Fordow update - IAEA denial, ISIS cannot confirm, new enrichment at Natanz

After we saw what appeared to be three separate confirmations  of WND's detailed report that there was some sort of massive explosion at the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility in Iran, we are seeing counter-reports.

First, the White House denied the report, saying it did not believe it was credible. That could be explained away, though, if the US was involved.

Then the IAEA denied it as well, but their denial was a little curious:

The U.N. atomic watchdog made clear on Tuesday it had seen no sign of any explosion at one of Iran's most sensitive nuclear plants, backing up Tehran's denial of media reports that such an incident had taken place last week.

"We understand that Iran has denied that there has been an incident at Fordow. This is consistent with our observations," IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said in an emailed statement in response to a question.

That isn't phrased quite as definitively as a flat out denial, but it carries some weight in trying to figure out what happened.

Finally, ISIS, which monitors Iranian nuclear activities from satellite images, says it sees nothing that indicates a blast as massive as had been described:

ISIS obtained from Astrium commercial satellite imagery of the site taken the day after the explosion (figure 1). The imagery shows no exterior signs of an explosion or major damage. Although an underground explosion may not leave visible exterior signs of damage, ISIS observed no intensified activity in the form of emergency or cleanup vehicles that one would expect to see around the site in the wake of an incident of this magnitude (figure 1). The lack of clarity at very high magnification does leave some doubt on whether a set of three white marks near one of the entrances of the southernmost tunnel could indeed be three vehicles. However, an emergency response would be expected to have been prompt and to have involved many more vehicles, particularly given the national importance of the gas centrifuge site and especially of the personnel working underground.

A very cynical response, and I'm not sure I am that cynical, is that Iran knows that it is being monitored by satellite and chose to mute the emergency response.

Meanwhile, Iran told the IAEA it would upgrade the centrifuges being used at the Natanz site.

Morsi again says he was misunderstood. So here are more MB texts on Jews.

Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi keeps trying to "contextualize" his anti-semitic statements:

"As I have said before the quotes were taken out of context... I am not against the Jewish faith, I am not against Jews who practice their religion," Mursi told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

"I was talking about the practices and behavior of believers of any religion who shed blood or who attack innocent people or civilians. That's behavior that I condemn."

"I am a Muslim. I'm a believer and my religion obliges me to believe in all prophets, to respect all religions and to respect the right of people to their own faith," he added.

I've already noted that the Muslim Brotherhood website is filled with the most outrageous anti-semitic vitriol - without mentioning Zionism at all.

Here's another example, from 2004.

Fagin as the archetypal Jew - to Muslims

It is a book review of "Literary Comparison of Jewish People." The author takes Jewish characters from English and Egyptian literature and analyzes them to see what characteristics they have in common over the centuries.

They include Jewish characters from Ivanhoe, The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nashe, Oliver Twist, and Egyptian novel Ahmed Daoud.

The conclusion?

These are the traits and characteristics of the Jewish character: instinctive love of money, treachery, treason, hypocrisy, immorality, terrorism, fear, and cowardice; qualities that are consistent in the Jewish character on any land they lived. Perhaps these qualities are the real key to know how to deal with them.

I'm sure this is taken out of context, and they were really talking about the Zionists.

Just like this passage on the MB website:

When we read the Old Testament and the Talmud, and the resulting perceptions and ideas from studies such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and rabbinic religious rulings and other tributaries of Jewish thought, we find personal Jewish patterns of deviant behavior against mankind, they dictate intolerance against humans from non-Jews, and false arrogant vanity on God's creations. They also suggest to them that those sources of sacred intellectual thought - in their eyes - is one of hypocrisy and deceit, and even treachery, and they shed the blood of non-Jews and take their money, and even maintain personal Jewish hostility to other human beings, inspired by those Jewish sources that are considered sacred to them, [which cause] the deviation of the Jewish character.

So is Morsi lying? Not quite. He says that he is not against Jews "who practice their religion." But from his perspective, Islam defines what Judaism is - not Jews! Just like Islam decides that the Jewish Bible is a corrupted text from the original, and the Talmud has nothing to do with real Judaism, and that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a sacred Jewish text, Islam decides which Jews are practicing their religion and which aren't.

The ones who practice Judaism properly, from the Muslim perspective, are the ones who acknowledge that Islam is the one true religion that they will happily pay their jizya tax to.

