Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Lebanon and Syria refuse to accept Palestinian passports
Egypt's censor shuts down film that promotes peace with Israelis
Naksa Day Special: 1967 IDF Photos of the Pyramids and Sphinx
Egypt again delays fuel delivery to Gaza
Muslims suppressing freedom of expression worldwide
More Flame info - not as impressive as the hype
Anti-semitism on the rise in Sweden, France, Ukraine, Norway
Abbas lies and threatens in WEF speech
Morning links

Lebanon and Syria refuse to accept Palestinian passports

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 08:03 PM PDT

Here's a reminder as to who has been treating Palestinian Arabs like garbage over time.

From Timatic Web, a comprehensive travel information site:

National Palestinian Territory (PS)
Destination Lebanon (LB)
Lebanon (LB)

Admission and Transit Restrictions:

- Admission and transit is refused to holders of Palestinian passports.

And:

National Palestinian Territory (PS)
Destination Syria (SY)
Syria (SY)

Admission and Transit Restrictions:

- Holders of Palestinian documents are not allowed to enter, even if holding a valid visa. These passengers can only enter if:
- they obtain approval from Syrian Immigration Headquarters upon arrival, which has to be arranged prior to arrival; or
- they are holding a residence permit of any country, except Egypt, Iraq, Jordan or Libya.

So Lebanon and Syria, who always say how much they support the Palestinian Arab people, refuse to allow them to use their own travel documents to enter their respective countries.

But the US does accept the PA passport:

The U.S. Department of State has determined that the Palestinian Authority Passport/Travel Document meets the requirements of a passport as defined in Section 101(a)(30) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and therefore is acceptable for visa issuing purposes and travel to the United States.

However, according to an official at the U.S. Department of State, the United States does not recognize Palestine as a country, and therefore the Palestinian Authority Passport/Travel Document does not confer citizenship.

Egypt's censor shuts down film that promotes peace with Israelis

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 02:40 PM PDT

Isn't primal, irrational hate a wonderful thing?

From Ahram Online:

Egypt's censor has halted production of a film for allegedly promoting the normalisation of relations with Israel, Al-Ahram Arabic has reported.

Mohamed Kenawy who wrote the film, Regheef Aish (Loaf of Bread), denied the accusation and said the film promotes peace and cooperation among all people regardless of sex, race and religion.

The story revolves around an Egyptian, a Palestinian and an Israeli, and examines life in the Arab region and the world.

The film had been under production for two months before filming was halted.

Westerners assume that everyone in the world actually wants peace. They cannot imagine that such a concept would be considered controversial, let alone anathema.

Welcome to moderate Egypt.

Naksa Day Special: 1967 IDF Photos of the Pyramids and Sphinx

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 01:20 PM PDT

From the IDF Blog:

Forty-five years after the Six Day War – one of the most significant chapters in the history of the IDF – new images taken by Israel Air Force pilots during battle have emerged. The photographs taken from above provide a rare perspective on the war.

More at the site.

Egypt again delays fuel delivery to Gaza

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 11:55 AM PDT

For the third time, Egypt has delayed a planned delivery of fuel from a Qatari ship to Gaza that has been promised for several months.

The fuel was expected to be transferred today to Israel to ship to Gaza via the pipeline at Kerem Shalom.

No specific reason was given for this further delay, just that it was for "technical reasons."

No new date for delivery was promised but there were vague mentions of Thursday or next Sunday.

For some reason, the world is not up in arms when Egypt drags its feet in helping Gaza.

Muslims suppressing freedom of expression worldwide

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 10:30 AM PDT

AFP reports:

A Bangladeshi court has issued an arrest warrant for the writer of a 2003 novel that allegedly contains insulting remarks against the Prophet Mohammed, a lawyer said Tuesday.

The court in Dhaka issued the order in response to a petition from a Muslim activist accusing author Salam Azad of hurting religious sentiment in his banned book "Bhanga Math" ("Broken Temple").

"We told the court that the book contained slanderous remarks against the Prophet Mohammed and Islam. The judge accepted the petition and issued a warrant of arrest," the petitioner's lawyer Ekhlas Uddin told AFP.

Reuters writes:

A Kuwaiti man was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.

And in the Maldives:

An outspoken Maldivian blogger known for his liberal views on religion was in intensive care on Tuesday after being stabbed by an attacker outside his home in the capital Male, police said.

Ismail Rasheed, who is better known as "Hilath", had his blog blocked late last year by the Maldivian telecommunications authorities who claimed it contained anti-Islamic material.

The 37-year-old, who has received death threats in the past, was later arrested following a rally he organized in December in support of religious tolerance and spent nearly a month behind bars.

"We don't know who attacked him. His condition is said to be stable now," police spokesman Hassan Haneef told AFP by telephone, adding that they were trying to track down the assailant behind Monday evening's attack.

The Maldivian government condemned the stabbing, but said Hilath should have sought protection.

"We condemn this attack. Hilath must have known that he had become a target of a few extremists," Human Resources and Youth Minister Mohamed Shareef told AFP.

