יום שישי, 31 במאי 2013

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Link to Elder of Ziyon

Nigeria catches Hizballah terrorists

Posted: 30 May 2013 06:18 PM PDT

From BBC:
An armoury belonging to the Lebanese group Hezbollah has been discovered in northern
Nigeria, the West African nation's army and spy agency has said.

Three Lebanese nationals have been arrested, an army spokesman, Brig Gen Ilyasu Isa Abba, said.

The cache, including rifles, anti-tank weapons and an RPG, were found in a warehouse in the city of Kano, he said.

Nigeria's State Security Service said they were intended for use against "Israeli and Western interests".

"This is the handwork of Hezbollah," Bassey Ettang, director of the State Security Service in Kano said.

"What has just been discovered is a cell of Hezbollah and what you have seen here is a Hezbollah armoury," he told journalists in Kano on Thursday.

Brig Gen Ilyasu Isa Abba said 11 anti-tank weapons, four anti-tank mines, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) and 21 RPG missiles, 17 AK-47s, two sub-machine guns and 76 grenades had been amongst the weapons found.

The Lebanese owner of the warehouse where "the weapons of mass destruction" had been stored in sawdust was out of the country, he said.
Which makes one wonder - how much more proof does any country need to declare Hizballah a terror organization?

Thursday Links Part 2

Posted: 30 May 2013 03:00 PM PDT

From Ian:
Elad Daniel Pereg: Message to Iran

In 2010 Daniel walked in front of an anti-Israel mob in LA with an Israeli flag.

WSJ: Curious IRS Timing
Why the special scrutiny for pro-Israel groups? A New York Times article in July 2010 provided a clue: Tax-exempt groups were donating to West Bank settlers, and State Department officials wanted the settlers out. "As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank," the Times wrote, "the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them."
Did the T-men take their political cues from such stories, or did Administration officials give them orders? Either explanation would be a violation of public trust.
Did the Palestinians Ask Obama to Target Pro-Israeli 501(c)(3)s?
Let me provide another possible clue, found in the June 16, 2009 minutes of the Palestinian negotiating unit headed by Saeb Erekat–part of the Palestine Papers published by Al Jazeera in 2011.
Dr. Mohammed Shtayyed made an additional suggestion to Erekat:
"We should also focus on the government incentives to settlers: loans without interest, land for free, agricultural subsidies in the Jordan valley. We can't stop a pregnant lady from having a baby, but look at what we can do. We should look at the 501(c)(3) organizations in the States that make donations to settlers. Let the US administration investigate this."
.US Treasury Openly Fighting Settlements, Pro-Israel Groups (Video)
You'll get a better treatment if you're associated with Hamas than with right-wing issues in Israel.
Alice Walker, Roger Waters urge Alicia Keys to cancel TLV gig
In an open letter posted online, Walker wrote that Keys was putting herself in "soul danger" by performing in "an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists. You were not born when we, your elders who love you, boycotted institutions in the US South to end an American apartheid less lethal than Israel's against the Palestinian people."
United Church of Canada boycotts Israeli companies
Canada's largest Protestant church targeted three Israeli companies with operations in Jewish settlements for economic sanctions and boycott.
Last week, the United Church of Canada's governing General Council approved the start of a boycott campaign, encouraging "economic action" against Keter Plastic, SodaStream and Ahava.
Guardian Letters: Desmond Tutu and the call for a Uefa boycott of Israel
Firstly, the reason Israel plays in European football tournaments is that, long before the 1967 war and the subsequent "occupation", Arab and some Asian countries refused to play Israel at any level. Secondly, if countries were stopped from hosting tournaments because of their human rights records, we'd probably have to hold the World Cup etc in Luxembourg every four years!
Lastly, the games played in Israel will be played in front of crowds unhindered by restrictions on race or gender, unlike the United Nations-sponsored Gaza marathon, which was cancelled due to the fact women were banned from running with men. The World Cup after next is in Russia which, last weekend, saw the arrest of dozens of gay rights activists in Moscow. I don't see any "show Russia the red card" protests.
Dreyfus Prison Letter Sells for $492,000 at Paris Auction
A letter by Alfred Dreyfus in which the French Jewish army captain wrongly accused of treason over a century ago protests his sentence sold for 380,000 euros ($492,000) at an auction in Paris Wednesday, the AFP news agency reported.
Newly Discovered Prisoner Journal Donated to Auschwitz
The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum said on Wednesday it had acquired a newly discovered journal written and illustrated by Polish prisoners of the Nazi German death camp in southern Poland.
The three inmates' hand-made memoirs, which include poems and pen-and-ink and watercolour drawings of gas chambers and a hanging, were donated by the widow of a US war veteran, museum spokesman Bartosz Bartyzel told AFP.
Israeli Company Mobileye Commercializing Automatic Driving Software
Israeli company Mobileye Vision Technologies Ltd. has unveiled a car that navigates itself without human driving using camera-based software. New York Times technology reporter John Markoff tested out the self-driving car on a drive from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, Globes reported.
Florida hospital installs EarlySense to advance health care
Hospital Tampa is the latest US health center to adopt the Israeli-made technology that helps avoid adverse patient events.
Israeli firm, protector of 1.75 billion mobile devices, honoured
Established in 1999, Red Bend has become the go to provider of FOTA (Firmware Over the Air) updates for phones and devices made by manufacturers like Kyocera, LG Electronics, Motorola, Sharp, Sony Ericsson and ZTE. Currently, Red Bend's technology is used by more than 80 mobile device manufacturers, mobile operators and semiconductor vendors, and is present on more than 1.75 billion devices.
The Indian-Israeli olive agribusiness experiment
Over the last five years, Indian farmers have joined hands with Israeli agribusiness to produce a crop that the majority on the subcontinent have only seen in books and films: fresh, green olives.
Hot fuss as Killers head to Israel
The American pop rock band The Killers is planning to stop in Israel in October as part of its up-coming world tour, Channel 2 reported on Monday.
The band, headed by vocalist and keyboard player Brandon Flowers, will be making its first visit to Israel.

