יום שבת, 24 במרץ 2012

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

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Weekend links

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 12:08 PM PDT

Nutty Syrian conspiracy theory of the day: Soccer star sending secret signals to Syrian smugglers

No Islamists Here: Media Buries Motive on Toulouse by David Gerstman at PJMedia

On the same topic, Removing All Traces of Islamist Terror from Toulouse Shootings at Commentary

Plus, Mohammed Merah in a photo-op with French politicians.

Lebanon's Shi'ite Amal party says it detects Zionist hands in Syrian and Iraqi car bombs. Of course it does.

Some Moroccan MPs are very upset that this weekend's Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly in Rabat will host some Zionists. They say it is "heinous."

Paintballing with Hezbollah. Really.
At the very end of the evening, things take a chilling turn. The Boss walks over and takes Ben's gun away from him while criticizing his marksmanship. In an exemplary display, the Boss takes careful aim at a rope hanging on the other side of the arena and fires shot after shot, squarely hitting the rope each time while chanting Yahoud ("Jew") on each pull of the trigger. He seems to think it's funny, but no one else laughs.

International Incident of the Day

Egypt MP calls for end to women's right to divorce

And, of course, Israel saving the world again - with a potential cure for pancreatic and prostate cancer.

Have a great weekend and Chodesh Tov!

(h/t @cetypeestfou, @ZNovetsky, @ChallahHuAkbar)

UNRWA lies

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 10:33 AM PDT

At the same conference that Catherine Ashton made such an idiot of herself, an almost equally stupid statement - but really more of an outright lie - was given by UNRWA Commissioner General Filippo Grandi. UNRWA was the conference organizer.

Our introductory speakers - representing their governments and institutions, but also through their own personal commitment - are an impressive cross section of all those who support Palestine refugees, and are thus UNRWA's key stakeholders: the European Union, our largest collective donor; the Government of Belgium, whose support to Palestine refugees dates back to 1949; the Government of Jordan, host to the largest single Palestine refugee population; the League of Arab States, the refugees' main global and regional ally and advocate; and Foreign Minister Malki of the Palestinian Authority, who will speak today on behalf of President Abbas. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, I remind you, is UNRWA's key partner and counterpart in its role of representing all Palestinians and through its efforts to find a solution to the question of refugees.

UNRWA has not done a single thing to help find a solution to the "refugees" since they really were refugees, in the mid 1950s. Since then UNRWA has gone from being part of the solution into being part of the problem. While in the early 1950s, they tried to build works projects to rehabilitate the refugees and allow them to ease into the economies of their host countries, the completely gave up on that part of their mandate by 1960. Since then they have been following whatever Palestinian Arabs want them to do, mostly because 99% of their employees are Palestinian - who don't want to solve the problem that gives them a livelihood.

One small but telling episode occurred in 1958. On the occasion of United Nations Day, October 24th, UN posters were distributed in all the refugee camps. The posters showed the flags of all the world's nations – including Israel.

Jordan protested the inclusion of the flag of Israel on these posters. So UNRWA personnel were sent to all the camps to erase Israel's flag from each and every poster.

And to praise the PLO as wanting to solve the refugee problem is to praise the PLO for wanting to destroy Israel, because that is exactly how they intend to solve the problem - by misreading UNGA 194 as if it means that Israel must accept millions of artificially-defined "refugees." It doesn't.

UNRWA could help solve the problem by putting their definition of "refugee" in line with that of UNHCR. Because then some 80% of the so-called "refugees' would disappear immediately even if you still believe that descendants of refugees are refugees themselves.

But they won't do that - because they don't want to solve the problem at all.

Latest Latma

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 09:21 AM PDT

A pretty good one:

The best referee in soccer history may be an Israeli

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 08:35 AM PDT

An 8,000 word article in The Guardian about legendary football referee Abraham Klein:

Abraham Klein had his hands in his pockets. He was 36 years old and about to referee his first World Cup game. To one side stood Pele, Carlos Alberto, Rivelino and Jairzinho; to the other Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Geoff Hurst and Gordon Banks. This was the grandest game, between the favourites Brazil and the holders England; the final before the final. The referee was an unknown Israeli. One report said that appointing him was "like sending a boy scout to Vietnam".

