The Elephant Bird (Aepyornis maximus) inhabited the island of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa. Madagascar was settled around 2000 years ago by African and Indonesian peoples. Legends of the giant roc (rukh) in Arab folklore were probably based on the elephant bird. During the 9th century, Saracen and Indian traders visited Madagascar and other parts of the African coast and would have encountered these birds. In 1298, while imprisoned in Genoa, Marco Polo wrote his memoirs, covering 26 years of travel. In chapter 33, "Concerning the Island of Madagascar" he wrote that the Great Khan had sent him to investigate curious reports of giant birds.
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The Malagasy people had had contact with Arab traders over several centuries, but had fiercely resisted colonisation. The first Europeans to visit the island were the Portuguese in 1500. Dutch and French expeditions established coastal settlements after 1509, penetrating the interior 150 years later. In the 16th century, Dutch, Portuguese and French sailors returned from the Indian Ocean with huge eggs taken as curios. The French established a settlement in 1642, by which time the Elephant Bird had become very rare. The last one probably died in 1649. The first French Governor of Madagascar and Director of the French East India Company, Étienne de Flacourt, wrote, in 1658, "vouropatra - a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places may not take it, it seeks the most lonely places". In the face of human hunters, the elephant bird was retreating to remoter regions. By 1700, it was gone forever.
The elephant bird was the largest bird ever to have lived. It was a ratite, related to ostriches and emus, though it was unlikely to have been a swift runner. It had massive legs and taloned claws, vestigial wings and a long, powerful neck. Its body was covered in bristling, hair-like feathers, like those of the emu, and its beak resembled a broad-headed spear. It had evolved at a time when birds ruled the earth and had probably existed on Madagascar for 60 million years. In spite of its fearsome appearance (the legendary roc was fierce and ate elephants), it was a herbivore. It had little to fear from other native creatures on Madagascar; it was protected by its huge size and if needs be, could use its feet and heavy beak to protect itself in conflicts with others of its own kind.
The birds resembled heavily built ostriches, with small heads, vestigial wings, and long, powerful legs. They stood 10 ft (3 metres) tall and weighed approximately 1000 lbs (455 kg); although some moas were taller, the elephant bird was more robustly built. Their eggs had a circumference of about 3 ft (91 cm), were about 13 inches (33 cm) long and a capacity of 2 imperial gallons (9 litres). This is the equivalent of 200 hen's eggs and three times the size of the eggs of the largest dinosaurs. Fossilised eggs are still found buried on the island. The photo here is of a replica exhibited at Ipswich Museum, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. The island would have supported only a small, slow-breeding population and the birds were probably driven into extinction by hunting and the theft of their eggs by humans. The fact that it had existed for 60 million years (much longer than humans) and adapted to a changing world, shows it to have been a very successful species. However, it was also specialised to an island environment with no large predators and was, therefore, not adapted to survive contact with aggressive European humans.
Fossil evidence indicates several other species of elephant bird, ranging from 3 ft (90 cm) to 10 ft (3 metres), had inhabited Madagascar, though most had died out before modern humans had evolved. As well as Aepyornis, one other species, the smaller Mullerornis, probably survived into historic times. The reasons for these birds' extinction are hard to determine as there are no reliable historical records of the pre-European history of Madagascar. They were probably hunted by native people 1000-2000 years before European contact. This was probably subsistence hunting and did not threaten the birds' numbers. Egg collecting by Europeans would have been much more of a threat - such huge eggs can only be laid in small numbers and the birds probably bred slowly. Habitat destruction would have posed a grave threat to such a specialised bird.
By Elias Akleh
Richard Falk, the professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN’s special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, had accused Israel of violating international law, international humanitarian laws, and the Geneva Convention. He described Israel’s policies against Palestinians and its siege of Gaza as “war crimes”, “genocidal tendencies”, “holocaust implications”, and “holocaust-in-the-making”. He urged the International Criminal Court to look into the possibility of indicting Israeli leaders for war crimes.
