יום שבת, 2 בפברואר 2013

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Link to Elder of Ziyon

Hitler's toilet. In New Jersey.

Posted: 01 Feb 2013 01:40 PM PST

From Tablet:
Florence, N.J., isn't too different from other small towns in the Garden State, one marked, if anything, by a slew of very ordinary sights—chain flower shops at every major intersection, decidedly lower gas prices, and a few cozy diners. But it is also home to something else, acquired by Greg Kohfeldt when he bought Sam Carlani's auto-repair shop here almost 20 years ago: Adolf Hitler's toilet.

According to Kohfeldt, the toilet came off of Hitler's biggest private yacht, the Aviso Grille, which was between 400 and 500 feet long, and at the time one of the biggest private boats in existence. "He wanted to ride it down the Thames in London and go live in Windsor Palace when he invaded," Kohfeldt told me on a subzero morning last week as he pulled a sink—also from the ship, and now in pieces—out of a box and laid them out for me to examine each of the maker's stamps and faucets. Another resident of Florence, Dick Glass—an expert on Hitler's yacht—told me that the ship was armed, had a crew of 245 men, a private room for Eva Braun, and was bigger than J.P. Morgan's ship Corsair. The Aviso Grille also played a significant role in one particular moment in history: Hitler's Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz stood on the deck of the ship on May 1, 1945, and gave the first word of the Führer's death and took command of Germany.

After the war ended, the Aviso Grille was taken to the United States and ended up in the hands of New Jersey shipyard owner Harry Doan, who illegally charged visitors 25 cents to board and tour Hitler's Yacht. However, according to Glass, both Doan and the federal government wanted to prevent the ship from becoming a memorial to Hitler, and so it was scrapped in Doan's salvage yard in the early 1950s.

At that point, Sam Carlani needed a new toilet. Doan, his close friend and poker buddy, told him he had one available.

...While Kohfeldt seems proud of his object's notoriety, he seems remarkably unexcited by the fact that he owns Hitler's toilet. This may be because the story of Hitler's possessions in Florence only begins with his toilet.

When the ship came to the United States, it was taken apart, and many of the pieces were distributed throughout Florence. One man took the teak wood from the paneling on the yacht and built himself a porch. The American Legion Post 194 in Florence still has one of the tables from Hitler's ship in their office. The aforementioned Dick Glass used a port window for his own house; he also collected the brass screws from the Grille with his father to build their own yacht. Other bits and pieces of the Grille—the relics of Hitler's great aspiration of taking over the United Kingdom—are scattered throughout nearby towns.
I find this fantastically appropriate.

I'm not making a joke about New Jersey. But the Jewish expression reflexively added on to the name of people who are as purely evil as Hitler is "yemach shemo," "may his name be erased."

Putting his artifacts in museums keeps his name alive. Destroying them in a solemn ceremony elevates them.

But having ordinary people - people he wanted to enslave - use these objects in such spectacularly mundane ways, where over time they will be discarded when they no longer have any utility, seems perfect to me.

There is no greater humiliation than to be ignored. And the people of Florence, NJ, while aware of the provenance of these items, ignore their attachment to the mass murdering madman and just use his stuff. They attach no importance to it, no sanctity or anti-sanctity - it is just stuff that will one day be replaced with something from Home Depot.

Yemach shemo v'zichro.

Friday links: Latma, Toameh, terrorists in Hebron, PA honors terrorist, "Tikkun Olam" supports anti-semitic cartoon

Posted: 01 Feb 2013 12:30 PM PST

From Ian:
LATMA: Bibi's coalition blues and Yair Lapid's hangover


Dutch MPs: Fire Richard Falk
MPs appalled by statements of UN Special Rapporteur comparing Hamas to WW2 Resistance.
"They reproached Falk for a "total lack of insight" and called his words "sickening."
Referring to American UN envoy Susan Rice's earlier comment that other statements by Falk damaged the credibility of the UN, they asked their government to promote immediate dismissal of the Special Rapporteur and to break all contact with him."

