יום שבת, 4 באוגוסט 2012

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Link to Elder of Ziyon

Clown-washing

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 01:10 PM PDT

From the US Embassy in Israel:


The Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem was smiling and laughing as a colorful group of clowns, led by "Nurse Nice" (aka Hilary Chaplain), a medical clown from New York, walked through the corridors of the Pediatric Ward and entertained sick children in the dialysis room. With her visit supported by the U.S. Embassy, Tel Aviv, Hilary gave several workshops to Israeli medical clowns and worked with the "Dream Doctor," the largest medical clowns' organization in the country, to apply new methods taught at the workshop. Ambassador Daniel Shapiro was the guest of honor at this special event and took an active role by talking to the children and dancing with the clowns. As one mother put it after seeing a real smile on her sick daughter's face: "It's about time she started laughing after such a long period of tears ..."

EoZ gets results! FIAP giving ultimatum to UAE photo contest

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 11:45 AM PDT

After a number of EoZ readers complained to the president of the FIAP, Mr. Emile Wanderscheid, about the fact that Israelis cannot register for the Emirates Photo Competition, as reported here this morning, he responded:

Dear Photographer Friends,

After having received your E-mails re the Emirates Photography Competition I want to get this problem straight, to make you understand that it is inappropriate to blame FIAP in this context.

In fact when receiving the application for FIAP Patronage we could not realise that any problem could occur in the context you mention, as it was written in the regulation that "the salon will be open to all photographers from around the world".

Only when receiving your complaints we realised that some countries like Israel are missing in the listing of the countries.

As this is a clear discrimination and an infringement with the FIAP rules, the FIAP Patronage Service wrote two hours ago an E-mail to the organiser telling him that he is formally requested within 24 hours to add all the countries including Israel to the drop down country list or to delete this list completely from the online entry form.
In case of refusal, the FIAP Patronage will immediately withdrawn.

In hope that in this way the problem will be settled and I hope to receive no more complaint from other persons you are motivating to do so.

Kind regards; yours truly,

Emile WANDERSCHEID
President of FIAP
Thanks to all my readers who complained. (I like how Mr. Wanderscheid is begging for the emails to stop.)

We will see if the EPC does the right thing, and if not, whether FIAP will follow through...stay tuned.

(h/t Ronald, Jack)

Friday links

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 10:35 AM PDT

From Ian:

LATMA returns with full episodes: Jamil and Awad's summertime blues and Israel's unfair tax burden


Stand with Us The El Al Ambassadors Program



J'lem 'angry' at PA failure to reciprocate goodwill
"The Palestinian failure to respond positively to a series of recent Israeli goodwill gestures shows that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is "unable to enter into negotiations that will require concessions," according to an internal government memo made known to The Jerusalem Post."

Capital, seat of government or a town in limbo: World still divided over an 'undivided' Jerusalem
"A statistics book by the UN, of all bodies, grants Israel the right to assert its capital claim, while leaving the Palestinians with Ramallah. It's an anomaly that highlights an unrelenting dispute"

Caroline Glick Israel -- Obama's wedge issue
"It is hard to think of a milder criticism of Palestinian society than Romney's comparison of the Palestinian economy to the economies of Mexico and Ecuador. Romney could easily have gone much further without ever leaving the confines of received wisdom. For instance, he could have mentioned - as Obama did in his speech in Cairo in June 2009 - that Muslim societies under-invest in education relative to non-Muslim societies."

The French Railroad and the Holocaust Is a Public Company Private? by Michael Curtis
"In all these legal encounters, the SNCF has used contradictory, but successful, arguments. In the French case, it argues that the court has no jurisdiction over it because it was a private company. In the U.S., it argues that courts have no jurisdiction over it because it was not a private company but an arm of the French government."

BDS enthusiast David Martin, MEP, and a Hamas-linked trip to Gaza

Muslim sprays tear gas into face of two women wearing the Star of David (German)
"On Monday evening two women who came to a waterpark in Stein were assaulted. A 23-year-old insulted them, sprayed them with tear gas and gave them the "Hitler salute" -- apparently because of a Star of David on a necklace of one woman...."

Al Qaeda trio' arrested in Spain with enough explosives to blow up a bus
The trio - two of whom had practiced flying light aircraft - may have been plotting attacks in Spain or elsewhere in Europe according to Spain's interior minister.
The three - a Russian, a Russian of Chechen descent, and a Turk, were arrested after being watched by Spanish authorities for 'some time'.

