Water – the new "blood libel"

Jews are long accustomed to the blood libel, namely, that the blood of Christians is used in the baking of matzoh for Passover. While that libel is certainly not dead, a new one has arisen. This one claims that Israel deprives Palestinians living in the West Bank of water to drink while Israel builds settlements with swimming pools.

Designed to inflame sensibilities, judged by the amount of news coverage the water libel is getting it is succeeding. The story couldn't be further from the truth. While Israelis have reduced their per capita consumption of water from 1967, the Palestinians have increased it beyond proportion.

In the meantime, Palestinians continue to dig illegal wells and build illegal cisterns that deprive their neighbors of water. They also refuse to treat sewage properly with the runoff polluting underground aquifers.

Water is a precious commodity to all in the Middle East, it's sad that the Palestinians use the issue to inflame hatred.


Read this report from Haaretz

Karin Friedemann: Whither After the Goldstone Report?

Karin Friedemann: Whither After the Goldstone Report?

A pro-Hamas supporter comments on the Goldstone Report reflects condemnation from that side of the divide.
But Miss Friedemann goes one step further and seems to advocate for the view that all Israelis are considered to be fair targets for terror actions. It's a sad commentary on how violent Palestine's supporters have become.

Well, that's what I have to say.
Stephen M. Flatow

CAIR planting spies on Capitol Hill? David Kupelian says "Yes!"

In a recent post on WorldNetDaily, David Kupelian writes about CAIR inserting itself into positions of influence with members of the House of Representatives and US Senate.

While a Washington, D.C.-based Muslim organization the government classifies as an unindicted terror co-conspirator – and which has, in fact, seen several of its leaders imprisoned on terrorism convictions – scoffed last week at congressional charges it was attempting to plant interns and staffers in key Capitol Hill offices to influence policy, a hot-selling new book documents the controversial group is successfully doing precisely that.

The book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to
Islamize America" by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, is based in part on a daring six-month undercover investigation that resulted in many alarming revelations about the supposedly "moderate" group, backed by 12,000 pages of internal documents.

Among the charges leveled against CAIR are these:

• Ghassan Elashi: One of CAIR's founding directors, was convicted in 2004 of illegally shipping high-tech goods to terror state Syria, and is serving 80 months in prison. He was also convicted of providing material support to Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial. He was chairman of the charity, which provided seed capital to CAIR. Elashi is related to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook.
• Muthanna al-Hanooti: The CAIR director's home was raided in 2006 by FBI agents in connection with an active terrorism investigation. Agents also searched the offices of his advocacy group, Focus on Advocacy and Advancement of International Relations, which al-Hanooti operates out of Dearborn, Mich., and Washington, D.C.
• Abdurahman Alamoudi: Another CAIR director, is serving 23 years in federal prison for plotting terrorism. Alamoudi, who was caught on tape complaining that bin Laden hadn't killed enough Americans in the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, was one of al-Qaida's top fund-raisers in America, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
• Siraj Wahhaj: A member of CAIR's board of advisers, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The radical Brooklyn imam was close to convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and defended him during his trial.

And the list of individuals similarly tarnished and actions of CAIR goes on and on. They belie its claim to be a Muslim equivalent to the NAACP.

Read the full WND article, Yes, CAIR is planting 'spies' on Capitol Hill.

Stephen M. Flatow

Investments in Hamas Tunnels Collapse

No pun intended in the caption but it seems that our enterprising Palestinian brethren are victims of their collapsing investments in smuggling tunnels that the Israel Air Force has helped collapse physically this past year.

According to Jonathan Ferziger writing on Bloomberg.com,

Investment opportunities are rare in the Gaza Strip. So when Nabila Ghabin saw one last year, she pawned her car and jewelry and put $12,000 into a network of tunnels that brought in supplies smuggled from Egypt.

She was one of about 4,000 Gazans who gave cash to middlemen and tunnel operators in 2008 as Israel blocked the overland passage of goods. Then Israeli warplanes bombed the tunnels before and during the Dec. 27 to Jan. 18 Gaza offensive and the investments collapsed.

No, this isn't an April Fools' day story. It's legitimate.

The report continues,

Now investors, who lost as much as $500 million, want their money back from Hamas, which runs Gaza. Hamas Economics Minister Ziad Zaza says about 200 people were taken into custody in connection with the tunnel investments; most have been released. Hamas is offering a partial repayment of 16.5 cents on the dollar using money recovered from Ihab al-Kurd, the biggest tunnel operator.

And who is Hamas's Madoff? According to investment victim Nabila Ghabin,

“The imam told us that we wouldn’t regret joining this blessed business,” she said in her apartment in an unfinished 12-story high-rise overlooking the Mediterranean as her husband played the lute. “This happened in mosques all over Gaza.”

I for one, hope the "collapse" of the tunnel market bankrupts every last one of these clowns.

Read the full story: Hamas Finds Gaza Tunnels' $500 Million Loss Worse Than Madoff.

Stephen M. Flatow

Honduras and Jew Hatred

During the age of Spanish exploration of the western hemisphere many Jews from western Europe turned to South America as a haven from persecution. The oldest organized Jewish community in the United States was founded by Jews from Brazil and their synagogue and community programs still function almost 400 years later.

However, all is not well in Central and South America.

Argentina has gone through a wave of Jew hating attacks as it sought to place blame for its economic woes on a particular aspect of its population. The 1990s bombing of the community center was not properly investigated for many years.

Today, a new center of Jew hatred appears to be rising in Venezuela under the government of Hugo Chavez who has bought into the wackiness of Iran's Ahmadinejad regarding the Holocaust. Chavez, never content to just deal within his borders, is busy trying to export his particular brand of government to neighboring countries. Honduras being one of them.

As commented upon in today's Wall Street Journal by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the ouster of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has led to much talk. But she writes,

"The Honduras debate is not really about Honduras. It is about whether it is possible to stop the spread of chavismo and all it implies, including nuclear proliferation and terrorism in Latin America."

She continues,

"Most troubling is the unflinching support for Mr. Zelaya from President Barack Obama and Democratic Sen. John Kerry—despite the Law Library of Congress review that shows that Mr. Zelaya's removal from office was legal, and the clear evidence that he is Mr. Chávez's man in Tegucigalpa. On Thursday, Mr. Kerry took the unprecedented step of trying to block a fact-finding mission to Honduras by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who is resisting Mr. Obama's efforts to restore Mr. Zelaya to power."

Are Jews in physical danger? Not yet, but the canary is going into the mine, it seems.

Read the full article Revolutionary Anti-Semitism.

Stephen M. Flatow