Video of Ramallah kids playing with enormous snake

Posted: 30 May 2013 01:15 PM PDT

Or, perhaps, a snake playing with its food....

This video is going around...I see it in some Arabic sites and now was picked up in Walla:



(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

Lebanon report roundup: Hizbollah ejecting Hamas from Lebanon; Hizb on Gulf terror list?,

Posted: 30 May 2013 11:30 AM PDT

From Ya Libnan:
Lebanese Hezbollah militant group has ordered its former ally the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas out of Lebanon effective immediately and within hours , the Middle East Online news agency reported on Thursday.

The move, the report says, is due to Hamas support for the opposition forces fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. Both Hezbollah and Syria are allies of Iran, which provides the two with financial and military support.
Hamas representative in Lebanon Ali Baraka denied the report to Lebanese paper Aliwaa, saying Hezbollah officials in Lebanon were surprised by the report.

But media sources close to the Palestinian national liberation movement Fatah in Lebanon said a Hezbollah senior security official informed Baraka, that all of those related to Hamas on the Lebanese territory have become unwelcome.

Times of London reported last month that Hamas' military unit has broken ties with Assad, and has begun training members of the opposition's Free Syrian Army in Damascus.

Meanwhile, from MEMRI:



In other related news:
Gulf Arab states will consider placing Hizbullah, which is openly involved in the Syrian conflict, on its terror list, al-Rai daily quoted highly placed diplomats on Thursday as saying.

Bahrain will ask foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to discuss "placing Hizbullah on the terror list" at a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the newspaper said.

Bahrain currently holds the GCC's rotating presidency.

The paper did not say whether this referred to the party as a whole or just its military wing, whose men are fighting alongside government troops in a fierce battle to retake the Syrian town of Qusayr from rebels.

