יום חמישי, 26 בינואר 2012

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Fatwa against driving a Chevy

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 04:31 PM PST

From Now Lebanon:

A Salafi sheikh in Egypt has reportedly issued a fatwa that buying [or driving] a Chevrolet vehicle is haram because the American brand's logo looks like the Christian cross.

Prominent Egyptian TV presenter Amr Adeeb takes the sheikh's joke-of-a-fatwa to task, saying, "We've reached a really strange place with this."

"The car's been around [for a century] and only now did you notice there's a cross on the car?"

Adeeb also notes that the car is not used or presented as a form of religious iconography: "Do we hold mass for it? Do we pray for it?" And his guest chimes in with a comment about the self-centered nature of the fatwa itself: "As if the people who came up with the logo were thinking that we want to put this special logo on the car just to piss us [Muslims] off?"

The TV presenter concludes, "With all of the problems in Egypt, you're concerned about the cross?... We're calling for unity [in the country] and then you come up with [fatwas] like this?"
(h/t Onion Tears News)

Midweek open thread

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 02:05 PM PST

In other words, I am too busy today to come up with another post.

So feel free to comment away!

Latest on Israeli thinking about Iran (NYT)

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 12:40 PM PST

Ronen Bergman in the New York Times Magazine writes a long and important article that brings us up to date with what Israeli leaders are thinking with respect to a nuclear Iran. Some excerpts:

"From our point of view," Barak said, "a nuclear state offers an entirely different kind of protection to its proxies. Imagine if we enter another military confrontation with Hezbollah, which has over 50,000 rockets that threaten the whole area of Israel, including several thousand that can reach Tel Aviv. A nuclear Iran announces that an attack on Hezbollah is tantamount to an attack on Iran. We would not necessarily give up on it, but it would definitely restrict our range of operations."

At that point Barak leaned forward and said with the utmost solemnity: "And if a nuclear Iran covets and occupies some gulf state, who will liberate it? The bottom line is that we must deal with the problem now."

He warned that no more than one year remains to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weaponry. This is because it is close to entering its "immunity zone" — a term coined by Barak that refers to the point when Iran's accumulated know-how, raw materials, experience and equipment (as well as the distribution of materials among its underground facilities) — will be such that an attack could not derail the nuclear project. Israel estimates that Iran's nuclear program is about nine months away from being able to withstand an Israeli attack; America, with its superior firepower, has a time frame of 15 months. In either case, they are presented with a very narrow window of opportunity. One very senior Israeli security source told me: "The Americans tell us there is time, and we tell them that they only have about six to nine months more than we do and that therefore the sanctions have to be brought to a culmination now, in order to exhaust that track."

...In the end, a successful attack would not eliminate the knowledge possessed by the project's scientists, and it is possible that Iran, with its highly developed technological infrastructure, would be able to rebuild the damaged or wrecked sites. What is more, unlike Syria, which did not respond after the destruction of its reactor in 2007, Iran has openly declared that it would strike back ferociously if attacked. Iran has hundreds of Shahab missiles armed with warheads that can reach Israel, and it could harness Hezbollah to strike at Israeli communities with its 50,000 rockets, some of which can hit Tel Aviv. (Hamas in Gaza, which is also supported by Iran, might also fire a considerable number of rockets on Israeli cities.) According to Israeli intelligence, Iran and Hezbollah have also planted roughly 40 terrorist sleeper cells across the globe, ready to hit Israeli and Jewish targets if Iran deems it necessary to retaliate. And if Israel responded to a Hezbollah bombardment against Lebanese targets, Syria may feel compelled to begin operations against Israel, leading to a full-scale war. On top of all this, Tehran has already threatened to close off the Persian Gulf to shipping, which would generate a devastating ripple through the world economy as a consequence of the rise in the price of oil.

The proponents of an attack argue that the problems delineated above, including missiles from Iran and Lebanon and terror attacks abroad, are ones Israel will have to deal with regardless of whether it attacks Iran now — and if Iran goes nuclear, dealing with these problems will become far more difficult.

...After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that. Instead there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear — rooted in the sense that Israel is dependent on the tacit support of other nations to survive — and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.

An insult to American Jews?

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 11:10 AM PST

Last month, there was a big kerfuffle over some ads created by Israel's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption that were meant to encourage Israeli expats in America to return. The ads were a bit heavy-handed, but the reaction of anger was explosive.

Jeffrey Goldberg started it off with saying "I don't think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads." The Jewish Federations of North America said it was an "outrageous and insulting message." Abraham Foxman called them "demeaning." The ministry pulled the campaign because of all the publicity.

Now, an Israeli TV show (Eretz Nehederet) is lampooning American Jews as buffoons, taking aim at Jews who go to Israel on Taglit/Birthright trips. (Sorry, no English subtitles.)



