EoZ

News and opinion on the Middle East ISSUE #00 JULY 20 2011

this issue
Abbas lies again P.1 Gazas new mall P.2 Israel Hayom beats Haaretz P.2 UNESCO converts MaimonidesP.3 Syria again P.3 How to tell an Arab leftist P.4

Mahmoud Abbas lies in Norway

Palestine Press Agency reports on Mahmoud Abbas's remarks in Norway concerning the unilateral move to have the UN short-circuit negotiations with Israel. He said, "Our people are eagerly awaiting their freedom and independence." If that is so, then why does he refuse to negotiate with Israel? If that is so, why does he consistently refuse to compromise on any major issues? If his people are so eager to have a state, then why not accept one of the many that Israel has already offered? He said, "Our choice is peace, and we continue to strive to achieve this with Israel through negotiations." Then why did he leave the negotiating table? why did he refuse to negotiate during Israel's ill-advised "settlement freeze"? And why aren't any Norwegian reporters or politicians asking these questions to him? He said, "We will make every effort possible to reach the unity of our people and end the suffering of our people in Gaza Strip." If so, then why has he not made any move to re-assert the PA's authority in Gaza? Why has he not yet visited the area? Why is he accepting Hamas' de facto rule? He said, "We are involved in the path of building our institutions and the development of our economy." If so, then why is the Palestinian Arab economy still so dependent on outside aid? Why is paying the families of terrorists, and salaries to the terrorists themselves in prison, a higher priority than paying his own employees?

ABOUT EoZ
This is a fantasy newsletter/ magazine, showing only a small portion of the type and variety of stories at the Elder of Ziyon blog every day. Maybe one day Ill have time, or staff, or money to do this right, instead of just using a canned business brochure template. The blog is at ElderOfZiyon.com .

Gazas New Andalusia Mall

The horror is almost too much to contemplate

Israel HaYom is read by nearly 7x as many Israelis as Ha'aretz

Israel HaYom, which has recently come out with an online English edition, is now the most popular newspaper in Israel, read by some 39.3% of the population in the first half of this year. The newspaper is a breath of fresh air as it reports without the sickening bias of Ha'aretz, whose readership fell to a tiny 5.8% market share. Of course, this won't stop foreign journalists from using Ha'aretz as their benchmark on how Israeli society thinks. They like to push the false idea that Israel hates its government and it more oriented to Meretz than Likud - since this is more in line with what they themselves believe. Wishful thinking trumps sober reporting nearly every time.
Gazans are forced to wait in dehumanizing lines in the scorching heat to have a few minutes of respite from their unbearable lives.

From Al Masry al-Youm: After marking its inaugural opening on Tuesday, the three-story mall in Gaza City now offers products running the gamut. The supermarket has nearly all possible commodities. Shoe stores with popular brand names, such as Nike, Adidas and Fox, sit next to clothing shops displaying window mannequins with hot miniskirts and vibrantly colored t-shirts. On the Andaluseyya malls top floor, customers are able to enjoy quality time with their families, eating at restaurants, playing arcade games and, for the first time in Gaza, watching a movie in the cinema. Escalators, rare sites in this besieged coastal enclave, escort people between floors. To top it off, air conditioning provides much-needed respite from the oppressive heat outside. Once again I am saddened to have to show you the photos of the hopelessness that Gazans are forced to live under - hopelessness that is worse than ahumanitarian crisis.

The captions are written in the style of the Free Gaza Movement, 972Mag, Mondoweiss and Reuters.

Escalators were installed at the insistence of the Zionists who manufactured, and are enriched by, them. This is meant to ensure that proud Gazans get less exercise and more heart attacks, thus contributing to their slow genocide.

