| Factsheet:Water in the West Bank Posted: 12 Jun 2012 02:00 PM PDT This document was released yesterday by COGAT and it answers a lot of the lies we keep hearing about water usage in the territories. Here's the FAQ section: Do settlers get more water than the Palestinians?
As Israeli citizens, settlers' water falls within the Israeli allowance allocated by the Interim Agreement. The 350,000 settlers in the West Bank consume 47 MCM/year which means 134m3/year of fresh natural water per capita. This is lower than the Israeli allowance of. 150 m3/year.
Do settlers 'steal Palestinian water?
No. Settler consumption falls within the Israeli allocation, and therefore does not tap into, or affect, the Palestinian allocation. Settlers source their water only from Israeli sources (which includes approved Israeli wells in the West Bank) and sourcing directly from Israel. The water sourced from Israel amounts to 100MCM in total, of which 52.5 MCM for Palestinian usage, and 47.5 MCM for settler usage (in addition
Palestinians produce 140 MCM/ year themselves) although in reality settler ,usage is lower than this thus leaving more water .for the Palestinians.
Does Israel use Palestinian water?
No. Israel uses strictly the amount of fresh water allocated by the agreement, and does not tap into Palestinian allocation.
Does Israel continue its presence in the West Bank as this offers a water advantage?
No. Israel's consumption from the Mountain Aquifer (and freshwater consumption in general) is distinctly lower than it was in 1967: In 1967 Israelis consumed 504 m3/year per capita (total water consumption of
1411MCM/year) of fresh natural water. In 2009 Israeli consumption was 137 m3/year per capita (total water consumption of 1040 MCM/year), and this despite a considerable population increase since1967.
Does Israel need the West Bank in order to access the underground aquifer?
No. The aquifer is spread out under both Israel and the West Bank, with the largest part of the aquifer
actually lying beneath Israel: 8900 km, while only 5600 lie under the West Bank.
Does Israel sell water to the Palestinians at inflated prices?
No. The trade price of water between the Israeli and Palestinian sides was established by the JWC Pricing Protocol in 1998, as 2.6 NIS per .cubic meter for the PWA. This is a considerably lower rate than the full real price and also significantly lower than that paid by Israeli municipalities, both within Israel and the West
Bank (the average Israeli Municipality pays 3.86 NIS per cubic meter.)
Is it difficult for Palestinians to drill wells?
No, and the procedure is identical for Israelis wishing to drill wells. The procedure for drilling wells requires either one or two steps. The first step is to get an approval for the well by the JWC. This applies to both
Israelis and Palestinians wishing to drill wells in the West Bank. If the well is located within Areas A or B, Palestinians do not need any further approvals or permits and can start drilling. If the well is within Area
C, both Israelis and Palestinians require a permit from the Civil Administration, which approves and permits
99% of requests. You can read the whole thing here: Factsheet: Water in the West Bank 
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| Stuxnet and Flame proven related Posted: 12 Jun 2012 01:00 PM PDT From Kaspersky Lab: - Kaspersky Lab discovered that a module from the early 2009-version of Stuxnet, known as "Resource 207," was actually a Flame plugin.
- This means that when the Stuxnet worm was created in the beginning of 2009, the Flame platform already existed, and that in 2009, the source code of at least one module of Flame was used in Stuxnet.
- This module was used to spread the infection via USB drives. The code of the USB drive infection mechanism is identical in Flame and Stuxnet.
- The Flame module in Stuxnet also exploited a vulnerability which was unknown at the time and which enabled escalation of privileges, presumably MS09-025.
- Subsequently, the Flame plugin module was removed from Stuxnet in 2010 and replaced by several different modules that utilized new vulnerabilities.
- Starting from 2010, the two development teams worked independently, with the only suspected cooperation taking place in terms of exchanging the know-how about the new "zero-day" vulnerabilities.