Muslims complain about a wedding site overlooking the Kotel

Muslims are condemning a new wedding site set up in the Old City of Jerusalem that overlooks the Kotel.
No, it is not on the Temple Mount. It is not even within the Kotel courtyard. It is a hundred meters away, apparently around the site of Aish HaTorah, overlooking the courtyard and the Kotel:



The Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation condemned this, saying it contributed to the "Judaization" of Jerusalem and is "affecting the basis of Islamic civilization and heritage."
Other Arab media reported this horrible crime. 
I think they would condemn photos of Jerusalem in Jewish homes if they thought about it. 
It does look like a great spot for a wedding though, doesn't it?
By the way, a group associated with this same Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation has been offering free Muslim weddings on the Temple Mount, something that was as far as I can tell never done historically, in order to forge another false bond between Islam and the site it usurped.

Jordan's king: Hamas accepts 2-state solution. Hamas: No way!

As night follows day...

From YNet:

Hamas Politburo chief Khaled Mashaal has asked Jordan's King Abdullah II to inform US President Barack Obama that Hamas accepts the principle of a two-state solution, Saudi Arabia's al-Sharq newspaper reported.

According to the report, which quoted Jordanian sources, Mashaal expressed willingness to stand behind a solution that will see a Palestinian state being established on the 1967 borders during a meeting with the king on Monday.

Break out the champagne! Peace is at hand! Hamas is moderating! Strike up the band!

Just don't read any explicit Hamas statements:

Leader of the Hamas movement Yahya Moussa said, "Some international parties want to confuse the ranks of Hamas by spreading news of their agreement to the principle of accepting a two-state solution". Moussa asserted that his movement does not accept two-state solution in any case. 

The Saudi Arabia newspaper al-Sharq published a story on Wednesday saying Jordanian King Abdullah II received the authority of the President of the Political Bureau of Hamas Khaled Mashaal that the movement accepts the principle of a "two-state solution ", ahead of an initiative of U.S. President Barack Obama planned for February.

Moussa explained to "Palestine Online", that this solution is rejected categorically. "We do not accept the Israeli occupation on any atom of the soil of Palestine,", he said. Moussa  stressed that historical Palestine stretches from the river to the sea. he pointed out that to accept the state of Palestine in areas occupied in 1967 does not mean to ever recognize the legitimacy of the occupation of historic Palestine.

Their media office issued a statement likewise denying it.

A few days ago, when Abdullah floated the idea of a peaceful Hamas at Davos, Hamas again responded "the only law of our relationship with the enemy is resistance."

Hamas has been clear: it will accept any land Israel gives up but it will never accept Israel.

Why is this so difficult for Westerners to understand?

Well, we know why. So many are so emotionally invested in the concept of "peace," and they know peace is impossible with a genocidal terror group. Cognitive dissonance takes over and they pretend Hamas isn't really all that bad, and they grasp at straws so they can Believe again.

The truth that peace is impossible is simply too painful for them to accept. So they will happily misinterpret anything they hear so they can keep that all-important hope.

So we will see front-page headlines of the hope, and the explicit Arabic statements that would dash that hope go generally unreported.

Sorry, but peace with Hamas is impossible. 100%, absolutely impossible. It is easier to pole vault to Mars. It is more likely to win the lottery every day for the next 17 years. Hamas' position will change at roughly the same date that the value for pi falls below 3. A Hamas accepting Israel is exactly as impossible as a circle with four sides - because a Hamas that says it accepts Israel would no longer be Hamas by definition.

Get it?

(h/t CHA)

Anti-Israel activist Anna Baltzer exposed as a fraud (updated)

From Lee Kaplan at Gatestone Institute:

Anna Baltzer, a pretty lady who heads the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO) in Washington, DC., has developed a platform for herself going about the world lecturing as a Jew who once supported the State of Israel, but who had an epiphany and discovered that Israel and "Zionists" were exploiting and abusing the Palestinian people. The USCEIO is, in fact, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) renamed for the purpose of lobbying Congress in Washington. It was created by Huwaida Arraf, one of the co-founders of the ISM who also serves on the group's steering committee.

