| Hamas bans singing competition TV show Posted: 17 Jan 2012 12:10 AM PST From Ma'an: The Hamas government in Gaza has banned residents of the coastal enclave from participating in the national reality singing show "New Star."
The first episode of "New Star," which follows the same format as popular US shows "American Idol" and "The X-Factor," was recorded in Gaza City via video link in December, and around 120 people turned up to audition.
But the successful contestants will not be able to continue in the competition as the Gaza government media office has since banned the talent show, which is produced by Ma'an TV network and broadcast on Ma'an-Mix satellite channel.
Hasan Abu Hashish, who heads the media office in the Hamas-run government, told Ma'an's public relations director Ala al-Abed that the program was "indecent."
The singing contest contradicts the customs and traditions of the Gaza community, Abu Hashish said, adding that singing was the passion of a few and not in the interests of the majority of the community. Hamas doesn't like singing? Come on...they love to sing some songs: 
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| Hasbara - Egyptian style Posted: 16 Jan 2012 08:31 PM PST From Al Masry Al Youm: Egypt's military leader Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi has ordered the formation of a committee of high-ranking army generals tasked with ensuring the Egyptian armed forces are given positive media coverage.
The new body — to be called "The National Military Media Committee" — will be comprised of 11 generals, and will be responsible for providing information about the military to journalists to counteract what the armed forces considers "biased coverage."
Sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm that part of the role of the committee will be to give the military's account of any future events that take the media spotlight, particularly those that involve armed forces personnel. Since anti-Zionists are so aghast at Israeli hasbara, I wonder what they think about Egyptian propaganda being pushed at the highest level of the military. Or do they only object in one specific case? (h/t Missing Peace) 
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| An open letter to 17-year old Jesse Lieberfeld Posted: 16 Jan 2012 02:00 PM PST Carnegie Mellon University held an essay contest for Martin Luther King day, and chose two "searingly honest essays" as winners. One of them is by 17-year old Jesse Lieberfeld, a high-school junior, who wrote about his experience trying to understand Judaism and Zionism - and failing. Excerpts: I once belonged to a wonderful religion. I belonged to a religion that allows those of us who believe in it to feel that we are the greatest people in the world -- and feel sorry for ourselves at the same time. Once, I thought that I truly belonged in this world of security, self-pity, self-proclaimed intelligence and perfect moral aesthetic. I thought myself to be somewhat privileged early on. It was soon revealed to me, however, that my fellow believers and I were not part of anything so flattering.
Although I was fortunate enough to have parents who did not try to force me into any one set of beliefs, being Jewish was in no way possible to escape growing up. It was constantly reinforced at every holiday, every service and every encounter with the rest of my relatives. I was forever reminded how intelligent my family was, how important it was to remember where we had come from, and to be proud of all the suffering our people had overcome in order to finally achieve their dream in the perfect society of Israel.
This last mandatory belief was one which I never fully understood, but I always kept the doubts I had about Israel's spotless reputation to the back of my mind. "Our people" were fighting a war, one I did not fully comprehend, but I naturally assumed that it must be justified. We would never be so amoral as to fight an unjust war.
Yet as I came to learn more about our so-called "conflict" with the Palestinians, I grew more concerned. I routinely heard about unexplained mass killings, attacks on medical bases and other alarmingly violent actions for which I could see no possible reason. "Genocide" almost seemed the more appropriate term, yet no one I knew would have ever dreamed of portraying the war in that manner; they always described the situation in shockingly neutral terms. Whenever I brought up the subject, I was always given the answer that there were faults on both sides, that no one was really to blame, or simply that it was a "difficult situation."
It was not until eighth grade that I fully understood what I was on the side of. One afternoon, after a fresh round of killings was announced on our bus ride home, I asked two of my friends who actively supported Israel what they thought. "We need to defend our race," they told me. "It's our right."
"We need to defend our race."
Where had I heard that before? Wasn't it the same excuse our own country had used to justify its abuses of African-Americans 60 years ago?
...I decided to make one last appeal to my religion. If it could not answer my misgivings, no one could.
