silwan photograph wins award
- Top Ten anti-Israel/anti-semitic slurs of 2011 (SWC)
- On Palestinian Arab nationalism
- Charges of corruption against Hamas leader Haniyeh
- Hamas celebrates 24th anniversary, brags it has killed 1365 Israelis
- "November Iran blast an attempt to assassinate Khamenei"
- Israel has no freedom of religion? (UPDATE)
EoZ on your tablet and smartphone! Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:27 PM PST ![]() Currents is an application that converts newsfeeds into an attractive format where you can read them on iPods, iPhones, iPads and Android devices, on or offline - for free. From the few minutes I played with Currents, it looks good, although I don't think it automatically updates its editions when I update the blog. If you want to check it out, just download Google Currents onto your mobile device, search for Elder of Ziyon and add it. If you like it and want to use it, let me know, or else I won't remember to keep it updated. |
Child terrorists in training at Hamas rally today Posted: 14 Dec 2011 01:35 PM PST |
Dutch will not ban kosher, halal slaughter of animals Posted: 14 Dec 2011 12:21 PM PST A followup to this April post, from AFP: Plans requiring animals to be stunned before halaal or kosher slaughter received a blow Wednesday after parties in the Dutch parliament's Upper House said they would give it the thumbs down. |
Lying Silwan photograph wins award Posted: 14 Dec 2011 11:00 AM PST From Ha'aretz: A photograph depicting the chairman of an organization dedicated to bolstering Jewish presence in Jerusalem running over two Palestinian children who were hurling stones at him was chosen as the best photograph at the "Local Testimony" 2011 exhibition. "Local Testimony" is a regional exhibition of photojournalism, running concurrently with the annual "World Press Photo" exhibition that features international press photographers. This year's exhibit is shown at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv. There was video of the incident: As we noted at the time: The boy was running towards the car even during the impact. The car honked the horn to get him out of the way. Clearly the driver was worried about his safety and didn't want to stop, and for good reason - we see his back windshield smashed by the innocent, youthful rocks being thrown.See also Honest Reporting at the time. The photo is undoubtedly dramatic - and also clearly deceptive. (The photographer's protests that the photo could be seen as a defense of the driver is laughable.) Shouldn't award-winning news photos be chosen based more on how accurately they tell the truth than how sensational they are? (h/t CHA) |
Top Ten anti-Israel/anti-semitic slurs of 2011 (SWC) Posted: 14 Dec 2011 09:45 AM PST From the Simon Wiesenthal Center: To be fair, it seems that Erdogan (#2) probably said "hundreds or thousands," not "hundreds of thousands" and that CNN's translator made a mistake. The rest of the quote is accurate and quite absurd enough. (h/t Jewess) |
On Palestinian Arab nationalism Posted: 14 Dec 2011 08:12 AM PST I never fail to be amazed at how Thomas Friedman, who regards his writing as "brilliant," is so clueless. His latest column shows how no matter how many years he has covered the Middle East, his understanding is still superficial. I love both Israelis and Palestinians, but God save me from some of their American friends — those who want to love them to death, literally.Gingrich announced clearly that he supports a two-state solution. This was reported, albeit snarkily, by Friedman's own newspaper. Apparently, Friedman's three choices are all equally wrong, as are his assertions of what Gingrich "must mean." In fact, even Friedman seems to know that his position is hypocritical. Note that he is speaking only about the "2.5 million West Bank Palestinians" and not Gazans. He knows that his logic falls apart with Gaza, as Israel did none of the three things he claims it "must" do in the West Bank. So how can one reconcile Gingrich's statements with a two-state solution? I cannot speak for him, but his characterization of Palestinians as an "invented people" is correct, as I have shown. They don't even know their own history. If a group is recognized as a people by both its own members and people outside the group, that is a pretty good indication that it really is a people. Jews have been considered a nation both by their own people and by others for thousands of years. The earliest possible date you can find for Palestinian Arabs to assert their nationhood is less than a century ago, and even then it was a small minority. Moreover, for the most part, Palestinian Arab nationalism has not been a genuine expression of a desire for independence. It has been a desire to erase Jewish nationalism. It was true in the 1920s, when the Mufti of Jerusalem in an instant shifted from supporting pan-Syrian nationalism to Palestinian Arab nationalism. It is true today, when "moderate" Saeb Erekat places the "right of return" - to demographically destroy the Jewish state - as exactly as important as the creation of a Palestinian Arab state. What kind of a nationalism demands that its own people be transferred to an enemy nation? Since 1948, Palestinian Arabs have become a people of sorts. This is mostly due to the political machinations and mistreatment by the Arab nations and their own leaders, but for sixty years or so they have a shared history. They deserve some rights, and Israel certainly does not want most of them to become citizens. But by any measure, the Palestinian Arab claim to nationhood is far weaker than that of the Jewish nation. In a way, it can be considered the Scientology of nationalisms - a recent construct that does not deserve the same respect as other more venerable belief systems. Even Friedman seems to be saying that their rights of nationhood stem completely out of the potential danger of them not gaining their demands, not any inherent rights they deserve because of their weak peoplehood. What Friedman and