יום שישי, 9 בנובמבר 2012

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Link to Elder of Ziyon

Interesting new weapon defeats electronic targets

Posted: 08 Nov 2012 05:00 PM PST

While this is a sales/press release from Boeing, it is interesting:


A recent weapons flight test in the Utah desert may change future warfare after the missile successfully defeated electronic targets with little to no collateral damage.

Boeing and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., successfully tested the Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) during a flight over the Utah Test and Training Range.

CHAMP, which renders electronic targets useless, is a non-kinetic alternative to traditional explosive weapons that use the energy of motion to defeat a target.

During the test, the CHAMP missile navigated a pre-programmed flight plan and emitted bursts of high-powered energy, effectively knocking out the target's data and electronic subsystems. CHAMP allows for selective high-frequency radio wave strikes against numerous targets during a single mission.

"This technology marks a new era in modern-day warfare," said Keith Coleman, CHAMP program manager for Boeing Phantom Works. "In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy's electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive."
I can imagine this being useful in any "go it alone" scenario...

Saudi advisory body puts women members behind a screen

Posted: 08 Nov 2012 01:45 PM PST

Too funny:
A Saudi official says a screen will separate genders on the country's main advisory body to King Abdullah when women join it for the first time.

Following a decision by Abdullah, women will be allowed to join the Shura Council, his main group of advisers expected to reconvene early next year. The format is seen as a compromise with hardline Islamic factions that oppose even small reforms in the ultraconservative kingdom, where sex segregation is a widespread custom.

Abdullah has pledged to allow women to vote and run in the next municipal elections in 2015. But Saudi women still face many restrictions, including a ban on driving.

The official, quoted in Al-Watan newspaper on Wednesday, says an internal communications network will allow men and women to communicate despite the barrier.
If this "communications network" is text-based, that last paragraph implies that the women wouldn't even be able to speak from behind the screen.

Here is a screen separating men from women at a Saudi McDonalds:


Doesn't the male worker behind the counter still see the female customers?

I guess he is a foreign worker.

Thursday links

Posted: 08 Nov 2012 12:15 PM PST

From Ian:
MEMRI: Hamas TV Host Criticizes UNRWA for Teaching Holocaust to Palestinian Children



Where Would Hezbollah Be Without the EU? by Douglas Murray
"The EU has been here before. During the same period they came up with their false wall-of-separation within Hezbollah they did the same thing with Hamas. That terror group too, they decided, had a military and a political wing. After the atrocities of the Second Intifada, however, that fiction disappeared. It did not disappear because the EU was made aware of something it had previously been unaware of. It disappeared in Europe because it was no longer possible – in terms of public opinion or political expediency – to allow a group to operate which blew up buses full of civilians."

Bahrain arrests bombing suspects and blames Hezbollah

Peres warns: Iran threatening another Holocaust
At inauguration of Russian Jewish museum in Moscow alongside Russian FM, Peres thanks Russia for defeating Nazis in WWII.

Nick Clegg just can't bring himself to support Israeli defensive action against Iran.
"Clegg continued in the same vein even when Bradby asked whether Clegg would expect military action once Iran had loaded nuclear weapon technology into a missile and, finally, if Israel's intelligence showed that they couldn't sit and tolerate the situation anymore.
Yet still Clegg could not bring himself to support Israeli defensive action, even against such an existential threat as an all-out nuclear attack."

BBC Watch: BBC shields audiences from antisemitism in Istanbul
"The BBC article also fails to relate in any way whatsoever to the antisemitic spectacle which went on outside the court on the first day of the 'trial' and which was obviously tolerated – if not encouraged – by the Turkish authorities."
"In the name of accuracy and impartiality, it would of course be proper for the BBC to update its anodyne profile of the Free Gaza Movement to include the recent display of blatant antisemitism by its leader Greta Berlin, who is quoted in the BBC profile. So far – over a month after the incident – that has not been done."

