יום חמישי, 2 בפברואר 2012

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Disgusting BBC piece sympathizing with a child-killer terrorist

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 06:44 PM PST

The BBC's idea of a hero:
A two-bed flat not far from the cornice in Qatar's capital, Doha, is now home for 47-year-old Ibrahim Shammasina from Ramallah.

His new living room is twice as large as the cell in the Israeli jail where he spent 19 years.

"A minute of freedom is worth more than all the possessions in the world," says Shammasina. "Prison, it's a grave - as if you're in a grave but still alive."

Shammasina was sentenced to 23 years in jail for his role in the 1990 murder of three Israelis and a further 20 years for planning a kidnapping. Despite spending almost half his life in prison, he does not regret his actions.

"When there is an occupation, you're forced to," he says. "It's your duty, the duty of every Palestinian, to resist the occupation. If I didn't resist, I would just have surrendered."

Out of one of the bedrooms steps Ibrahim's frail 85-year-old mother, Tamam. While he was in prison, Ibrahim's brother, father and wife all died.

His mother, who peppers every sentence by giving thanks to God, could not see her son for years.

Understandably, she has now decided to come to Qatar to be with him.

Despite the time they spent apart, she supports what he did.

"No, I don't regret it. I don't regret it," she says simply.

Also visiting Shammasina for a few weeks is one of his two sons, 24-year-old Iyad.

His father has been in prison for most of his life, but he says that he does not feel any anger towards him, although they do not have a typical relationship.

"He's more my friend than my dad," says Iyad.
The BBC allows Shammasina to talk about how horrible prison is, how wonderful freedom is, and how important resistance is. It describes how heartbroken his mother is, how he is trying to rebuild his family, and how tragic it is that his brother, father and wife all died while he was imprisoned. The entire is designed to make the reader sympathize with him and with the tribulations he has had to endure.

But it doesn't say a word about his victims.

Who did Shammasina kill?

Lior Tubul and Ronen Karmani, were both seventeen years old (some reports say Ronen was 18.) On a summer day in 1990, they went to visit their girlfriends north of Jerusalem.

Shammasina abducted them, bound their hands behind their backs, gagged them and then stabbed them dozens of times, so that their faces were unrecognizable. They were dumped in a ravine nearby.

This subhuman scum was also involved in murdering a taxi driver, Rafi Doron, as well as abducting and killing a hitchhiking soldier, Yehoshua Friedberg.

This happened during that non-violent first intifada we hear so much about.

This is the monster - and child-killer - that the BBC is asking its readers to sympathize with.

(h/t IranAware)

Erdogan freaks over an American author's refusal to visit

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 02:00 PM PST

From NYT:

The publication in Turkey of a new work by Paul Auster — even before it is released in the United States — would seem to be a cause for celebration there. But instead it has provoked a war of words between Mr. Auster, who has used the occasion to call attention to human rights violations in that country, and the Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, who mocked the author as "an ignorant man."
The dust-up began when Mr. Auster gave an interview to the daily newspaper Hürriyet in Turkey, where his book "Winter Journal" has recently been published. Mr. Auster said he would not visit the country "because of imprisoned journalists and writers."
"How many are jailed now?" Mr. Auster said in the interview. "Over 100?"
That elicited a strong if not especially concerned reply from Mr. Erdogan on Tuesday at a meeting of his AK Party in Ankara, Reuters reported.
"If you come, so what?" Mr. Erdogan said. "If you don't come, so what? Will Turkey lose prestige?"
Well, until Erdogan went nuts over this issue, hardly anyone would have even known about this. In one fell swoop, Erdogan managed to make Auster a much more famous author and simultaneously made himself look like a petty child.

But he didn't end there:
Mr. Erdogan went on to criticize Mr. Auster for having previously visited Israel, saying: ""Supposedly Israel is a democratic, secular country, a country where freedom of expression and individual rights and freedoms are limitless. What an ignorant man you are. Aren't these the ones that rained bombs down on Gaza? The ones that launched phosphorus bombs and used chemical weapons. How can you not see this?"
 Auster answered:
Whatever the Prime Minister might think about the state of Israel, the fact is that free speech exists there and no writers or journalists are in jail. According to the latest numbers gathered by International PEN, there are nearly one hundred writers imprisoned in Turkey, not to speak of independent publishers such as Ragip Zarakolu, whose case is being closely watched by PEN Centers around the world. All countries are flawed and beset by myriad problems, Mr. Prime Minister, including my United States, including your Turkey, and it is my firm conviction that in order to improve conditions in our countries, in every country, the freedom to speak and publish without censorship or the threat of imprisonment is a sacred right for all men and women.