Klein trusted his ability; so did Fifa. But anybody with an anima would have been nervous. He had refereed international games before. Only five of them, though, none anywhere near this stratosphere. This was a football opera, and his hands were trembling like a violin string. It gave a whole new meaning to the pre-match handshake. "I was very nervous," he says. "My hands were shaking, so I put them in my pockets. I did not want the players to see how my hands were moving. Then I took them out and I decided to be strong in my body and in my hand." He met both captains with an unyielding handshake, looked left and right and blew the whistle for the start of the match. His life had just taken an almighty fork in the road.

....Timisoara is often described as the most beautiful city in Romania. A piece in this paper spoke of its "bold, age-worn architecture", "handsome, cracked grandeur" and "wealth of genuinely grand Habsburg buildings". This gallery shows that your retinas could do a lot worse. Yet sometimes beauty is in the mind's eye of the beholder. There is no beauty for Abraham Klein. Timisoara is where he was born and spent his first 13 years, six of them during the second world war. "My memories from that city are so bad that when I was in Romania as a Uefa observer two or three times they ask me if I want to go to Timosara to see my city," he says. "I told them, 'I don't want to go'. What I remember, I don't want to remember again."

Klein eventually escaped Timisoara, one of 500 children who were put on a train to Holland. "My mother was still alive," he says. "Many of my family were killed in Auschwitz, in the concentration camps. My father was lucky that he left Romania in 1937 before the war starts. When the war starts it was impossible to leave the country with my mother. For five years it was very difficult for us. My mother had six sisters; we lived with them and the parents in two rooms. The situation was not the best." It's so far beyond our comprehension that there's no point even trying to empathise.

The article describes the superhuman efforts Klein would use to prepare for his games - learning the local language, scouting the teams, getting newspaper clippings, even mountain climbing to get used to the altitude before a game in Mexico City.
Abraham Klein arrived in Guadalajara in late May 1970. For the next two weeks, he ignored the not inconsiderable temptations of a fascinating city, and concentrated on his usual preparation. "I didn't leave my hotel for two weeks, even for one day, to see the city," he says. "I didn't see the city at all, only the hotel and the stadium. I want to concentrate only on the game. I know that I cannot have a bad game. It was very important for me because I know that, coming from a small country, I have a big responsibility to the Fifa members who appointed me to the game. Later I ask Sir Stanley Rous or Ken Aston (the Fifa president and chairman of the referees' committee, respectively) why they chose me. I was a very young referee with no experience, only five international games. Aston always told me: we trust you, you are honest, you make good impression and you are in good physical condition."

Klein wasn't plucked out of thin air; he was picked because he could cope with thin air. He had shown that during the Mexico Olympics in 1968, and Fifa knew he was fit enough to cope with Mexico's oppressive heat. England's Terry Cooper would lose 12 pounds in the match. For Klein it was squeaky-bum time in more ways than one. He still had the problem of being perceived as the boy scout in 'Nam. The players of Brazil and England did not know who he was. "In the first moment, they look me: 'Who is standing here in the middle of the field?' They knew nothing about me. I try from the first moment to respect the players; I look their eyes. A little later during the game they understood that they must also respect my refereeing."

He controlled the game calmly from the first whistle. It flowed gracefully from end to end, a festival of goodwill and mutual respect, and is still one of the World Cup's iconic contests. "A referee is feeling during the game and after the game, how is he refereeing, how is his performance. If you make a mistake, you alone know immediately. You feel it: you feel it because of the behaviour of the player, you feel it when you watch the coach. I'm not talking about [José] Mourinho; he always protests against the referees. You have some coaches who you respect. If they wave their hands once every 10 years you think about it. But I feel very good in that Brazil/England game."

...The letter cut straight to the point. It was written in 1995 by Ken Aston, the former chairman of the Fifa Referees' Committee, and addressed to Klein.

