IRIS Blog

Concerned Citizen Hacks Israeli Army?s ?Rocket Hotline?, from AFP:

A concerned Israeli has thwarted the army?s latest anti-militant initiative by hacking its ?rocket hotline? set up so that Palestinians in Gaza can rat on those firing projectiles at Israel, the Yediot Aharonot daily reported.

Following a week of multiple Israeli air strikes targeting rocket-firing militants in northern Gaza, the air force tried a new tactic: dropping leaflets encouraging locals to anonymously snitch on any rocket-toting militants.

Note: the PA has agreed in every signed document to stop terrorists themselves.

Internet Rules: The Miers Denouement Shows the Power of the New Media, by John Fund

One-Third of PA Arabs Thinking about Emigrating

PA Academics Take to the Streets After Fatah Violence Against President

Bali Bombers May be Released by Indonesia

UN Security Council Unanimous Vote: Demands Full Syrian Cooperation in Hariri Probe

Islamic Group Linked to India Blasts

Non-Muslim Women 'Must Wear Scarves' on Campuses

Conservatives Praise, Liberals Pan Bush Supreme Court Nominee

Fourth Night of Muslim Riots in Paris; Suburb is Seeing 'Civil War'

These are all editorials related to the Iranian President's Call for Israel's Destruction:

A President's Hate Speech

Iran's Zealot in Chief Does Bush a Favor

Iran's Threat

Menace in the Mideast

From Maariv (Hebrew):

IDF Brig.-Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, the head of the Military Intelligence research department, said Sunday that Hamas was not participating in the rocket fire against Israel because it does not want to lose public support. "Islamic Jihad is less influenced by this consideration because it is not participating in the elections," he said. He warned that Islamic Jihad was seeking to kidnap Israelis. He also said the PA is cooperating with Iran. "Two weeks ago Abbas sent his welfare minister, Abu al-Razek, to an event where funds from Iran were distributed to the families of terrorists. The PA sponsored the event," he said.

From Haaretz:

The Shin Bet security service said Sunday that it has arrested three Palestinians in an operation to thwart an attempt to establish the manufacture of high-trajectory weapons such as rockets and mortar shells in the West Bank city of Jenin. The three - senior members of the Popular Resistance Committees and Gaza residents - were arrested in the Negev on Oct. 5 at the funeral of an Egyptian-Bedouin smuggler. All three crossed into Israel via the Sinai border after bribing Egyptian police to let them through.

The men are experienced manufacturers of rockets and explosives, and are suspected to have been involved in attacks against Israelis in the Gaza Strip. They had been sent to Jenin to create a terror network in the northern West Bank, with funding from Hamas and Hizballah.

Lashkar, Al-Qaeda Share Cadres

Lashkar-e-Taiba, the primary suspect in the bomb blasts in New Delhi, has close links with the global terrorist outfit al-Qaeda, as well as the Palestinian terrorist outfit Hamas, according to highly-placed sources in India's Intelligence Bureau (IB). LeT set up its base in Jammu and Kashmir in the early 1990s and has succeeded in establishing its modules in all Indian states which have a substantial population of Muslims. These modules comprise well-educated and computer literate Sunni Muslim men, as per IB sources. Only Sunnis are recruited because the group propagates Sunni Wahabism, the pan-Islamic doctrine.

From Xinhua (China)

Three wanted Hamas members crossed the Gaza-Egypt border and returned to Jabalya in northern Gaza on Sunday, Palestinian security sources said.

Nihro Mas'ood, 38, one of the founders of the Hamas al-Qassam Brigades, had been wanted by Israel for 14 years and had been living in Sudan.

From the Times Online:

Iran has promised a reward of $10,000 to Islamic Jihad if the militant group launches rockets from the West Bank towards Tel Aviv, a senior Palestinian intelligence official said last week. Speaking in his Ramallah office, the official produced a fat wad of $100 notes which he said had been confiscated from a pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad activist. The money was said to have gone from Iran to Damascus, from where Ibrahim Shehadeh, Islamic Jihad's head of overseas operations, transferred it to the West Bank....The Israeli media claimed last week that rocket attacks from the West Bank were widely expected: Ben-Gurion airport's eastern runway is just five miles away and the outskirts of Tel Aviv are within 10 miles.

