All of those fools who are touting talking to Syria, and giving back the Golan Heights to achieve peace with Syria can stop now. (Oh, they won’t, but they should.) Bashar Assad has said quite clearly that even if he gets back the Golan, he won’t be dumping his patron-in-terror, Iran, and he will never give up funding the Iranian proxy army in Lebanon, Hizbullah.

Syrian President Bashar Assad rejected Israel’s demand that Syria cut its ties with Iran and Hizbullah.

He said that detaching his country from the two was “irrelevant” to reviving peace talks.

So the point in talking to Syria would be…?

Uh-huh.

Yesterday David Ignatius wrote:

The game-changing events in the 2008 campaign are issues of war and peace. Both may be in play between now and November, in ways that add extra volatility to the presidential race.

And of course the “game changing” event in the Middle East that he refers to is peace:

The other wild card in the campaign is, happy to say, the possibility of Middle East peace negotiations. Bush administration officials continue to insist they have a chance of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement while Bush is in office. By this, they mean an agreement on paper — one that would codify the outlines of the two-state solution that was negotiated but never finally concluded during the last days of the Clinton administration. This “shelf agreement” could be endorsed by the U.N. Security Council and provide a baseline for continuing talks next year about implementation.A peace agreement — even one that has no practical effect on the ground — would be a feather in the cap for President Bush. But its political benefits for the GOP would be limited. Even a full-fledged peace treaty between Egypt and Israel failed to save Jimmy Carter from defeat at the polls in 1980. In that election, as perhaps this year, the Iranians played the role of spoilers.

Finally, there are noises offstage from Israel and Syria about a possible peace treaty. This would be the ultimate pragmatic bargain — Israel likes the stability that Bashar al-Assad’s military regime provides in Damascus, and it regards Syrian hegemony in Lebanon as an acceptable and perhaps desirable price. An important feature of the Syrian-Israeli dickering is that they have used Turkey as the key intermediary. If Turkey can broker peace between these two, it would reattach Ankara firmly to the Arab world for the first time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

Why Syria’s hegemony over Lebanon is acceptable to Israel, Ignatius doesn’t bother to explain. Still the visions of an Israeli surrender of territory really excites him.

Daniel Pipes thinks a little caution is in order.

The Middle East’s deep and wide political sickness points to the error of seeing the Arab-Israeli conflict as the motor force behind its problems. More sensible is to see Israel’s plight as the result of the region’s toxic politics. Blaming the Middle East’s autocracy, radicalism, and violence on Israel is like blaming the diligent school child for the gangs. Conversely, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict means only solving that conflict, not fixing the region.

To David Ignatius and many other Middle East navel gazers, an Israeli-Arab peace treaty (no matter how useless) will be a transformative event. To Daniel Pipes it is the transformation of the Middle East that is a prerequisite for peace.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There’s a group called Follow the Women that’s organized a bike ride through the Middle East in the name of peace. Here’s what a participant wrote last month:

Nearly 250 women, representing 30 nationalities from mostly Europe and the Middle East, but also the United States and Canada, arrived in Beirut last week for the third “Follow the Women” bike tour, which winds through Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and - Israeli government permitting- the Occupied Palestinian Territories.Started in 2004. One of the founders is a British woman named Detta Regan, “Follow the Women” is not a race, but a bike tour where women ride in the name of female empowerment and the aim of expressing solidarity with the Middle East. It is also a good place to break down cultural stereotypes and experience woman-to-woman diplomacy, away from official government positions and media hype.

Most of the Western women I cycled with expressed surprise at how calm Beirut is, and how beautiful. “It’s nothing like how it is in the news,” the British woman next to me exclaimed.

Note that the group didn’t plan to show solidarity with the women of Israel. And also note that now that they are in Syria, things aren’t so calm in Beirut anymore. And it’s their current host who’s fomenting the violence.