In other Flame news, over the weekend all computers that were under its control destroyed (almost) all traces of the malware. Earlier this week, Kaspersky Labs noted that in a matter of hours after researchers had announced the discovery of Flame, the command and control infrastructure behind Flame went dark. This infrastructure was important because Flame is initially configured to contact a number of these servers and then run the control scripts that they serve. However, by 28 May — the day that Flame's details began to emerge — requests for these scripts were met with 403/404 errors, hampering efforts to learn more about the servers behind the malware.
Kaspersky Lab, with the assistance of GoDaddy and OpenDNS, attempted to sinkhole the malware; however, Symantec noted that this effort was only partially successful — Flame's authors still had control of a few command and control servers — enough to communicate with some of the infected computers.
"[Flame's authors] had retained control of their domain registration accounts, which allowed them to host these domains with a new hosting provider," Symantec wrote on its blog.
From here, infected machines received a new module from the remaining command and control servers — browse32.ocx — which has the purpose of covering Flame's tracks. It not only has a hit-list of all Flame-related files and folders to delete, but it subsequently rewrites random characters on the disk to ensure that the old data can't be retrieved.
There is one exception to the firing squad, and that is a temporary file: ~DEB93D.tmp. According to CrySyS' research (PDF), it is an encrypted file that contains a SQLite database of NetBIOS name look-ups. In theory, it would provide forensic teams with the ability to determine the names of all the computers it was able to see and possibly infect.
Researchers haven't come to an agreement as to whether sparing this file was an intended feature or an oversight by Flame's authors, but its existence is already being used as a temporary indicator for if a computer is, or was, infected by Flame. CIO magazine gives backhanded praise to the (presumed) US programmers who made Stuxnet, and, presumably, Flame: Even though many folks suspected Flame was made in the U.S.A., this is as close as anyone has come to saying so. As an American I feel a wee-bit of national pride. So what if our critical utilities infrastructure is less secure than my son's piggy bank? And so what if the government's defense and intelligence networks are more compromised than a herd of Kardashians? We made the coolest piece of malware since William Gibson invented Black Ice in Neuromancer. 
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| Linkim Posted: 12 Jun 2012 11:30 AM PDT From Ian: UN Watch "Jesus' Birthplace in Danger" Will UNESCO choose PA hype over expert findings? "ICOMOS (The International Council on Monuments and Sites)also found that, contrary to the Palestinian submission now before the UNESCO committee, the Church of the Nativity was neither "severely damaged," nor "under imminent threat"." Palestinians: Salam Fayyad "The Moderate" by Hisham Jarallah "Fayyad often comes across in the international community as a "moderate" man who believes in peace and coexistence with Israel; but his actions in the past few years reveal that the Palestinian prime minister is anything but liberal or moderate, even if he did receive a doctorate at the University of Texas." "If Fayyad does not want Palestinian children to mix with Israelis, why does he continue to live in an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem that is under Israeli sovereignty? And why does he continue to meet with Israelis on different occasions? If, as his aides say, he despises Mahmoud Abbas and believes that he is leading the Palestinians toward the abyss, why doesn't he tell this to the president in his face? Or is it possible that Fayyad and Abbas are playing the good cop and bad cop?" Der Sturmer in the UK? "What would Israel do if a journalist from Der Sturmer was filing reports from inside the country? Despite the fact that there is remarkable press freedom in Israel, extending to and including Arab media such as Al-Jazeera, it's a safe bet that Israel would find it extremely hard to swallow.
Yet there is such a foreign media outlet represented in Israel, publishing propaganda and openly supporting Israel's worst enemies. It's called The Guardian." Palestinians prefer symbolic UN bid to negotiations with Israel, experts say 
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| EoZ items invade San Francisco Posted: 12 Jun 2012 10:00 AM PDT  Last Sunday, San Francisco held its annual "Israel in the Gardens" festival where thousands of people get together to celebrate Israel. There were concerts, community booths, a mini-film festival, theater and dancing sections. The StandWithUs booth handed out postcards with postcard versions of some of my posters, the "This is Israel" series. Here is a photo of Matt and Mike with some of them: You can see the full series of posters, originally named "This is Zionism," here. (h/t Faith) 
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| The evil Zionist Pigs return! Posted: 12 Jun 2012 08:40 AM PDT From Ma'an: Wild boars on Sunday damaged farm land near Salfit, farmers said.