While it is true that the first "insult" was from the Israeli government, and the second is on a humorous TV show, will American Jews get all upset over the skit in Eretz Nehederet? Is it an obvious "demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews"?

Is being insulted a function of the source, the content - or the observer?

For the record, I do not find either video to be insulting, and the Eretz Nehederet one is pretty funny in that black humor way that Israelis enjoy. The spoof doesn't make me think any less of Birthright.

Both of them contain a grain of truth that is hurtful to some - generally those who need to think a little harder about their own Jewish and Zionist identities.

The Arab-Jewish coexistence that the Left doesn't want you to see

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 09:45 AM PST

If coexistence is a good thing, why don't you ever hear about this?
At Barkan Industrial Zone near Ariel, the biggest Jewish town in the northern West Bank, Palestinian workers at a plastics factory say they prefer to work with the Israelis because they get paid double than what they would make working for a Palestinian employers.

"We don't talk politics. I come to here work," machinist Ramadan Islim from nearby Salfit tells The Media Line. "We work together and for the five years I've been here there haven't been any problems. What happens outside of the factory is the business of the politicians. We are here to work. We have a home and family to support."

Yehuda Cohen, the plant's manager, says he moved his factory here from near Tel Aviv because he needed the space. He adds that that the government did not offer him any incentives despite promises.

"After I came here, I can say that the Palestinian workers are the best workers that I can find in Israel," Cohen tells The Media Line.
A lot of people who call themselves liberal would prefer to see Ramadan Islim unemployed rather than work happily in a Jewish-owned factory in Samaria.

A lot of people who call themselves liberal would prefer to see Ramadan Islim and Yehuda Cohen hating each other to justify their own political opinions and demands.

A lot of people who call themselves liberal are anything but.

(h/t Ian)

Two Oscar foreign language nominations have Jewish themes

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 08:20 AM PST

Two of the Academy nominees for Best Foreign Language Film have Jewish themes.

One of them is "In Darkness," from Poland:

From acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland, In Darkness is based on a true story. Leopold Socha, a sewer worker and petty thief in Lvov, a Nazi occupied city in Poland, one day encounters a group of Jews trying to escape the liquidation of the ghetto. He hides them for money in the labyrinth of the town's sewers beneath the bustling activity of the city above. What starts out as a straightforward and cynical business arrangement turns into something very unexpected, the unlikely alliance between Socha and the Jews as the enterprise seeps deeper into Socha's conscience. The film is also an extraordinary story of survival as these men, women and children all try to outwit certain death during 14 months of ever increasing and intense danger.



The other is Footnote, from Israel:

Footnote is the story of a great rivalry between a father and son. Both eccentric professors have dedicated their lives to their work [in the Talmud department at Hebrew University.] The father seems a stubborn purist who fears the establishment. His son, Uriel, appears to strive on accolades, endlessly seeking recognition.

But one day, the tables turn. The two men switch places when the father learns he is to be awarded the most valuable honour one can receive. His desperate need for recognition is betrayed, his vanity exposed. Uriel is torn between pride and envy. Will he sabotage his father's glory?

Footnote is the story of insane competition, the admiration and envy for a role model, bringing father and son to a final, bitter confrontation.




It looks like the favorite to win though is the Iranian film "A Separation."

How the EU should treat UNRWA - if it wants "peace and stability"

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST

From UNRWA:
The European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Filippo Grandi, signed today at UNRWA's Gaza Training Centre a € 55.4 million financing agreement towards the Agency's General Fund.

The EU High Representative Catherine Ashton said during her visit [to Gaza] that "the continued EU support to UNRWA is an essential element of the EU strategy to bring peace and stability to the region. The € 55.4 million contribution we are signing today represents our ongoing commitment to Palestine refugees.
If the EU wants to bring peace and stability to the region, it would not support UNRWA.

UNWRA was meant to be a temporary agency with the purpose of helping provide short-term relief services to Palestine refugees (both Arabs and Jews) while encouraging resettlement in their new countries via works programs (the W of UNRWA.) Arab countries refused to allow the resettlement of the Palestinian Arabs in their countries - something that the oft-cited UNGA 194 mentions as a goal of the UN Conciliation Committee for Palestine - and as a result the works programs vanished, leaving a sizable population kept miserable as part of six decades of pan-Arab policy on permanent UNRWA welfare.

UNRWA's definition of "refugee," that Ashton sickeningly accepts, includes both people who have citizenship and people who are already resident in British Mandate Palestine, which flies against every normal definition of refugee used anywhere else. Adding them up and you see that 80% of the so-called refugees aren't refugees - even if you allow for the definition to include descendants until the end of time, as UNRWA jarringly does.

