Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Rainbow open thread
Sunday Links (Ian, plus)
Gas off Gaza coast sitting while Hamas/Fatah bicker
One of the "martyrs" whose body Israel returned last week
Hamas loves photos of grieving Israelis
Egypt again delays fuel shipment from Qatar to Gaza
New evidence revealed that PFLP-GC behind Lockerbie
Photo: Empire State Building in blue and white
Man attacks Syrian reporter with shoe during live broadcast
Sunday morning Links (Ian)

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 07:15 PM PDT

This evening I saw the most stunning rainbow of my life - a full 180 degrees. I captured part of it in two photos at a parking lot.

Phone cameras cannot do justice to a rainbow, but you work with what you have...

And until this very minute I didn't even realize that it was a double rainbow!

This is as good an excuse as any for an open thread....

Sunday Links (Ian, plus)

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 05:00 PM PDT

From Ian:

Israel A Country Fenced In (video)

from Daphne Anson
Why Israel Should Not Return To The 1967 Borders

Democratic House primary turns into ethnic proxy war over Israel

Pascrell in recent weeks has waged a charm offensive in the Arab community, campaigning alongside a Hamas-sympathizer and many who have expressed hostility towards Israel.
James Zogby, president of the American Arab Institute, recently helped Pascrell collect more than $50,000; Zogby is a longtime critic of Israel who has accused the U.S. of "being the coat holder and cheerleader" for the Jewish state.
Pascrell also has embraced Imam Mohammad Qatanani, a controversial Passaic spiritual leader who stands accused by the State Department of hiding a conviction in Israel for having ties to the terror group Hamas.
Last Friday, Pascrell held a high profile event at a local mosque where he was joined by Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn), a prominent ally of the fringe group J Street and the first Muslim member of Congress.

German controversy over Israel boycott

Politicians reject German mayor's Israel boycott. Schröter: goal is to label goods from 'illegal' settlements.
"Critics accused Schroter, 57, the Social Democratic mayor of Jena in Thuringia state, of fostering modern anti-Semitism with his support for a call by the German branch of Pax Christi, an international Catholic "peace movement," to not buy Israeli goods."

President Obama Shuns Lech Walesa

According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no.
Administration officials told the Journal that Walesa is too "political." A man who was arrested by Soviet officials for dissenting against the government for being "political" is being shunned by the United States of America for the same reason 30 years later.
Meanwhile, one of the recipients of the Medal was Dolores Huerta, the honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. So socialist politics are acceptable, but not the politics of a man who stood up and fought socialism.

Australian hi-tech investor unveils audacious 30-year Jerusalem master plan

Greg Sheridan in The Australian on some of the wasteful exercises of diplomacy being carried out in your name

According to Gillard government officials in devastating Senate estimates committee testimony this week, one Bashir al-Kheiri* was president of UAWC from 2008 to last year. He is closely associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a proscribed terrorist organisation, and has served substantial jail time for terrorist offences. There are many other connections between UAWC figures and the PFLP.
The government's entire defence on this matter has rested on the narrow legal argument that in funding the UAWC it is not breaching laws against funding terrorists because there is no formal organisational connection between UAWC and PFLP, and there is no diversion of funds.
No doubt the government is right that it is not breaking the law. But what possible reason is there for Australian taxpayers to labour so that they can provide resources to individuals associated with the PFLP? It is complete madness, morally repugnant and against common sense.
*alt spelling - al-Khairi
(unfortunately the full Sheridan article is paywalled, his broader point was that money is being recklessly spent on aid rather than on diplomatic staff who could supervise aid spending, advise the government and build relationships.)

Bonus
Best Israeli English Class Ad Ever - NSFW

Also:

Israeli subs from Germany can carry nuclear weapons

JE Dyer: Just a reminder: Iran still closing in on bomb

Racism in Poland and Ukraine football (BBC, video seems only available in UK)
...But the British team is visiting Auschwitz before the tournament

Another warning from Iran. Yawn.