"Thanks you for your book … It is a great shame that you made a great mistake in your refereeing career. A very serious mistake which you could never recover, and one which everyone connected with the appointment of referees at international level remembered. And what you ask was this great and serious mistake? Simply that you were an Israeli. I must tell you that had I still been chairman of the Fifa Referees' Committee in 1982, you would without any doubt have been carrying the whistle and not the flag. I was happy to have been able to support you throughout your career simply because you deserve such support."
Politics cost Klein the World Cup final in 1978 (and perhaps 1982), a place in the 1974 tournament, and permeated his career. There was, at first, a mistrust of a referee from a small league, although that kind of prejudice was the least of Klein's worries. In 1981, when he went to French Guiana as part of the Fifa Coca-Cola Project, he was originally refused admission because Israelis were not allowed. When the rest of the Fifa party said they would get on the first return flight unless Klein was allowed in, the authorities relented. Far more damagingly, the Munich massacre of 1972, in which members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and killed, meant it was not safe for Klein to go to West Germany for the World Cup two years later.

...Argentina needed to beat Italy to stay in Buenos Aires for the second group stage. In his History of the World Cup, Cris Freddi said that Argentina's "excesses were kept in check by the best referee in the world". Italy won 1-0. "The crowd were very upset. I had no problem with the players; they respect me. The crowd, you know, they pay and when they pay they can tell you whatever they think about you and your mother."

Klein turned down a couple of penalty appeals just before the break, which led to vicious abuse either side of half-time. This time his hands were not in his pockets. He strode off the pitch knowing he had made the right decisions, a proud monument of conviction and moral courage. "When I'm on the pitch, only two things are important to me: being fair to both teams and making my decisions bravely," he told Simon Kuper in Ajax, The Dutch, The War. "I think all referees are fair, but not all of them are brave, probably."

He looked the beast in the eye and did not blink. "There was nothing more impressive in this World Cup," wrote Brian Glanville, "than the way he stood between his linesmen at half-time in the Argentina-Italy game, scorning the banshee whistling of the incensed crowd."

This is not to say Klein was entirely unaffected by the abuse. He is human and he needs not to be hated. "The feeling is very bad," he says of his reaction at half-time. To avert a similar reception, he decided to delay his return on to the field. Instead of leading the players out, he let the Argentina players go first; his return was lost in the hero worship. It was an ingenious and highly successful manoeuvre.

"I felt stronger in the second half because I know all my decisions were correct. I feel very good with this. Even after the game, they told me, 'don't go out, the crowd is waiting for you'. I told them, 'I'm not afraid'. I was never afraid in my career. I know that the crowd will do nothing after the game. I was not afraid to do what a referee must do in the game. There was no problem."
...There is no arrogance, just pride and still, perhaps, a hint of incredulity at this unbelievable life. He does not need the validation of being called the best referee of all time. He gets validation every time he looks in his museum, or every time he flies to a different part of the world and is introduced as the man who refereed England v Brazil in 1970. It's enough to say that Klein was one of the greatest referees of all time. And that he has lived a life like no other.
I don't know much about soccer, but if you are a fan, print it out and read it at your leisure.
(h/t Raanana Gamer)

Censorship a priority for Egyptian telecom minister

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 07:23 AM PDT

From Egypt Independent:

The government is taking steps to completely block internet pornography in Egypt, according to Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology Mohamed Salem.

Salem announced Thursday that the National Telecommunications Regulation Authority will form a committee to lay out the technical methods for the control of adult websites, which he estimated to number in the millions. The censorship was also recently discussed in Parliament.

"Parliament will be represented in the committee. The issue is becoming persistent and worrying to families," said Salem in a briefing on the sidelines of a conference for people with special needs.
This seems to be in response from a call from both Islamist and liberal MPs last month.

If Egypt can block pornography on a national level, it can block anything it deems offensive. So this is not a morality issue - it is a censorship and freedom issue. It is expensive to install the proper equipment to block portions of the Internet to the entire country, and Egypt is strapped for cash.

Last January, Egypt shut down the Internet altogether for a few days in response to the revolution.

Ros-Lehtinen urges US to leave UNHRC

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 06:00 AM PDT

In 2009:
The U.N. Human Rights Council, since its inception in 2006, has called for restrictions on free speech and ignored blatant human rights abuses in a host of countries. It has passed five separate resolutions condemning Israel -- more resolutions than the total number it passed against all of the other 191 U.N. member states combined.

It counts among its members consistent human rights violators as China, Cuba, Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia.

