| Leaked videotape shows Tunisia's "moderate" president re-assuring Salafists Posted: 28 Oct 2012 11:00 PM PDT From allAfrica, in a story that got picked up by Die Welt today: Some Tunisians are accusing Ennahda's leader of pursuing a hidden agenda with salafists.
A leaked video featuring Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi strategising with young salafist leaders is causing controversy in Tunisia.
In the video, which was first broadcast last April and re-broadcast October 9th, Ghannouchi said, "The secularists are still controlling the media, economy and administration. Therefore, controlling them would require more time." He added that "the police and army's support for Islamists is not guaranteed, and controlling them would also require more time."
"I tell our young salafists to be patient... Why hurry? Take your time to consolidate what you have gained," Ghannouchi said before advising them to "create television channels, radio stations, schools and universities" to push their agenda.
The Ennahda leader said, "We've met with Hizb ut-Tahrir, and the salafists, including Sheikh Abou Iyadh and Sheikh al-Idrissi."
Abou Iyadh, also known as Seif Allah Ben Hassine, is currently wanted by Tunisian police in connection with the September 14th attack on the US embassy.
In the video, Ghannouchi said he was "not afraid" to include an article in the new constitution on Sharia law. He went on to mock secularists who accept Islam and fear Sharia. "They are like those who accepted content but rejected the name itself," he said.
He also told the salafists about achievements that were made for them after Ennahda came to office. "The government is now at the hands of Islamists, the mosques are ours now, and we've become the most important entity in the country," he said.
"The Islamists must fill the country with associations, establish Qur'anic schools everywhere, and invite religious preachers because people are still ignorant of Islam," Ghannouchi continued.
In his first reaction to the leaking of video, Ghannouchi said that his words were "taken out of context", adding that the secularism he denounced was "the radical and extreme secularism". 
 |
| King of Bahrain reportedly coming to Gaza - is UNRWA legitimizing Hamas rule? Posted: 28 Oct 2012 03:30 PM PDT This story comes from Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today, which is generally a pretty good news source considering it is run by terrorists and their supporters. Informed sources in the northern Sinai said that notice has been given to plan for Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, King of Bahrain, to visit the Gaza Strip, this coming week.
The sources confirmed the King will fly from Bahrain in Arish Airport International, and then transfer via helicopter to the city of Rafah, 40 kilometers from the airport, and then will cross into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing amid heavy Egyptian and Bahraini security forces.
The sources pointed out that it is expected that the king of Bahrain to provide some financial aid and grants to the Gaza Strip, during his visit.
The visit was arranged by UNRWA and Khalifa is scheduled to meet the Prime Minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh. If UNRWA is facilitating a visit between a head of state and the head of Hamas, that means that the UN is officially recognizing Hamas - a terror group that just today asserted that there is no room for Israel in the Middle East - as the official political leadership of Gaza, and it would be a slap in the face of the PA. An Egyptian paper verifies that the king is arriving, but doesn't mention UNRWA. We'll find out this week if the UNRWA story is true. 
 |
| Sunday links Posted: 28 Oct 2012 01:30 PM PDT From Ian:
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews "Today, a sizable section of the European left has been reluctant to take a clear stand when anti-Zionism spills over into anti-Semitism. Beginning in the 1990s, many on the European left began to view the growing Muslim minorities in their countries as a new proletariat and the Palestinian cause as a recruiting mechanism. The issue of Palestine was particularly seductive for the children of immigrants, marooned between identities." Malice, media bias, and the Cape Times One of the strange paradoxes of our age is the unholy alliance between many self-designated Western social progressives and assorted tyrants, homophobes, xenophobes and anti-Semites in the Middle East.
