Following Farfour the Mouse’s Islamic domination mini-series, it’s Nahoul the Bee who this time goes in for some animal cruelty.

Palestinian Media Watch have captured the footage and posted it to their YouTube channel.

A warning applies for those who find animal cruelty distressing: don’t watch the video. For those that can stomach it, the video is here.

PETA has finally woken up to the barbarism, as reported in Ha’aretz:

International animal rights group PETA on Wednesday condemned a “shocking and sickening” video clip produced by a Hamas-run TV station and posted on the YouTube Web site that showed the abuse of animals.

PETA said it would protest to the TV station over the program that showed animals being abused as part of a program aimed at teaching children not to hurt animals.

The clip prompted scores of complaints from viewers worldwide.
“It’s shocking and sickening,” said Martin Mersereau, manager of the domestic animal abuse division of U.S.-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Mersereau said PETA was drafting a letter of protest to the Gaza-based Al-Aqsa television station.

A letter of protest?

“Oooh, that’s a worry”, Hamas must be thinking.

Given that Hamas preachers have previously labelled Jews as “apes and pigs”, would that also count as animal cruelty?

Do you think that Israel could get the powerful PETA organisation on its side?

Nope, nor do I.

neoZionoid

A microbrewery in eastern Germany has found success with a new niche product: officially certified kosher beer.

The first 30,000 bottles of Simcha pilsner – a name that means joy in Hebrew – have sold out since being put on the market at the end of April, said Wilfried Gotter, a spokesman for the new product.

Brewed under the strict Bavarian purity laws with only water, hops, grain, and yeast, almost all German beer is technically kosher – fit for consumption according to Jewish law.

But Simcha goes one step further, having Berlin Orthodox Rabbi Yitshak Ehrenberg oversee the brewing and bottling process and give it official kosher certification.

For very religious Jews the availability of kosher beer is tremendously important, Gotter said. The certification takes it to the next level.

Drinking the beer will take the consumer to the next level as well.

I can think of other brands that should be considering kosher variants of their beverage:

• Heineken: Shmeineken
• Budweiser: Ben-Weiser
• Fosters: Borschters (may need to add beetroot juice)

Anyone else got suggestions?
neoZionoid

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo Thursday and appealed to him to authorize the construction of a moat that would prevent weapons being smuggled into the Gaza Strip from Egypt via the Philadelphi Corridor, Channel 1 reported Thursday.

Abbas proposed that the corridor, currently a land barrier under which terror groups dig tunnels in order to move weapons and ammunition, be turned into a trench and flooded with sea water.

Once the corridor was flooded, any tunnels dug beneath it would collapse.

Sounds like a great idea. But not very original. The IDF proposed this idea about three years ago, but didn’t get approval to proceed from the government.

Interestingly, the anti-Israeli organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) was critical of the original plan in a 2004 report:

Another option is to fill the trench with water like a moat to block tunnels or to flood them if penetrated.

The project as described is highly problematic on several grounds and may carry serious consequences for the welfare of the civilian population in the area. First, the IDF has argued that construction of the trench may require further mass demolitions to widen the buffer zone, in order to reduce risk to those digging the trench.143 This would defeat the purpose of digging a trench in order to obviate the need for demolitions.

Even without demolitions, the project seems impractical from engineering and environmental perspectives. The Rafah ground slopes gradually upward from west to east, so that a moat connected to the sea would require leveling the land at enormous cost, one water engineer said. If the moat is intended to reach both the water table and the Mediterranean Sea, it would mix sea water with underground drinking water, greatly exacerbating the already pressing water crisis in the Gaza Strip. If the trench was filled with water from another source, it would have to be circulated regularly to prevent it from becoming stagnant and threatening public health.

Do you think that HRW will be as critical of the idea now that it’s pushed by Abbas?

Meanwhile, hidden somewhere deep in the bowels of a Reuters news article (is that a tautology?), we find Hamas have imposed a new customs duty on food imported from Israel:

Merchants said they can’t get their products to the markets without first paying 2,000 shekels ($465) in fees to the Hamas-led administration in the Gaza Strip, despite a decree by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah to exempt individuals and companies from paying taxes in the territory.

Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, tax ‘em.

Speaking of corruption, Ynet reports that bribery is suspected in the oh-so-unsurprising Hamas salary scandal:

A senior official in the Palestinian Authority Finance Ministry is suspected of illegally transferring yearly salaries to 3,500 members of the Hamas security forces, in violation of Fatah policy since Hamas’ forceful takeover of the Gaza Strip in June.

… it appears that the case is a criminal one and Hamas bribed Finance Ministry workers to attain the money.

So where did they get the money to bribe the Finance Ministry workers?

neoZionoid

The article, titled The Dangers of ‘Peace’ Making, essentially argues that efforts to bring about peace can backfire and make things worse.

Reading the article, I was struck by the following paragraphs (emphasis added):

In August 2005, the international community embraced Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza, largely for these very reasons. The “occupation,” which they tirelessly argued was polarizing the Middle East, would be rolled back. The Palestinians would take over Israeli greenhouses and export cherry tomatoes to the European Union. They would pump gas from lucrative off-shore gas fields being developed by British Gas to bring in huge revenues to the Palestinian people.

Ms. Rice also pushed hard for the “Rafah Border Crossing Agreement,” which was supposed to facilitate trade between Gaza and the rest of the world while keeping terrorists out. EU observers were deployed.

But moderation did not ensue … Huge amounts of weapons and cash also poured into Gaza.

Gold continues further on talking about al Qaeda:

Its recruits have responded to Web clips of U.S. armored vehicles in Iraq exploding, or the beheading of Russian soldiers in Chechnya.

These are classic examples of globalisation, free trade and technology at work. Unfortunately for Condi Rice and the Europeans, they are working in reverse.

Instead of globalisation and technology working to provide hope for oppressed people in the Middle East, these phenomenon have been exploited with ruthless effectiveness by terrorists to advance their 7th century vision.

Incidentally, this is reminiscent of Thomas Barnett’s concept of ‘connectedness’ discussed in his book The Pentagon’s New Map. In it, Barnett describes the concept of the core (loosely speaking the integrated developed countries) and the non-integrated gap (that includes the Middle East). In Barnett’s view, the 21st century strategy for the US – as the only military hyperpower – should be to connect the gap to the core to bring relative security.

Instead, true to form, the Middle East provides a harsh reality check for those theories based on assumptions that global actors are not evil.

Perhaps those MacDonalds-shop-window-bashing anti-globalisation anarchic fruit-loops do have it right after all?

neoZionoid