The utter cluelessness of these women was described nicely recently by Bret Stephens:

For reasons both telling and mysterious, Israel has become unpopular among that segment of public opinion that calls itself progressive. This is the same progressive segment that believes in women’s rights, gay rights, the rights to a fair trial and to appeal, freedom of speech and conscience, judicial checks on parliamentary authority. These are rights that exist in Israel and nowhere else in the Middle East. So why is it that the country that is most sympathetic to progressive values gets the least of progressive sympathies?

How welcome do you figure this woman would be in Tehran or Gaza?

But let them ride their bikes and give cover to the tyrants who are fomenting the strife in the Middle East.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Anyone out there using Firefox and NoScript?

I installed it earlier this week, then got really tired of having to pick and choose what sites I would let show scripts, so I uninstalled it. Now it doesn’t show the proper display for Hot Air, and only Hot Air. The javascript wrapper is completely gone; only the raw (and ugly) html is displayed.

For the hell of it, I tried reinstalling and uninstalling it. No dice.

Anyone? I’m pretty sure there’s something resident in Firefox from the NoScript installation, but I don’t know where to begin to look. I’m using the latest release, 2.0.0.14.

The Washington Post’s Griff Witte, takes a device from Reuters and focuses on two men who, like Israel, were born in 1948. One is Israeli and one is Palestinian. In Born at the dawn of a new state

Witte is careful to emphasize the success of the Israeli with the haplessness of the Palestinian. But I guess it comes to the final two paragraphs:

With Nablus under Israeli military siege, Zaharan rarely leaves the city, and he has not been inside Israel since 1980. But if he had the chance, he knows exactly what he would say to any of his former Jewish neighbors about the past 60 years.”I would say to him, ‘Your life hasn’t changed in the way my life has. You’ve made it. You’ve succeeded,’ ” he said. “And I would want him to say back to me, ‘I recognize your rights.’ “

As if Israel hasn’t recognized his rights. Maybe not to return to Jaffa from where his family fled as it waited for the mighty Arab armies to destroy the nascent Jewish state so it could return. But certainly Israel has made greater efforts to create a Palestinian state than any other country in the world, only to find its efforts dismissed as not enough.

In the end there will be no Palestinian state unless the Palestinians choose to create a functioning government and society.

Update: The article contains the words “checkpoints” and “siege” but not “terror.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Making up somewhat for yesterday’s insult, The NYT today reported on At 60, Israel Redefines Roles for Itself and for Jews Elsewhere.

The conference seems like an extravagance:

But there is another form of celebration planned, and its sponsors believe it says something about the national character: a three-day conference of some of the best minds from around the world on some of the biggest challenges facing humankind — and especially the Jews — in the coming decades.“The brain enriches the pocket, not the other way around,” Shimon Peres, Israel’s president and the patron of the conference, said in an interview. “We are a small land and a small people, but we can become a daring world laboratory, and that is our desire and plan.”

Nearly 700 guests are expected to take part next week in 35 discussion groups. They include statesmen like Henry A. Kissinger, Vaclav Havel, Tony Blair and Joschka Fischer, but also Sergey Brin of Google, Terry Semel of Yahoo and Rupert Murdoch, along with seven Jewish Nobel laureates and President Bush.

It’s a chance, I suppose, for these people to act important. I have doubts that much will come of this conference outside of some really nice sounding declarations.

Still:

In fact, what are billed as global challenges — terrorism, Iran — seem to be somehow especially Jewish and Israeli ones. The organizers say this is not coincidental or unusual and point as an example to Hitler, who posed an enormous threat to the world but focused particularly on the Jews.“Cataclysms always seem to affect Jews first,” remarked Stuart E. Eizenstat, a senior official in the Clinton and Carter administrations, who wrote an essay that forms a basis for the conference. “Go back to the Black Plague. It was not a Jewish issue, but it had particular impact on Jews because they were blamed for it.”

Not surprisingly the Arab leaders who were invited haven’t accepted yet. In a triumph of absurd hope, the organizers anticipate that a few might be able to tear themselves away from Naqba celebrations to join a discussion on the future of the Jews (that would rather deny.)

However cynical I am about the value of the “strategic planning” likely to emerge from the conference, it reflects an important reality.

