יום שני, 29 ביולי 2013

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Link to Elder Of Ziyon

Hamas forges letters from Fatah

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 07:48 PM PDT

Hamas claims to have gotten copies of letters from Fatah and the PLO, allegedly proving that they are behind the incitement against Hamas in Egypt.

I found a high resolution version of one of the letters, and it is obviously fake. And this is clear even without understanding the Arabic.

There is a handwritten signature on this letter - but the rest of the letter itself could not have been scanned. It is way too perfect, especially when zoomed in.

Scans always leave artifacts, whether the text is slightly skewed, or dust on the scanner, or cracks in the toner on the dark parts, or something. Here we cannot even see the edges of the paper.

Some Hamas member got a copy of the signature of some Fatah member as well as letterhead, and simply Photoshopped them around a letter that could say whatever the accuser wants it to say.

In other words, this letter cannot possibly prove anything.

Again, here is another indication that Hamas is running scared with the loss of its Muslim Brotherhood patron, and its increasingly hysterical attempts to blame its problems on its enemies.

Egyptian MB leader says Jews behind all anti-Islamist actions worldwide

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 04:28 PM PDT

I gotta admit, I enjoy seeing these people freak out.
Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie accused Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of carrying out massacres "only likened by those carried out by enemy Zionists and their treacherous agents."

In a message addressed to Sisi on Sunday, Badie said that Sisi is even worse than the Pharaoh who used to kill the children of the believers and let the women live. "You and your soldiers are worse, you kill everybody," he said.

...Badie also said that the current regime with its security, military, judicial, and media tools twists the truth such that communications with Gaza are portrayed a crime while communications with the Zionist enemy are considered an honor.

Badie accused "Zionist fingers" of meddling in the affairs of the Arab Spring countries the same way they are present in Egypt in order to build a Greater Israel.

He added that the Zionists have killers in Libya and Tunisia assassinate political activists opposed to the Islamist current to pave the way for the removal of Islamists from power.
Badie has no idea how deep the conspiracy goes.

After all, in Jew-owned Hollywood, movies are sent worldwide with Western/Zionist ideas of who is a good guy and who is a bad guy.

Someone named "Badie" never had a chance.

Some EoZ site debugging and other administrivia

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 12:58 PM PDT

The EoZ website was getting worse and worse. Page-load times were horrendously slow and, most recently, Internet Explorer users could no longer comment using Disqus.

A lot of junk scripts accumulated over the years on the page, and I was not able to successfully excise them to figure out what was causing the problems.

Therefore, today, I started from scratch, keeping the basic design but building it from the ground up.

So far, it appears (using most of the online speed test sites) that things are much faster than they were, and IE comments seem to work again.

Unfortunately, I decided to let SpongeBob go. I know a lot of people loved him but he was (along with the blog name itself) an impediment to people taking the blog seriously.Yes, that was the point of using him to begin with, but he outlived his usefulness.

Let me know how the site is working for you, or if something is broken (or missing).

In other EoZ news, I am going on a business trip this week to  a certain Nevada city known for gambling, drinking  and debauchery. So blog posts will be more sporadic, and possibly unintelligible. I imagine there will be some open threads rearing their ugly heads as well.

Gaza exports potatoes to Jordan via Israel

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 11:00 AM PDT

PalPress and COGAT report that two truckloads of potatoes, weighing 34 tons, were exported from Gaza to Jordan this morning.

Some 330 truckloads of goods also entered Gaza via Kerem Shalom this morning.

Although I saw a small shipment of gravel last week from Egypt to Gaza, I have not seen any exports from Gaza into Egypt.

Must be because of that Israeli siege.