"Three atrocities were examined: the Bulgarian bomb attack, the Toulouse shootings and the Fogel family murders (which took place in 2011). In brief, only the Bulgarian bomb attack was actually reported by the Cape Times while the other two were essentially ignored. Nevertheless, the paper did find space to present other either irrelevant or anti-Israel articles at the time these atrocities took place." 'Whining' About 'Pathetic' Rockets "For instance, between 2006 and 2011, 44 Israelis were killed and 1,687 injured by Gaza rockets. These figures include many children, as terrorists often fire rockets when Israeli children are walking to school. More than one million Israelis live in range of rocket attack from Gaza.
What do Israel's critics have to say about this?
Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow describes the rockets thusly: "pretty pathetic things – nobody gets injured". The Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah complained only yesterday about Israelis "whining about rockets". Other opponents of Israel have dismissed the rockets as mere "fireworks", and sneered that their only effect is to unsettle the pets of a handful of Israeli families." CIF Watch: Ben White dreams that, by the "bloodshed and sweat of martyrs", Palestine will be free! BBC Watch: The BBC, History and Politics Another object which appears on the website is a Canaanite bottle from around 2,000 BCE. It is described as coming from "Jericho, Palestine", but of course the term Palestine did not come into use for a further two millennia until it was introduced by Hadrian in 135 CE. Hezbollah crosses Syrian border with bloody assault on Assad's enemies Shia fighters coming to the regime's aid have tipped the balance of power. Loveday Morris meets beleaguered rebels taking sanctuary a few kilometres from the border Syrian rebels find Iranian cash in the wallets of Assad's militiamen Saudi authorities disperse anti-Assad protest in Mecca Iran cancels parliamentary visit over EU demands to meet Sakharov Prize recipients Official in Tehran says his country does not accept any preconditions Iran Installs 3,000 Centrifuges, Works to Trade Oil With Asia to Circumvent Sanctions "International intelligence officials say that Iran has installed nearly 3,000 centrifuges at a nuclear site called Fordo, located under a mountain and inside a military base near the holy city of Qum, the Washington Post reported." Lebanon arrests two Malaysian suspected suicide bombers On Thursday, Lebanon's Al-Joumhouria newspaper, quoting security sources, said the Malaysians were detained by army intelligence on charges of being al-Qaeda members.
Investigations revealed they were recruited into al-Qaeda by another Malaysian before being taken to Yemen where they met other members of the organisation.
Al-Joumhouria said that about two months ago, the two Malaysians had tried to enter Syria via Turkey on a jihadist mission to carry out suicide attacks. Indonesia Arrests 11 People Suspected of Planning Terror Attack Against U.S. Embassy Saudi Textbooks Incite Hate, Say Leaders in American Publishing "A ninth-grade textbook published by the Ministry of Education states, "The Jews and the Christians are enemies of the believers, and they cannot approve of Muslims." An eighth-grade textbook says, "The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians." These are just two examples of a long list of hate-filled passages." 'Hate content against religious minorities rampant in school textbooks across Pakistan' Textbooks used in Pakistan's schools include factual errors and hate content, which fuels the increasing levels of intolerance and extremism in the society, according to education experts. Israeli 5-in-1 tool for rescuers creates design buzz An industrial design student's nifty invention for disaster scenes garnered lots of attention at Milan Design Week. Israel Daily Picture: Jerusalem Commemorates the Visit of the German Emperor 114 Years Ago The Kaiser Arrives, and the Rabbis Turn Out. How Jerusalem's Jews Greeted the German Emperor in 1898 
 |
| The Allah Goat. Buy and slaughter it today! Posted: 28 Oct 2012 11:30 AM PDT From the Daily Mail: A prized goat has been put up for sale in India with a whopping £128,000 price tag. Islam Bhati, 37, from Rajasthan in India, is trying to sell his finest goat for 11 million rupees to a Muslim family celebrating the Eid al-Adha festival.
The two-year-old animal is organic and has the word 'Allah' in Arabic emblazoned on one side of his fur. He also has a crescent and star on the other side.
Mr Bhati said: 'It's a miracle animal and I feel blessed to own him. We have looked after this goat like our child and he's the best goat around. We can easily charge 11 million for such a divine animal, it's pretty reasonable.'