A scene in a Saudi mall

Ben Dror Yemini on the African refugee problem (Hebrew)

(h/t Ben, O., Alan S., Yoel)

Gas off Gaza coast sitting while Hamas/Fatah bicker

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 02:00 PM PDT

From Xinhua:

Under Gaza's glittering waters of the Mediterranean, a strategic gas reservoir that is capable of ending the crippling power crisis in this Palestinian enclave has been lying out of commission since it was discovered 12 years ago.

Now, electricity outage in Gaza is suffered up to 12 hours per day, as the only power plant lacks enough diesel to run its turbines. Cars stop in long queues for hours at petrol stations, hospitals warning that fuel for generators is running up and cooking gas suffers sporadic shortages.

In 2000, the U.K.-based energy firm BG Group plc and its partners -- the Lebanese Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)'s Investment Fund -- announced the discovery of a gas field 36 km off the Gaza coast. Later in the year, the consortium said it drilled two wells (Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2), with estimated resources of around 1 trillion cubic feet.

"There are no real obstacles preventing us from extracting the gas," said a source from BG group. "The only problem is that we are still searching for a market." The source says that despite talking to several regional and foreign potential buyers, no agreement was reached. No explanation for this was offered from the source.

BG Group spent seven years in negotiations with Israel as a possible purchaser of Gaza gas, but the negotiations stopped in 2007 and the company closed its Tel Aviv office. Sources from the company say Israel wanted to get the gas for two U.S. dollars per cubic feet, below the market's seven-dollar price.

Also in 2007, Islamic Hamas movement wrested control of the Gaza Strip, leaving the PNA's rule confined to the West Bank. As Al-Khatib and the BG Group source downplayed the partial responsibility of the Palestinian split for not extracting gas, another BG Group source did not. "If there was no split, the gas field might have been developed."

Of course, the article can't resist false Israel-bashing:

As part of the Israeli sanctions against Hamas, shipments of diesel to the station from Israel were limited. For a year, Hamas managed to smuggle the fuel from Egypt, but the process was interrupted by the beginning of 2012.

Um, no. Israel was sending all the fuel it was being paid for through Kerem Shalom. Hamas stopped the shipments for over a year and refused to resume them for months as Gaza went dark.

Observers believe that Israel's monopoly on the Palestinian energy resources aim at preventing any unilateral step of independence by the Palestinian leadership.

Those "observers" wouldn't happen to be rabid Israel haters, would they?

(h/t Meryl Yourish)

One of the "martyrs" whose body Israel returned last week

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 12:30 PM PDT

Israel's unilateral return of the bodies of the most heinous terrorists last week is most perplexing, as the only consequence from that act has been a huge amount of praise given to these terrorists by the Palestinian Arabs.

One of those whose bodies were returned was Reem Riyashi. From Wikipedia:

Riyashi detonated a 2 kg bomb inside a building where the thousands of Palestinians who cross each day from Gaza to work in a neighbouring industrial zone are processed.[2]
The Israeli army reported that when she reached the metal detector at the terminal, Riyashi pretended to be crippled and claimed to have metal plates in her leg which would sound the alarm. She asked to have a body search instead. After being taken to an area where a group of soldiers and policemen were checking bags, she was told to wait for a woman to come and search her in a cubicle. It was then that she detonated the explosive device.

Two Israeli soldiers, a policeman and a civilian security worker were killed. Seven other Israelis and four Palestinians were injured.

Riyashi posed with her two small children, one who was 3 years old and the other 18 months old:

Most Arabic media in Egypt and Lebanon praised her at the time. Typical was the reaction of Lebanese MP Walid Jumblatt:

"Yesterday, the Palestinian mother Reem Al-Riyashi sacrificed herself, and by so doing joined the columns of the brave Jihad warriors and broke the atrocious and troublesome Arab silence, the helplessness, and the retreat that precede failure and disintegration. She offered hope in a sea of complacency, indecisiveness, and fear. It is a new Intifada. It is the Intifada of the revolutionary Palestinian woman and of the land, opposing the 'Jewification' [of Palestine], the Jewish reality, and the Arab regimes. Did it come out of despair?

"No, and again no. It is an act of belief and it is the correct path, because the fall of one Jew, whether soldier or civilian, is a great accomplishment in times of decline, subservience, and submissiveness, as a way to undermine the plan to 'Jewify' all of Palestine."