even much smarter people like Jeffrey Goldberg don't get there is that a lot of daylight between giving them autonomy commensurate with how much they deserve it, and their maximal demands that these pundits seem to accept without protest. Jerusalem is the most obvious example. If Palestinian Arabs are indeed an invented people, whose documented interest in Jerusalem is less than a hundred years old and even then has directly correlated with Jewish influence in the city (they didn't seem to care about it much from 1949-1967), then their claim to Jerusalem is objectively much weaker than that of the Jewish nation. So, from the perspective of competing nationalisms, why should anyone take their claim on the Old City seriously? On the contrary: their words and deeds show that they deserve to govern none of it, and whatever they manage to control they will use specifically to eliminate any Jewish connection to the city. As recently as last week the mayor of Hebron said that he would ban Jews from worshiping in the Cave of the Patriarchs - a clear indication of how Palestinian Arab nationalism is a negative reaction to Jewish nationalism, not a positive, independent expression of a desire for freedom. If they do not end up with Jerusalem and its Jewish suburbs, does that make a possible Palestinian Arab state any less real? Does that affect their potential independence? Not at all. But Friedman and the other pundits cannot seem to grasp that the solution is not a choice of "take it or leave it." Arab intransigence does not translate to a valid claim. And fear of terrorism is not a reason to give in to terrorists and their supporters. Palestinian Arabs can gain local autonomy. Or they can gain independence in a smaller area than they demand.Or they can create a federation with Jordan on parts of the West Bank that is acceptable to Israel. Or Israel can unilaterally withdraw from specific areas of the West Bank while keeping areas necessary for security. There are options - as long as the world doesn't blindly accept Palestinian Arab propaganda about what the borders of their state must be. Friedman and the other "experts," however, cannot seem to distinguish between giving Palestinian Arabs a desirable level of autonomy and giving them everything they demand. And their inability to distinguish the two - and to frankly be honest about the shortcomings of Palestinian Arab nationalism - is doing a disservice to real peace. Because real peace cannot be built on lies. |
Charges of corruption against Hamas leader Haniyeh Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:10 AM PST Fatah media is reporting about a YouTube video has surfaced accusing Hamas president Ismail Haniyeh and his family of hiding a vast fortune. It starts off showing Haniyeh giving a speech in his mosque saying that the people of Gaza are suffering in the heat without air conditioning, and then shows that this mosque has ten AC units and a generator. It then shows expensive cars and apartments allegedly owned by Haniyeh's family, and further alleges that Haniyeh has been taking public Gaza lands for his own private enterprises. There is nothing corroborating the charges, but the fact that they are out there and being reported is most interesting. Especially during supposed "unity" talks. |
Hamas celebrates 24th anniversary, brags it has killed 1365 Israelis Posted: 14 Dec 2011 05:45 AM PST Interestingly, this is the 24th anniversary in the secular calendar, not the Islamic calendar. As I had mentioned before, the logo for the celebrations shows a weapon emerging from the Dome of the Rock: Hamas also released some statistics for the occasion: 1848 "martyrs" 1365 Israelis killed6411 Israelis wounded 1117 terror attacks 87 suicide bomb missions 11,093 rockets and mortars shot to Israel Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas continues to lie and claims that Hamas is accepting the 1967 borders and a truce. |
"November Iran blast an attempt to assassinate Khamenei" Posted: 14 Dec 2011 03:55 AM PST From JPost: The excellent Missing Peace website had reported two weeks ago that Khamenei was supposed to be at the base that day - which means that if it isn't already on your daily reading list, it should be. |
Israel has no freedom of religion? (UPDATE) Posted: 14 Dec 2011 02:57 AM PST A perfect example of media bias from Ha'aretz: What do Israel, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have in common? All of them scored a big fat zero on the annual freedom of religion index published by CIRI, the Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Dataset.Let's first look at the bias in the Ha'aretz article.
Now, why did Israel score a zero? I don't know. Despite CIRI's claims that its data is objective, reliable and replicable, they do not specify the sub-criteria they use to determine each individual country score. Here is their description of how they determine freedom of religion: What kind of governments score a zero, one or two? ZEROSo how does Israel get a score of zero? From these criteria one would expect Israel would receive a one. (Note that even by Uri Regev's criteria quoted in Ha'aretz, Israel should still get a one.) Could it be that CIRI is including Palestinian Authority and Hamas practices under the Israel score? Or is it because Israel arrested someone like Raed Salah who is a radical anti-Israel terrorist supporter but who is also a cleric, making the score an automatic zero ("Arrest, detention, physical violence, or official government harassment of religious authorities or officials should be coded as a ZERO")? Perhaps the fact that Israel does not allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount is the reason ("Governments that place restrictions on access to places of worship")? Or is CIRI not quite as objective as it pretends to be? We don't know the answer. And neither does Ha'aretz. (h/t CHA) UPDATE: CIRI replied to me: I replied with why I disagree: Thanks for your reply. |
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