Professor Falk had a little taste of Israel’s Nazi-like crimes and human rights violation when he traveled to Israel, last Sunday December 14th, 2008, to visit the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to report on Israel’s compliance with human rights standards and international humanitarian law. The Israelis “detained” Professor Falk at the airport, treated his as a criminal and a threat to the state, humiliated him and deported him next day back to Geneva.
Despite Israel’s strong declaration that every Jew in the world is automatically granted full Israeli citizenship with all the protections this entails, and despite being a Jew himself, Professor Falk was not spared the humiliations and cruelty Israel treats its enemies with.
Emboldened by the American blind and unconditional support, defiant Israel wanted to publicly give its finger to Falk and to the UN he represents, declaring itself above all international laws and above any criticism of its crimes and human rights violations even if such criticism comes from a Jew himself. Such defying humiliation of the world political body is meant to distract the UN, and thus the whole world, away from the holocaust it is perpetrating against the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, and all its on-going war crimes against the rest of Palestinians throughout the whole Palestine.
Falk’s accusations of Israel’s Nazi-like holocaustal implications are no different from those made by John Dugard, his predecessor, in several reports on conditions in occupied Palestine. Many conscientious political figures, as well as regular citizens, around the world had described Israel’s policies in occupied Palestine in specific and in the Middle East in general as war crimes and threat to world peace.
Comparing the present-day Israel with Nazi Germany one discovers that the majority of the Israeli policies are the exact copies of the Nazi policies. Nazi Germany had invaded its European neighbors extending from England to Russia. Israel had also invaded all its neighboring countries; Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. It is also heavily involved in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Its tentacles had also reached African countries as far as South Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Angola, and Sierra Leone.
Nazi war machines used to invade resisting towns, line up the men in the center of the town to be executed in cold blood, and destroyed the whole town as a deterring example for any possible other resisting towns. Worse than the Nazis Israeli forces used to invade peaceful Palestinian towns, execute men, women and children in cold blood everywhere and anywhere they encounter them, dynamite their homes on top of their residents, and finally demolish the whole town making room for new Israeli colonies. Throughout 1948/49 Israelis had committed 70 ugly massacres against Palestinian villagers, and totally destroyed 675 Palestinian towns and villages including their churches and mosques. Such massacres and demolitions followed a set pattern, repeated in one village after the other, indicating a pre-meditated genocidal plan.
In the words of the late Israeli General Moshe Dayan: “The declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 was at the expense of ethnically cleansing 513 Palestinian villages, creating over 700,000 Palestinian refugees and expropriating their lands, homes and businesses in 78% of Palestine … There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former (Palestinian) population.”
Israel is, still up till today, carrying these same genocidal Nazi-like holocaustal crimes gradually choking 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza to death by starvation, thirst, lack of fuel and disease. Israeli army is in the process of demolishing 40 Palestinian villages in the Negev desert. Army bulldozers are daily destroying Palestinian homes in major Palestinian cities such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Ramallah, and Nablus.
The Nazi army perpetrated many massacres against prisoners of war. They used to execute prisoners and dump them in graves the prisoners where ordered to dig for themselves. The Israeli army followed the same method of executing prisoners of war especially during 1956 and 1967 Israeli-Egyptian wars. This was reported in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper in June 27th 2000. The Egyptian Human Rights Organization Secretary-General, Muhammad Munib, submitted a report confirming that Israel had killed between 7,000 to 15,000 Egyptian prisoners of wars of 1956 and 1967. The report also identified the locations of 11 mass graves in Sinai and Israel in which thousands of Egyptian prisoners were buried.