Censored by Facebook, Arab-Israeli Journalist Continues to Expose PA Corruption
"One of the first Israeli papers Abu Toameh wrote for was a Hebrew publication called Yerushalayim (or Jerusalem). "At that time, I wrote articles criticizing Israel, and the IDF in particular, for various human rights violations, and I won several awards. Of course now that I am criticizing the Palestinian Authority, I am roundly condemned," he said.
Abu Toameh is not only condemned but is often threatened. "Today, I am getting more threats from the US, Canada, Europe and the UK than I am from within the Palestinian Authority," Abu Toameh said.
"But what is unique, is that those that threaten me roundly acknowledge that I am telling the truth," he said. "They don't question my reporting. They just want me to shut up. I'd be much more afraid of what could happen to me if I were lying," Abu Toameh stated."

IDF Blog: IDF & ISA Uncover Hamas Terrorist Assets in Hebron
"The IDF and ISA have uncovered Hamas terror assets in Hebron. The joint activity, which took place in recent months, prevented attacks that the group had been planning.
The assets were part of a Hamas attempt to establish a local headquarters in Hebron and included approximately 20 terrorists affiliated with Hamas. The group was planning to kidnap an IDF soldier and use her or him as a bargaining chip for the release of Hamas prisoners. Most of the terrorists were already known to authorities."

Israelly Cool: Richard Silverstein Defends Blood Libel Cartoon
"Anti-Israel blogger Richard Silverstein continues to find new ways to demonstrate his utter contempt for Israel, as he now defends the horrendous "blood libel" cartoon of the Sunday Times' Gerald Scarfe, for which even owner Rupert Murdoch apologized."

PMW: Fatah honors suicide bomber who killed 2 and injured hundreds on its official Facebook page
On the annual anniversary of the terror attack, the administrator of Fatah's Facebook page posted a picture of Idris and a long text describing her and her attack.
"The hero whose name the Zionists will remember well and so will Palestinians; the hero who sacrificed herself and her body for Palestine and became a symbol of the struggle and of Palestinian loyalty through one of the most honorable Martyrdom-seeking operations," the texts says about Wafa Idris.

Ma'an removes Antisemitic article following PMW's exposure

Daphne Anson: Anti-Israel Fanatics Badger The Bachelor Boy
"British pop icon and practising Christian Sir Cliff Richard (seen and heard in film footage below against the backdrop of Jerusalem) is scheduled to perform in Israel this summer.
And, predictably, the wretches of the BDS movement are bombarding him with demands that he cancel his plans."

White House Falters on Legitimacy of Iranian Government
Just hours after Hagel's testimony, White House press secretary Jay Carney faltered regarding legitimacy of Iranian government.

White House: Iran's centrifuge upgrade represents 'further escalation'
'While the world is discussing where and when the next meeting with Iran will be, Iran is rapidly advancing toward a nuclear bomb,' says Israeli official

GOP Senators Introduce Legislation Banning Arms Sales to Egypt
"Two United States Republican senators introduced legislation on Thursday to halt arms sales to Egypt.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, proposed a bill prohibiting the sale of F-16 aircraft, tanks and other advanced weapons to Egypt's Muslim-Brotherhood, The Hill reported."

Venezuela spying on its Jews, documents reveal
Some in the community regarded as foreign agents with subversive socio-political influence, others as benefiting from US military interference
"Last week, Analisis24, a right-leaning Argentinean news website, released 50 documents attributed to the Venezuelan intelligence agency containing private information on prominent Venezuelan Jews, local Jewish organizations and Israeli diplomats in Latin America. The Anti-Defamation League, among others, believes the documents are authentic based on the wealth of detailed and private information included."

Toronto Yeshiva Defaced with Anti-Semitic Graffiti
"Students at the "Mishkan HaTorah" Yeshiva in Toronto, Canada, were shocked when they arrived in the early hours of the morning to find that the building was covered with anti-Semitic graffiti.
This is the second time in a short period of the time that the building has been defaced."

Yemenite Jew Badly Hurt in Anti-Semitic Attack
"Members of Yemen's small Jewish community said Wednesday that one of its member had been attacked and badly hurt in an anti-Semitic assault. The victim, Yosef Anati, was hospitalized in serious condition."

ADL Leader Joins Jewish Groups' Call to Protect Mideast Christians
"We have not paid enough attention to the discrimination, persecution of Christians in the Middle East, especially by Islamic fundamentalists," Foxman said in an interview with Newsmax TV."

