יום שני, 5 בנובמבר 2012

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Link to Elder of Ziyon

#BDSFail: Batsheva dancers ignore interruptions and get rave reviews

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 05:32 PM PST

From Scotsman.com:
"Ignore". That was the first word spoken during a voiceover in the opening moments of Deca Dance. It wasn't something special, added in for the occasion – it's always there – but tonight it had a special resonance.

Back in August, when the main Batsheva company played Edinburgh, the dancers paused each time a futile interruption from anti-Israeli protestors came their way. But not this time. Instead, during the eight shout-outs the ensemble (Batsheva's youth wing) kept right on going.

Created over a period of 20 years by Batsheva's artistic director, Ohad Naharin, Deca Dance changes almost on a monthly basis. Featuring slow, thought-provoking ensemble pieces, high energy routines, a sensual duet, and quite possibly the most joyous bit of audience interaction you'll ever see, it's a work that bears a few repeat viewings.

Aged just 18-23, the ensemble's dancers are still learning their craft, but they're already technically strong, sharply synchronised and more than capable of injecting a vast well of emotion into their performance.

What grabs you most about Batsheva, however (both the main company and its funky little ensemble sister), is the way these dancers move. Naharin has devised an entirely unique dance style called Gaga, and it is this that marks his companies out as different. Fluid, dynamic, expansive yet delicate, animalistic yet profoundly human, Gaga gives his dancers a whole other vocabulary with which to speak to us. And, despite the vain attempts to block it, their voices came through loud and clear.
Batsheva Ensemble, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Star rating: * * * *

Another reviewer, Thom Dibdin, called it "a stunning performance of a thoroughly entertaining piece of dance."

I'm glad that the dancers kept on going. Ignoring the idiots who came to disrupt the performance is the smartest way to ensure that the protesters are the ones who are marginalized.

I'm sure it isn't easy to ignore them, but who said representing Israel is easy?

(h/t CiFWatch tweet)

Sudan's foreign minister says America controlled by Jews

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 03:00 PM PST

Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti denounced the United States, describing it as "hypocritical and weak and Machiavellian" and controlled by "a few Jews."

He stated this in response to the US extending sanctions against Sudan for the 15th consecutive year.

Speaking on state radio, Karti described the United States as "hypocritical and Machiavellian and weak," pointing out that the US has issued contradictory statements about Sudan. In recent years the US has praised Sudan as cooperative in the fight against terrorism has commended President Omar al-Bashir's position on the peace agreements with South Sudan.

Karti added that America shows weakness because it is "in the control of a few Jews in the decision-making centers." He stressed that Sudan has nothing to do with terrorism and had no plans to harm U.S. interests.

Sunday links

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 01:00 PM PST

From Ian:
BBC Watch: Airbrushing terror: the BBC on Abu Jihad
"Unlike the BBC, the Palestinian Authority is quite certain about al Wazir's connections to terror attacks in which hundreds of Israelis were killed and injured. In fact, as recently as April 2012 the PA organized a week-long celebration of the man and his terror attacks, including the naming of sporting events in his honour, TV broadcasts of footage of him planning a terror operation and the presentation of 125 Israelis killed in attacks he planned as an 'achievement'."

Abbas interview aimed to interfere with Israeli elections, Liberman charges
Foreign minister dismisses moderate comments by PA leader as an attempt to strengthen parties 'who represent Palestinian interests'
"The foreign minister added that Abbas doesn't say the same things in Arabic that he does in English, and that Israelis who failed to see through the tactic were deluding themselves. "The attempt to lie to ourselves [about Abbas's moderation] amazes me every time," Liberman said."

Peres praises Abbas for 'brave' new statements on peace, Netanyahu dismisses them
Abbas said Thursday he had no territorial claims to pre-1967 Israel and no 'right' to return to live in Safed; thousands protest his remarks in Gaza
"But in a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said there was "no connection" between Abbas's words and deeds. Abbas had "refused to restart negotiations with Israel for four years despite a series of steps taken by the prime minister to resume them — such as an unprecedented construction freeze in the West Bank," the statement said. "In addition, Abbas refuses to discuss security arrangements that are necessary to protect Israeli citizens." Still, the statement said Netanyahu's offer to restart negotiations and meet with Abbas without preconditions still stands."

Rocket fired from Gaza lands in southern Israel
No injuries or damage reported

Meanwhile - Alan Dershowitz: Following the Elections, Mideast Peace Negotiations Should Resume

Correcting the Record, Haaretz Style
"We saw a similar phenomenon a few years ago when Haaretz published soldiers' "testimonies" from the Gaza war alleging IDF abuses. Ultimately, the stories were proven bogus, but not before Big Media fulfilled the maxim generally attributed to Mark Twain:
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."The Globe & Mail shows the truth got halfway around the world. But Levy's still racing it."