The most prominent of these massacres was the El-Arish massacre, where Israeli forces murdered at least 150 Egyptian prisoners of war. Some of the prisoners were run over by Israeli tanks several times, a crime that is still practiced by Israeli army especially in the Gaza Strip. The story of the massacre was originally reported by Israeli eyewitnesses in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper, and later by Israeli journalist Ran Adelist on Israeli television. It was also reported by the Washington Report of May/June 1996 pages 27 and 28. The massacre was also recorded by the American USS Liberty surveillance ship that was sailing 12 miles off the shore of Gaza. This massacre was a serious war crime and could have been the main reason for the Israeli attack on the Liberty.
Worse than the Nazis the Israeli army had adopted the policy of targeting young Palestinian children in an attempt to “nudge” Palestinian families to leave the country for the sake of the future of the children, and/or to exhaust their financial resources in treating and caring for their disabled and crippled wounded children; the victims of Israeli snipers. Since the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada, September 2000, Israeli forces have murdered 1050 children in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank; see also the Guardian, October 21, 2008, and Al-Jazeera, October 22, 2008. A Palestinian Centre for Human Rights report documented, with eyewitness testimonies, at least 68 children were murdered by Israeli army during 12 months from June 07 to June 07 just before the cease fire agreement. The child murder toll rose dramatically during the first six months of 2008 with the Israeli army massive assault of “Operation Winter Heat” against Gaza Strip. Children were directly targeted by Israeli snipers while walking in the streets, while standing in front of their homes, and even while sitting in their school rooms, also directly by drone missiles while playing in courts. They are also the indirect victims if Israeli deliberate targeting densely populated residential areas (Gaza is densely populated) including schools, hospitals and food markets.
The average age of the targeted children was ten years old according to a thousand-page document by Save the Children. The majority of these children were innocent bystanders not participating in any “hostile” activity or causing any threat to the heavily armed Israeli soldiers. In the 80% of the cases of targeted children, the Israeli army prevented the victim from receiving any medical attention. The report also documented that more than 50,000 child victims required medical attention for injuries including gunshot wounds, tear gas inhalation and multiple fractures. A bulletin titled “Deliberate Murder” published in 1989 by the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights reported the targeting of Palestinian children by Israeli army and snipers from “special unit” had “carefully chosen” the children, who were shot in the head or heart and died instantaneously (Mike Berry & Greg Philo, ‘Israel and Palestine-Competing Histories’, Pluto Press, London, 2006, pp. 86-87).
According to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, and the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (signed by Israel) children are to be afforded special protection during international armed conflicts. Israel had, and still is violating these international laws.
Like Nazi Germany, who developed and used all kinds of new weapons including the V2 rocket bomb and nerve gas, Israel has used every kind of weapons, even new experimental ones, against Palestinian civilians. This included the Dumdum exploding bullets, nerve gas, experimental chemical and biological weapons, flying drones, and DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) and the latest remote control high power machine guns (seer shoots) installed on the high towers of the imprisoning wall (separation wall) and operated by teen aged female soldiers in far away operating rooms like computerized war games. Israel is also know to be a nuclear weapon and is always hinting at using it if/when they feel threatened.
Nazi Germans were brainwashed and driven by a social supremacist ideology of the superior Aryan Race (Der Supermann). They believed that they were superior to the rest of the people and that they should rule the world. Similarly the Israelis are brainwashed and driven by the religious supremacist ideology of god’s chosen people in god’s promised land, and believe that it is their religious duty (mitzvah) to cleanse the world from all gentiles (non-Jews), and to establish a Jewish only world government in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Such dangerous extreme ideology is taught to Israeli children since childhood.