7/28 Links: PA TV - Female terrorists Are Role Models, Another Mysterious Airstrike in Syria

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 09:00 AM PDT

From Ian:
Another peace process charade
The major changes in our region -- in Egypt, Syria and in Iran -- not only place challenges before the State of Israel but they also create considerable opportunities for us."
The prime minister's language is worth noting, particularly the phrase "exhaust the chance of ending the conflict with the Palestinians." Does this suggest that when 9 months are up and another stalemate has been achieved, that Israel will resist further American pressure to continue the futility?
There is another way to read the time horizon for the effort. It may be that during the upcoming 9 months, perhaps in the first few months of the process, that Israel alone, or Israel and the United States will take military action or other action required to shut down Iran's nuclear program. The peace talks with the Palestinians may also be the smokescreen needed to insulate Israel from any major international condemnations, if it moves unilaterally (wink, wink first to the Americans ) against Iran.
On the Release List: Terrorists who Murdered Children
On the list are Mahmoud Salam Saliman Abu Harabish and Adam Ibrahim Juma'a-Juma'a, who in 1988 murdered 26-year-old schoolteacher Rachel Weiss, her three young children, and a young soldier. The two hurled firebombs at a civilian bus, sending it up in flames; Weiss and her children ages 3, 2 and 9 months were unable to escape.
Soldier David Delarosa died trying to save them.
Also on the list is the terrorist who committed a similar murder the year before. The 1987 firebomb attack on a family car killed pregnant Ofra Moses and her young son Tal Moses. Father Abie Moses and three other young children were badly burned but survived.
'Why Hunt Down German Nazis, but Release Muslim Nazis?'
Twenty-two years ago Rabbi Eliezer Weiss lost his wife Rachel and their three young sons in a brutal terrorist attack. The four burned to death in a bus targeted in a firebomb attack.
On Sunday morning, Rabbi Weiss learned that his children's murderers are expected to go free in a mass terrorist release. The government is planning to free over 100 terrorists, several of them murderers, in a "gesture" to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
MKs: Has America Ever Freed Murderers?
"It isn't moral to release murderers. It isn't safe to release murderers… Has the United States ever released murderers as a concession to terrorism?" asked MK Motti Yogev (Bayit Yehudi).
"The United States hasn't even freed Jonathan Pollard, after he served his sentence and has been in prison for more than 28 years," he noted.
"Negotiations based on releasing killers have nothing to do with peace, or security, or morality, or truth," Yogev warned.
PMW: Female terrorists Dalal Mughrabi, Wafa Idris, and others are role models for students, on PA TV