Muslims Behead Christian Girls in Indonesia

Islamic Group Linked to India Blasts

Iranians Threaten Freedom of Worship for Catholics in Iran if Vatican Condemns Call to Eliminate Israel

Vatican Denounces Iran Remarks on Israel

Islamic Jihad fires 5 Kassams from Gaza

UN May Pass Tough Measures on Syria

The Nightmare of Hamastan, by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen

From a New York Times minivan review comes this tidbit:

On a trip from Detroit to northern Michigan to drop off my teenage daughter and a friend at camp, those middle chairs were the scene of a marathon DVD viewing of the entire first season of "Sex in the City." All we heard for four hours from the girls, snug in their wireless headphones, was laughter and an occasional gasp at some risqu? line. I think they wished their camp was farther away, perhaps in Duluth.

Is there not something unusual with a father facilitating his teenaged daughter's immersion in "Nudity/Strong Sexual Content/Profanity/Sexual Situations" just prior to sleepaway camp? Would a typical father subsequently publicize this fact?

Note: This widely circulated story is not one about Times errors. That's how it started, but it turned into one about an attempt to push an entirely revisionist definition of "Jerusalem" that has no basis whatsoever in fact, law or history. The Times refuses to even clarify that this is the contention of one party to the conflict.

In today's New York Times, Jerusalem "buearu chief" [sic] Steven Erlanger presents two anti-Israel falsehoods. Here is the first:

During the first gulf war, in 1991, she says, the Israelis, under the threat of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons and Scud missiles, handed out gas masks - but only to the guests, not to the Palestinian staff of the hotel.

Here are the facts:

During the Gulf War in 1991, Israel distributed gas masks to every Israeli citizen [i.e. Jewish and Arab] but not to the local Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza. After a petition to the Supreme Court, the court ordered the army to distribute gas masks to the local population, as well.

Here is the second distortion:

But the Israeli security barrier - a large concrete wall through most of Jerusalem - just makes her angry.

Here is a map of the security barrier, which largely follows the border of Jerusalem as it stood when Israel regained the territory during the 1967 Six Day War. It appears there are two very small areas where the barrier enters the boundaries of Jerusalem at all, in each case to keep an Arab population area contiguous. It is therefore not fair to speak of the security barrier going "through Jerusalem" at all. Rather, it will enclose Jerusalem on three sides when complete.

Here are some past quotes from Erlanger. When reading the first, consider that the formal definition of philanthropy is "love of humanity."

On Hamas: "the Islamic group that combines philanthropy and militancy"

On Arafat: "heroic history"

On Abbas: "intelligent, proud, committed to nonviolence -- is admired by Israel and the United States"

On Israeli complaints to Abbas about terrorism: "may seem self-serving"

Update (Oct. 31): An extremely interesting correspondence with the Tmes has been going on in reaction to the errors I exposed here. Read the whole thing, but Here is a paraphrase of the highlights of this parody (text in quotes below are verbatim) of the correspondence between an attorney reader of the Mediacrity blog and Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bonner:

Reader: It is not true, as your article asserts, that there is "a large concrete wall through most of Jerusalem." It goes around it. Here's the map as evidence.

Deputy Foreign Editor: "There is indeed a tall concrete wall through large parts of Jerusalem."

Reader: No it goes around. "That's, of course, different from "through Jerusalem", and the difference is probably correction worthy"

Deputy Foreign Editor: "you can't possibly be serious."

Reader: "But it looks to me that the" barrier "largely tracks the Jerusalem municipal border...which would make the wall not 'through Jerusalem', am I wrong?"

Deputy Foreign Editor: "while most of that wall does indeed follow the municipal boundary, some of it...do not. [sic] from the point of view of palestinians living in those areas, the barrier feels very much like it is going through their city?

To sum up, first the point was denied out of hand. Then it was accepted (with the minor exceptions I had originally specified), but apparently the New York Times has changed its definition of "Jerusalem" from the actual boundaries of the city to what local Arabs "feel it is."

The Deputy Foreign Editor ignored the second falsehood I hed reported. Read the whole exchange at Mediacrity. Kudos for following up on this story so tenaciously.

