Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Freedom of expression, Palestinan Journalists Syndicate-style
Egyptian presidential race wide open
Some Hungarian anti-semitism
Former Jerusalem mufti says "don't visit Jerusalem"
Fatah member insults Hamas; says it supports Israel
Iran freaks out over Google Maps
Stumbling onto an Elder (open thread)
Biased Reuters article on UNRWA filled with lies
The Canadian madrassa that teaches hate of Jews

Freedom of expression, Palestinan Journalists Syndicate-style

Posted: 10 May 2012 08:44 PM PDT

A couple of days ago the New York Times has an adoring article about how Palestinian Arab journalists are paying a price for their desire to express themselves freely:

Yousef Shayeb, 37, a Palestinian journalist from Ramallah, published an article in a Jordanian newspaper this year charging officials at the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Paris with corruption and espionage. In an interview here last week, he said that he had imagined people might thank him for his exposé. Instead, he spent eight days in a Palestinian Authority jail.

Jamal Abu Raihan, a Palestinian blogger, has been in prison for three weeks, after he posted a satirical column lampooning the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as a donkey on a Facebook page he ran titled, "The people want an end to corruption."

And in recent months, on the orders of the attorney general, the authorities have tried to block Palestinians' access to a number of Web sites that officials said were supportive of Muhammad Dahlan, a onetime Gaza security chief and now a rival of Mr. Abbas.

As Palestinian journalists and activists, imbued with the spirit of the Arab Spring, become more daring and enamored with the possibilities of new media and social networking sites, the primary instinct of some in the Palestinian Authority has been to crack down.

But if you read past the initial paragraphs, you see something a little jarring:

Now Palestinian officials, journalists and bloggers are struggling to define the principles of freedom of expression and its boundaries, and to distinguish between legitimate criticism and defamation.

"We understand that we have a constructive power," said Nabhan Khraishi, the communications officer for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, "and on the other hand we have a destructive power that can be a catastrophe."

Isn't it a little unusual for a journalists' syndicate to talk about how their own people might be crossing the line into "defamation"? Usually they will argue for absolute (or nearly absolute) freedom of expression and let others advocate for limits on such freedoms.

Well, it turns out that the PJS is against freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. From JPost:

Any Palestinian journalists who meet with Israeli colleagues will be expelled from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in the West Bank, the group warned on Thursday.

The warning followed a meeting that took place last week between Israeli and Palestinian journalists on the occasion of World Free Press Day.

"We are opposed to such meetings because they are designed to achieve normalization with Israel," said a senior member of the journalists syndicate in Ramallah. "Any member who meets with Israeli journalists will be fired."

So in the end the leaders of the journalists themselves are the ones who are the most against freedom of expression! In fact, they are acting in ways that are indistinguishable from how the Arab dictators and despots they pretend to despise act.

Egyptian presidential race wide open

Posted: 10 May 2012 03:15 PM PDT

From Egypt Independent:

A poll on the popularity of presidential candidates conducted by the Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), a think-tank associated with the Egyptian Cabinet, showed that Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh led the presidential field, although nearly 40 percent said they were undecided.

According to the poll, Abouel Fotouh's 9 percent support was followed by Ahmed Shafiq who garnered 8 percent. Shafiq rose one rank as compared to a poll conducted by the IDSC in April.

The results of the poll, which was published Thursday said that Amr Moussa stood at 7 percent support, falling into third place. The Muslim Brotherhood's candidate Mohamed Morsy came fourth with 4 percent, while Hamdeen Sabbahi was fifth with 2 percent.

The poll said that the 39 percent are yet to decide on a candidate, down from 42 percent in April. Eight percent of people, meanwhile, said they would not participate in the election and 6 percent refused to name their candidate.

Fotouh is a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and who has garnered support from both secularists and from Salafists.

Shafiq was the last prime minister under Mubarak, making his second place showing a bit surprising in a country trying to remove the "remnants" of the Mubarak regime.

Amr Moussa is the former secretary general of the Arab League and had been considered the front-runner.

With such a small percentage of people supporting even the leading candidates, and so many undecided, this election can go to anyone.