3 Syrian tanks cross into Golan demilitarized zone, Israel raises alert
The Israeli army, which has been braced for Syrian fighting spilling into Israel, reports the incident to UN peacekeepers
"The incident — the first such violation in 40 years — was not regarded as an incident of hostility toward Israel. Rather, the Syrian tanks were apparently facing off against Syrian rebel forces. Nonetheless, Syrian-Israeli relations are relentlessly fraught, and any border incident raises tensions."

Islamist gunmen kill three Egyptian policemen in the Sinai
Assailants ambush cops in El-Arish, shout 'God is great,' then flee.  [See also how Egyptians are blaming "Zionists."]

Ex-neo-Nazi regrets joining the Taliban
Jailed German jihadist tells court he ended up contracting hepatitis A, and his wife missed her mobile phone and supermarkets

Anti-Semitic incidents in the US down by 13%, ADL audit finds
1,080 occurrences of assault, vandalism and harassment cited

In the midst of a forest, a house for Herzl
An early 20th-century villa built in tribute to the Zionist founder is nestled in the center of the Hulda Forest, surrounded by lush foliage of every variety. A training farm for pioneers, it proved an unlikely retreat during the riots of 1929

Top 10 ways algae boost science, energy and medicine
Israeli scientists find novel approaches to tap into the potential of this slimy plantlike organism for fuel, nutrition and innovative medical therapies.

Voicemail for video
Supermodel Noa Tishby helps launch new Israel-based startup, Minit, for bare-bones video sharing via smartphone.
Noa Tishby, perhaps best known for selling hit Israeli TV series such as In Treatment and Homeland to Hollywood, has joined Minit, a three-person startup based in Tel Aviv making what Tishby describes as "voicemail for video."

Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan says Halloween party was "satanic and homosexual"

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 11:00 AM PST

From AFP:
Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday condemned Halloween celebrations held in an Amman cafe as "Satanic" and homosexual, while a newspaper reported acts of vandalism at the party.

"We watched with disgust and shame last night (Friday) homosexual and Satanic rituals in an Amman cafe," the Brotherhood said in a statement on its website.

"This presents a challenge to the values of the Jordanian people and their Arab and Muslim identity, as well as a violation of religious laws," it added.

The group demanded that those who organised the party be tried for the "grotesque act," decrying that such events are allowed to go ahead when the people are "stricken by poverty and amid political crises" in Jordan.

Al-Ghad newspaper, meanwhile, reported that violence broke out when "angry youths tried to prevent the Halloween celebrations from taking place" in the cafe in Amman.
Meanwhile, an Egyptian paper reports of a similar gathering in Egypt where seven people got together in an apartment to practice homosexuality and, yes, Satanism. They were arrested.

Abbas spokesman to release "proof" Israel conspiring with Hamas against PLO

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 08:30 AM PST

For someone hailed as a serious leader, Abbas sure loves conspiracy theories.
The president's spokesman said late Saturday that the Palestinian Authority will release proof that Arab countries, Palestinian groups and Israel have held secret talks to sabotage the president's bid for a UN upgrade.

"What is this harmony between (Israeli premier Benajmin) Netanyahu and (Foreign Minister Avigdor) Lieberman on the one hand, and between Hamas and Arab parties on the other, in the attack on the president before heading to the United Nations?" Nabil Abu Rudaineh said in a statement.

Local groups, Arab countries and Israel have planned a campaign to thwart President Mahmoud Abbas efforts to upgrade Palestine to a non-member state at the UN General Assembly in the next month, the spokesman alleged.

He warned that they will soon publish confidential files of meetings to that effect.
I, for one, am anxiously awaiting the release of these files.

Abbas has previously insisted that Israel trains wild dogs to attack Arabs and wild pigs to destroy their crops. His Fatah group has previously accused Hamas of collaborating with Israel.

So why is a habitually lying paranoiac considered such a wonderful, moderate leader?

I don't know - ask Thomas Friedman.

The death of Arab secularism (The National)

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 06:00 AM PST

This is a very useful overview of how Arab secularism has all but disappeared and Islamism has ascended. Excerpts:

The death of Arab secularism is the story of a country that no longer exists and a world almost impossible to imagine.

That world can be glimpsed in old newsreels from the Arab cities of the 1950s and 1960s. The cities of the post-war period - Cairo, Beirut and Damascus, Baghdad and Aden - look much the same as many developing countries of the time: American-built cars, European-style suits, a certain easy mingling of men and women.

The vision of the future the men and women in those over-saturated newsreels had, how they saw their modern world unfolding, cannot easily be understood.