In Pakistan a couple of weeks ago:

Pakistan on Sunday blocked access to Twitter in response to "blasphemous" material posted by users on the microblogging and social networking website, a senior government official said.

"They (the ministry) have been discussing with them (Twitter) for some time now, requesting them to remove some particular content," he said.

Pakistan blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and about 1,000 other websites for nearly two weeks in May 2010 over blasphemous content.

And last month:

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today expressed grave concern over the Kuwaiti Parliament's approval last week of severe new penalties for blasphemy. The Emir of Kuwait has 30 days to approve these penalties before they would become law. The new provisions would impose the death penalty on Muslims who refuse to repent after being found to have insulted God, the Prophet Mohammad, his wives, or the Qur'an. For non-Muslims, the punishment would be up to 10 years in prison; for Muslims who repent, the punishment would be up to five years or a fine.

For twelve years, Muslim states have been trying to get the UN to pass "anti-blasphemy" resolutions, an initiative that they have only recently said they would downplay. There is no doubt, however, that the desire is still there.

More Flame info - not as impressive as the hype

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:05 AM PDT

From YNet:

Researchers at the Kaspersky Lab said Tuesday that one of the Flame virus' main objectives was to copy confidential technical drawings pertaining to Iran's secret military and nuclear facilities.

"Flame" hit Iran in late may and has since been hailed as "the most sophisticated cyber-bomb to date."

Tehran said it was able to contain the malware, but had admitted that significant amounts of data have been corrupted.

According to the BBC report, the hackers controlling Flame "used a number of complex fake identities in order to carry out their plans."

Kaspersky's researches said that the fake identities – complete with fake addresses and billing information – were "used to register more than 80 domain names used to distribute the malware."

Researchers were also able to put together statistics on the extent of the Flame strike. The information was gathered via "sinkholing."

Vitaly Kamluk, a senior researcher at Kaspersky, explained that, "Sinkholing is a procedure when we discover a malicious server - whether it is an IP address or domain name - which we can take over with the help of the authorities or the (domain) registrar.

"We can redirect all the requests from the victims from infected machines to our lab server to register all these infections and log them," the BBC quoted him further.

Kamluk added that the attackers had a "high interest in AutoCad drawings, in addition to PDF and text files"; further cementing reports suggesting the Flame was on a complex reconnaissance mission.

"They were looking for the designs of mechanical and electrical equipment," Prof. Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey, told the BBC.

The thing is, Kaspersky seems to be overstating Flame's sophistication.

The Register, a well-regarded British security publication, says:

Flame may be big in size but it's nothing like the supposedly devastating cyberwarfare mega-weapon early reports of the malware suggested. This new nasty is quite complex by design, yet researchers are still hunting for any truly evil and innovative attack techniques, or similar threats, within the code.

Rather than redefining cyberwar and cyberespionage, as Kasperky researchers initially claimed amid Iranian warnings that the malware was "a close relation to the Stuxnet and Duqu targeted attacks", Flame is bloated and overhyped, according to rival security vendors.

Flame is a precise attack toolkit rather than a general-purpose cyber-weapon, the argument goes. It hasn't spread very far and might well be restricted to systems administrators of Middle East governments.

"While it really doesn't do anything we haven't seen before in other malware attacks — what's really interesting is that it weaves multiple techniques together and dynamically applies them based on the capabilities of the infected system," Patrik Runald of Websense explains.

"Also, Flame has been operating under the radar for at least two years, which counter-intuitively may partially be attributed to its large size."

...A lot was made of the modular design of Flame but this isn't new either. Chris Wysopal (AKA Weld Pond), a former member of Boston-area hacking collective L0pht and who later founded the application security firm VeraCode, noted with some disdain that the Back Orifice 2000 hacker tool included modular functionality when it came out 12 years ago.

Hungarian security researchers at CrySyS reckon that Flame was "developed by a government or nation state with significant budget and effort", the one point on which there's general agreement.

The experts reckon a military sub-contractor was likely to have carried out the work rather than an intelligence agency. To support this theory, it cites job adverts by Northrop Grumman for a software engineer to work on offensive cyberspace missions. Lots of other defence contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, have positions for this type of project, F-Secure adds.

As far as registering Internet domains with fake credentials - that is ridiculously easy to do, hardly an indication of a super spy network. Many domain registrars don't require proof of identity.

No doubt Flame was created by a government, and no doubt it is powerful, but the original description was filled with hype. Its looking for AutoCAD drawings, not to mention its Bluetooth sniffing, indicates it is an espionage tool.

It is not unusual for directed malware, meant only for a small geographic area and only infecting a comparatively tiny number of machines, to not be noticed for years.

Which means that it is entirely possible that there are lots of Flames out there.

Anti-semitism on the rise in Sweden, France, Ukraine, Norway

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:45 AM PDT

From IBA:

The CFCA notes a report from France that shows that there were over 400 anti-semitic attacks there in 2011 - a number that has increased this year.