Video: Armless IDF Captain Awards Combat Pins to Soldiers
Captain Ziv Shilon, badly injured in Gaza three months ago, was with his soldiers again Thursday.
"Captain Ziv Shilon, who was badly injured in Gaza three months ago, was back with his soldiers Thursday and awarded them combat pins.
The soldiers were supposed to receive the pins at an earlier date, but the ceremony was postponed in order to enable their heroic commander to take part in it."

Slides from my lecture at YU

Posted: 01 Feb 2013 10:15 AM PST

Due to popular demand, here are the slides of my lecture at YU earlier this week:



If anyone wants me to speak at their venue, feel free to contact me.

Baby burqas demanded in Mali. Oh, in Saudi Arabia too.

Posted: 01 Feb 2013 08:30 AM PST

From AP:

A leaflet listing the regulations for women under Islamist rule now lies in dirt here at the tribunal in Timbuktu. Rule No. 1: The veil should cover the entire body. Rule No. 4: The veil cannot be colored. And Rule No. 8: The woman should not perfume herself after putting on the all-enveloping fabric.

Several days after French special forces parachuted in and liberated this storied city, there is a growing sense of freedom. Though in the houses immediately facing the Islamic tribunal, many of the 8- and 9-year-old girls are still wearing the head covering.

"It is out of fear of the Islamists that they still wear this, says Diahara Adjanga, the mother of one girl said Thursday."They hit everyone — even children."

The Islamists seized control of Timbuktu and the other northern provincial capitals of Gao and Kidal last April. During the nearly 10 months of their rule, the al-Qaida-linked extremists imposed harsh regulations for women and publicly whipped those who went in public without veils.

Fatouma Traore, 21, said that there was one commander who was especially brutal to the women in Timbuktu.

"We don't want the army to catch him. It's the women who want to arrest him so that we can kill him ourselves. ... Even if you're talking to your own blood brother on the stoop of your house, they hit you. Even if you are wearing the veil, and it happens to slip off, they hit you. This man, Ahmed Moussa, he made life miserable for women. Even an old grandmother if she's not covered up, he would hit her."

She picks up her 1-year-old niece and hoists her on one hip, saying: "We even bought a veil for this baby."
It isn't only Al Qaeda nutcases demanding a veil for babies.

A Saudi cleric just declared that all female babies must have their faces covered as well.

Sheikh Abdullah Daoud said on TV that even little girls must wear the veil.

His logic? Since there are reports of even little girls being sexually molested, he believes that the veil will protect them!

Dauod was roundly criticized on Twitter and from some fellow Saudis. Sheikh Mohammad Aljzlana, former judge at the Saudi Board of Grievances, said that the ruling was denigrating to Islam and Sharia and made Islam look bad. He added that he feels sad whenever he sees a family walking around with the children covered, saying that it is an injustice to children.

Khamenei aide says "total upheaval in the Middle East" will bring the Mahdi

Posted: 01 Feb 2013 06:40 AM PST

From AEI Critical Threats:

Representative of Supreme Leader to the IRGC, Hojjat al-Eslam Ali Saidi addressed the coming of the Mahdi [12th Shia Imam]:
"The fourth way [of bringing about the arrival of the Mahdi] is by preparing upheaval in the Middle East and so long as there is not total upheaval in Middle East then the Imam of the Era [Mahdi] will not arrive."

"Before the arrival of [the Mahdi] we needed a Mahdi government, and the Iranian Islamic Revolution was along the path of the arrival of Imam of the Era."
The Washington Post describes some of this possible upheaval to fulfill the crazed imams' messianic dreams:
In a defiant move ahead of nuclear talks, Iran has announced plans to vastly increase its pace of uranium enrichment, which can make both reactor fuel and the fissile core of warheads. Eager to avoid scuttling those negotiations, world powers are keeping their response low-key.

The brief note quoted Iran as saying new-generation IR2m "centrifuge machines ...will be used" to populate a new "unit" — a technical term for an assembly that can consist of as many as 3,132 centrifuges.

Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert and former senior official at the U.S. State Department, described the planned upgrade as a potential "game-changer."