Today Israel’s Jewish population of 5.5 million is the world’s largest, just ahead of that of the United States, which is slowly declining through low birth rate and intermarriage.

Israel is, more and more, the center of the Jewish world.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

A few days ago Media Backspin asked What is Israel’s Greatest Accomplishment?

I was in grade school when the 6 Day War was fought. I remember seeing a film strip soon after. It was quite impressive. Though, as a 6 year old I don’t think I comprehended the miraculous nature of the victory.

I was a teenager at the time of the Entebbe rescue. That was very exciting. I was fascinated by the level of planning that went into the raid and how it was executed nearly flawlessly.

I was spending a year studying in Israel when I heard that Israel destroyed a reactor in Iraq. I thought I’d been misinformed. Israel had been running raids over Lebanon, surely Israel hit a target in Lebanon. But no, it was Baghdad. I only recently raid a full account of that raid. Again it was an amazing, no, miraculous operation. It made the Gulf War in 1991 and the subsequent Iraq War in 2003 possible. Despite the criticisms directed at Israel, the destruction of the Iraqi reactor is an event that has changed history dramatically, including the eventual defeat of a brutal tyrant.

And of course going to a site like Israel 21c, I see how Israel leads the world in many areas of technology. If I go to the MASHAV website, I can see how Israel lends a hand to other countries (with little or no credit.)

As exciting as all these were, the action that makes me most proud has been the rescue of Ethiopia’s Jews, Beta Israel. Operations Moses and Solomon overall rescued about 35,000 Ethiopian Jews and brought them to Israel. I’m not going to pretend that everything’s been perfect since then. The assimilation of the Ethiopians hasn’t always been smooth. However it’s the ultimate example of why Israel exists.

Jews were in danger. People don’t remember but at the time of Operation Moses Ethiopia was one of the most brutal regimes in the world. The government of Haile Mariam Mengistu forced relocations of the country’s population creating a famine that killed millions. The thousands saved by Israel, might well have died. Instead Israel rescued them, giving them a second chance.

Over the past 20 years, the center of the Jewish world has shifted slowly towards Israel, where the largest population of Jews in the world now resides. We are witnessing “kibbutz golyos” - the ingathering exiles - in our time. It may not be dramatic, but it is happening.

Attacks on Israel’s legitimacy, are attacks on the Jewish people. Similarly doubts raised about the Jewish connection to the land, reject the notion and history of the Jewish nation.

In bringing the Jews of Ethiopia to Israel, Israel showed its commitment to a threatened Jewish community. Israel didn’t just show that it’s the Jewish state, but also why the Jewish state is necessary.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Birthday greetings from Hillel Halkin:

Were I prophetically to know that Israel would perish within the next 20 or 30 or 50 years, as many of its bon ton critics are now prognosticating, it would not make the slightest difference to me in terms of my own decisions. I would still feel happy that I chose to live here; would go on living here; would want my children to live here; would want them to raise my grandchildren here — until the last possible moment. Isn’t that the way we want to live our own personal lives, too: Until the last possible moment?

Happy — and proud. Because for all its shortcomings and mistakes, Israel is and will always be one of the most glorious historical adventures in the history of mankind. A 3,000-year-old people, the victim of the greatest act of mass murder ever committed on this planet, has the indomitable will to reconstitute itself in its ancient homeland, to revive its ancient language, to assert its right to live, to create new life, to nourish it and maintain it in defiance of all odds — there’s never been anything else like it before and never will be again.

I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to be part of it. I would have felt envious had I been anywhere else.

Eff you.

The IDF is an army that thinks. The Iranians go with what worked in the past. Like I keep telling you: The IDF is going to be fighting the next war, while Hamas and Hezbullah are fighting the last one. From an interview with Ehud Barak:

So how do we deal with the military buildup in Gaza?

“We’ve already been inside Gaza, and while we were there Qassams were fired and the armament was ongoing. We might have to go back into Gaza – we have to be ready for that. We’re not thrilled about it, but if and when we decide to do it, the operation won’t resemble the Second Lebanon War.