Some Hungarian anti-semitism

Posted: 10 May 2012 12:45 PM PDT

I received two items today about Hungary.

The first incident:

Actor József Székhelyi had been invited to perform as part of a cultural event in Eger, but the city council decided (after the posters and programmes had been printed) to un-invite him because, as one councilwoman put it, he is a "Liberal, stinking Jew".

In reaction:

Israeli Ambassador Ilan Mor cancelled a planned visit to Eger to protest allegedly anti-Semitic remarks made against actor József Székhelyi by a Fidesz local councillor. Mor assured Székhelyi of his solidarity.

Mazsihisz and the Budapest Jewish Religious Community BZSH will hold an event to show solidarity with Székhelyi at Goldmark Hall near the Dohány utca synagogue in Budapest on Sunday evening.

And the second was this photo of a poster, supposedly widely visible throughput Hungary, showing an Aryan-like Hungarian shaking the money out of an evil Jew's pockets:

(h/t O. and JH as well as jzaik)

Former Jerusalem mufti says "don't visit Jerusalem"

Posted: 10 May 2012 11:15 AM PDT

A wonderful example of the rigorous logic of Israel haters:

Former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Sheikh Ekrima Sabri criticized a controversial visit by Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa to al-Aqsa Mosque, saying it was wrong both religiously and politically.

"On the religious level, one should not deal with, support, or recognize the enemy," Sheikh Sabri said in an interview with Al Arabiya's "Noqtat Nezam" (Point of Order), scheduled to be aired on Friday.

Defenders of Gomaa's visit to Jerusalem have cited the Prophet Mohammed's visit to Mecca while the city was under control of the tribe of Quraish , his enemy at the time.

But Sheikh Sabri rejected this comparison saying: "When Prophet Mohammed went to Mecca, it was not under occupation while Jerusalem is."

Say what? The two sound pretty analogous to me - Muslim holy cities under control of their enemies.

But it gets better:

Sheikh Sabri said from a political perspective Gomaa's visit implied the recognition of Israeli's occupation.

"Recognition is a form of normalization because no one can enter Jerusalem without an Israeli visa or without proper coordination with the Israeli security forces."

But if Muslim citizens of Europe or America visit Israel, their visit would not be considered as an act of "recognizing the occupation," Sabri said.

"If German or French Muslims visit Jerusalem, this is not normalization since their countries already recognize Israel.

"Some Arab governments might not boycott Israel, but their people do and they reject normalization."

So when Germany or France recognizes Israel, that means that German or French Muslims can visit Israel. But when Egypt and Jordan recognize Israel, it means that Egyptian or Jordanians cannot visit Israel, because somehow it is the people who decide that they do not want to recognize Israel.

Yet if people want to visit Jerusalem, they shouldn't be allowed to because, um, the other people don't want them to!

All of this is pretty much a very poor attempt to put a fig leaf of poor logic on top of what is, in effect, just plain hatred.

Jerusalem Grand Muftis come and they go, but they all seem to have that good old fashioned hatred in common.

Fatah member insults Hamas; says it supports Israel

Posted: 10 May 2012 09:30 AM PDT

Whenever Hamas and Fatah insult each other, it is to prove that the other side is more conciliatory and peaceful towards Israel (and, in contrast, how their side is adamantly against Israel and its policies.)

Which tells you all you need to know about how much they desire peace.

The latest comes from Fatah Revolutionary Council member Jamal Nazzal, who says that Hamas' positions are so close to Israel's that Hamas could become a member of Israel's unity government!

Excerpts:

What are the manifestations of the 'dispute' between Hamas and Israel? There are none. What are the axes of the field of conflict between Hamas and Israel? No axes of conflict. ... How many rockets are fired by Hamas to the occupation every day? Zero. How many Hamas leaders in the field are targeted by the occupation per month? Zero. What are the means Hamas uses to pressure Israel to halt settlements? None. What are the means Hamas uses to achieve the demands a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem? None. What is Hamas' program for the return of refugees? A dreamy call of Palestine from the river to the sea. What is the nature of Hamas programs for relief and care of refugees? None at all!