"If thousands of the more efficient machines are introduced, the timeline for being able to produce a weapon's worth of fissile material will significantly shorten," said Fitzpatrick, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"This won't change the several months it would take to make actual weapons out of the fissile material or the two years or more that it would take to be able to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile, so there is no need to start beating the war drums," he said. "But it will certainly escalate concerns."
But, hey, the West is really, really pushing Iran - to talk:
The British Foreign Office confirmed that Iran had informed the International Atomic Energy Agency of its plan, and described it as "a cause for concern," noting it breached both U.N. Security Council and IAEA board resolutions urging Iran to curb enrichment.

But it avoided linking the move to the next round of talks. Instead the statement expressed hope that Iran would soon respond to the six powers on a time and place for a meeting, adding: "We hope that Iran will agree to talks quickly and come to the table ready to engage and negotiate seriously."

The European Union's top foreign policy official, Catherine Ashton, said she is confident negotiations over Iran's nuclear program will resume soon.
Talks have been so effective over the past decade in curbing Iran's nuclear program, haven't they?

(h/t Washington Guardian Geopolitics Playbook)

PLO's new attempt to use UNESCO to co-opt Jewish history

Posted: 01 Feb 2013 04:50 AM PST

This Ma'an report leaves some information out:
Palestinian experts are putting the final touches on Palestine's 2013 submission to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which will propose the ancient Bethlehem village of Battir as a heritage site.

The proposal, which outlines historical, natural, and cultural features of the hillside village, will be submitted by mid-February, the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs official working on UNESCO, Omar Awadallah, told Ma'an.

The committee will vote on whether Battir takes World Heritage status at the June general conference, he said. A Palestinian official delegation will attend the conference.

Battir village, with a population of about 4,500, uses an ancient system of irrigation that has provided fresh water to the community for centuries.
Battir, Battir, sounds so familiar. Oh yes - because its real name is Betar, the last Jewish stronghold in the Bar Kochba revolt.

Archaeologist David Ussishkin points out:
Iron I-II pottery was found in previous surveys. Some Iron IIB-C pottery was found in the fills supporting the wall, including a storage jar handle bearing a two-winged lmlk seal impression. Pottery from the Persian, Hellenistic and Early Roman periods was found in previous surveys, and several Hellenistic coins were recovered in the excavations. It thus appears that Betar was continuously settled since Iron I till the Roman period and that a settlement of some importance existed here during the later part of the Judean Monarchy.

Significantly, wall segments built of ashlars, one of them with ashlars dressed in characteristic Roman-Herodian style, were incorporated in the later fortifications. These remains and the pottery indicate that a settlement of some significance existed here prior to the Second Revolt.

As Diane Muir Appelbaum noted in a post I linked to last year, "the Jewish liberation fighters hastily threw up crude stone fortification walls, incorporating parts of the walls and buildings of the Jewish village."

Elli Fischer in TOI adds:
Jewish memory – as preserved in the Talmudim and Midrashim – recalls Betar as a catastrophe of massive proportion whose implications for the future of Judaism exceeded even that of the destruction of the Temples. The rabbis viewed the fall of Betar, not the Temple, as worthy of adding a blessing to the Grace after Meals – a blessing that sought God in the minor miracles of an exilic existence and not in the divine flourishes of an integral Jewish civilization.

In fact, the Talmud offers an alternative explanation for the fertility of Battir: "For seven years [after the fall of Betar] the gentiles fertilized their vineyards with the blood of Israel without using manure."

So Battir and its environs are certainly worthy of being marked as a significant site with Jewish as well as world culture. No doubt the ancient terraces are worth preserving. Yet if these hills are to be recognized as a World Heritage Site, they must be acknowledged, first and foremost, for its significance to Jewish history.
Maybe there really are some ancient Arab villages or sites in the boundaries of British Mandate Palestine that deserve UNESCO recognition, but for some reason the ones being nominated by the PLO are always ancient Jewish sites of significance - and they ignore the Jewish component.

As we have seen before, the PLO's strategy of joining UNESCO has nothing to do with culture or education. It is meant to do no less than to co-opt, and delegitimize, the history of Jewish people.

Ban Ki Moon seems to have forgotten something

Posted: 01 Feb 2013 02:39 AM PST

From the UN:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today noted with "grave concern" reports of Israeli air strikes in Syria and called on all concerned to prevent an escalation of tensions in the region.