Hamas offices in Syria raided, adding to fears of Palestinian deportations
Abbas appeals to envoy for international protection as Palestinians increasingly involved in violence

[Also I saw an Arabic article saying that Syrian rebels would re-open Hamas offices when they win. - EoZ]

7 more Syrian generals defect to Turkey
Seven generals who recently defected from the Syrian army arrived with their families at the Turkish-Syrian border on Tuesday and were allowed to enter the country at the town of Reyhanlı in the southern province of Hatay under tight security measures.

Space-age rapid transit to debut in Tel Aviv
Developer of NASA-designed skyTran chose Israel as the perfect place to pilot the software-guided personal transport pods that glide on a cushion of air.
If all goes as planned, within two years Israelis will be the first people to try out a futuristic rapid transport system designed by NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California.

World Famous Tenor Andrea Bocelli Tells UK Paper of His Love for Israel
"A country that has really resonated with me and I was really impressed with was Israel. I found that the whole country had a very special atmosphere. I was there to perform but it was one of the few places that I've visited over the years that I had some free time to explore, and I was hugely impressed by all the religious history there."

IDF sends search and rescue crew to Ghana after mall collapse
Dozens feared trapped in rubble in Accra shopping center
"The Israel Defense Forces was scheduled to send a search and rescue team to Ghana Wednesday night after a shopping center collapse in the African country's capital earlier in the day left dozens trapped.
The army search and rescue force of doctors, engineers and other experts, 18 people in total, were to be flown to Accra late Wednesday night to assist in rescue attempts, the IDF said on its website. Some 51 people have so far been pulled from the rubble of the shopping center, with one confirmed death."

Anti-Israel NGOs keep on pumping out lies

Posted: 08 Nov 2012 10:00 AM PST

A reader asked me to comment on an October report apparently being distributed to EU politicians by some 20 NGOs to pressure them into banning imports of goods from Jews - and only Jews - who work in Judea and Samaria.

These slick-looking reports are churned out with regularity by the anti-Israel crowd, complete with lots of footnotes that no one will ever check out for veracity. Beyond that, they engage in deception by framing issues in the most biased way possible.

I don't have the time to fisk this entire report, called "Trading away Peace: How Europe helps sustain illegal Israeli settlements," but I noticed one section, 2.2, that is emblematic of the deception throughout the document.

Ban on dual-use items: Israel bans Palestinians from importing a range of "dual-use" items, including chemicals and fertilisers used in factories and agriculture. While Israeli settlers have full access to these materials, Palestinians are forced to turn to more expensive or less effective alternatives that further increase the cost of production and often have greater negative long-term impact on the environment. It is estimated that the fertilizer restrictions lead to losses of between 20% and 33% in agricultural productivity.

It is simply unbelievable that such a paragraph could be written without even acknowledging the history of terror attacks - using home-made explosives - that have come from the West Bank. The demand that Israel ignore its own security imperatives is untenable an shows an alarming lack of concern about the lives of Israelis.

Any report such as this that doesn't even acknowledge Israel's very real security concerns - even if only to dismiss them - can be assumed ab initio to be biased against Israel no matter how many footnotes it has.

But here's the next paragraph:
Obstacles to movement of goods: While settlers enjoy easy and direct access to Israeli and international markets, all Palestinian goods destined for Israel or further export must pass through Israeli checkpoints where they are unloaded from Palestinian vehicles and extensively checked before they can be re-loaded onto an Israeli vehicle on the other side (the so-called 'back-to-back' system). This is extremely time-consuming and often damages the products. Palestinian goods destined for international markets then pass through Israeli port and airport terminals where they face further disadvantages, obstacles and excessive time delays. All these obstacles significantly reduce the competitiveness of Palestinian products and increase the unpredictability of their delivery times and quality.

This is a bit silly; if there were an independent Palestinian Arab state declared on the 1949 armistice lines today, access to the European markets of Arab goods would have the exact same restrictions. In fact, goods exported to Jordan from the PA have more onerous restrictions than those going through Israel! (This recent post of mine addresses the issue.)

In other words, they are objecting to Israel behaving like a sovereign nation.