Hamas did not interfere in the recent war between Israel and Islamic Jihad. Therefore we can not say that there is a state of war taking place between Israel and Hamas, any more than we can talk about a state of war between Syria and Israel. Israel ended the field of engagement with Hamas for a truce in exchange for Israeli silence on the authority of Hamas in Gaza. This is the image: a truce for Hamas' authority. Hamas's commitment to the protection of borders and addressing the factions is a part of this agreement. Calm. Peace. These are the fundamental concepts of the relationship of Israel by Hamas.

...The real conflict is not between Hamas and its ally, the Israeli right. Both benefit from the current situation remaining unchanged, they hope for a thousand years.

The Fatah movement calls makes demands rejected by the Israeli right. Hamas refuses to reject the Israeli right!!

Fatah calls for an independent Palestinian state with its capital Jerusalem. Israel rejects this.

Fatah calls for the return of refugees and the removal of settlements Israeli. rejects this.

Hamas and the Israeli right reject the UN resolutions of international legitimacy and the Palestinian state and the idea of a negotiated solution! And they accept a temporary Palestinian state as a reality under the rule of Hamas to secure the occupation in Gaza now....

D. Jamal Nazzal
Member of the Revolutionary Council of Fatah

In Arabic, you will not hear Fatah saying that Hamas rejects peace while Fatah strives for it - you will hear the opposite! Fatah tries to position itself as being more intransigent and less flexible in relation to Israel. They almost taunt Hamas to increase their militancy.

But to the idiots in the media, Fatah is still the "moderate" movement.

Iran freaks out over Google Maps

Posted: 10 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT

From Al Arabiya:

Google has -perhaps unknowingly- launched a new war in Gulf. The internet giant sparked a conflict with the Iranians last week when it dropped the name "Persian Gulf" from the body of water that separates Iran from the Arabian Peninsula.

The waterway also touches Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain – the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that call it the "Arabian Gulf."

Google also declined to call it "Arabian Gulf," or even "the Gulf," saying it would hurt their credibility and creditability.

The company instead decided, perhaps as the biggest landmark on its maps, to leave the 250,000 square kilometers (97, 000 square miles) body of water nameless .

Iran, previously known as Persia, did not approve of Google's decision and didn't hesitate in launching a verbal attack.

In an interview the Islamic Republic's official news agency Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Bahman Dorri said "Google fabricating lies... will not have any outcome but for its users to lose trust in the data the company provides."

"The enemies cannot hide facts and evidence about the Persian Gulf," Dorri said. "Documents in the U.N. and the UNESCO show the name of this body of water has always been 'Persian Gulf' since a long time ago."

"The efforts of the (global) arrogance and its Arab allies to remove the name of the Persian Gulf will result in its name becoming more durable," he added in a reference to the United States.

The controversy over the name of the Gulf goes back to the 1960s and has entangled everyone from the Asian Games to the Unites States Navy to National Geographic Magazine.

Today, the United Nations refers to it as the "Persian Gulf", as does the UK and the U.S., although the U.S. Navy, which has extensive dealings with Arab Gulf states, mostly uses 'Arabian Gulf.'

In 2004, National Geographic published a world atlas that, while acknowledging the waterway's primary name as the "Persian Gulf" added "Arabian Gulf" in brackets. Tehran responded by banning the American-owned magazine and its reporters from Iran.

When a country is so emotionally invested in how people name an adjacent body of water to the point of creating an international incident every time someone uses a different name, it is not exactly an indication of a mature and reliable member of the family of nations.

Here's the funny part: If you do a search of "Persian Gulf" in Google Maps, you do end up inside the Gulf. If you type in "Arabian Gulf" you will not, and Google would guess that you are referring to various Arab companies with that name.

Stumbling onto an Elder (open thread)

Posted: 10 May 2012 06:10 AM PDT

This week I took a scenic boat ride along part of the Intercoastal Waterway and saw many very expensive houses and mansions.

(Part of) one of them looked like this:

Besides the prominent Israeli flag, the boat moored at the house is named "Mitz-Sea-Ah," in Chinese-style lettering.