Thursday Links Part 1

Posted: 30 May 2013 10:00 AM PDT

From Ian:
Ya'alon, let IDF win
In light of his past and his principles, it is hard to believe Ya'alon will continue to favor the State of Israel's photogenic and diplomatic needs over the need for deterrence. This deterrence is eroding at a frightening pace.
The restraint policy of the past few months has not convinced the Palestinians to stop. It convinced them to carry on. Stone-throwing incidents have steadily increased, and on YouTube more and more videos are being posted showing IDF soldiers fleeing. This also increases the Palestinians' motivation to continue with their violent ways. If any member of the General Staff believes that running away will spare us a third intifada, he should think again.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Terrorist who killed 38 Israelis appointed PA adviser
Hussein Fayyad, one of the commanders of the terror group that carried out the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, revealed on Tuesday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had appointed him as one of his advisers.
The attack, which led to the killing of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, was planned and carried out by Abbas's Fatah faction.
PMW: International Red Cross does not prohibit use of its money for terror glorification
However, not only did ICRC not condemn the Palestinian Red Crescent's glorification of terrorists in the ceremony, it chose to justify the use of ICRC money by the Palestinian Red Crescent. The ICRC issued a statement defending their right to use donor money any way they choose, even though the issue being raised was the use of ICRC money for terror glorification:
Libel on PA TV: Israel spreads drugs to destroy the minds of Palestinian youth


BBC's Yolande Knell goes campaigning
Knell devotes a considerable portion of her written article to the subject of the Israeli Absentee Property Law. Significantly – especially in this case – she makes no effort to inform readers of the fact that during the 19 year Jordanian occupation of Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem (the later annexation of which was not recognized by the international community), there existed a body called the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property which was established to handle property seized from Jews during the War of Independence.
Hezbollah Turning Southern Lebanon Homes and Villages Into Military Installations
Hezbollah is attempting to move advanced weapons into civilian areas in Lebanon in preparation for another conflict with Israel. The Iran-backed terror group has an extensive, video-documented history of exploiting Lebanese civilians, and during its 2006 war with Israel successfully created incidents in which human shields were endangered and killed.
Assad: S-300 Missiles Already Here
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that despite the portrayal by the media of a deal for advanced missiles to be purchased from Russia as a future event, the fact is that Syria has already begun acquiring the S-300 missile system from Moscow.
Our Syrian Aid Recipients: Radical Wahhabis Bulldoze Historic Mausoleum of Prophet Abraham
"From May 16, 2013: A radical Wahhabi group affiliated with al-Qaeda's Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) is seen surrounding and then destroying with a bulldozer a historic mausoleum or shrine visited by pilgrims for the prophet Abraham, who supposedly spent some time with his wife Sarah in the town of Ayn al-Arous where the shrine was built. Ayn al-Arous is located south of Tal Abyad in the Raqqa province in northern Syria.
Argentinian prosecutor alleges extensive Iranian terror activity in South America
The Argentinian prosecutor in charge of investigating the bombing at the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, has accused Iran of infiltrating several South American countries and building intelligence stations from which terrorist attacks could be planned and carried out.
U.S., Israeli Generals Paint Picture of What Strike on Iran Might Look Like
What would a strike on Iran by the U.S. and/or Israel look like? The question has been posed countless times, but perhaps few have the insight of retired US Gen. James Cartwright and Israeli Maj.Gen. Amos Yadlin, who in a recent article in The Atlantic try to imagine how an attack on Iran would play out.
Canada bans nearly all Iranian imports
Pressure on Tehran continues to mount as it was announced today that Canada is set to ban nearly all exports to, and imports from Iran.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said today that Canada has grave concerns over Iran's nuclear program and will add another 30 individuals and 82 entities to an economic blacklist.
Iran hauls off Christian pastor, shuts down church in new sweep
Government agents shut down Iran's largest Persian-language Pentecostal church Monday, just one week after one of its pastors was arrested and hauled away midway through a worship service.
Free Saeed Abedini
What is Abedini's crime? Did he butcher an Iranian soldier on a street corner in Tehran? Did he explode a bomb in a crowd of bystanders or on a Tehran bus? Was he arrested for conspiring to commit some atrocity against innocent civilians?
No, Abedini's crime is his advocacy of Christianity in Iran. This is compounded by his conversion from Islam in 2000.
100,000 Christians killed each year due to faith
The Vatican has announced that around 100,000 Christians are killed each year due to their faith, in a worrying trend affected the Middle East and Africa
Troubling 'Nakba day' speech in South Africa
Hendricks (president of the Muslim Judicial Council of Cape Town) then ventures to make the outrageous statement that, "Prior to 1929, there was absolutely no evidence of the Wailing Wall." He then proceeds to say that "The Buraq Wall is an integral part of Masjidul-Aqsa. If any Muslim believes it is an exercise of interfaith or to recognize that the Jewish people have a right to be in front of the Wailing Wall, then it is a sign of extreme arrogance and ignorance."
Saudi self-help writer urges men to molest women in the workplace
Saudi writer Abdullah Mohammed Al Dawood has urged his 97,000 Twitter followers to molest women hired to work as cashiers in big grocery stores in an attempt to "encourage" women to stay at home.
Al Dawood, who tweeted in Arabic using a hastag that translates as "#HarassFemaleCashiers, writes "self-help books" including one called "The Joy of Talking". He comments have stoked fierce debate this week as he implied that sexually harassing women in the workplace would help protect their chastity.

