JERUSALEM NEWS
NEWS AND INFORMATION
Events, happenings, and Opinions Concerning
Israel, Israelites, Judah, and Everyone Else
Jerusalem News-808
Jerusalem News-808
16 Elul 5768, 16th September 2008
Contents:
1. Israeli Pro-Palestinian Quisling
Foreign-Funded Organization Caught Misrepresenting the Figures
2. Excerpts: Poll of USA and Europe finds Israel more popular than Palestinians
3. The Coming threat from Egypt?
Caroline Glick: When dictatorships end with a whisper
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1. Israeli Pro-Palestinian Quisling
Foreign-Funded Organization Caught Misrepresenting the Figures
In 2007, B'Tselem Casualty Count Doesn't Add Up
September 4, 2008by Tamar Sternthal - CAMERA
www.camera.org:80/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=39&x_article=1533
Extracts:
B'Tselem has pulled it off again, duping the mainstream media into
believing
it has tallied civilian Palestinian casualties when it has done no such
thing. The oft-cited organization bills itself as a human rights group
devoted to rigorous documentation of Israeli conduct in the West Bank and
Gaza aimed at educating the public and encouraging political action. Yet the
so-called documentation continues to be marred by serious flaws that
journalists routinely ignore while reporting the group's charges at face
value.
B'Tselem,
it should be noted, is heavily funded by European entities,
including German, British, Irish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swiss groups,
as well as the Ford Foundation and the New Israel Fund.
As CAMERA had done for 2006, a detailed review was conducted of B'Tselem's
data for the months of November and December 2007. Multiple inconsistencies
and irregularities were found, some of which were continuations of last
year's questionable methodology, including the organization's discounting of
contradictory information from Israeli and Arab sources pointing to
individuals' involvement in hostilities at the time of their death as well
as the failure to identify terrorist affiliations.
There were also new problems. For example, the death of an 11-year-old boy
killed in Fatah-Hamas clashes is blamed on Israel, while B'Tselem leaves out
the killing of two Palestinians, who according to even Palestinian sources,
were Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades members attempting to infiltrate into Israel.
2. Excerpts: Poll of USA and Europe
finds Israel more popular than Palestinians
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=40697
The sample sizes amount to approximately 1000 respondents in each country.
. US
. FR = France
. GR = Germany
. UK= The United Kingdom
. IT = Italy
. NL = The Netherlands
. PL = Poland
. PT = Portugal
. SP = Spain
. SK = Slovakia
. TR = Turkey
. BG = Bulgaria
. RO = Romania
Q3 Next I'd like you to rate your feelings toward some countries,
institutions and people, with 100 meaning a very warm, favourable feeling, 0
meaning a very cold, unfavourable feeling, and 50 meaning not particularly
warm or cold. You can use any number from 0 to 100. If you have no opinion
or have never heard of that country or institution, please say so.
| | US | FR | GR | UK | IT | NL | PL |
PT | SP | SK | TR | BG | RO |
|
USA | 83 | 47 | 51 | 56 | 58 | 52 | 55 | 45 |
43 | 50 | 14 | 51 | 66 |
|
Russia | 48 | 41 | 49 | 47 | 45 | 47 | 40 | 43 |
45 | 52 | 18 | 66 | 45 |
|
Israel | 62 | 41 | 47 | 45 | 47 | 49 | 38 | 40 |
39 | 32 | 08 | 36 | 41 |
|
Palestinians | 36 | 40 | 39 | 45 | 43 | 44 | 37 | 37 |
46 | 25 | 44 | 28 | 38 |
|
Iran | 25 | 24 | 29 | 33 | 23 | 30 | 31 | 27 |
31 | 22 | 32 | 24 | 33 |
3. The Coming threat from Egypt?
Column One: When dictatorships end with
a whisper
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 11, 2008
www.jpost.com
/servlet/Satellite?cid=1221142453785&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Extracts:
With its nuclear weapons program, its control of Lebanon, Gaza and Syria,
its massive influence in Iraq and Afghanistan and its messianic, global
ambitions, Iran is rightly viewed as the greatest threat to global security
today.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the Iranian challenge is that on the
issues of greatest concern to the West, there is no way to divide and
conquer the regime. Anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and the quest for
Islamic dominance worldwide are sentiments shared by all levels of the
regime. The desire for nuclear weapons that can be used together with terror
armies to destroy Israel and the West is shared by all members of Teheran's
decision-making bodies.
The Iranian regime came to power in a violent revolution 29 years ago. Led
by the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the hate-spewing,
Koran-thumping ayatollahs overthrew the pro-Western autocracy of the shah.
The Islamic revolution was a popular revolution. The shah's repressive
policies and the resonance of Khomeini's Islamic dogmas gave the ayatollahs
broad support among the Iranian people.
THE IRANIAN revolution is frequently recalled as a cautionary tale for the
West as Americans, Israelis and Europeans continue to view unpopular, yet
ostensibly pro-Western Arab autocracies as stable. Such warnings have been
uttered with increasing frequency in recent years in regards to Egypt, whose
pro-Western dictator Hosni Mubarak now enters the twilight of his reign.