Even with this person's unseemly love of bad puns, it is clear that the owner of this house is an Elder in good standing.

Don't forget that you have a chance to stumble onto not just any Elder on May 21st in New York City.

Biased Reuters article on UNRWA filled with lies

Posted: 10 May 2012 03:30 AM PDT

Decades of Palestinian Arab lies are all taken as fact in this incredibly biased article by Noah Browning of Reuters.

For example:

Three generations of Palestinians displaced by the founding of Israel in 1948 know only life in UN refugee camps, going to schools beneath the blue-and-white UN flag and drawing their food stocks from UN warehouses.

The exodus of Arabs pre-dates the founding of Israel by six months, and certainly the first couple of hundred thousand left on their own, as they were mostly the richer ones who left the same way they left during the 1936-9 Arab riots. In other words, they wanted to avoid a conflict started by their fellow Arabs to kill Jews.

For these Palestinians whose long-cherished goal is the right of return to the lands they lost 64 years ago, the camps must be seen as temporary no matter how permanent they might seem to others.

This article seems to be only about those in camps in Palestinian Arab territory - which are, of course, in Palestine.

It is their leaders who "insist" on forcing the people into these "temporary," horrible camps, not the residents themselves. I don't see any residents who insisted to remain in tents in the 1950s when given the chance to move to concrete housing. The residents were - and are- used as pawns, but the lies are swallowed by Reuters.

Which explains why the latest program by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, to upgrade the camps' dilapidated facilities is such a delicate operation.

The article could have - and should have - focused on the hypocrisy of the "leaders" who insist on keeping these people in camps rather than allowing them to move on and become productive citizens of territories that they already claim as their own.

Some 700,000 people fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was created after the 1948 war, but now as many as five million refugees and their descendants live in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, many of them in squalid camps.

The vast majority were not "driven" from their homes and about half left before Israel was created, all of them before or during - not after - the war. The number who live in camps is actually about one third of those in the five countries UNRWA operates in.

Founded in 1949, UNRWA is almost as old as the UN itself. Given that prospects for a resolution to Israel's disputes in the Middle East continue to be dismal, it appears to have a long future ahead.

UNRWA's existence is not at all dependent on Israel or its "disputes." It should have disappeared in the 1950s and it almost lost its funding a few times in its first couple of decades. This article implicitly blames Israel for the existence of these so-called" refugees" and doesn't say a word about how most Arab countries refuse to give citizenship to Palestinian Arabs who desire to live in their host countries - even though Arab League countries allow naturalization of every other Arab.

The fate of refugees clinging to the right of return has been one of the toughest issues facing negotiators in two decades of on-off talks aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel says the demand for a right to return is a deal breaker in any peace accord, arguing that allowing the refugees into Israel would increase the proportion of Palestinians living within its borders and thus undermine its nature as a Jewish state.

It also disputes the legal basis of the right of return set out in a UN resolution of December 1948 and says the world has not taken into account the plight of Jews forced from their homes across the Arab world in the last 65 years.

The text here takes as a given that UNGA 194 gives the "right of return" when in fact the word "right" was deliberately and consciously taken out of the text of the resolution itself. In other words, this "right" is fictional. Reuters is saying that the "right" exists and only Israel's interpretation is wrong.

In fact, the UN itself wrote an exhaustive analysis on how to interpret UNGA 194 in 1950, proving that there is no such blanket "right to return."

"194, 242, 338," student Alaa al-Homuz rattles in staccato, naming UN Security Council resolutions dealing with Palestinian refugees which he is studying in a class on international law.

194 was not a Security Council resolution. UNSC 338 merely refers to 242, which vaguely requires a "just settlement to the refugee problem" without using the word "Palestinian;" in context it might be referring to those displaced as a result of the 1967 war.

There's lots more incredible bias and outright lies in this article, and the sad part is that the lies are so embedded in the narrative of lies pushed by the Arabs that most Westerners don't recognize the lies any more.