It also gives examples of extreme anti-semitism in an online newspaper in Volyn, Ukraine.

A new report shows one in eight Norwegians hold clear prejudices against Jews.

(h/t O)

Abbas lies and threatens in WEF speech

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 06:15 AM PDT

Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the World Economic Forum Middle East yesterday in Istanbul.

As usual, his speech was filled with lies, threats and demands - par for the course for a despot.

Here is part of his speech:

I am pleased today to speak before this conference, which includes prominent international figures in the fields of economics and politics, to discuss many issues, especially the democratic transition, and its impact on the economy and sustainable development, peace and stability in the region and the world.

This from a person who is in office years past the date he was supposed to leave.

[The WEF] discussed the many economic development initiatives and investment in the region, in order to provide prosperity and stability, helping to create a suitable environment for the negotiations and the political process between us and the Israelis; However, despite all efforts the peace process remains stalled without reaching a just solution to end the Israeli occupation of our land, and put an end to the suffering of our people and the agonies extended for more than sixty-four years since the Nakba; However, our people will not lose hope for a better tomorrow for us and our neighbors, and we will continue our quest for peace and stability.

As long as it doesn't involve negotiations or compromise.

I am pleased to take this opportunity to express the State of the brother Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey, our sincere thanks and appreciation, for inviting us and hosting this important conference throughout this beautiful country, which reflects the extent to which you attach, your Excellency, to achieve security, peace and stability in the region, and to ensure a just and comprehensive solution to the Arab - Israeli conflict...

Yeah, Erdogan is a real peach.

On June 5 it has been 45 years since the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and the peace process is on the horizon of a dead end, where there is still a draft two-state solution and great obstacles, because of illegal Israeli settlements, which devours the Palestinian Territories, and cut apart, and isolates East Jerusalem from its Palestinian Arab neighbors, and changes the historical and cultural features, as well as settler attacks daily in East Jerusalem, and throughout all the West Bank, and their attacks on unarmed Palestinians and their property and houses of worship, and lack of commitment by the Israeli government reference, international, two-state solution based on 1967 borders, according to the Roadmap, the Arab Peace Initiative, and the resolutions of international legitimacy.

But the daily attacks on Jews, daily incitement in Palestinian Arab media, official government denial of Israel's existence in all PA maps, are fully justified and completely compatible with peace, right? Which residents of the territories live behind fences because of fear of attacks - Jews or Arabs?

Notice also that Abbas denies any Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, so his accusations on that point are more than hypocritical.

On the Palestinian level, we fulfilled all our obligations in agreements, and initiatives of the international Quartet, and made our position and intentions, and we have all that is required of us in this regard, and to meet the aspirations of our people's national living in an independent sovereign state is committed to international law, and in the 1967 borders, living in security, peace and stability with the state of Israel, and believes the Charter of the United Nations.

See above. They show no desire to live in peace with Israel, especially by praising terrorists as recently as this week.

In the context of constructive cooperation with the international community finished building the institutions of the state, recognized by more than 132 countries and has diplomatic representation in most countries of the world. However, the embodiment of its independence and its sovereignty over the land is still subject to end the occupation and the Israeli settlements on our land, including East Jerusalem, the capital of our Palestinian state, which requires the demarcation of the border between the two countries based on the 1967 lines, and ensure the security of third parties; and resolving final status issues all, including the creation of a just and agreed according to the Arab peace initiative for Palestinian refugees, who have been displaced from their homes, robbed of their rights, and still waiting for justice to the international community for them, also includes the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Arab states have no responsibility for keeping Palestinian Arabs stateless and miserable for 64 years, of course. Abbas wants them to remain that way, and has said so, taking away their own freedom to choose citizenship elsewhere. He is a lying, opportunistic, dictatorial, sickening hypocrite who is more than willing to throw his own people under the bus in order to fulfill his own fantasies of destroying Israel, one step at a time.

Our region needs to build bridges of cooperation and peace and dialogue, and not to create walls and the expansion of settlements, but to initiate serious negotiations leading to the desired peace.

Yet Abbas is the one who has refused to negotiate for four years now.

[Our people have made] a great sacrifice, desiring a state on less than a quarter of historic Palestine, do not turn away for this opportunity available today, which may not remain available for a long time, the region experiencing rapid and successive developments, and if we want the victory of democracy and human rights, then we have to make a just and comprehensive peace, which guarantees a better future for our region and our future generations, and avoid the consequences of our children and your children return to the squares of violence and the cycle of conflict.

The opportunity ha sbeen available since Oslo, and Abbas and his gang have refused to accept a state. That's the bottom line. Instead they threaten, support terror, teach their kids to hate and continue their demand to destroy Israel demographically.

And, of course, Abbas must trot out his lie about "historic Palestine."

If they really wanted peace and if they really wanted a state, they would have had it years ago. But their demands are not for a state or peace, but for a bizarre definition of "justice" where they are the judges, and of a world without a Jewish state.