How many universities worldwide have "American Day"?

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 12:55 PM PST

The University of Haifa did, on January 19:


I was curious if I could find any other university worldwide that ever had an American Day.

I found only one: Hebrew University, last March.

Can you imagine a scene like this in any European university, or in any other Middle East country?

Here is video from the US Ambassador to Israel on his trip to Haifa, including this event and visits to GE Health Israel (where they manufacture ultrasound equipment) and a science museum.



This is one part of Israel that the anti-Israel crowd doesn't want you to see. Israelis love America. They don't resent it, they aren't jealous of it, they don't take it for granted - they simply love America.

And the feeling is mutual - even though a small but noisy bunch of haters try their hardest to change that.

Jimmy Carter says a couple of Iranian nuclear bombs is no big deal

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 11:40 AM PST

How immoral can a Nobel Peace Prize winner be?

From Time Magazine, behind paywall, quoted in Huffington Post:

Well, of course, the religious leaders of Iran have sworn on their word of honor that they're not going to manufacture nuclear weapons. If they are lying, then I don't see that as a major catastrophe because they'll only have one or two military weapons. Israel probably has 300 or so.

Only slightly less outrageous: Noam Sheizaf at +972mag -one of the intended victims of any Iranian bomb - shows this same quote from Carter. His takeaway fact is that - warmongering Israel has 300 nuclear weapons, seemingly confirmed as "probably" by an ex-president who hasn't seen any intelligence reports for over three decades.

(h/t Ian)

Fake photo of soldier stepping on girl goes viral (UPDATED)

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 11:00 AM PST

YNet Hebrew notes that Facebook and other social media is awash with copies of this image, often with a caption claiming that this is an IDF soldier stepping on a Palestinian Arab girl:


YNet traced it back to a Twitter image from June, but that one was captioned as if it happened in Syria.

There are thousands of copies throughout the Internet.

Israeli site Tazpit noted it in June, and did some basic research:
The soldier in the photo appears to be holding a Kalashnikov AK47 which is not used by the Israeli army, but used often by the Palestinian police forces and terror organizations. The IDF is known for using M16 and M4 weapons, and its uniforms are different from the soldier's uniform that appears on the photo.

The Israeli Governmental Advertising Agency told "Tazpit" earlier today: "the photo has been checked by the IDF Spokesperson and after investigating, it seems that the photo is not authentic and that the soldier is not Israeli. Unfortunately, the use of such photos is a known method, trying to harm Israel's image on the internet and is part of the social networks war of information".
I don't think it is from Syria. This looks completely staged. It might even have been some street theater.

Daled Amos discussed this photo last year.

(h/t Dan)

UPDATE: A funny spoof:

Pun/phrase untranslatable without a lot of explanation, sorry.

(h/t Kramerica)

UPDATE 2: Tweeter Michal found the originals - and as I suspected, they were done as street theater, apparently in Bahrain, in December 2009 during celebration of the holiday of the 9th of Muharram:

Mahmoud Abbas' jihad against InLightPress newspaper

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 09:45 AM PST

Over the past few days, Challah Hu Akbar at Israellycool has been documenting a remarkable attack on a Palestinian Arab newspaper, apparently ordered by Mahmoud Abbas himself, after it published some articles critical of him.

The site, InLightPress, suffered from a DDoS attack that the paper said been orchestrated by the PA government and authorized by Abbas personally.

A couple of journalists have also been arrested by the PA in recent days.

InLightPress is down as of this writing, and this time it looks like a more traditional hacking attack rather than a denial of service.

Fears of Syrian chemical weapons going to Hezbollah

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 08:35 AM PST

From Israel HaYom:
The transfer of chemical weapons from Syria to Hezbollah would be tantamount to a declaration of war, a senior defense official said on Tuesday, adding that Israel would not accept such a move and would act to prevent it.

In light of the recent events unfolding in Syria, Israeli officials are concerned the regime may try to transfer its advanced weapons – including non-conventional weapons – to the Lebanese-based terrorist organization Hezbollah.