Thoughts about that antisemitic Norwegian cartoon

Posted: 30 May 2013 08:30 AM PDT

As you are no doubt aware by now, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet published an obscenely anti-semitic cartoon to protest circumcision. Here is my translation:



As JPost describes it:
It showed police officers looking on as a bearded man wearing a black hat and black coat sticks a three-tooth pitchfork into the head of a blood-soaked baby while holding a book.

Another unseen person cuts off the baby's foot with a bolt cutter as a woman in a long-sleeve shirt and a hat shows the officers another blood-spattered book and tells them: "Abuse? No, this tradition is central to our belief." The police officers apologize "for interrupting."
The cartoonist, Tomas Drefvelin, emailed to a Jewish organization that he had no anti-Jewish intentions:
The strip is not meant as a criticism of either a specific religion or a nation.

The cartoon is intended as a general criticism of religions (all of them) the opportunity to wriggle away from what I perceive as the abuse of children (and also the oppression of women etc, if one takes the point of the strip), by referring to faith and tradition.
I gave the people in the picture hats, and the man a beard, because this gives them a more religious character. (Many religions have a penchant for hats and beard, it appears.)

This is a classic example of people reading more into a drawing than what it actually there. I have deliberately refrained from naming any holy book and the fork, perceived as a Devil Fork, is actually just a fork.

Jew-hatred is reprehensible. It would never occur to me to draw a strip to create hatred of a people, or against individuals. Let me repeat: My criticism of religion in general, not anything else.
Dagbladet echoed Drefvelin's defense, claiming that it is as liberal as possible and therefore completely against antisemitism. They also add that it is not obvious that the baby in the cartoon is a boy.

Let's see if this argument holds water.

Two major religions mandate circumcision: Judaism and Islam.

Only Jews routinely circumcise boys when they are infants. (Some Muslims will have doctors circumcise boys in the hospital soon after birth, but not in their homes.)

Only religious Jews are associated with black hats and beards.

Muslim circumcision, and female genital mutilation when practiced,  is not a ceremony with prepared texts from prayer books.

There are only about 1300 Jews in Norway, while there are over 100,000 Muslims.

Despite his protestations, Drefvelin is clearly aiming this cartoon at the minuscule Jewish population of Norway, not the growing Muslim population.

Whether consciously or not, it seems far more likely that Drefvelin (and Dagbladet) know that they can attack Judaism without worrying about being the target of death threats - or any worries about actually being murdered.

Also, Muslims often complain about "defamation of religion." Here is a textbook example of exactly that. Yet I cannot find a single Muslim organization condemning this cartoon.

PA leaders rejecting coexistence, Kerry's economic boost. It's almost as if they'd rather destroy Israel.

Posted: 30 May 2013 07:00 AM PDT

Time reported at the World Economic Forum a few days ago:
If politicians remain in their corners, business leaders are stepping up — both to pressure elected leaders to re-engage in talks and to help invigorate a West Bank economy currently overwhelmingly dependent on foreign aid, perhaps in hopes of buying time for the political process.

A group of 300 Israeli and Palestinian business leaders announced a "Breaking the impasse" public-relations campaign intended to assure reluctant political leaders that a constituency exists for taking risks for peace. "We want to provide the politicians with the feeling that the biggest part of Israel is supporting negotiations," said Yossi Vardi, an Israeli businessman who made a fortune in hi-tech. "The biggest risk is we begin to treat the conflict like a chronic disease, that it's something that cannot be solved."