The next time I attended a service, there was an open question-and-answer session about any point of our religion. I wanted to place my dilemma in as clear and simple terms as I knew how. I thought out my exact question over the course of the 17-minute cello solo that was routinely played during service. Previously, I had always accepted this solo as just another part of the program, yet now it seemed to capture the whole essence of our religion: intelligent and well-crafted on paper, yet completely oblivious to the outside world (the soloist did not have the faintest idea of how masterfully he was putting us all to sleep).
When I was finally given the chance to ask a question, I asked: "I want to support Israel. But how can I when it lets its army commit so many killings?" I was met with a few angry glares from some of the older men, but the rabbi answered me.
"It is a terrible thing, isn't it?" he said. "But there's nothing we can do. It's just a fact of life."
I knew, of course, that the war was no simple matter and that we did not by any means commit murder for its own sake, but to portray our killings as a "fact of life" was simply too much for me to accept. I thanked him and walked out shortly afterward. I never went back.
I thought about what I could do. If nothing else, I could at least try to free myself from the burden of being saddled with a belief I could not hold with a clear conscience. I could not live the rest of my life as one of the pathetic moderates whom King had rightfully portrayed as the worst part of the problem. I did not intend to go on being one of the Self-Chosen People, identifying myself as part of a group to which I did not belong. Dear Jesse: I am a bit older than you, but I remember well what it was like being seventeen. I remember having questions that could not be answered by adults and people who I thought should know. I remember asking about things that seemed self-evident to everyone around me. I don't blame you for being uncomfortable with what you were hearing and reading about Israel and Judaism. It shows intelligence and assertiveness. It shows that you are a moral person. You are absolutely right to bring up issues that disturb you. And I can also empathize about how you think that your questions cannot be answered. You confided in your peers, you asked your parents, and you confronted your rabbi. You did everything that you should do. There is only one problem. Not to put a fine point on it, but your eighth grade peers were ignorant fools. (There is no Jewish race.) And your rabbi, the person you trusted to know the answers, the person who is is just as ignorant as your childhood friends were. I am not going to spend my time here defending Israel. I cannot defend it adequately without knowing what you think you know. But I can say, without any doubt, that you did not ask the right people to get the answers to your very valid questions. If all I knew about Israel is from what the newspapers say and the TV images I saw, I would be upset too. You are reacting to the reality you are subjected to. And, sorry to say, most Jews are not all that knowledgeable about the Jewish state, and are ill-equipped to answer any questions that go beyond the surface. Their ignorance is not proof that Israel is in the wrong. Jesse, you are now famous. Your essay is in the paper. Well known people are praising you. All because of your opinion and your bravery. And you were indeed brave for what you did. But I'm going to ask you to do something even harder and even braver. You see, Jesse, once people become famous for their opinions, it is nearly impossible for them to keep an open mind. They get fans who praise them. They get lots of positive reinforcement for their words. They don't want to disappoint all their new, like-minded friends. But based on your description of the idiots who support Israel that you know, I can say with certainty that you never heard the true Zionist side of the story. Not once. The question you need to answer for yourself, honestly, is whether you want to even listen to pro-Israel people who aren't as thoroughly clueless as your family rabbi. Can you give the other side an honest hearing with an open mind? Most people could not. If you think you are one of the few who could - if you are interested in truly understanding both sides of the conflict - if you can actually see the possibility that Israel is not a one-dimensionally monstrous regime - I will be happy to answer any questions you have. In public. On this blog. If you are interested, just email me. At the very least I can guarantee that you will learn something. Sincerely, Elder 
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| Pure anti-semitism in Iranian "news" sites Posted: 16 Jan 2012 12:30 PM PST From the state-run Tehran Times, which Google indexes as a "news" site, as well as IRIB, the Iranian radio website: Jonathan Azaziah is an Iraqi-U.S. Muslim poet, activist, analyst, writer and journalist from Brooklyn, New York. He is currently residing in Florida. His articles, poems and music deal with the subject of international Zionism. He is also a staff writer for Pakistan's premier alternative media outlet, Opinion Maker, a regular contributor to Veterans Today journal and a frequent guest and co-host of the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement's Ugly Truth radio broadcast.