Placing Anna Baltzer as the titular head of the Campaign was intended to convince both Jews and non-Jews that opposition to Israel's existence is fine because even Jews such as her believe in the necessity of destroying the Jewish state, especially through boycotts and divestment. Anna Baltzer is a modern day Tokyo Rose for the ISM against Israel: she speaks at anti-Israel events and promotes boycott and divestment campaigns against Israel, in support of terrorist groups such as Hamas in its plans to destroy Israel any way it can. She has participated or helped at demonstations staged by Code Pink, Global Exchange, the Gaza Flotilla, Viva Palestina and other anti-Israel groups that make up the ISM.

USCEIO has been frantically sending out fundraising email blasts and announcing on its website that Ms. Baltzer will appear in a debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be presented by the distinguished Oxford Union in England on January 31st. According to the Oxford Union's website, "The Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe."
...
In her Wikipedia entry and various speeches she has presented, mostly to Christian churches, Ms. Baltzer has claimed she comes from a Jewish family in which her grandparents were Holocaust survivors; that she was a Fulbright Scholar from Columbia University, and that at first she was pro-Israel. After touring with Fulbright in 2003 in Turkey, she alleges she visited "Palestine," Syria and Iran and met "friends" who "educated" her on the suffering of the Palestinians at Israeli hands, so that today she is a dedicated anti-Zionist. She included a cry at the end of an interview recorded in Ireland in 2010 on an anti-Israel radio station that it is her hope "Inshallah, to one day bring down Zionism" -- meaning to end the Jewish state.

More recently, Anna Baltzer, back in the United States, lent her name and prestige to an attempt by the Students for Justice in Palestine at UC San Diego to prompt the entire student body association there to boycott and divest from Israel. The appearance, presumably intended to be a springboard to spread the boycott and divestment to other campuses, failed. While the event was being debated at UC SAN Diego, Anna Baltzer made a video, which appeared on YouTube, in support of boycotts and divestments from Israel, and directed to the anti-Israel campaign at the UC Campus. In this video, she claimed that she went on a Birthright tour -- a program that provides free trips to Israel for Jewish college students and recent graduates -- in the year 2000 as an enthusiastic pro-Zionist Jewish girl. She claims that after finishing the tour, she researched the suffering of the Palestinians and became a supporter of the anti-Israel movement.

There is just one problem with this scenario: According to my research, Anna Baltzer never went on a Birthright tour of Israel in the year 2000 or any other time. Inquiries to the New York and Israel offices to ascertain if she went with Birthright, revealed absolutely no record of any Anna Baltzer attending the program ever, let alone in year 2000. In short, it seems that Anna Baltzer lied about her participation in Birthright to convey the false impression that she was once a loyal Jew who supported the Jewish homeland but had discovered the justification for Palestinians' goals to overthrow Israel.

Further, after researching Ms. Baltzer's claims of being a Fulbright Scholar from Columbia in 2003, it has been determined from both Columbia's and the Fulbright websites, as well as Fulbright officials, that Anna Baltzer was never a Fulbright scholar either. A list of Fulbright Scholars at the Fulbright website contains the names of all Fulbright scholars from the United States and abroad from the late 90's to the present. Ms. Baltzer's name is nowhere to be found.

...Baltzer claims she is the descendant of Holocaust survivors who instilled in her a need to support Palestinian aims against Israeli persecution. After researching her grandparents through the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, to see if her family were actually in concentration camps, nothing could be found. This, too, appears to be a fabrication by Baltzer, or at best an embellishment...

The Oxford Union's President was distressed to learn these facts about Ms. Baltzer's academic fraud and said she would share such information with the faculty advisers with the possible outcome of her being removed from the debate.

An educational debate, especially at a university as august as Oxford, should feature academics or speakers who are genuine, not imposters or fakes planted to distort facts and slander and demonize a fellow democracy. Anna Baltzer seems to be neither a Fulbright scholar, not a descendant of Holocaust survivors nor an alumna of the Birthright program. She appears to be just a fraud and a fabulist. So why is Oxford having her speak?

You mean that people who are dedicated to destroying the Jewish state and who condone terrorism lie about their background?

I'm shocked. Shocked!

(h/t Ian)

UPDATE: I am told that Baltzer changed her name; she did receive the Fulbright under the name Anna J. Pillar. See this article that says her real name is Baltzer and that a 2006 lecture of hers was under the name Piller.

One of my readers emailed me with this cogent point:

It is also true that inventing Fulbright scholarships and perhaps even survivor grandparents can have more legs as a news story and be more discrediting to her than the mere fact that she likes to invent IDF atrocities.