Vardi was joined on the podium by Munib al-Masri, a West Bank tycoon whose published net worth is $1.6 billion. "From 1999 til now we haven't moved," al-Masri said. "We want to move."

Kerry added American business leaders to the mix. Without naming names or venturing into detail, the diplomat described the broad outlines of an economic project that he said has been taking shape over the past six weeks on the West Bank, "a groundbreaking plan for the Palestinian economy" that he called "bigger, bolder and more ambitious than anything since Oslo 20 years ago." 
Kerry called the economic plan "more transformative than incremental, and different than anything we have tried before." Kerry said the hope is "to mobilize $4 billion of investment" in the West Bank, in tourism, construction, light manufacturing, building materials and information technology, among other fields. "The preliminary results," he said, "are stunning." Without elaborating on the makeup of the expert "teams" he said were assembling the plans, Kerry said they estimate the GDP of the West Bank could be increased by 50% in three years and unemployment cut by two-thirds. Tourism could triple, he said, and construction could add 100,000 jobs.
Who could possibly be against such an initiative?

Oh, right - the beneficiaries.

Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad blasted the plan and the Palestinian Arab businessmen who support it, saying that it is simply a version of Netanyahu's "economic peace" plan and therefore should be rejected, as it would "have a negative impact on the Palestinian reality."

Another group of prominent Palestinian Arabs issued a statement calling for the "Palestinian people to reject this new attempt to deny our inalienable rights, first and foremost [the rights of] return and self-determination, against the billions of promised dollars. The biggest beneficiary would be the Occupying Power, which controls our economy and our trade. In the second place it will benefit a small handful of Palestinian capitalists who put profits above all that is ethical and nationalist, [instead they] accept the extension of the Zionist economy."

Of course, nowhere was this initiative linked to any other. But many Arabs believe fervently that if Israel benefits from anything, Arabs must be the losers - the zero-sum mentality that underlies so much thinking and that Westerners simply cannot understand.

However, the underlying theme that is absolutely consistent through decades of Jewish-Arab interaction is that the ultimate goal is to uproot the Jewish state from the Middle East, whether through war, through "peace agreements" where the Arab side gives up nothing concrete, through lawfare or through fake appeals to Western values like human rights that are utterly ignored in the Arab world. Any plan that results in Israel being perceived as more permanent will always be rejected by the Arabs, no matter how "moderate."

The West simply doesn't get it, because such a mindset is so alien to us. But for any real progress to be made, anyone who truly wants peace needs to acknowledge and work with how the other side really thinks, not how we all wish they think.

Report: Hamas acquiring Jordanian land

Posted: 30 May 2013 05:30 AM PDT

A number of Arab newspapers are reporting that members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan are buying large plots of land in the Jordan Valley, acting as middlemen for Hamas ownership of the land.

Is Hamas preparing for a possible fall of Jordan's government, so they could be positioned to attack Israel with rockets from the east?

Or are they trying to have another front ready in case of another Fatah-Hamas civil war?

Their map of "Palestine" in their logo doesn't include the parts of Palestine outside the British Mandate, so it doesn't appear that they are trying to try to acquire Palestinian land in Jordan.

Egyptian MP demands banning ballet

Posted: 30 May 2013 02:39 AM PDT

From Al Masry al Youm:

Salafi MPs made controversial statements during a Shura Council session Tuesday. The Shura Council is currently the sole legislative body in Egypt after the dissolution of the People's Assembly in June.

An MP of the Salafi-oriented Nour Party called for banning ballet in Egypt, describing it as "the art of nudes," while another MP from the Salafi-oriented Asala Party suggested disbanding the National Council for Women (NCW).

Nour Party member Gamal Hamed said yesterday that ballet performances at the Opera House spread immorality and obscenity to the people.

Hamed's comments came during a meeting of the Shura Council's Culture, Information and Tourism Committee, in which the budget for the Opera House for the new fiscal year was being discussed.

Hamed clarified that he is not against the arts in general, but that he opposes "nudity" in the name of art or under the banner of cultural slogans.
I'm sure that a compromise can be reached, and Egypt will open the world's best Burqa Ballet:
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