UNESCO Islamicizes Maimonides

YNet has a damning article by Giulio Meotti about UNESCO that makes a very good case that the agency is actively engaging in a fight against Israel, and even against Jewish culture and history - especially if that history happened to occur on the "wrong side" of an imaginary green line. That began to change as UNESCO started de-emphasizing his Judaism. In their description of Cordoba, for example, he is referred to as "Musa-ibnThis one part of the article was stunning to me: On a final note, a recent UNESCO report on science, Jewish physician and theologian Maimonides is classified as a Muslim named Moussa ben Maimoun. So the Rambam for Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon has been forced to convert to Islam by the UNs revisionist historians. The document he is referring to was in the French version of a December 2010 report on science in the Arab world by Adnan Badran. Translated, It says: Now Lebanon reports: After the recovery of Toledo from the Moors by the Crusaders in 1085, European scholars flocked there to translate the ancient classical texts from the Greek (which Europe had forgotten) to Arabic and Hebrew and Latin, making it the first part of the European Middle Ages (1100-1543), the names of some European scholars appeared in scientific literature next to a large number of Muslim scholars, including Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Maimouna Ibn Moussa (Maimonides), Tousi and Ibn Nafis. This is in marked contrast to how UNESCO used to act. In 1986, it organized a roundtable to celebrate the 850th anniversary of Maimonides' birth, and dedicated an entire issue of its cultural magazine to Maimonides and Averroes that same year where his Jewish roots are emphasized. In that issue they Both US envoy Robert Ford and French ambassador Eric Chevallier visited Hama on July 7 amid repeated large demonstrations in the city against the rule of President Bashar alAssad. Either Ford should immediately go to Hama or he should immediately go home. There is no value to his staying under virtual house arrest while the Syrian regime slaughters thousands. And if France does it first, it would make the US look really bad. "We will impose a ban on any [diplomatic] travel more than 25 kilometers (15 miles) outside Damascus, if the ambassadors continue to ignore [our] guidance," Muallem told the envoys at a meeting broadcast by state television. "I hope that we will not be forced to impose the ban," he added. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem warned the French and US ambassadors on Wednesday not to travel outside Damascus after they both visited the flashpoint central city of Hama earlier this month. This isn't the usual anti-Zionism that we come to expect from the UN. This is a consistent pattern of the denial of Jewish history and culture. In other words - this is UN-sanctioned anti-semitism. And now - he is a Muslim. Maymun." mention that he is known as The Rambam and they say his name was Moses ben Maymun.

ISNT IT TIME TO RECALL THE US AMBASSADOR TO SYRIA?

How to Tell an Arab Leftist

There is a Twitter hashtag, mostly written by Arabs, called "#HowToTellAnArabFarLeftist." A lot of them are quite funny and many apply to leftists altogether. Here are some of the entries:

when they say that Nutella is an American conspiracy product to taint the brains of 3 yr old kids. mention colonialism every 5 min even though foreign aid has hurt economies much worse. They despise the west and United States but they probably graduated from American University of Beirut they voted for Bush in 2000 because Gore's running mate was Jewish...then they complain about how Bush "stole" Florida they think Norman Finkelstein is a genius "there has always been a secret American plan to invade and split up Iraq into 3 countries." Castro is not ruining Cuba. He is merely teaching his people how common misery is better than greedy capitalism. "The Israel lobby controls the media and the U.S. government." "my daughter is only allowed to marry from my village" the UN is a Zionist conspiracy. The Israel lobby is America's shadow government. Syrian revolt a conspiracy too. a sentence cannot be formed w/o: zionist, racist, imperialism, puppets, conspiracy, corporate. Speaking out against religious extremism is so pass compared to railing against corporations "they bitched and moaned when Bush passed the patriot act and said nothing when Obama renewed it "Palestinians aren't allowed to own land in Lebanon because they want them to go back to their homeland" holocaust denial. Sad but true. The only scholar worth mentioning in regards to the Middle East is Edward Said. If you criticize West they're your best friend,if you criticize Arabs they support you're guilty of Orientalism. "we're replacing Mubarak thugs w our much nicer ones who'll punish the real bad guys (e.g Investors)" Saddam Hussein was a good guy he is just misunderstood. Rage rage against human rights abuses by Obama and Bush. Crickets chirping with regard to Castro, Lenin, Stalin they are secular but praise Osama bin Laden and yell about it on al-Jazeera while screaming conspiracy. their vocabulary consists in one word: colonialism. Ok two, they can say it in Arabic too Having an import cup of coffee at a super lavish cafe while discussing child labour sympathizes with and takes photos of homeless people from his 1000$ Canon camera u thnk wearing a Keffiyeh & nagging will free Palestine, but an economically strong arab world won't. give you a long lecture about horror of fascist dictatorship then praise #Stalin strongly supports freedom of speech except when you disagree with his beliefs they don't smile because smiling is a western conspiracy to distract us from their plot to destroy us. they love revolutions and elections but hate liberty they would rather Palestine never get a state always be occupied, to bitch, rather than them get half the loaf.