NGO Monitor: The EU's closed feedback loop
These same organizations work to undermine Israel's relations with the rest of the world. They want to force their agenda on the Israeli public. Any issue related to the conflict is oversimplified and used to vilify Israel. Under these absurd circumstances, senior European officials are fed unreliable, inaccurate and distorted information from organizations that they themselves fund (under the pretense that they represent Israeli "civil society"). On the basis of these falsehoods, they criticize Israel and make policy decisions that are disconnected from reality. It is a closed feedback loop that turns Europe's decision-making process into a failure. It prevents educated discussion and raises the question of whether it is appropriate for political NGOs and European governments to influence the Israeli and Palestinian publics.
Erasing Jewish Jerusalem from Apple maps
Although this city was developed after 1967, much of the land was bought by Jews in the 1930s. On the basis of Jordan's illegal occupation of this land during 1948-67 the 'international community' regards it as 'occupied territory' even though it did not belong to any state. Any rational person who has actually travelled through this and other Jewish areas of 'occupied Jerusalem' knows that this land will never be 'given up' under any 'peace agreement'. Yet, bizarrely, when I tried to navigate to Pisgat Zaev using the Apple iPad Maps application (not Google Maps) I discovered to my astonishment that not only does no such place exist but there is a completely empty space on the map where it is physically located. The same is true for all other Jewish areas of 'occupied East Jersusalem' such as Gilo; yet, far smaller Arab areas of East Jerusalem such as Silwan are on the app. The most bizarre omission of all is the completely empty space where the old city of Jerualem should be.
UN Watch: Noam Chomsky in Geneva with support of Swiss government
Chomsky's lecture was entitled "USA, Iran, Israel and the Arab World: Where are we?" In his 35 min speech he only kept accusing "neocolonialist" Israel and its American backers. Only in the last minute did he say he worried about the situation in Syria and Egypt.
His talk was incoherent, using selective evidence, poorly-formulated arguments, distorting historical facts and with conspiracy theory undertones such as "the American media is hiding the truth from us." Among his claims was that there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and, if it does, it is for defensive purposes only. Also he thought the model of the Ottoman Empire is something we could use in the Middle East, forgetting that the Ottoman military was guaranteeing the stability of the empire.
Muslim Brotherhood: 120 Dead in 'Massacre'
Graphic video shows bodies at morgue, reportedly shot by security forces in weekend violence involving pro-Morsi rioters.
A Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson, Ahmed Aref, said 66 people were killed, while another 61 are "clinically dead", and a further 4,500 people were injured. Of these, he claimed, 700 were wounded by live bullets.
Reports: Israel attacked another weapons convoy in Syria
Israel has attacked yet again, according to foreign reports, in Syria. Arab media outlets and websites affiliated with Syrian opposition forces reported on Saturday that Israeli fighter jets seen flying over Quneitra bombed a weapons convoy intended to reach Hezbollah.
It was also reported by Lebanese news outlet El-Nashra that Israeli jets bombed weapons warehouses at Syrian army outposts in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon.
Pakistan may seek to trade hero Afridi for Al Qaeda-linked terrorist
Pakistan is preparing a proposal to swap the doctor who helped the CIA pinpoint Usama bin Laden for a notorious female neuroscientist and suspected Al Qaeda operative being held at a federal prison in Texas, FoxNews.com has learned.
Tom Jones to wrap up Israel's 'summer of nostalgia'
After hosting international stars like Barbra Streisand, Cliff Richard and the Pet Shop Boys, Israel will end its "summer of nostalgia" with a performance by '70s heartthrob Tom Jones.
The Welsh "Sex Bomb" will be performing in Tel Aviv's Nokia Arena on October 26.
French and Israeli Scientists Use Stem Cells to Study Schizophrenia
Thanks to a simple human hair, French and Israeli scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding schizophrenia. French researchers at INSERM (the French equivalent of the British Medical Research Council) and an Israeli team from the Haifa Technion, have developed a new stem cell model in order to gain a better understanding of schizophrenia.
Will the Eastern Mediterranean become the next Persian Gulf?
The United States has for more than two decades taken Eastern Mediterranean maritime security for granted. The 1978 Camp David Accords ended the state of war between Egypt and Israel, and the fall of the Soviet Union diminished Moscow's influence in the region. The triangular relationship between the United States, Israel, and Turkey also provided a foundation of stability. But with the recent discovery of vast oil and gas deposits in the region, the Eastern Mediterranean is in flux.
In 2010, the US Geological Survey estimated that the Eastern Mediterranean's Levant Basin—which is surrounded by Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus—may hold up to 3,450 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of oil, putting it on par—at least when it comes to natural gas resources—with onshore lands and state waters off the Gulf Coast of the United States.
An Israeli Special Forces Soldier, An Arab Investor, A Religious Zionist -- And A Hot Start-Up Called Webydo
Webydo has removed software code developers and programmers from the picture – enabling professional graphic designers to create sites on the fly for ten times cheaper, and far faster.
Not only that, but the team that is doing this is a case study of what Israel's "Start-up Nation" may look like in the years to come. Webydo is a collection of individuals that few might imagine joining hands on a venture — even inside a country that already boasts the most NASDAQ-listed companies per citizen. But the multi-cultural Israel – there are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druse, Bedouin nomads, Bahai, Samaritans and so many others — has begun to fuse many of these groups into their modern economy. At Intel , for example, ultra-orthodox Jews (mainly women) now comprise 10% of its Jerusalem workforce, as FORBES reported this week. And high-tech collaborations between Israelis and Palestinians are increasing, as we also discovered and revealed.
At Webydo, one finds a microcosm of this new alchemy. (H/t EoZ)

ElderToons: One man's terrorist....