Syria has transferred advanced weapons to Hezbollah control in recent years, but the weapons have remained on Syrian soil in accordance with Assad's instructions, to avoid their possible destruction by Israel. With the increasing belief that Assad's rule is expected to end in the near future, some analysts have warned he may decide to transfer arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The delivery could include a large number of long-range missiles, advanced anti-aircraft systems that could threaten Israel Air Force flights in the north, and chemical weapons.

Syria is believed to possess the world's largest stockpile of chemical weapons, including some of the deadliest chemical agents known, such as sarin and the nerve agent VX. Their chemical agents have already been integrated in warheads mounted on advanced Scud missiles.

The weapons are currently under the tight supervision of military forces loyal to Assad, but may be transferred to Hezbollah – possibly even at Iran's behest – because Lebanon is currently perceived as more stable than Syria. "We are seeing a paradoxical process unfold, in which Syria is undergoing a process of 'Lebanonization' and vice versa," said the senior Israeli defense official. "Syria, which was an island of stability in the past is now being torn apart by military clashes. Lebanon is now perceived as being the more stable of the two," the official added.

For Israel, the transfer of such weapons – and especially chemical weapons – to Hezbollah would be crossing a red line. The senior official said such a situation would be tantamount to "a declaration of war." Unlike Syria, whose weapons are mainly a deterrent, "Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that is much less predictable and cannot be allowed to entertain itself with unconventional weapons," the official said.
Jane's reported in 2003 that Syria had 100 long range ballistic missiles with VX warheads aimed at Israel.

(h/t Yoel)

Gaza children protest Hamas and Fatah

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 06:10 AM PST


A group of children held a press conference in Gaza yesterday, saying that they will lead marches against the division between Fatah and Hamas.

They claimed that there are some 30,000 children in the territories who are being exploited for labor, being underpaid, and often forced out of school. 32 of the tunnel workers who have been killed in accidents were children. They complained that their exploitation is a violation of a number of international conventions and yet no one is trying to help them.

This might be related to the protests that are planned for 7 PM today where disgruntled Palestinian Arabs plan to bang pots and pans from their homes to protest the division. In both cases, the protests are smartly designed to be difficult to be stopped by the authorities.

It is too early to tell, but this might be the beginning of the Palestinian Arab version of the Arab Spring.

LA Jewish Journal supports fake Gaza children's art exhibit

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 04:15 AM PST

Last September, there was a controversy over the Oakland Museum of Children's Art canceling an exhibit of artwork supposedly drawn by Gazan children.

At the time, I brought some evidence that the artwork was not conceived, or in some cases even drawn, by children at all. Commenters with art backgrounds generally agreed that these were not the works of children. Additionally, the lack of any names on the artwork itself, and the sponsors not publicizing the names of the artists themselves, is more than a little fishy - where else is art shown without publicizing the name of the artist?

But the organizers pushed on, finding other venues. And now the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles is supporting them, in an article called "Who's afraid of children's art"?

[The controversy] about the situation in Oakland caught the eye of Jordan Elgrably, an Arab Jew and one of the co-founders of the Levantine Center in Los Angeles. "I said, 'Well, what are people really afraid of?' " Elgrably said recently, speaking on the phone from the park, his children at play a few feet away. "This is kids, and it's from their experience. It's searing; it's real. We should host this."

Around the same time Elgrably was contemplating Walker's op-ed, an e-mail from MECA, the organizers of the failed Oakland exhibition, popped into the in-box of Amani Jabsheh, a Los Angeles-based peace activist. MECA was looking for places to show the work around the country, and they needed help. Jabsheh knew she had to do something. "When I saw what they painted — that's their reality. I want people to see how the children suffer there under the occupation."

According to Jabsheh, it was Rachel Corrie, a young American woman who was killed while protesting in front of an Israeli bulldozer, who inspired her to get involved in promoting peace in the Middle East. She saw what Corrie had done and thought to herself that if someone like Corrie, who shared no background with Palestinians, was getting involved, she couldn't sit on the sidelines. "She was not Muslim, she couldn't speak the language, you know, [had] nothing [in common] with us, and since that time, I've felt an obligation as a human being to do my part," Jabsheh said.

Jabsheh wrote back to the organizers and MECA, and they put her in touch with another woman in Los Angeles who had also contacted them, Dara Wells-Hajjar. When Jabsheh and Wells-Hajjar connected, they realized that they'd both worked with the Levantine Cultural Center and that it would be the perfect place to stage the exhibition.