If the EU really wanted to bring "peace and stability" to the region, it would insist that the UNRWA definition of "refugee" be changed to be more in alignment with that of the Refugee Convention of 1951, amended in 1967. In a couple of years, most of the "refugees" would disappear. Then, change the mandate of UNRWA back to its original intention.

Rather than enabling a UN agency whose current policies do not even allow for any refugees to lose that status, the EU should pressure the host countries to integrate and naturalize Palestinian Arabs who have lived there for decades, if they so desire. A five year plan should be made to phase out UNRWA altogether, and to move its ever-increasing budget to the host countries to allow them to build permanent communities to replace the camps.

That would represent human rights. That would help the cause of peace. And that is what the EU should be doing.

(h/t Dan)

What's under the abaya? Sometimes, nothing.

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 05:50 AM PST

From Bikya Masr:
Kuwaiti police have reportedly arrested three women for not wearing any clothes underneath their abayas at a cafe in the Salmiya commercial complex, the al-Rai daily newspaper reported.

Two of the women were from Gulf countries and are not Kuwaiti, police sources said.

The report said that a local boy told his mother that he had seen one of their naked bodies. The mother then called the police and they were arrested.

The newspaper added that the women, one of whom was a minor – allegedly told police that they had just had sex in an apartment, consumed alcohol and "had become drunk." They had then gone to the cafe afterwards.

Police reported to have phoned the father of the two GCC girls, but he said he could not come to Kuwait as he was busy. The girls have been referred to the Criminal Investigations Department.

According to Marwa Tarek, a women's rights activist and blogger in Kuwait, the women could face a number of criminal charges, especially if they are accused of being lesbians.

"The crime and penalty for being gay is not a nice one here and they could be facing years in prison if the accusations they had consensual sex are proven true," she told Bikyamasr.com.

Tarek said that she questions how the boy saw any of them naked, as the abaya usually covers the entirety of the body and is difficult to see through.

"The boy was probably peeking underneath and then told his mother. It is the boy who should be in trouble, not the three women who did nothing wrong except be in public. I know a lot of women who often wear nothing underneath their abaya because it is so hot and nobody can see," she added.

Remember this old controversial commercial featuring a 15-year old Brooke Shields?



I don't know how smart it is for a women's rights activist to tell Arab men that sometimes there is nothing underneath an abaya. Arab harassment of covered women was already sky-high.



(h/t CHA)

"Palestinians trying to derail peace talks with Israel" (The Telegraph)

Posted: 25 Jan 2012 02:34 AM PST

From Con Coughlin in The Telegraph:

Most people in the West believe the main reason the talks are not going anywhere is because of Israel's refusal to compromise on its settlement building programme. But while the Netanyahu government's insistence on building settlements is certainly an obstacle, I am told by Western diplomats close to the exploratory talks that are currently taking place in Jordan between the two sides that the real reason they are running into difficulty is because the Palestinian delegation, led by the veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, is refusing to take the talks seriously.

For example, I am told by a Western diplomat working for the Quartet that when the Israeli delegation arrived for a meeting last weekend in Amman, the Jordanian capital, to present their latest security proposals, Mr Erekat simply refused to enter the room.

My man in the Jordan conference room says that he was surprised at Mr Erekat's behaviour, especially as the topic under discussion was supposed to be one of the two main topics the Palestinian delegation wanted on the agenda for the Jordan talks, which are a precursor for the more formal talks that are supposed to take place once both sides have agreed a negotiating framework.

Mr Erekat's refusal to enter the negotiating room and hear what the Israelis had to say does not bode well for the Quartet's attempts to get the two sides to resume full negotiations, and raises questions about just how serious the Palestinians are about getting a peace deal. With Israel feeling increasingly isolated as world attention focuses on the fall-out from the recent revolts in Libya, Egypt and Syria, there is a growing suspicion among Western diplomats that the Palestinians are working on the basis that, if they draw out the process, they will be able to strike a better deal with Israel.

If that is the case, then they are badly mistaken. The real enemy in the Middle East today is Iran, not Israel, and by playing into the hands of Islamist militants who seek Israel's destruction, the Palestinians could see their cause being overtaken by a far greater regional conflict.

I have previously shown that the Arabic press is saying the same thing, that the Palestinian Arabs never had any intent to negotiate seriously with Israel during this round of talks in Amman and instead have been planning their diplomatic and legal offensive against Israel.

Their lack of good faith has been clear from even before the start of these current talks, as they fought against the Quartet to even do these cosmetic negotiations since September.

(h/t P)

UPDATE: Abbas just said that he does not want to continue the Amman talks, trying (as usual) to blame Israel.
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