Farmers told Ma'an the boars damaged apricot trees, wheat crops and seedlings. They said the boars were released onto their land by settlers.
Residents and local officials in the area have for several years complained that settlers release pigs, which have caused injuries and destroy land in the rural communities. If you are so stupid as to believe that Jewish settlers raise wild boars, specifically to attack Arab farms and workers, you must either be: (h/t Yaacov Lozowick via David G) 
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| Swiss supermarket joins anti-Israel boycott Posted: 12 Jun 2012 07:15 AM PDT From JPost: Swiss-Jewish organizations sharply criticized last week a full-page advertisement in the Swiss paper Neue Zürcher Zeitung promoting the Migros supermarket's decision to boycott products from Israeli settlements.
A Swiss Protestant aid organization sponsored the ad and urged readers to support the boycott.
In a letter to Claude Ruey, the president of the Zurich-based aid organization of the Protestant Churches of Switzerland (HEKS), Swiss-Jewish leaders wrote, "We protest this discrimination against the State of Israel and are disappointed that the HEKS as a recognized aid organization fosters anti-Israel sentiments, which have a direct effect on us Jews in Switzerland."
The letter to Ruey was signed by Dr. Herbert Winter, Nicole Poëll and Gabrielle Rosenstein.
The Jewish leaders added that the decision is "purely political," singling out Israel and not boycotting goods sold in Migros from other countries where human rights violations are taking place.
The Berlin-based office of the American Jewish Committee said in a statement last week, that the "AJC has raised concern about the European relationship to Israel, given the growing number of boycott and BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] campaigns targeting Israel in Europe. In recent days, the large Swiss supermarket co-op Migros began labeling products originating in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, while the German branch of the church-based peace organisation Pax Christi launched its 'Occupation Tastes Bitter' boycott campaign against Israeli products." Since the boycott only affects Jewish-sourced products (Arab Israelis can manufacture anything they want over the Green Line and no one would boycott them) I figured this story needs an illustration: 
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| UN report on children being tortured, murdered in Syria Posted: 12 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT From the UN in a report on Children and Armed Conflict, 2011: The United Nations has received reports of grave violations against children in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011 and throughout the reporting period, continuing into 2012. In response to the need for United Nations verified information, my Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict sent a technical mission to the region to conduct interviews with victims and witnesses in refugee camps, villages and hospitals in the region in March 2012. In almost all recorded cases, children were among the victims of military operations by Government forces, including the Syrian Armed Forces, the intelligence forces and the Shabbiha militia, in their ongoing conflict with the opposition, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Children as young as 9 years of age were victims of killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill- treatment, including sexual violence, and use as human shields. Schools have been regularly raided and used as military bases and detention centres. Information obtained by the technical mission is in line with the findings of the independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.
Interviews with former members of the Syrian Armed Forces and the intelligence forces indicated that civilians, including children, were targeted by Government forces if they were residing in villages where members of FSA or other armed opposition groups were believed to be present or where deserters were hiding, or if they were seen fleeing the country seeking refuge. In one instance, a former member of the Syrian Armed Forces stated that, during protests in Tall Kalakh in December 2011, he was given an order by his commander to shoot without distinction, although the soldiers were aware that there were women and children among the protesters. During the armed break-up of the demonstrations, the witness saw three girls between approximately 10 and 13 years of age who had been killed by the Syrian Armed Forces. In another similar incident in Aleppo in the fourth quarter of 2011, a former member of the intelligence forces witnessed the killing of five children in a secondary school during demonstrations.