More deception follows:
Gaza closure: Compared to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip has been subject to even more stringent restrictions, especially since the takeover by Hamas in 2007. Exports from Gaza, a territory inhabited by 1.6 million Palestinians, have been banned almost entirely, contributing to the low volume of overall Palestinian exports. Despite the easing of some restrictions by Israel since 2010, the volume of exports from Gaza is still less than 2% of the pre-2007 levels. EU imports from Gaza over the five years of blockade have been limited to a few shipments of agricultural produce to the Netherlands and two trucks of garments to the UK.

The source for this, Gisha, does not note what percentage of goods exported from Gaza before 2007 went to Israel. My understanding is that a significant majority of all goods exported from Gaza before the blockade did go to Israel. Surely Israel has the right to limit its imports from Gaza if it chooses. So the 2% figure, while probably accurate, does not give any indication of how many goods were exported from Gaza to the EU before 2007, which I would venture to say was negligible. But if, say, 85% of Gaza's goods used to go to Israel  then Gisha should note that before putting out the 2% number.

It might just be that Israel doesn't want to buy goods from a sector that is still shooting rockets at it. Just a wild guess. Do these NGOs think that Israel should be allowed to say where it imports its tomatoes from?

Besides, Israel is indeed working to increase the number of exports from Gaza to the West Bank, as I've reported. One question to ask is what demand there is for Gaza goods in the West Bank today and if that is not being met.  Another question is whether any of these NGOs are complaining that Egypt is not importing goods from Gaza, which Israel could not limit if it tried. These are questions that this report does not ask - because the truth is not the goal of reports like these.

This is an indication of the bias that pervades this - and similar - reports. People who are not well-versed in the issues, those who do not have the time or inclination to research it themselves, those who don't have the necessary skepticism and those who are already sympathetic to the anti-Israel cause will swallow this garbage without thinking.

Which is exactly what the Israel-haters want.

The organizations behind this exercise in demonization are:
1. Aprodev
2. Broederlijk delen (Belgium)
3. Caabu (UK)
4. CCFd - Terre Solidaire (France)
5. Christian Aid (UK and Ireland)
6. Church of Sweden
7. Cordaid (Netherlands)
8. danChurchAid (denmark)
9. diakonia (Sweden)
10. FinnChurchAid (Finland)
11. ICCo (Netherlands)
12. IKv pax Christi (Netherlands)
13. International Federation for Human rights (FIdH)
14. Medical Aid for palestinians (UK)
15. medico international (Germany)
16. medico international switzerland
17. The Methodist Church in Britain
18. Norwegian people's Aid
19. Norwegian Church Aid
20. Quaker Council for european Affairs
21. Quaker peace and Social Witness (UK)
22. Trocaire (Ireland)
Truth and fairness are obviously not part of these organizations' agenda.

By the way, if you object to my characterization in the first paragraph of these organizations' goals as banning imports of goods from only Jews who work in Judea and Samaria, I am being entirely accurate.

There are a number of industrial zones across the Green Line - Barkan, Atarot and Adumim - whose companies get targeted regularly by the anti-Israel crowd. Richard Falk relies heavily on the "Who Profits" website when he insists that certain American and Israeli companies be universally boycotted, and this "Trading Away peace" report quotes "Who Profits" some 26 times.

I looked through the Who Profits site, and I was unable to identify a single Israel-Arab-owned company that they propose boycotting.

Yet, according to this Globes article that discussed the success of these industrial parks, the Atarot park was quoted as having "a nice combination between Arabs and Jews, both in terms of employment and business ownership."

So there are definitely Arab-owned companies in these industrial zones - but not one of them are targeted for boycott!

One probable example is Al Mada'ain Food Products, formerly Slava Food Company, in Atarot, owned by Abu Ghazala Haitham. Assuming that Mr. Haitham is an Israeli citizen, then why isn't his company being tracked for being boycotted by Who Profits or other similar "pro-Palestinian" initiatives? Is he not Palestinian? [If he isn't an Israeli citizen, then presumably the PA will arrest him any hour now.)