Mubarak has been ruling Egypt with an iron fist since 1981. He is 80 years
old and the state of his health is uncertain.
The Egypt Mubarak presides over is an economic basket case. Egypt's
population of 80 million - the highest in the Arab world - has doubled since
he took power after Anwar Sadat's assassination. Forty percent of Egyptians
are under 15 years old.
Mubarak has done little to advance his country's economic prospects. A fifth
of Egyptians subsist on less than a dollar a day. The average per capita
income, which has been declining since 2000, was $1,485 in 2006.
With few job prospects, Egypt's youth increasingly turn to the mosques for
consolation. There they embrace the jihadist doctrines of the Muslim
Brotherhood. Like its spinoffs - al-Qaida and Hamas - the Muslim Brotherhood
upholds jihad in the quest for Islamic world domination as its highest goal.
And due in large part to Mubarak's failure to develop his country, the
Muslim Brotherhood is the strongest social force in Egypt.
Owing to Mubarak's careful cultivation of Egypt's military and intelligence
services and his control of the media, the US and Israel uphold him as a
strong leader of a strong state. Yet Egypt's inherent weakness and Mubarak's
own incompetence is exposed every time something goes wrong in the country.
Whether al-Qaida strikes in Sinai or ferries sink to the bottom of the Red
Sea, Egyptian authorities are incapable of handling disasters.
MUBARAK'S RULE of Egypt bears many similarities to recently ousted president
Pervez Musharraf's rule of Pakistan. Like Musharraf before him, Mubarak
understands that his hold on power is based not on his own people's consent
but on the US's continued political and financial support for his regime.
Consequently, like Musharraf, Mubarak views secular democrats - who enjoy
Western support - as greater threats to his regime than the jihadists, whom
the West opposes.
So, too, like Musharraf, Mubarak's owes his ability to remain in power to
his control of Egypt's military and intelligence services. And like
Musharraf, Mubarak has maintained their support both because he himself
emerged from their ranks and because he showers the army and intelligence
services with economic power and social prestige.
It was the US's support for Musharraf's secular opponents and their call for
elections that forced Musharraf from power this summer. The Pakistan the US
now confronts is led by the weak government of newly elected President Asif
Ali Zardari, who was sworn into office on Tuesday. Unlike Musharraf, who
commanded the military as president, Zardawi has little sway over Pakistan's
General Staff and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence force.
After the September 11 attacks on the US, Washington was so concerned with
the prospect of what would happen if Musharraf were to leave office that it
subordinated its own interest in defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida to its
interest in maintaining him in power. For six years the US refrained from
attacking al-Qaida and Taliban redoubts inside Pakistan for fear that doing
so would weaken Musharraf's credibility within the military and among the
Pakistani population in general. Like their Egyptian counterparts,
Pakistanis are better disposed toward jihadists than they are toward the US.
And in the interest of maintaining Musharraf's support for its operations in
Afghanistan, the US allowed him to host al-Qaida and the Taliban in
Pakistan.
In Musharraf's last two years in office, the US's policy of self-restraint
became increasingly untenable. The Taliban and al-Qaida took control over
more and more of Pakistan's border provinces with Afghanistan and used the
areas as launching pads for their stepped-up insurgency in Afghanistan. In
recent months, it became apparent to Washington that if the US wishes to
achieve victory in Afghanistan, it will need to extend its fight to
Pakistan's border provinces.
Counterintuitively, it was Musharraf's very exit from power that has enabled
the US in recent weeks to steeply intensify its operations in Pakistan.
While Pakistan's military commander Gen. Ashfaq Kayani is far less
supportive of the US than Musharraf was, he is also far weaker. What's more,
the US has little investment in his longevity in power. The same is the case
with Zardawi's government.
The fact that in Pakistan today no one person or faction has the power to
control the country is what rendered the US's stepped up operations inside
of its border provinces with Afghanistan politically feasible. The US's
stony silence in the face of Kayani's condemnation Wednesday of its ground
forces' raid on a Taliban camp in Pakistan this week showed that America is
no longer deterred by Pakistani objections.
There is no doubt that the current state of affairs in Pakistan is
inherently unstable. If the US raises its military profile in Pakistan too
much, it is liable to foment a backlash that could propel its enemies to
power in that nuclear-armed state. But if the US is able to press its
advantage with a weak regime, it may be able to defeat the Taliban and
al-Qaida before they muster the strength necessary to take over the country
and so secure Pakistani neutrality for the foreseeable future.
Based on the current situation in post-Musharraf Pakistan, perhaps the US
and Israel should not be fearing that if Gamal Mubarak fails to secure full
control of Egypt after his father dies they will have to contend with an
Iranian-style Muslim Brotherhood regime. Maybe what will emerge is a more
amorphous situation where no one group will have the power to assert
absolute power. Such a situation could free the US and Israel to concentrate
on simply defeating their enemies, without concerning themselves with the
fortunes of those who have yet to join in the fight against the forces of
global jihad.
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