Mr Bhati, who run's the family's marble business, bought the goat from a nearby farm two years' ago.
He said: 'I noticed the inscriptions soon after I bought him. I knew it was sacred. Since we took him into our home we have cared for him and fed him pulses, fresh tree leaves and dry fruit. His meat will be very good.'
Mr Bhati has been offered huge sums for the goat since he posted an advert on the Internet last week. However, no one has stepped forward and paid the asking price yet. You might think this is a unique, once in a lifetime occurrence. After all, how many goats have spots that can be interpreted by idiotic Muslims as Allah? Well, the same thing happened in 2007, also in India: And in 2008: But this goat did them all one better, because it had both Allah and Mohammed on it! Allah must really love goats to reveal himself in so many of them. Then again, he also seems to like to show up in people's ears, on honeycombs, clouds and tsunamis. Not to mention ice-cream logos and sneakers, but since those were Western creations, they were abominations and not miracles. 
 |
| Hurricane open thread Posted: 28 Oct 2012 09:30 AM PDT  Jewish weather control stations had a minor glitch late last week, and as a result a small meteorological disturbance is headed directly towards La maison Elder which may entail some emergency measures at EoZ Central. So today I need to make some preparations. It is entirely possible that power will go out around here, probably sometime Monday, and that would make blogging a little bit more difficult. So here's an open thread while I batten down the hatches. And I try to get this stupid song out of my mind: Not to mention this: 
 |
| LA Times: More Jews praying on Temple Mount (updated) Posted: 28 Oct 2012 07:30 AM PDT Not a bad report - with the glaring exception of the media believing Muslim lies without checking: A simple, ancient ritual is threatening the delicate security balance atop Jerusalem's most sacred plaza: Jews are praying.
On most days, dozens — sometimes hundreds — of Jewish worshipers ascend to the disputed 36-acre platform that Muslims venerate as Al Aqsa mosque and Jews revere as the Temple Mount with an Israeli police escort to protect them and a Muslim security guard to monitor their movements.
Then, they recite a quick prayer, sometimes quietly to themselves, other times out loud.
Jewish activists call the prayers harmless acts of faith. Police and Muslim officials see them as dangerous provocations, especially given the deep religious sensitivities of the site and its history of violence. Twelve years ago, the presence of Jews on the plaza was so controversial that a brief tour by Israeli politician Ariel Sharon helped trigger a Palestinian uprising that lasted more than four years. [Lie #1]
But today Jewish worshipers are commonplace, coming in greater numbers than at any time since Israel's founding and perhaps, some scholars say, as far back as half a millennium ago. Their goal? To challenge the Israeli government's tacit acceptance and enforcement of a ban on Jews praying there by the Islamic trust that has continued to administer the site even after Israel captured the Old City in 1967.
Jewish visits to the plaza are expected to surpass 12,000 this year, up 30% from 2011, according to estimates by Jewish worshiper groups.
"What is provocative about a person wanting to pray?" Rabbi Chaim Richman asked after defying mainstream rabbinical religious rulings and risking arrest by praying on a recent morning near the golden Dome of the Rock. The world's oldest surviving Islamic monument, it's built atop the site where Jews believe their first temple held the Ten Commandments.
"It's the most basic human right," said Richman, international director of the Temple Institute. "I'm not asking to build a temple. I'm just asking to move my lips."
His group and others that advocate the rebuilding of a Jewish temple have often been dismissed by other Israelis and the international community as extremists and zealots who seek to destroy the Dome and the nearby Al Aqsa mosque. Now they are betting this prayer campaign will give their cause more mainstream support, portraying it as a matter of religious equality and free speech.
How can it be, they ask, that in the state of Israel, Jews and Christians are banned from praying at Judaism's holiest site, while Muslims can worship freely? Even the U.S. State Department has cited Israel's ban on non-Muslim prayer on the plaza in its annual report on religious freedom, they note.