The nucleus of the Zionist mindset, the energy source that drives those who think in this manner to behave like the inhuman monsters that they are, is Jewish supremacism; the need to destroy all that it is not Jewish, the goyim, in order for "the Jewish people" to survive. The developer of the neutron bomb, Samuel T. Cohen, was a Zionist with a strong Talmudic-Jewish upbringing, as was Robert J. Oppenheimer, the creator of the atom bomb. The supremacist-need to destroy all non-Jewish peoples and cultures was close to the blackened hearts of the early leaders of the usurping Zionist entity, hence why Ben-Gurion, Dayan, Eshkol and Peres collectively came up with the "Samson Option," the military plan to unleash 'Israeli' nukes upon the world if any nation or every nation attempted to confront Zionist power. The polar opposite of this thuggish outlook on existence, is the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran, a nation whose Persian history is rooted in the very essence of creation. The finest poets, artists, mathematicians, scientists and theologians that the world has ever known originate from this great land.
The Zionist entity, in its twisted collective mind, must destroy Iran because the Islamic Republic represents everything that it is not: tolerant, beautiful, non-destructive, non-aggressive and most importantly, God wary. Iran does not bow down to the feet of the Zionists and their rabbinical overlords, it only bows before Almighty God and for this, it has drawn the ire of the Zionists and their imperial conduit puppets. From the geopolitical perspective, the Zionist entity must not allow any Islamic nation to acquire nuclear weapons because that would neutralize its domination of the region...
The true goal of Zionism is to wipe out all non-Jewish peoples in vast parts of Egypt, including most of its north, all of Sinai and Cairo, all of Jordan, all of Kuwait, a gargantuan portion of Saudi Arabia, all of Lebanon, all of Syria, all of Cyprus, an elephantine part of Turkey up to Lake Van and finally, part of Iraq south of the Euphrates River. The expulsion and/or mass murder of these peoples would lead to the creation of the Zionist dream known as Greater Israel. So branding this usurping dragon of an entity simply as an "apartheid state" is not only incomplete, it is deceptive. And this disingenuous injection of language into the vocabularies of Palestine's supporters is also meant to deflect the attention from the root cause of this 63-year occupation: the age-old Talmudic ideology that gave birth to Zionism, which is an amalgamation of terrorism, racism, barbarism, supremacism, expansionism and imperialism.
All persons who represent this entity, all of its occupiers and squatters, must be thrown out immediately so the 8 million Palestinian refugees worldwide can finally return to their homes. Its sayanim across the Western world must be prosecuted for treason. We will not make peace with this usurping Jewish supremacist beast. We will never recognize this filthy entity. We will not share our lands with thieves and thugs, killers and degenerates. There will not be 'equal rights' for oppressed and oppressed.
It must also be noted that Apartheid South Africa did not own and control global mass media; Zionism does. Apartheid South Africa did not control global commerce; international Jewry does. Apartheid South Africa didn't have a worldwide Afrikaner lobby network that dominated governments into submission; the Zionist entity does. And Apartheid South Africa didn't have a foreign intelligence directorate committing false flag attacks all over the world in order to further its geopolitical objectives; 'Israel' does, with its Mossad. International Zionism is strangling the world because its agents think that their "chosen-ness" gives them a free pass to do so.
There is no doubt that the United States, the 'golem' of the international Zionist Power Configuration and Jewish banking interests, is the world leader in terrorism. The US is in no moral position to condemn any government or group in the world until it fesses up to its own blood-soaked history. 100 million Native Americans exterminated. 150 million Africans, many of them Muslims, murdered in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which was dominated by Spanish Jews like Aaron Lopez who had an entire fleet of slaveships and financing from the Rothschild family; these Jews, who were of the extremist and now dominant Talmudic-Kabbalistic school of thought, also introduced the Curse of Ham to their Gentile slave-trading brothers, a horrific, racist story concocted and developed by the rabbis in their Talmud which lowered the rank of our brothers and sisters of beautiful black skin to animals. This Talmudic drivel was used to justify the dehumanization of millions of others and in the greater geopolitical sense, it is now being exercised to justify more Zionist aggression on the African continent. Guess who else picked up on this interview? Intifada-Palestine, also indexed as a "news" site by Google! But they are of course not anti-semitic. Perish the thought. They are just uncomfortable with Zionism, nothing else. This can in no way be considered incitement to genocide against all Jews, no way. 