Hamas loves photos of grieving Israelis

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 10:45 AM PDT

Every time an Israeli is killed, terrorist media love to show photos of grieving Israelis. And the killing of Netanel Moshiashvili on Friday morning near Gaza is no different.

Hamas' Palestine Times features a photo essay with some 15 photos from Moshiashvili's funeral.

The title of the story is "Zionists crying and bemoaning the dead."

The reason? To them, seeing Jews crying shows their supposed weakness.

Beyond that, it shows that Arab terrorists aren't irrelevant - which is their biggest fear. They are proud to know that they have the ability to affect people's lives in Israel! (They have similar photo essays of Jews running to bomb shelters whenever they shoot rockets towards Israel.)

Significantly, Palestine Times showed no photos from the funeral of the Arab who infiltrated Israel and was killed. Usually when they do, the prevalent emotion is not sadness but anger; in this Reuters photo we see one of the "mourners" with a rifle.

While wire services will show mourning Arabs, the Arab media is much more reluctant to do so - again, because they regard sadness as weakness, and they want to channel all emotions into anger and terror.

Egypt again delays fuel shipment from Qatar to Gaza

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 09:00 AM PDT

From AFP:

A delivery of 30 million liters of Qatari fuel, which was to have entered Gaza on Sunday, has been delayed yet again, officials said, prompting an angry reaction from the Palestinian energy authority.

The Hamas-run Gaza Strip has been living through its worst electricity crisis in living memory, with the Qatari shipment expected to help ease the situation.

But Raed Fatuh, head coordinator for the Palestinian Authority at the Kerem Shalom crossing between southern Gaza and Israel, told AFP the delay was the result of "technical issues" on the Egyptian side.

He said delivery of the fuel, which is to be transported through Egypt's Al-Awja crossing and into southern Israel, then into Gaza through Kerem Shalom, would take place on Tuesday.

It was the third such delay in less than three weeks and prompted an angry outburst by the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Authority (PENRA), which said the shipment had been sitting in the dock at the Egyptian port of Suez "for a month and a half."

"There has been a change of roles between the Israelis and the Egyptians in suffocating the Palestinian people and continuing the siege on Gaza," a statement posted on the PENRA website said.

"This continued delay in the arrival of the Qatari fuel will extend the electricity crisis in Gaza, especially with summer approaching."

Last month, Israel gave the green light for the fuel to be transferred through its territory after receiving a request from the Egyptians, an Israeli security official said.

The fuel was in Egypt two months ago, but Egypt only requested to transfer it through Israel last month, and Israel approved the shipment.

Proving yet again that Gaza is being blockaded - by (post-revolution) Egypt.

Notice that AFP still cannot figure out that Hamas created the fuel crisis by refusing for months to accept fuel from Israel. Qatar's two month supply is free, showing that Hamas' cynical abuse of its citizens in Gaza pays off.

New evidence revealed that PFLP-GC behind Lockerbie

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 07:45 AM PDT

From CNN last week:

Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the only person convicted in connection with the Lockerbie airline bombing that killed 259 people on board Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 on the ground, went to his grave protesting his innocence.

And there are others who believe that Megrahi, who died on Sunday from cancer, was not responsible for bringing down the jet over Scotland in 1988, including some of the victims' families.

...TV producer and author John Ashton has spent many years studying the case, and worked as a researcher with al Megrahi's defense team between 2006 and 2009. He believes al Megrahi was innocent and presents his reasons in his book "Megrahi: You are my jury - the Lockerbie evidence.'"

He believes that Iran is the likely suspect behind the bombing, using the Palestinian group The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) to carry out the attack.

He told CNN he believed the group operated from Damascus but had a cell inside Germany, and alleges the attack was in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet by the Americans in July 1988 with the loss of 290 lives. Missiles from USS Vincennes hit the plane as it flew over the Persian Gulf.

Now, the Herald Scotland says it is going to publish evidence that the British government tried to suppress:

It has been hidden, blocked and kept secret by the UK Government for more than 20 years, but The Herald can reveal for the first time the contents of the top-secret Lockerbie document that the UK tried to prevent us from publishing.