The Canadian madrassa that teaches hate of Jews

Posted: 10 May 2012 01:00 AM PDT

From The National Post:

Police are investigating a complaint about a Toronto Muslim school whose curriculum tells boys to exercise so they are "ready for jihad," refers to "treacherous Jews" and contrasts Islam with "the Jews and the Nazis."

"Yes, I can confirm for you that a complaint has been made and our Hate Crimes Unit is investigating," Acting Sergeant Rebecca Boyd, a York Region Police spokeswoman, told the National Post on Monday.

"However, they are in the early stages of the investigation," she added. The complaint was made by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which found the material on the website of the East End Madrassah.

The Islamic school operates out of David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, a public high school in Toronto. But the complaint was made to police in York because the Islamic school's mailing address is in that region.

"We are looking into it," said Masuma Jessa, principal of the East End Madrassah. She said the curriculum document in question had been removed from the school's website. Later on Monday, the entire school website went offline.

...Ms. Jessa said the complaint about the material was made on Thursday. "We told them that we took the book off the website and yesterday [Sunday] we had a meeting and we looked at it and we are correcting it," she said. "It was an error."

Some error!

I found a copy of the same curriculum online at another Islamic site. One booklet is called "Prophet Muhammad [s] A Brief Biography." Here are some excerpts:

Scattered here and there across West Asia and North Africa were colonies of Jews, to whom several outstanding Messengers had been sent by the Almighty. But these divine favours had failed to reform the crime hardened Jews, whose very name had become synonymous for treachery. They had long deviated from the commandments of Allah, distorting the laws brought by Prophet Moses [a], tampering with divine scriptures, slaying prophets and in the end coining the chauvinist creed called Judaism. It was more a racial sedition rather than a set of beliefs and the Israelites' vehement opposition to the last great reformer, Prophet Jesus Christ [a], was still fresh in the minds of the people.

End of Jewish Plots and Treacheries

Ever since the Prophet's entry into Madina, the treacherous Jews had vehemently opposed him and his Islamic call, evoking memories of their hostility to the previous Prophet, Jesus Christ (a), half a millennium ago. The crafty Jews entered into an alliance with the polytheist Quraish in a bid to stamp out Islam. They conspired to kill Prophet Muhammad [s] despite the fact that he was lenient towards them and had treated them kindly, hoping to convince them of Islam's truth. But eventually as Jewish plots and aggressions increased, he had no choice other than to take up arms against them, in order to protect Islam and the Muslims. At the battle of Khaiber which is famous for Imam Ali's [a] heroic exploits, the Prophet defeated them ending Jewish intrigues and conspiracies in Arabia.

The Jews flaunting their sacred books used to mock the pagan Arabs, saying that soon a Prophet will emerge in Arabia and come to Yathrib and will put an end to their wicked ways.

But strangely enough when Prophet Muhammad [s] did finally proclaim his Prophethood and emigrate to Yathrib, it were the Arab tribes of Aws and Khazraj who renounced idolatry and accepted Islam, while the chauvinistic Jews, whose forefathers had come to Arabia, for this very occasion, rejected the Prophet. Their pretext was he was an Arab descended from Prophet Abraham's [a] elder son Ishmael [a], rather than Isaac [a] and therefore unacceptable to the racist Jews.

Another booklet that was on the site is

A Glance at the Life of the Holy Prophet of Islam, by Dar Rah Haqq's Board of Writers
Published by:
Mostazafan Foundation of New York
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
ISBN 0-922817-01-4

It says:

Before Islam emerged, the Jews had changed the religion of Moses into hidebound dogma and its principles into hollow, lifeless rules and precepts.

Unlike the beliefs of the ancient Romans, the Jews, and the Nazis, Islam is not restricted to a certain community or a certain race, but is for all human beings and aims at human prosperity and salvation.

The combatants of Islam do not intend to gain control of a land or overthrow an oppressive rule to replace it with a similar rule through jihad. Rather, jihad is a pure humanitarian struggle fulfilled in God's way and for human evolution and the rescue of the oppressed people. This struggle culminates in the elimination of all sedition and in the establishment of peace and prosperity.

There were probably other books from this site on the madrassa's page.

But the madrassa apologized, so everything must be just great again.