Photos from today's Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade

Israel Daily Picture: The Hardships of Aliya (Immigration) to the Land of Israel in the 1930s

Fascinating account of Israel's strike against Syria's nuclear facilities

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 09:15 AM PDT

Ha'aretz (Hebrew) is excerpting a piece from the new book by Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, whose English title is "Spies Against Armageddon." It sounds fascinating.

Here is an excerpt from the Haaretz article, auto-translated back to English:
Information about the Syrian nuclear program came to the Mossad by accident. A few years before, on Christmas Eve 2003, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi announced that he agreed to give up his plans to produce weapons of mass destruction. Israeli intelligence - the IDF Intelligence and the Mossad espionage agency - were stunned. They did not have a clue about the Libyan leader's intention , and they learned it from the media.

Dagan and research officers of the Mossad intelligence wing sank into a sad reverie. They asked themselves: "If we did not know about Khan's activities in Libya (Pakistani nuclear scientist, Abdul-Qadir Khan, was that brain behind the Libyan nuclear program), what else don't we know?" Consequently, in early 2004, the head of Military Intelligence demanded to examine every piece of information collected and stored in the last decade in connection with his actions, his conversations and Khan's trips in the Middle East.

Intelligence communities tend to store hundreds, if not thousands of bits of information, not always with the time and tools for humans to read or listen to them carefully. Information that is important can disappear because no one noticed it or people didn't understand its meaning. They found that Khan visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria. The evaluation was that because Saudi Arabia and Egypt are countries friendly to the U.S., they will not rush to accept the offers of Dr. Khan's services to purchase nuclear know-how. In any case, the Mossad assessed, even if they keep in touch with him, then the U.S. will know about it.

Therefore the Mossad decided to concentrate on Syria, a country hostile to Israel, who runs anti-American policy and that cooperates with Iran and supports Hezbollah. Bashar al - Assad, who took power after his father died in 2000, was inexperienced and may have been tempted to do reckless or adventurous acts.

A few months after the start of the initial examination, the spring of 2004, researchers returned to the Mossad's research division to their division head and told him that indeed there is something behind it, because as the intelligence division investigators pursuing the Mossad's issue, they found more and more suspicious and worrisome signs.

It turned out that Syria has increased three years prior to testing the secret dealings with North Korea. The Mossad had known about the cooperation between the two countries in the development of Scud missiles, but now there was also cooperation between them in the nuclear field.
I just ordered the book.

(h/t Yoel)

UPDATE: Challah Hu Akbar notes another book that covered this topic, excerpted in JPost a short while ago. Each has details the others don't have.

LA Times: Don't worry, "experts" assure us Iran isn't going nuclear soon

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 07:45 AM PDT

I love how "experts" are willing to bet every single Israeli life that they are correct:

Nonproliferation experts and Middle East analysts are skeptical of Israeli claims that the Tehran regime is so close to building a nuclear weapon that time is running out for a peaceful resolution of the decades-long standoff.

OK, let's hear them:
"This is a window that has been closing for 15 years now, and it's always imminently about to close," said Jamal Abdi, policy director for the National Iranian American Council. He sees the sudden flurry of diplomacy between Jerusalem and Washington as an outgrowth of the U.S. presidential campaign and Israeli interest in ensuring that the United States continues to hold a hard line against Iran.
Hmmm... an advocate for Iran in America is the first "expert" the LA Times quotes. Sounds a little like an agenda, doesn't it?
Who's next?
Alon Ben-Meir, a professor of international relations at New York University's Center for Global Affairs, said Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak used the American visits to send a message to Tehran that Israel won't hesitate to take unilateral action.

Ben-Meir cautions U.S. and other officials against seeing the Israeli threats as mere posturing, pointing out the profound national security concerns that shape Israeli defense policy and the country's unshakable faith that Washington will come to its rescue if a strike against Iran triggers retaliation by Tehran or its well-armed allies in the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia.

"I don't think Israel is bluffing entirely. There is an element of exaggerating its readiness to act and likelihood of winning. But many advisors to Prime Minister Netanyahu are saying that if he waits six or eight months, they may end up unable to do anything significant in terms of damage" to nuclear facilities that Iran has been moving underground to protect them from airstrikes, Ben-Meir said.
This seems pretty accurate - of course Israeli public statements are meant to send a message, but at least he acknowledges that time is running short.

Next expert?
Threats of military action against Iran are spurred by Israel's frustration with the paltry progress being made at recently resumed negotiations between Iran and six major powers. The talks are aimed at ensuring that Iranian programs are limited to peaceful purposes like energy production and medical research, said Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, a nonproliferation scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

"I don't see any particular breakthroughs in the Iranian program. It's been on a pretty steady course," she said, adding that, as far as preemptive air strikes were concerned, "there is technically no urgency to do this."
Except that Iran's nuclear weapons program is on a pretty steady course. Hmmm.