The grave violations continued into 2012 and although this is beyond the reporting period, the gravity of the incidents requires their inclusion in the report. Witness accounts described a particularly grave incident in the village of Ayn l'Arouz in the Jabal Azzawiyah in Idlib province. On 9 March 2012, Syrian Armed Forces, together with the intelligence forces and the Shabbiha militia, surrounded the village for an attack that lasted over a period of four days. Government forces entered the village on the first day and killed 11 civilians, including three boys aged between 15 and 17 years. Thirty-four persons, including two boys aged 14 and 16 years, and one 9-year-old girl, were arrested for interrogation about the suspected presence of deserters. Eventually, the village was reportedly left burned and 4 out of the 34 detainees were shot and burned, including the two boys aged 14 and 16 years. There is no evidence of Government forces formally conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 18 years. However, the Syrian Armed Forces and its associated Shabbiha militia used children as young as 8 years on at least three separate occasions within the reporting period. In the incident mentioned above in the village of Ayn l'Arouz in March 2012, a witness stated that several dozen children, boys and girls ranging between the ages of 8 and 13 years, were forcibly taken from their homes. These children were subsequently reportedly used by soldiers and militia members as human shields, placing them in front of the windows of buses carrying military personnel into the raid on the village.
The United Nations collected dozens of accounts of eyewitnesses of both children as young as 14 years of age who were tortured while in detention, as well as former members of the Syrian Armed Forces who themselves were forced to torture or witness torture. The Shabbiha militia was also involved in the detention and torture of children, especially during military operations and often in makeshift detention cells in schools. Most child victims of torture described being beaten, blindfolded, subjected to stress positions, whipped with heavy electrical cables, scarred by cigarette burns and, in one recorded case, subjected to electrical shock to the genitals. At least one witness said that he had seen a young boy of approximately 15 years of age succumb to his repeated beatings. Children were detained and tortured because their siblings or parents were assumed to be members of the opposition or FSA, or they themselves were suspected of being associated with FSA. On one occasion, in May 2011, a 15-year-old boy was taken into custody by intelligence forces in the municipal building in Jisr Ash-Shughur and repeatedly beaten with heavy electrical cables during interrogation. The boy stated that there were at least 20 other children his age or younger held in detention.
The United Nations has received some credible allegations of the recruitment and use of children by armed opposition, including FSA and other armed groups, although FSA has a stated policy of not recruiting any child under 17 years of age. Various sources reported on young children association with FSA carrying guns and wearing camouflage uniforms. My Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict reminded all parties of their obligations under human rights and international humanitarian law. (h/t JPD) 
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| The EoZ Pinkwashing Poster Posted: 12 Jun 2012 02:53 AM PDT Last year I made a series of posters called Real Liberals Love Israel. Here's a worthy addition to that series. Photo courtesy of the IDF. One of the Facebook comments on the photo: Aharon Cohen Mohliver: Just to clarify to all the skeptics: this picture was taken during gay pride in israel. It's not "just two men holding hands" and it is absolutely reflective of how the Israeli army treats gays. I'm gay. I served in the IDF as an openly gay soldier in combat units. This is a clear example that sexual orientation has nothing to do with how well one can perform any task, including serving in the field with other (straight) men. UPDATE: YNet has an article about this photo: The Foreign Ministry, as well as Israeli missions worldwide, has been known to use the IDF's acceptance of gay soldiers into its ranks as a symbol for Israel's progressive nature; but this is the first time the military has publically embraced the gay community on one of its social media platforms.
The IDF's Facebook initiative struck a chord: Within hours of posting the photo online, it garnered 4,621 "Shares" and over 6,500 "Likes," as well as hundreds of supportive comments. (h/t Yoel) 
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Last Sunday, San Francisco held its annual "Israel in the Gardens" festival where thousands of people get together to celebrate Israel. There were concerts, community booths, a mini-film festival, theater and dancing sections.
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