The highly classified document, which has never even been aired in public or shared with the courts, originally came from Jordan and indicates that a Palestinian terrorist group was involved in the bombing that killed 270 people – something the UK Government has vehemently denied.

The UK Government has gone to considerable lengths to prevent details of the document – which casts further doubt on the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi – being published by The Herald.

It has threatened legal action to stop publication of the newspaper and asked the paper to sign up to a court-approved gagging order.

Our decision to publish details of the document, which was obtained by the Crown Office but never shown to the defence team, will prove highly embarrassing to the Crown, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Office of the Advocate General, whose lawyers have worked tirelessly to prevent it ever being even discussed in public.

The document incriminates the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) in the Lockerbie bombing.

The PFLP-GC were the original suspects in the investigation into the biggest terrorist atrocity ever to have been committed in mainland Britain. However, by 1991 police and prosecutors were entirely focused on Libya. Since then politicians and the investigating authorities have denied the possibility of their involvement, instead blaming the whole atrocity on Libya.

Repeated, high-level attempts to block the report indicate it is vital to unearthing the truth about the Lockerbie bombing. The UK Government arranged for the document to be covered by Public Interest Immunity on national security grounds. This prevented it from being shared with the defence but does not prevent publication by a newspaper.

There are no details in this article. But many others have pieced together evidence that the PFLP-GC was behind the bombing, as this 2007 London Review of Books article details.

The PFLP-GC works closely with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It had been responsible for a number of bomb attacks on airlines in the 1970s, as well as a number oof high-profile attacks in Israel including Kiryat Shmona and the Avivim School Bus Massacre.

(h/t Akusia)

Photo: Empire State Building in blue and white

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 06:10 AM PDT

The Empire State Building was lit up in blue and white this weekend in honor of Israel's Independence Day in New York:

Photo from the Empire State Building's Facebook page

The Empire State Building in New York will form the focal point of Manhattan's Israel independence celebrations from June 1-3 when it will be lit up in blue and white in honour of the Israeli flag.

The New York landmark will also mark the route of the largest ever parade to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the Jewish State on Sunday, on Fifth Avenue.

More than 200 groups from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Israel will take part in the event - which is organised by the The Community Relations Council of New York, in conjunction with the City of New York, the Israeli Consulate in New York and Israel's Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs – with 35,000 anticipated participants and 29 floats. Hundreds of thousands of New York City spectators are expected to follow the event in the city's streets.

The Israel parade will be televised live in the New York metropolitan area for the second consecutive year.

There has been a bit of controversy over the fact that some left-wing groups that advocate boycotting Israeli goods are being allowed to march in the parade. I think it is appropriate to heckle them as they pass by; but I strongly disagree that the parade itself should be boycotted because people disagree with a tiny minority of those marching. It is far more important to show up and express support for Israel.

Man attacks Syrian reporter with shoe during live broadcast

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT

From MEMRI:

The Syrian newsman's logic afterwards - that lies must continue to be broadcast - is truly classic. As if Syria allows the opposition to broadcast their alleged "lies."

Meanwhile, the Arab League asked Arab satellite channels to discontinue broadcasting Syrian news channels, exactly because of the many provable official Syrian lies.

Predictably, Syrian officials are incensed, claiming that not only is this unacceptable "violation of media ethics," but that this is a form of - wait for it - "terrorism."

Sunday morning Links (Ian)

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 01:00 AM PDT

What happens when the BDS brownshirts come to town
Why BDS Scars Don't Heal A StandWithUs Production

Richard Beinart and Peter Goldstone – Part I

Into The Fray: Peter Beinart has placed himself in precisely the same category as Richard Goldstone. He should be treated in precisely the same manner.
"In Beinart's account, one is given the clear impression that the evictees were the helpless victims of some callous, arbitrary act perpetrated by a heartless regime, driven by a discriminatory Judeocentric dogma. Nowhere could the reader get a sense that the reason for the eviction was the tenants' refusal to pay rent; that their removal from the Jewish-owned property was the culmination of a legal battle that extended over three decades and was backed by a verdict of the Supreme Court, an institution invariably depicted as a jealous custodian of the liberal-democratic values Beinart claims are so dear to his heart."