Elgrably agreed. "For a decade now, we've been championing a greater understanding of the Middle East and North Africa by presenting arts and educational programs that really attempt to bridge political and religious divides," he said of the Levantine Center.
To think that an exhibit like this promotes peace is more than a stretch. Many of the drawings promote hate; for example there are multiple drawings showing mosques engulfed in flame with Israeli aircraft and tanks nearby.



That last drawing, as I have shown, is a direct copy of a famous poster by anti-semitic artist Latuff, down to the path of the rocket.

Many others do not reflect any reality that children in Gaza would have witnessed. They seem to more reflect Western Israel-haters' ideas of what the children should be drawing.



No reputable museum would show an exhibit without proving the provenance of the artwork. Fake pathos should not replace the truth. Any venue for this exhibit has the responsibility to determine who drew these pictures and under what circumstances.

Because this is not art - it is propaganda. And chances are pretty good that it is a hoax as well.

Turkey's seeming correction (Zvi)

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 01:33 AM PST

Zvi comments on this post:
Well, you know, when your (meaning Erdogan's) shiny-new Arabist foreign policy blows itself to smithereens in the most spectacular manner possible,

And when you realize that some of the Europeans that you spurned are now voting to condemn you for the genocidal rampage that your country has always refused to acknowledge, and you've realized that threatening them just makes Europeans think that you're an idiot,

And when you realize that even the irrevocably anti-Israel UN supports the legality of the Gaza blockade that you insisted was illegal,

And when you realize that the Israelis whom you stabbed in the back immediately discovered the most promising energy bonanza in the eastern Mediterranean, and when this rapidly brings Israel together with Cyprus, partly because you gave up your influence with Jerusalem when you stabbed Israel in the back,

And when you realize that your "great friend" al-Assad is courting the PKK again,

And when you realize that your new buddies the Iranians are "smuggling weapons to terrorists through your soil" ... without your approval,

And when you realize that your new "friends" the Russians simply won't listen to you, and are going to protect their old friends in Damascus, the ones who are feeding the PKK,

And when you think about it honestly and realize that because you threw all of your reliable, sophisticated, influential friends under the bus, YOU HAVE NO RELIABLE AND INFLUENTIAL FRIENDS LEFT AT ALL,

Well, you really must start thinking "maybe I'd better start picking my battles." Certainly, hosting the overtly genocidal Hamas terror group would piss off not only the US but the EU. Not to mention certain Gulf Arab regimes who view anything connected with Iran, Syria OR the Muslim Brotherhood as poison.

So you (Erdogan) try to turn down the temperature on the completely unnecessary fights that you started in order to get "in" with the crowd that is now self destructing. After all, you don't need yet another diplomatic train-wreck to your credit, do you?

Maybe you (Erdogan) start courting the poor, stupid, forgiving Jews who used to stand up for you - yeah, we're very stupid and very forgiving - the Jews whom you stabbed in the back. You show "Shoah" on a TV station and hope that everyone will get all excited by this "signal" and forget about "Valley of the Wolves." You put out press about how you held Holocaust Remembrance Day events, and hope that everybody will forget about the Armenians. You say that hosting Hamas is "out of the question" and hope that everyone will forget your warm cuddles and diplomatic cover for Hamas in the very recent past. You blast Russia for its support for the Syrian regime, and hope that everyone will forget your own snuggles with al-Assad only a year before. You hem and haw after an earthquake and accept only a tiny portion of the assistance that Israel offered, and hope that your voters care more about burning Israeli flags than they care about freezing Turks.

Not to mention that you (meaning Erdogan) accepted the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize scant months before that vile dictator's people rose up and extinguished him. THAT one is a "must" for the "Most Epic Fails" album. You (Erdogan) wish that you could forget about that one yourself.

But Erdogan has not decided to make peace with Israel. He's not going to do that. Attacking Israel is too ingrained in many within his party, and his support for a bunch of psychopaths on the Mavi M. has left him no line of retreat without completely humiliating himself and his country (more than he already has, that is). The right-wing Islamist ideologues within his AKP remain vehemently anti-Semitic.

Erdogan has stopped throwing fuel on the bonfire, but he has not put it out, and I see very little likelihood that he will do so. If the Turkish people have any sense, they will evict the AKP and its disasters from office in the next elections. But I don't see that as a very likely possibility.
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