Moshe Feiglin, who won a respectable position on the Likuds’ Knesset list for the upcoming Israeli election is an admirer of Hitler and his superior ideology. In an interview with the Ha’aretz Newspaper in 1995 he described Hitler as a military genius and a great nation builder. “Hitler was an unparallel military genius. Nazism had transformed Germany from a low to a fantastic physical and ideological status. The ragged, trashy youth body turned into a neat and orderly part of society and Germany received an exemplary regime, a proper justice system, and public order. … This was no bunch of thugs. They merely used thugs and homosexuals”. His holocaustal solution to the Palestinian problem, according to his Manhigut ha’Yehudit (Jewish leadership) website, is to order “the complete stoppage of water, electricity and communication” to the four million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Feiglin expresses the inner sentiment of every Israeli political leader starting from their first Prime Minister Ben Gurion up to Tzipi Livni, the latest acting Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affair, who have been calling for the murder and the transfer of Palestinians out of the god’s promised land of Israel (Erez Israel). Their real policies become obvious and louder in their campaign rhetoric.
Such genocidal holocaustal tendencies are nurtured, encouraged and called for by top Israeli Rabbis and political leaders. Rabbi Yousef Obadia, the top Israeli religious leader, Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, director of the Tsomet Institute, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the leading religious authority in Israel’s religious national current and former chief Eastern rabbi for Israel, Rabbi Dov Lior, president of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed and a candidate for the post of chief rabbi or Israel, Rabbi Eliyahu Kinvinsky, the second most senior authority in the Orthodox religious current, Rabbi Israel Ariel, one of the most prominent rabbis in the West Bank colonies, and Rabbi Yitzhaq Ginsburg, a top rabbi in Israel among many other extremist religious Israeli leaders are continually calling for total extermination and transfer of Palestinians.
Brainwashed and misguided Israelis, especially religious fundamentalists, regularly attack Palestinian towns, vandalize their churches, mosques and cemeteries with graffiti slogans such as “Death to Arabs”, “Gas the Arabs”, and “Mohammad is a pig”, occupying Palestinian after forcefully evicting their Palestinian owners, attacking farmers, burning their crops, cutting their fruit trees, poisoning their water wells, killing their farm animals, destroying properties, looting shops, terrorizing civilians and children and shooting people. Searching youtube.com for “Israeli settlers violence” to watch the hundreds of videos showing Israeli settlers terrorism.
One prominent similarity between Israel and the Nazis is their state sponsored terror groups. According to articles “Eichmann Tells His Own Damning Story”, Life Magazine, Volume 49, Number 22, (November 28th 1960) pp. 19-25, 101-112, and “Eichmann’s Own Story: Part II”, Life Magazine, December 6th 1960 pp. 146-161, Adolf Eichmann stated how Zionist leaders were idealist like Nazi leaders, willing to sacrifice hundred thousands of their own blood to achieve political goal. Lenni Brenner explains in his book “Zionism in the Age of Dictators”, in chapter 25, that Eichmann was referring here to a deal the Nazi struck with Zionist leaders, such as Hungarian Rezso Kastner, to save a few thousand hand-picked Zionists and wealthy Jews, who would immigrate to Palestine, in return for leading 750,000 Hungarian Jews, and other millions of European Jews to their death to make Jews “rightful victim”, so that World Zionist Organization would have the “right” to come “ before the bargaining table when they divide nations and lands at the war’s end … for only with (Jewish) blood shall we (Zionists) get the land.”
The Nazis set up Police Battalion 101, a terrorist group, whose sole purpose was hunting Jewish citizens, killing them and looting and destroying their property. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen states in his book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” that Battalion 101 was responsible for “the deportation and gruesome slaughter in Poland of tens of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children”.
Israel had its own exact copy of Battalion 101 called Unit 101 under the terrorist Ariel Sharon, who later became Israel’s Prime Minister. Under Sharon’s leadership Unit 101 adopted the same criminal methods to terrorize Palestinians. It also implemented what became known as jeep raids; driving jeeps, with machine guns mounted on the front and rear, into Palestinian towns murdering inhabitants, dynamiting homes, and burning their fields. Since early 1950s Unit 101 was responsible for massacres in Palestinian towns such as Bureij refugee camp, Qibya, Idna, Surif, Wadi Fukin, Falameh, Rantis, Jerusalem, Budrus, Dawayima, Beit Liqya, Khan Younis and Gaza.