And now the United States wants to become one of the organization's 47 members.

The Obama administration claims it can reform the "rights" body from the inside out. In a statement Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the administration will join the council to help make it more effective as part of President Obama's desire to create a "new era of engagement" with the international community.

"Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy," Clinton said. "With others, we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system to advance the vision of the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights."

Susan Rice that year said that the US would join the HRC to battle "the anti-Israel crap."

So from 2006 to 2009, the UNHRC passed five resolutions condemning Israel. How has it done since the US has chosen to reform it from within?

Last year it passed six anti-Israel resolutions This year it passed five more.

It doesn't look like this administration's plan to reform the UNHRC is working too well, does it?

From CNSNews:
The Obama administration should walk away from the U.N. Human Rights Council, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said Thursday after the body adopted a fresh batch of resolutions critical of Israel.
Wrapping up a month-long session in Geneva, the U.N.'s top human rights body passed one resolution condemning North Korea, two condemning Syria – and five condemning Israel. (Another resolution, relating to Burma, contained mildly critical elements.)

"Instead of running for re-election to the council, the U.S. should finally leave that rogues' gallery and seek credible alternative forums to advance human rights," Ros-Lehtinen said Thursday, after the HRC adopted the five Israel-related resolutions.

The council remained "as anti-Israel as ever," she said.

"Any limited, tactical gains made by U.S. engagement at the council are outweighed by the harm done through granting legitimacy to the fundamentally illegitimate body," Ros-Lehtinen argued. "The fact is that, with or without the U.S., the UNHRC remains dominated by rogue regimes who protect human rights abusers and target free democracies like Israel."

Work accident!

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 04:25 AM PDT

Ahmed, in his happy place
Hamas' "Brigades of the Martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam" announced the death of the young Alqitarawi Ahmed Ali, 24, during a "jihad mission." He was killed Thursday night, and the statement said that his death "came after a great and honorable career in jihad, after hard work and sacrifice and Jihad."

His nom de guerre was "Abu Muslim."

Alas, the announcement didn't give the details of his death - an explosion? Another jihadist shooting him? Hamas killing him because he watched porn?

We can only speculate and hope that many more such shining lights of jihad meet a similar fate in the near future.

(There was an explosion in the al-Maghazi camp yesterday that Israel denied having anything to do with, so that might be related [h/t T34] )

Hamas claiming credit now for fuel it never wanted

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 02:50 AM PDT

Fuel is now being pumped from Israel to Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing, and it is coming from an Israeli company Dor Alon and being paid for by the PA. This is being done despite strenuous efforts by Hamas over the past six weeks to not accept any fuel that comes via Israel.

Egyptian sources, however, say that the 450,000 liters being pumped today is being provided by Egypt, through Kerem Shalom. COGAT confirms that it is from Dor Alon, though.

Either way, the Gaza fuel crisis was entirely because of Hamas' refusal to accept fuel from Israel.

But now that the fuel is being pumped in exact opposition to the way Hamas tried to get it (via Rafah from Egypt without PA involvement), Hamas is taking full credit.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said "The contacts and meetings between the SPLM and the government continued with Egyptian officials on a daily basis around the clock, On this basis, it has informed us that our brothers the Egyptians will be pumping fuel to run the power plant, already today. Hamas praised the role of government officials, led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk, who played a special role with our brothers the Egyptians in this matter, stressing the movement continued efforts to provide a radical solution to the fuel crisis."

Even more cynically, Hamas is arranging for rallies by Gazans this afternoon to protest the fuel crisis, presumably so they direct their anger at the PA, Egypt, Israel or anyone else besides Hamas.

It cannot be stressed enough: Hamas caused this crisis, deliberately, in order to get Egypt to pump fuel through Rafah and to provide cheaper fuel that Hamas could tax and enrich its terror operations. All the suffering that Hamas residents went through was for Hamas political reasons.

There is one other lesson here. As soon as Gazans started being vocal about their displeasure with Hamas, Hamas caved. Even though Hamas pretends to be on the side of the "Arab Spring," the terror organization is just as frightened of a "Gaza Spring" as any Arab country, and Gaza residents have the power to scare the hell out of the Islamist terror dictators that run the Strip.
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