When you go beyond the rhetoric and fine print in the volumes of invective released by these NGOs, you uncover the fact that they really are discriminating against Jews, and only Jews.

I think there is a name for that, but these "humanitarian" organizations get very upset when you say it.

Egypt news: Porn ban, Fatah member killed, plague of locusts

Posted: 08 Nov 2012 08:38 AM PST

Here's today's roundup of interesting news from Egypt.

The Egyptian government has announced that Internet pornography will be banned:
A new moral code has been sculpted for Egyptians, one which has jostled them into a freeze frame "based on ethics." The limits have well and truly been set, much to the mass grumble of Egyptians from liberal circles.

To quote Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood spokesman, the decision to ban all pornographic online content in Egypt on Wednesday by the state prosecutor was "a first step towards establishing a society based on ethics."

And the reaction has showcased the usual split in Egyptian society, one which has made a cyclical appearance since the Islamist powers garnered control of the country's presidential and parliamentary scenes: The societal yearning for freedom of expression vs. state control.

Now in Egypt, the ban has raised questions over the futility of online censorship – whether blocking porn can be easily dodged with a bit of proxy fine-tuning – and whether authorities are stifling democratic freedoms by crouching behind "ethical boundaries."

The argument being, attributing the porn ban to "ethics" and the "national interest" is an open-ended declaration.

"These pornographic websites stem from a Western culture, they deteriorate our moral family values and youth. They promote a criminal culture, one which leads to unproductivity, drugs and theft," says Mamdouh Ismail, a Salafi member of the Egyptian parliament who rose to prominence after he stood up during a parliament session in February to loudly recite the Azaan, or call to prayer, in protest of session timings.
Of course, there is plenty of home-grown Egyptian porn out there, and the thirst for pornography in the Arab world is apparent just from the number of hits I still receive from Internet searches for misspelled "Arab six videos".

In other news, Palestine Press Agency reports that a Fatah member who fled Gaza to avoid being killed by Hamas during the coup was murdered in El Arish, Egypt. Could be a coincidence, but Hamas ties to Egyptian Islamists might have had something to do with this.

Finally, a Biblical plague is hitting parts of Egypt, today:
The Agriculture Ministry declared a state of disaster in Aswan on Thursday as swarms of desert locusts descend on Lake Nasser, the Egypt-Sudan border and the Eastern Desert.
There was a huge plague of locusts in Africa and the Middle East in 1988.

John Kerry to replace Hillary?

Posted: 08 Nov 2012 07:15 AM PST

Hillary Clinton has confirmed that she plans to step down at the end of this year, and the top names that have been popping up to replace her are U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon and Senator John Kerry.

Kerry had long been an apologist for Bashir Assad before a more recent about-face. Here is a photo of Kerry and Assad, along with their wives, dining in a Damascus restaurant in 2009.


As National Review has noted:
John Kerry has been a frequent traveler to Syria, meeting with Assad five times from 2009 to 2011. Like Pelosi and Lantos, the former presidential candidate sought to promote peace talks between Syria and Israel. A WikiLeaks document revealed that Kerry told the emir of Qatar in November 2010 that Assad is a man who "wants to change" and that Israel should cede the Golan Heights to the Syrians "at some point."

After a "long and comprehensive" meeting with Assad in April of that year, Kerry described it as "a very positive discussion." A month later, Kerry was back in Syria. His spokesman, insisting that "Syria can play a critical role in bringing peace and stability if it makes the strategic decision to do so," asserted that Kerry had "emerged as one of the primary American interlocutors with the Syrian government."
See how well his interlocution worked out?

Kerry has also flip-flopped about Israel, condemning settlements in 2008 but saying that Obama wasted a year and a half by focusing on the settlements in 2011.