"The Secretary-General notes with grave concern reports of Israeli air strikes in Syria. At this time, the United Nations does not have details of the reported incident. Nor is the United Nations in a position to independently verify what has occurred," said a note issued by Mr. Ban's office.

"The Secretary-General calls on all concerned to prevent tensions or their escalation in the region, and to strictly abide by international law, in particular in respect of territorial integrity and sovereignty of all countries in the region."
What do we know about what happened?

Here's the NYT:
Many questions swirled about the target, motivations and repercussions of the Israeli attack, which Arab and Israeli analysts said demonstrated the rapid changes in the region's strategic picture as Mr. Assad's government weakens — including the possibility that Hezbollah, Syria or both were moving arms to Lebanon, believing they would be more secure there than with Syria's beleaguered military, which faces intense attacks by rebels on major weapons installations.

American officials said Israel hit a convoy before dawn on Wednesday that was ferrying sophisticated SA-17 antiaircraft missiles to Lebanon. The Syrians and their allies said the target was a research facility in the Damascus suburb of Jamraya.

It remained unclear Thursday whether there was one strike or two. Also unclear was the research outpost's possible role in weapons production or storage for Syria or Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite organization that has long battled with Israel and plays a leading role in the Lebanese government.

The Jamraya facility, several miles west of Damascus, produces both conventional and chemical weapons, said Maj. Gen. Adnan Salo, a former head of the chemical weapons unit in the Syrian Army who defected and is now in Turkey.

Hezbollah indirectly confirmed its military function in condemning the attack on Arab and Muslim "military and technological capabilities." That raised the possibility that Israel targeted weapons manufacturing or development, in an attack reminiscent of its 2007 assault on a Syrian nuclear reactor, a strike Israeli never acknowledged.

But military analysts said that the Israeli jets' flight pattern strongly suggested a moving target, possibly a convoy near the center, and that the Syrian government might have claimed the center was a target to garner sympathy. Hitting a convoy made more sense, they said, particularly if Israel believed that Hezbollah stood to acquire "game-changing" arms, including antiaircraft weapons. Israeli leaders declared days before the strike that any transfer of Syria's extensive cache of sophisticated conventional or chemical weapons was a "red line" that would prompt action.

Hezbollah — backed by Syria and Iran — wants to upgrade its arsenal in hopes of changing the parameters for any future engagement with the powerful Israeli military, and Israel is determined to stop it. And Hezbollah is perhaps even more anxious to gird itself for future challenges to its primacy in Lebanon, especially if a Sunni-led revolution triumphs next door in Syria.

But if weapons were targeted, analysts said, it is not even clear that they belonged to Hezbollah. Arab and Israeli analysts said another possibility was that Syria was simply aiming to move some weapons to Lebanon for safekeeping. While there are risks for Hezbollah that accepting them could draw an Israeli attack, said Emile Hokayem, a Bahrain-based analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, there is also an upside: "If Assad goes down, they have the arms."

Those suggestions comported with the account of a Syrian officer who said in a recent interview that the heavily guarded military area around the Jamraya research facility was used as a weapons transfer station to southern Lebanon and Syria's coastal government stronghold of Tartous for safekeeping, in convoys of tractor-trailer trucks. (The officer said he had lost faith in the government but hesitated to defect because he did not trust the rebels.)
Apparently, either Israel hit a convoy transporting weapons to Hezbollah, or a depot for weapons meant to go to Hezbollah, or a plant that manufactures weapons of mass destruction - or a combination of the three.

According to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, Hezbollah should be dismantled as an independent armed force. According to 1701, arms transfers from Syria to Hezbollah are prohibited. According to everyone, Syrian chemical weapons are a serious threat to the entire region.

Yet Ban Ki Moon could only rebuke Israel for doing what the UN cannot and is seemingly unwilling to do. The UN forces in Lebanon have stood by impotently since 2006 watching Hezbollah illegally build a huge arsenal of smuggled arms from Syria for its private terror army - and Moon personally made that decision to keep the UNIFIL forces impotent.

It looks like the only operative parts of 1701 that remain are the ones that can be used against Israel.
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