And finally....
Still, those pressures are mounting on Iran and raising the cost -- both financially and politically -- of the regime's nuclear pursuits, said Alireza Nader, senior policy analyst on Iran for Rand Corp. He pointed to reports of Iranian demonstrations against rising food prices and shortages, along with demands, even from Iranian elites, that the government give priority to social needs over nuclear investments.

"According to the U.S. intelligence community, the Iranian leadership hasn't even made the decision to weaponize their program," Nader said. "They've been creating the technical know-how and the infrastructure, but they haven't made that decision, and there is much more time than the Israelis portray there to be. I don't think an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is inevitable or imminent."
Here's a classic example of how some academics can't think.

Nader doesn't think that anything bad will happen, and while Iran is doing everything besides publicly announcing it is building nuclear bombs, they haven't officially decided to do it. Iran has merely decided just to get to the point where they can build a bomb within 15 minutes if they choose to.

That's OK, isn't it? I mean, there will still be 15 minutes to act, right?

Now, I wonder if these "experts" would be so lackadaisical and pushing their "probablies" and "I thinks" if the warheads were aimed squarely at them?

Morsi will not attend Tehran NAM conference - but Abbas will

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 06:00 AM PDT

From Egypt Independent:
The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper said Friday that President Mohamed Morsy will not attend the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran at the end of August, where Egypt is scheduled to hand over chairmanship of the movement to Iran.

A source close to the presidency said either Prime Minister Hesham Qandil or Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr would likely represent Egypt at the summit. The source added that Morsy decided not to attend after being advised that he should not visit Tehran. The source did not reveal from whom the president received this advice.

Morsy was told that he could face public criticism for visiting Iran because of Tehran's support for the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, the source explained.
As I have previously noted, most members of NAM have wavered on sending their leaders to the conference in Iran, instead sending lower-level representatives.

But Mahmoud Abbas eagerly accepted the invitation.

So what does it say about the PA's "moderate" leadership when it is more accommodating to Iran than practically every other country?

UAE photo competition open to all - except, of course, Israel

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 04:00 AM PDT

From the website of the Emirates Photo Competition:

Under the patronage of International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP) the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) is organizing the Seventh Session of the Emirates Photography Competition (EPC) 2012.

...The EPC believes in the inclusive nature of art and its timeless ability to unite the interests and creativity of human beings everywhere, as well as the ability of photography to facilitate interaction and communication amongst people. Therefore the EPC's Seventh Edition will be open to all photographers from around the world.
Sounds great! Let's register!

Uh-oh:


It's a bit difficult for Israelis to register for this competition that is "open to all photographers worldwide, amateur or professional" when their country and nationality is not listed in the registration form.

If this was only a typical daily example of Arab hypocrisy and hatred of Israel, perhaps it could be laughed off. But this competition is under the patronage of the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP) which states clearly on its website:

All considerations of political, ideological or racial order are absolutely banned from the activities of FIAP.

So why is it sponsoring a photo contest that violates its own rules?

I am told that FIAP has already been contacted and is aware of the issue, but has not yet decided to do the right thing.

The president of FIAP is Mr. Emile Wanderscheid and his email is e.wanderscheid@fiap.net. You might want to contact him and ask about why FIAP is ignoring its own stated standards and is acceding to blatant discrimination against a FIAP-member country.

UPDATE: See my follow-up post here.

BREAKING: 20 Palestinians killed by artillery

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 01:03 AM PDT

8 Palestinian Arab civilians  were killed as a barrage of artillery shells were fired on the Yarmouk camp. (UPDATE: The death toll is now 20!)

Two children who were killed were apparently brothers, Anas Ahmad Tlozi and Ibrahim Ali Tlozi.

Several shells exploded on Ja'una Street in the camp, which also injured 25 civilians. Many of them are in serious condition at a nearby hospital.

Residents of the camp appealed to the UN to help protect them from the withering fire of the enemy.

This terrible event will no doubt generate endless op-eds and condemnations from Palestinian sympathizers.

Hold on....I just received an update: The Yarmouk camp is in Syria, not Gaza.

Oh, forget it then. No one cares about dead Palestinians when they are killed by Arabs!
פורסם על ידי zoom ב- 0:04

אין תגובות:

הוסף רשומת תגובה

הירשם ל- תגובות לפרסום (Atom)