Israel had always resorted to terrorist attacks against Jews in other countries especially Arab countries, such as North African Arab countries, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan, to encourage Jewish Arab residents to immigrate to Israel. The Lavon Affair is just one famous terrorist related incident in Egypt.
In January 29th 1999 article in Israeli Ha’aretz paper, Gideon Spiro, a former member of the 890 battalion, stated that Unit 101 was an early, more primitive prototype for the more sophisticated liquidation units of Duvdevan and Shimshon established during the Intifada” Its operations were characterized by “lots of killing of civilians and little real combat”.
Israel is the only county in the world with many Prime Ministers, who were members of terrorist and state-sponsored terrorist organizations directly involved in slaughter of civilians. These include Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Shimon Peres.
Arnold Toynbee wrote “It was a supreme tragedy that the lesson learnt by them (the Jews) from their encounter with the Nazi German Gentiles should have been, not to eschew but to imitate some of the evil deeds that the Nazis had committed against the Jews.”
Israelis and Jews of the world have relentlessly pursued Nazi war criminals for decades for their war crimes committed during WWII. They chased Nazi war criminals for the rest of their lives, even when they were old and close to their death, to make them pay for their crimes. No doubts in my mind that Israeli war criminals, in turn, will be pursued and sentenced for their war crimes committed against Arabs.
A liger is the offspring of a lion father and a tiger mother. Though the tigers involved are usually of the orange colouration, white tigers have been hybridised with lions to produce white ligers and golden tabby tigers have been hybridised with lions to produce golden ligers.
As big cat hybridisations go, this is a relatively common combination, occurring quite often in captivity by accident, and very occasionally by design.
No official scientific name exists for hybrid animals such as these, though ligers are occasionally referred to in a light-hearted manner as Panthera leo/tigris.
Ligers share characteristics of both their parents. Some look very like lions, while others show their tiger heritage strongly.
They usually chuff like a tiger and roar like a lion, but without giving the typical lion grunt at the end. Their vocabulary is made up both of lion and tiger sounds.
The liger pelage usually has the typical tan lion colouring, with tiger 'candle flame' shaped stripes or spots running through it. Most typically, the striping is located across the back and hindquarters, while the abdominal area is spotted. These spots are inherited from the lion parent, even though they are not normally obvious in adult lions. (Spotting can be seen on lion cubs and helps with concealment in the wild. Very occasionally, adult lions will retain these).
On ligers, tiger ear spots may or may not be present and the same applies to the tiger facial ruff.
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A male liger may have a leonine mane, but this is much more modest than on the lion and many male ligers have little or no head decoration at all. All the ligers on this page are male, yet few show any mane, and even where they do it is puny compared to the lion.
Ligers generally inherit a love of the water which comes from their tiger parent, but it can take some time for the tiger side of their personality to convince the lion side that water is a great thing. Apparent confusion between the lion and the tiger sides of a liger's personality is quite often noted by handlers.
Hybrid animals usually display what is known as 'hybrid vigour'. This means the offspring grow much larger and faster than either parent, and it appears that many hybridisations cause gigantism.
Lligers are the largest felid in the world and can stand 12 feet tall on their hind legs. There are several photographs within this article which show comparisons between humans and ligers; they give an idea of just how huge these hybrids are. Fortunately, these cats have quite a gentle and easy going disposition. (Note that tigons are quite a different story when it comes to size. They show a tendency towards dwarfism).
Ligers may weigh in at half a ton, up to double the weight of a fully-grown Amur tiger. 'Hobbs', the liger shown below is the offspring of a Bengal tigress and an African lion. He has an estimated weight of between 800 and 1200 pounds. As a comparison, the Guinness Book of World Records lists the heaviest Amur tiger as being a 1,025 pound male, but this is highly unusual for the subspecies and a captive Amur tiger would be very lucky to reach 650-675 pounds.