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| "Moderate" Fatah: "Our war is against the descendants of apes and pigs" Posted: 16 Jan 2012 11:00 AM PST From Palestinian Media Watch: The following is an excerpt from the Fatah ceremony broadcast on PA TV: Moderator at Fatah ceremony:
"Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews)
is a war of religion and faith.
Long Live Fatah! [I invite you,] our honorable Sheikh." PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein comes to the podium and says:
 "47 years ago the [Fatah] revolution started. Which revolution? The modern revolution of the Palestinian people's history. In fact, Palestine in its entirety is a revolution, since [Caliph] Umar came [to conquer Jerusalem, 637 CE], and continuing today, and until the End of Days. The reliable Hadith (tradition attributed to Muhammad), [found] in the two reliable collections, Bukhari and Muslim, says:
"The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews.
The Jew will hide behind stones or trees.
Then the stones or trees will call:
'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'
Except the Gharqad tree [which will keep silent]."
Therefore it is no wonder that you see Gharqad [trees]
surrounding the [Israeli] settlements and colonies.." [PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 9, 2012] Unfortunately, the video has been taken down from YouTube. I found one at MRCTV: If there are any female singing trios out there, I'd love to write lyrics for " Don't Sit Under the Gharqad Tree"... 
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| Arab "expert:" Abbas afraid of assassination Posted: 16 Jan 2012 09:45 AM PST The Director of the Center of Palestine Studies in the UAE, Aldrawi Ibrahim Masri, has figured out the reason why Mahmoud Abbas agreed to participate in the sham Quartet negotiations in Amman. He is afraid that if he doesn't, he will be assassinated - just like Arafat was. How can you argue with logic like that? I wonder if Abbas has been feeling the effects of those long-distance, high technology, poisoning Joo-Rays? I'd love to be a Director of Palestine Studies in some Gulf state. Getting a salary for making stuff up is a pretty sweet gig. I hope they'd let me telecommute. 
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| Lebanese terror suspect charged in Thailand; may have targeted synagogue Posted: 16 Jan 2012 08:30 AM PST From The Local (Sweden): A man carrying a Swedish passport who was arrested on terror suspicions in Thailand last week was indicted on Monday after leading police to a massive stash of bomb-making materials.
According to reports in the Swedish and international press, the man is 47-year-old Hussein Atris, a former Lebanese-born barber who lived for many years in western Sweden before moving back to Lebanon seven years ago.
Atris took Swedish citizenship after marrying a Swedish woman in 1996, Israeli news site Ynet reported.
Atris , who has alleged ties to Hezbollah, was arrested in Thailand last week following a warning from United States about a threat against tourists in the kingdom.
Following a tip from Atris, Thai police on Monday morning carried out a raid at a warehouse where they discovered more than 4,000 kilogrammes of fertilizer and several litres of liquid ammonium nitrate at a warehouse, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reported, citing Thai media reports.
 Citing anonymous sources, the AP reported that Atris told police he had rented the warehouse last year along with three other accomplices.
Later on Monday, Atris was charged with illegal possession of explosives material, the AP reported.
According to his wife, Atris was in Thailand on business at the time of his arrest.
A senior Thai intelligence officer who did not want to be named told AFP that the kingdom had been informed before the New Year by Israel of a possible threat. The New York Times reported on Friday: Amid public warnings from the United States and Israel of a possible terrorist attack, Thai officials said Friday that they had arrested a Lebanese man believed to be a member of Hezbollah in connection with a plot to strike tourists in Bangkok.
The country's defense minister, Gen. Yuthasak Sasiprapha, said the plot may have involved using car bombs at tourist sites, synagogues and the Israeli Embassy. He said Israel intelligence agents first informed the authorities in Thailand on Dec. 22 that two or three men were suspected of plotting an attack in Bangkok, the Thai capital. There is a Chabad House in Bangkok, making one wonder if this was meant to be a Mumbai-type attack (which is Debka's conjecture, h/t Yoel) 
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| Unity! Haniyeh insists that Gaza security forces will remain Posted: 16 Jan 2012 07:15 AM PST At a graduation ceremony of "police" in Gaza yesterday, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh insisted that the security forces that the Hamas security forces in Gaza will remain in place no matter what. Which means that he is against any consolidation of security forces with the PA - the acid test for any real unity between Hamas and Fatah. He also said that the "police" were "a fortress for the Palestinian people and resistance." Here is a photo of these "police" carrying weapons and marching in ways that make them look a lot more like soldiers than policemen. I don't know what he was supposed to have said here, but Google auto-translates part of his speech as saying "What we have built we will not destroy, because the Palestinian people felt the fruit of construction, particularly by ending the security chaos, and the presence of police work for the home clean hands, tongue, vagina, grew up on the table the Koran." That is some kinky stuff right there. 