The groups want the Israeli government to implement a time-sharing plan that would set aside certain hours for Jewish worship, similar to one used to divide Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, a holy site for Muslims and Jews.
Palestinians and Muslim leaders call the prayer campaign the latest ruse designed to instigate clashes so that Israel can justify putting the plaza under military control.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas this month accused Israel of launching a "fierce assault" on the mosque after soldiers broke up a Muslim riot triggered by a group of Jewish worshipers. [Lie #2]
Jordan, which has maintained day-to-day supervision of the plaza through an Islamic trust called the Waqf, is asking the U.N.'s cultural body, UNESCO, to condemn Israel for permitting an increase in Jewish prayers.
"The Israeli strategy is to take it over," said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, a Jerusalem think tank. "We don't want to share, not because we don't accept them, but because we don't trust them." He said the Hebron agreement was supposed to result in sharing, but it led to bloody clashes between Jews and Muslims, and finally a military takeover. [Lie #3]
Hadi also noted that temple-rebuilding extremists set fire to Al Aqsa mosque in 1969 and plotted to bomb the Dome of the Rock in the 1980s. [Lie #4]
Jewish prayer at the Jerusalem holy site is certainly not new, but it has been rarely seen during the last 2,000 years. After the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70, a Jewish presence on the plaza was mostly banned or severely limited during Christian and Islamic rule.
Under the Ottoman Empire, Jews were given access to the Western Wall — believed to be a remnant of the Second Temple compound — but banned from the plaza above, which was reserved for Muslims only, according to Israeli historian F.M. Loewenberg.
Even after Israel took control of East Jerusalem in 1967, most Jews stayed away because of rabbinical prohibitions that warned them against visiting the site lest they inadvertently step on hallowed ground.
In recent years, however, a small but growing number of rabbis have softened that position. At the same time, national religious groups have argued that Israel should exert greater control over what is considered Judaism's holiest site.
In 2000, Jewish visitors were allowed onto the plaza only in groups of two or three at a time and even moving lips in silent prayer might led to arrest, Jewish activists say. Today Jewish groups as large as 150 are allowed to roam the plaza, sometimes drawing nothing more than cold stares and quiet curses from Muslims.
But instead of furtive prayers when police aren't looking, more worshipers are sometimes singing and lying on the ground in keeping with Jewish traditions. Such overt prayer often sparks clashes with Muslims, as occurred this month during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot when a right-wing Israeli politician was arrested for praying.
Police officials say they oppose any attempt to allow non-Muslim prayer on the plaza.
"As soon as that takes place, it causes a response from Israeli Arabs, and the Israeli police have to respond and separate them," said Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. "Our aim is to keep the status quo and make sure the different religions can use and respect the site."
Right-wing Israeli lawmaker Arieh Eldad, who recently drafted a bill to impose a time-sharing plan that would allow Jews to pray at specified times, accused Palestinians of using the threat of violence to keep the plaza to themselves.
"Muslims are blackmailing the West, saying they will burn, riot and murder if we practice our right of freedom of speech," he said.
Temple group activists say their strategy is to keep praying and getting arrested, hoping Israeli courts will force the government to drop the ban.
Israel's Supreme Court upheld the right of Jews to pray on the plaza, but gave police broad latitude to restrict access in the name of security. Muslim males younger than 45 are also sometimes banned from the holy site for security reasons.
"We're focusing on prayer for the next year," said Aviad Visuli, a Haifa attorney who represents Jewish activists. "It's something nobody can object to."
Waqf leaders in Jerusalem declined to speak publicly, citing the sensitivity of the issue. But one Waqf official warned that Palestinian and Arab Israeli worshipers are increasingly uneasy over the prospect of sharing the plaza.