Rice might be even worse. Here is how she effectively condemned Israel at the UN after vetoing an anti-Israel resolution, saying that the US really agreed with the resolution but felt this was not the right venue:
Our opposition to the resolution before this Council today should therefore not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity. On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity...While we agree with our fellow Council members—and indeed, with the wider world—about the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, we think it unwise for this Council to attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians. We therefore regrettably have opposed this draft resolution.
Read Elliot Abrams' response.

Things are not looking good for the next four years of US Middle East policy if either Kerry or Rice get chosen as the new Secretary of State.

But it is nice to know that Russia would prefer Kerry. Rice was too critical of Russia arming Syria, it seems.

HRW's anti-Israel position illustrated by a single tweet

Posted: 08 Nov 2012 05:04 AM PST

Yesterday, Human Rights Watch head Ken Roth tweeted:

The people who reflexively condemn every time we criticize  are finding it hard to dismiss our  work.

The link is to an article in the Jewish Daily Forward, praising HRW's work in Syria.

I will accept that HRW is doing good work in Syria. The problem is that, as this tweet indicates, HRW cannot distinguish between the morality of a brutal regime murdering tens of thousands of its citizens and Jews building houses in their historic capital.

In fact, the Forward article indicates that even HRW is afraid that its very recent work in Syria is overshadowing its anti-Israel work:
Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa division, says that the focus on Syria has meant an accompanying relative shift away from Israel and Palestinian territories.

"Since Israel was involved in a war in Lebanon and a war in Gaza, of course it got a lot of attention," Whitson said. As the group's area manager, Whitson says, she now struggles to keep the work that the organization continues to do outside Syria from getting buried. Before the uprising, Syria "was such a moribund place, we couldn't generate news…. The reality is, for us to report we needed to be documenting active measures of repression or active measures of abuse."
A hundred killed every single day in Syria, and Sarah Leah Whitson is complaining that she cannot gain traction on her usual anti-Israel focus! (And HRW managed to focus on Israel plenty of times besides the wars in Lebanon and Gaza.)

In other words, for them to report on Syria before rebels managed to start making territorial gains was really hard, but for them to report on Arabs claiming Israeli abuse was really, really easy. So they decided that Israel was the major human rights abuser in the Middle East, and Syria  - while bad - is problematic because mass murders there are overshadowing their specialty.

The article also somewhat contradicts Whitson's claim that it was nearly impossible to report abuses from Syria before the current round of mass murders:
"We've been working on Syria for so long; I'd been doing it for six years when the uprising started," said Nadim Houry, HRW's Beirut-based deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division. "We already had contacts with quite a few activists and had been able to establish trust and assess accountability over a few years."
So there you have it. A single tweet shows that HRW is not only equating Israeli actions with Syrian human rights abuses, not only that it feels it should be congratulated for doing what it is supposed to be doing, but that it feels guilty that it is emphasizing Syria so much recently.

I never saw a quote from an HRW officlal complaining that Israel is taking up so many of HRW's resources that they cannot focus properly on Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Which means that even today, HRW's  main focus is Israel, and Syria's murderous regime is a distraction that must be solved so it can get back to its major agenda of demonizing the Jewish state.

Egypt's crippling humanitarian siege of Gaza continues

Posted: 08 Nov 2012 02:28 AM PST

Isn't it interesting that no one writes headlines like that?
Fuel donated by Qatar for the Gaza Strip is still stuck in Egypt due to the unrest in Sinai, a Gaza official said Wednesday.

Mohammad Abadleh, an official with a gas company coalition in Gaza, said the blockage was due to the security situation in the restive peninsula, not any procurement problems.

On Sunday, Egyptian security officials told Ma'an that deliveries had stopped after Bedouin blocked roads.

Seven trucks of fuel were set to leave Egypt via Israel's al-Auja crossing, escorted by security officers from Suez, but the delivery had to be abandoned.
We all know that "security reasons" are not an excuse to deny goods to Gaza, especially necessities like fuel, as human rights organizations never tire of telling us.

Yet you hardly hear any of them criticize Egypt for repeatedly denying or restricting Gazan access to fuel and other essential goods as well as travel into Egypt itself.

Strange, that.
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