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 07:03 AM PDT



I guess I'm in a 'toon mood today.

(The fourth panel is not the Prime Minister's office. That building is actually fuzzed out in Google Street View! This is a nearby office building in Jerusalem that will have to stand in for the PM's HQ.)

Will Jordan be next?

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 04:30 AM PDT

From AFP:
Jordan plans to raise power prices after doubling taxes on cellphones to offset a large budget deficit, despite warnings that such measures will provoke a public outcry.

Grappling with little or no natural resources and an external debt of more than $23 billion, the kingdom is trying to reduce a $2 billion fiscal deficit this year and at the same time tackle cuts in Egyptian gas supplies.

Sabotage attacks on gas pipelines from Egypt -- the energy source for 80 percent of Jordan's electricity -- are costing the government at least $1 million a day, energy officials say.
In response, as it tackles paring down a $10.5-billion 2013 budget, the government in Amman intends to hike the price of electricity by 15 percent, having already doubled taxes on cellphones to 16 percent and to 24 percent on mobile telephone contracts.

"Such wrong and uncalculated steps show that the government lacks a comprehensive understanding of the situation," Yusuf Mansur, chief executive officer of the Amman-based Envision Consulting Group, told AFP.

"When the government increases prices and taxes, the productivity and consumption of people will be affected and this will reduce government revenues."

Mansur, who headed Jordan's Agency for Economic Development, estimated the current inflation rate at about seven percent and this year's real economic growth at 2.6 percent.

According to the government, the inflation rate now stands at 6.5 percent, and real economic growth will come to 3.5 percent.

"People, including government employees, will resort to strikes and protests and the government will be forced to borrow more or impose more taxes. It's a vicious circle," he said.

"We are completely dependent on foreign aid and government economic policies have failed, at least in the past three years. I expect a very bad recession in the next stage."

A government decision in November to raise fuel prices, including household gas, by up to 53 percent, sparked a wave of nationwide protests, with some calling for King Abdullah II to step down, which is punishable by imprisonment.

Unemployment stands at about 14 percent in the country of 6.8 million people where 70 percent of the population is under 30, but other estimates put the jobless figure at between 22 and 30 percent. The minimum wage is $211 (159 euros) a month.

Last month, ratings agency Moody's cut its sovereign grade for Jordan from "B1" from "Ba2," in the middle of its category for "speculative" or so-called junk debt, saying government finances had weakened sharply in the past two years.

And in May, Standard & Poor's lowered Jordan's long-term credit rating by one notch to "BB-" with a negative outlook due in part to the conflict in neighbouring Syria.

Jordan is home to more than 500,000 Syrian refugees, and Amman has repeatedly complained they are burdening the country's scarce resources, while calling for international aid.

"Regional instability, including the disruptions in Egypt's gas supplies and the Syrian refugees, is seriously affecting the budget," lawmaker Mohammad Dmur, head of parliament's finance committee, told AFP.
Economics has been the main incentive behind the revolution in Tunisia and the newest one in Egypt. Islamists are poised to take advantage of the Jordanian situation, although the Egyptian coup will make it more difficult.

It seems clear that Israel is poised to replace Egypt as the supplier of gas to Jordan as soon as the Mediterranean fields are operating more steadily, but that is not going to happen immediately and it also won't happen without some backlash from Jordanians who simply hate Israel.

No matter what, Israel's most reliable neighboring ally is in danger.

ElderToon: Prerequisites for "peace"

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 12:19 AM PDT


The real punch line?
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has understood that their complete release is the key for restarting peace talks, and this is what he promised to Abbas, a PLO official said.
Orwell himself couldn't have imagined this.
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