"This is a Muslim site," the official said. "If the police don't stop this, the people will. For Muslims, this is a red line." Arab lie #1: At least the authors wrote Sharon's visit "helped trigger" instead of "triggered" the second intifada, but the fact is that the riots were planned for months before Sharon's visit. From a December 2000 speech to the UN by the Israeli ambassador: It now seems as if the leading role that the Palestinian leadership has played in the current spate of violence is finally being admitted. The Palestinian semi-official daily Al Ayyam reported on 6 December that Palestinian Minister of Communications, Imad Al Falouji, confirmed that the Palestinian Authority had begun preparations for the outbreak of the current intifada from the moment the Camp David talks concluded, this in accordance with instructions given by Chairman Arafat himself. Mr. Falouji went on to state that Arafat launched this intifada as the culminating stage of "Palestinian steadfastness" in the negotiations, and not merely as a protest of Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount (Al-Ayyam, 6 December 2000) Arab lie #2: From reading the Arab media, while they complain about "Talmudic rituals" on the Temple Mount, it is the mere presence of Jews there that cause them to protest - not the prayers. They will fill their newspapers with photos of "Jewish desecrators" who are merely walking around. Arab lie #3: The massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs [1994] preceded the Hebron agreement in the Wye River Accords [1996.] It wasn't that the agreement caused the massacre. However, there were plenty of horrid terror attacks by Arabs against the Jews of Hebron after the Accords. For example, the 1998 murders of Rabbi Shlomo Ra'anan (stabbed in his bedroom) and Danny Vargas, or the 2001 murder of 10-month old Shalhevet Pass. The idea that Wye River was an Arab gesture of wanting to live peacefully with Jews is an outrageous lie. Arab lie #4: While there was a Jewish plot to bomb the Al Aqsa mosque in the 1980s, the 1969 attack was done by an unhinged Christian, not Jews, as implied here. UPDATE: CAMERA found some other problems with the article, including - most egregiously - the headline. 
 |
| Another dead terrorist, IDF now 9 for 9 Posted: 28 Oct 2012 05:30 AM PDT From Reuters: Israel killed a Hamas gunman it accused of preparing to fire a rocket from the Gaza Strip on Sunday and a separate Palestinian salvo struck a southern Israeli city, causing no damage.
The incidents followed a three-day lull since an upsurge in violence last week in which Israel killed at least seven Palestinians, and dozens of rockets were fired at Israeli towns, damaging some homes and wounding several agricultural workers.
An Israeli air strike before dawn on Sunday struck two gunmen from Hamas' military wing as they rode a motorcycle near the central town of Khan Younis, local officials said.
The Al-Qassam Brigades said Suleiman Qarra, 27, from Bani Suheila, was killed, and another fighter wounded.
An Israeli military spokesman said the air force had targeted a squad preparing to fire a rocket into Israel.
Hamas said its gunmen had fired mortar rounds at Israeli ground forces who had penetrated the coastal territory nearby. The military said those soldiers, who were unhurt, had been carrying out "routine work along the boundary fence."
Separately, two Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza struck Beersheba, a city 40 km away, causing no damage, the military spokesman said. Beersheba sounded air raid sirens and shuttered its schools as a precaution against further attacks.
The Popular Resistance Committees, one of several smaller Palestinian factions in Gaza that often operate independently of Hamas, said it had launched one of the Beersheba rockets. There was no immediate claim for the second. YNet notes what Reuters ignores: that there were rockets fired beforehand. This means that since the current escalation started, the IDF has now killed 9 terrorists - and zero civilians. Here's what the jihadist looked like while alive:
May we see many thousands more "after" photos on the jihadist sites.
 |
| Islamonazism in Tanzania (photo) Posted: 28 Oct 2012 02:30 AM PDT Israeli Nir Geiger recently went on a trip to Tanzania, where he snapped this photo: 'Nuff said. (h/t Israel Muse) 
 |
Jewish weather control stations had a minor glitch late last week, and as a result a small meteorological disturbance is headed directly towards La maison Elder which may entail some emergency measures at EoZ Central. 
אין תגובות:
הוסף רשומת תגובה