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| Abbas' alleged Israeli travel permit (photo) Posted: 16 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST AP reports: Israel has stripped Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of VIP status and given him a watered-down travel permit that is valid for just two months, Palestinian officials charged Sunday.
The officials said that Abbas complained about the permit at an internal meeting of his Fatah Party last week.
In a speech, Abbas said the new permit, similar to those required for Palestinian laborers entering Israel, was a reflection of Israel's continued control over the Palestinians, and suggested that Israel was trying to punish him for applying for Palestinian membership in the United Nations.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because they were not allowed to brief reporters.
Maj. Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israeli agency that issues travel documents to Palestinians, said there has been no change in policy. He said the permit was the result of a technical glitch that should be resolved soon.
"Freedom of movement ... remains exactly the same as it was," Inbar said. "I deny all claims of changes in travel passes of Palestinian officials," he said. "There is no change in position or policy regarding the travel passes of Palestinian officials."
The VIP permit allowed Abbas to travel whenever and wherever he wanted. Palestinian officials acknowledged the new permit has not prevented Abbas, a frequent traveler to world capitals, from moving in and out of the West Bank. On Sunday, Abbas flew to London for talks with British leaders.
Dozens of local Facebook users spread what appeared to be a copy of Abbas' travel permit, in many cases with sarcastic comments about Abbas' weakness. "See you at the checkpoint," wrote one user, identified as Nidal Ahmed. This photo is circulating on PalArab social media sites: It supposedly shows Mahmoud Reda Abbas' temporary travel permit card. It says he can stay overnight in the West Bank and Gaza Strip only, and is allowed to enter Israel except for Eilat, and is not allowed to drive a car in Israel, and a handwritten note "valid despite security prevention." It is valid for two months. 
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| Palestinian Authority issues fake statistics, no one questions them Posted: 16 Jan 2012 03:22 AM PST Ma'an reported in 2006: The Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs has revealed that 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested and imprisoned in Israeli prisons since 1967. This means that 25% of the total population of the occupied Palestinian territory has been held in Israeli jails over the last 29 years.
In a report, the ministry pointed out that 50,000 of them were arrested during the current, Al Aqsa Intifada (which began in September 2000) and 10,300 of them are still in Israeli prisons. Today, the Ministry has updated the figures, saying that about 800,000 Palestinian Arabs have been arrested since 1967. We have already looked at how Addameer inflates their statistics on arrests, pulling their numbers out of thin air. Now let's look at the Ministry's numbers. Let's say that 50,000 were really arrested between September 2000 and September 2006, during the height of the intifada, as they claimed in 2006. If that is true, is it remotely credible that more than double that amount has been arrested in the 5 years since then, when things have calmed down considerably? If 100,000 were arrested in the past 5 years, that would be 20,000 a year or about 55 a day. Yet an already unreliable study published at the end of December claims only 3,300 were arrested last year, and the most arrests were in 2007 when some 7,000 were alleged. Even those numbers seem grossly exaggerated, as the only group that seems to keep tracks of actual arrests is PCHR, and they only record about 1000-1500 arrests a year. Last week, for example, they recorded 31 arrests and 29 the week before. Since 2006, the number of Arab prisoners in Israeli jails has decreased from about 10,000 to under 4,000. While all available evidence shows that the number of arrests is far less than the Ministry of Prisoners Affairs is reporting, no one is questioning them (or Addameer) for their absurd inflation of these statistics. These ridiculous numbers get accepted by the UN and by the mainstream media. This is not some NGO without any oversight issuing these numbers. This is the Palestinian Authority, funded with billions of dollars from the West, and using that money to issue ridiculous lies back to those same Western countries. Isn't it time that someone calls them on these fabrications? 
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