Update (Oct. 31): Why is the New York Times obstinately refusing to correct an obvious mistake? Why is the "paper of record" admitting that it is throwing out historical borders as evidence in favor of what the barrier "feels like from the point of view of the Palestinians?"

I realized the explanation must be that this New York Times "error" represents a long-running Arab disinformation campaign. Here are a few of the many sites spreading this myth:

Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign: The Wall Weaving through Jerusalem

The Wall that is Slicing through East Jerusalem

Here is a map stating the same fiction:



Here's another "map of the wall cutting through occupied East Jerusalem."

One may wonder if the Arabs have had a different definition of "Jerusalem" when it was controlled by Jordan from 1949 until 1967. This is not the case. The areas that these sites above claim as Jerusalem were not included then, as this map shows. As an example, one of the above sites mentions the "Abu Dis area in Jerusalem." Both historical maps above show that Abu Dis was always considered outside of Jerusalem. Additionally, the small pieces of two neighborhoods (Shuafat and Kafr Aqab) that the Deputy Foreign Editor compained were cut out of Jerusalem were clearly not part of Jordanian Jerusalem.

Let me restate the facts: the security barrier encircles Jerusalem along its municipal border (as much as possible) to separate it from the West Bank. That is the formerly Jordanian territory from which most of the suicide bombings and sniper fire directed at Jerusalem have emanated. The "paper of record" has dropped factual evidence as a standard and essentially now claims to be the "paper of feelings." This is a euphemism for the "paper of propaganda."

Update (Nov. 3):
TimesWatch has more on Erlanger's biased reporting.

Update (Nov. 15): Other media sources are running the same anti-Israel error:
"The concrete wall through Jerusalem carves out Arab enclaves in the city" (Oct. 18, Guardian)

Welcome New Visitors-if you liked this post, try this one as well:
AP Sets Record for Most Bias Crammed into Smallest Space

UAE Says Saddam Agreed to Exile Before War, Arab League Scuttled Offer

Israel Slams Annan's Plan to Go Ahead with Iran Visit

Australian Police Told to Show Tolerance for Muslim Traditions on Wife-Beating

Third Night of Muslim Rioting in Paris

Muslim Students Shut Down Exhibit at Harper College

From the BBC:

Three girls have been beheaded and another badly injured as they walked to a Christian school in Indonesia. They were walking through a cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in central Sulawesi province when they were attacked.

This is an area that has a long history of religious violence between Muslims and Christians.

A government-brokered truce has only partially succeeded in reducing the number of incidents in recent years.

Police say the heads were found some distance from the bodies.

It is unclear what was behind the attack, but the girls attended a private Christian school and one of the heads was left outside a church leading to speculation that it might have had a religious motive.

Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country.

From Reuters:

A 14-year-old Egyptian boy faces execution in Saudi Arabia after a flawed trial in which he was convicted for the murder of another child, Human Rights Watch said today....Following a seriously flawed trial, Ahmad al-D. was sentenced to death in July for the murder of three-year old Wala' 'Adil 'Abd al-Badi' in Dammam in April 2004....Saudi Arabia has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the capital punishment for offenses committed by individuals under 18 at the time of the crime and protects the rights of all children accused or convicted of crimes.

Saudi Arabia stated in its 2004 report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child that the "Islamic Shariah in force in the Kingdom never imposes capital punishment on persons who have not attained their majority" and that "a juvenile is defined under the Detention Regulation and the Juvenile Homes' Regulation of A.H. 1395 (1975) as every human being below the age of 18".

At every stage of the investigation, detention, trial and sentencing, the Saudi authorities violated Ahmad's due process rights and well as international legal protections for children. He had no legal assistance or representation during interrogation, detention and trial. Press and police accounts also throw into question his psychological stability during this period and his ability to participate in his own defense. He told the Saudi online newspaper al-Yaum al-Elektroni that he confessed only after police questioned him for the third time because "my strength dwindled and I lacked the capacity to refuse." He said that while in pre-trial solitary confinement for three months he "cried from fear and loneliness."

Although he was only 13 at the time of the murder, the court tried and sentenced Ahmad as an adult, based on its assessment of the coarseness of his voice and the appearance of pubic hair....At least four other persons are known to be facing death for crimes committed when they were children....The Saudi Law on Criminal Procedure in article 4 guarantees every defendant the right to a lawyer.