But it can perhaps be surmised from a joke, told by Egypt's leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to an audience in the years after the Muslim Brotherhood was accused of attempting to assassinate him. Nasser described meeting with the Brotherhood's leader in 1953 in an attempt to reconcile the group with his leadership. (Nasser doesn't mention whom he met, but it was most likely Hassan Al Hudaybi, a judge who led the group for 20 years from 1951.)

"The first thing he asked me was to make the wearing of hijab mandatory in Egypt," says Nasser, "and to force every woman walking on the street to wear a hijab." The crowd laughs and Nasser hams it up for them, looking perplexed at such an outlandish request. "Let him wear it!" shouts an audience member, and the crowd erupts in laughter and applause.

But that's not the punchline. Nasser tells Al Hudaybi he knows the Brotherhood's leader has a daughter studying medicine, and his daughter doesn't wear the hijab. "Why haven't you made her wear the hijab?" he asks, before delivering a knockout blow: "If you cannot make one girl - who is your own daughter - wear the hijab," he says, "how do you expect me to make 10 million women wear the hijab, all by myself?" The crowd roars its approval.

Nasser's joke is instructive for the world view it implies. The middle and upper classes of 1950s Egypt considered it ridiculous that the wearing of the hijab could be enshrined in law. Most did not wear it; they considered the proper role of religion to be private, outside the realm of government and politics. Nasser himself explicitly declared the same thing.

Contrast that with today's Egypt, and indeed the wider Arab world, and it is clear how much has changed in just half a century....The days when the very notion of large numbers of women wearing the headscarf was unthinkable have passed into history. Nasser's punchline is now Egypt's reality.
The writer goes into a brief history of how the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which was officially based on Islam, required a new way of thinking to unify the Arab world, and secularism in the form of Nasserism and Baathism was the high-water mark of that attempt with the formation of the United Arab Republic.

He doesn't note the obvious influence of the Iranian revolution on the Islamic revival in the Arab world.

What is left unsaid is that the current Islamist revival is different from the Ottoman model; the Ottoman Empire used religion as a means to maintain unity but it was not driven by religion. Today's pan-Islamic movement, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, is far more extreme and far more dangerous. The Ottoman Empire was still political with the veneer of religion, the new Islamists use an extreme interpretation of Islam that they believe includes politics.

If religious rulings trump political decisions, then all of the rules of international politics go out the window when dealing with the new Islamism. For better or for worse, diplomacy is nearly meaningless to Islamists - it is only a means for them to gain power, not to co-exist. In the Islamist mindset, concessions can only be considered when the alternative is a war they know they cannot win.forc Only force would be respected.

Moreover, when religion defines politics, the extremist interpretations seem to have free reign - even though the Muslim Brotherhood won the Egyptian elections, there has been very little pushback from them on a religious basis on the Salafist attempts to move Egypt even further to extremist Islamism.There are no "moderate" imams who command the respect of the extremists, and the extremists have a monopoly on accusations of blasphemy against their enemies.

People who think that it can be business as usual with the new Islamic states emerging in the Arab world are fooling themselves. And the fatal error from the West is to conflate Islam as a personal religion and Islamism as a political movement. The former, while problematic, is ultimately benign, while the latter is truly evil and must not be coddled by the free world.

(h/t John G)

Arabic media: Tzipi Livni extorted prominent Arabs with sex!

Posted: 04 Nov 2012 03:12 AM PST

Hubba-hubba!

This story is literally all over the Arabic media based on an original at Egypt's major newspaper Al Masry Al Youm, but the only English translation so far is this one from Gulf Daily News:
Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni said she had been involved in several special operations during her work with Mossad which involved sexual relations with prominent personalities to extort information for the Israeli intelligence agency. Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Livni as telling Time magazine in an interview that she never minded having sex and committing murders to obtain intelligence to benefit her country.

She said she was prosecuted in a number of European countries for murders and sexual extortion but was able to get away due to her government's influence.
The Arabic versions helpfully add:
The former leader of the opposition Kadima party justified the fact that she wasn't involved in any romantic relationship throughout those years, by saying that these kinds of relationships require trust and faith between the spouses and she couldn't build such a relationship with anyone. She said: "Nevertheless, short, passing relationships don't cause pain or damage, if both sides abide by the rules."
Israeli media is amused, noting that Livni had a 2009 interview with the Times of London where she said the exact opposite, that she would never have sex with the enemy when she was in the Mossad. It also quotes a friend of Livni's who says that she was amused by the "revelation."

To its credit, Shorouk News reported that the article was fabricated.

Al Masry al Youm is actually one of the more reliable Egyptian media outlets, which gives you an idea of how reliable Arabic media is altogether.

No correction yet on the Al Masry al Youm website.

(h/t Al Gharqad)
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