“Israel is the strongest nation in the Middle East, but we have to apply our strength wisely. War is no picnic. Wars should be prevented and if you can’t prevent them you have to put them off. If war is forced on us, we have to be able to win it quickly, unequivocally, on enemy soil and without any damage to the home front.”

That sounds like harsh criticism of the last war.

“It is. And if you ask me what we’ve been doing since the last war, the answer is we have learned quite a few lessons during the war… we’re pushing a perennial program headed by the chief of staff and a new chain of command was named of officers who understand post-war realities.

“But the real answer is in training. Training, training and more training in a scope I can’t ever recall before. We are short NIS 2 billion (approx $581.81 million) every year and we intend to fight to get them back.”

And should war break out, is the military ready?

“We are more ready than ever before, even if we have to face a combined front. Then again the other side has discovered that our home front is vulnerable – which takes us back to my original premise – wars should be prevented.”

Syria, Hamas, and Hezbullah have built up their store of Iranian rockets and missiles, and are aiming them at Israeli cities and towns. Hamas:

An Israeli study says that Hamas, the militant group that now controls Gaza, is engaged in the broadest and most significant military buildup in its history with help from Syria and Iran, restructuring itself more hierarchically and using more and more powerful weapons, especially longer-range rockets against Israel’s southern communities.

The study, by an independent research group with close ties to the Israeli military establishment, says that while the buildup will take some years to complete, it is in an intensive phase that has already led to better infiltration into Israel and a rise in the breadth and precision of rocket fire.

Hezbullah:

Almost two years after its war with Israel, Hezbollah has rearmed and is stronger than before the conflict, according to Israeli and Western officials and the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim group itself.

But assessments diverge on the source of Hezbollah’s arms. Western and Israeli officials accuse Iran and Syria of smuggling thousands of short-range rockets as well as missiles that can strike deep into Israel and other weaponry into Lebanon in violation of a U.N. arms embargo. Smuggling routes have included a rail line through Turkey, the officials say.

All this has been going on right under the noses of UNIFIL. All of it. UNIFIL constantly denies that Hezbullah is doing anything under their noses, and yet, the arms buildup occurs.

Barak again:

“When we left Lebanon in 2000, they had 6,000, maybe 7,000 rockets, but we had six quiet years. When the war broke out in 2006, they had 14,000 rockets, some ranging to Hadera. Now they have 40,000 rockets that can reach your house, here (the Defense Ministry’s Tel Aviv HQ) and Dimona; so we have to stop thinking that freeing Barghouti and striking Hamas will result in a truce. We have to focus on the things we can change and help any positive factor in the area.”

And finally, words for Israel’s 60th birthday:

“I say again – Israel in the strongest nation in the Middle East, surely within 1000 miles… there is no power out there that could destroy the State of Israel, but that doesn’t meet we can stop being vigilant.”

This week’s Shire Network News is out. The feature interview is with Barry Rubin of The GLORIA Center. My piece is on Israel’s 60th birthday, and is available on my site as well.

One aspect of Israeli negotiations with the Palestinians that’s constant is that whatever Israel offers will be dismissed as an insult or some other epithet.

Now that negotiations are coming down to nitty-gritty details like borders, the cries start anew. The Jerusalem Post reports:

“Today, it’s clear to us that Israel has no intention of withdrawing from all the territories that were occupied in 1967,” said one official.”If the Israelis and Americans think that they will ever find a Palestinian leader who would accept less than the 1967 borders, they are living under an illusion.”

Another top PA official said that maps presented by the Israeli government to the Palestinians in the past few weeks showed that Israel is planning to retain control over nearly half of the West Bank and large parts of eastern Jerusalem.

The Israeli maps, he said, “turn the Palestinian communities in the West Bank into cantons surrounded by Israeli military bases and large settlement blocs.”

The official added: “We have made it clear to both the Israelis and Americans that they should throw away these maps. No Palestinian will ever agree to the presence of settlements or Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. This is in violation of [US President George W.] Bush’s vision of two states living next to each other in peace.”

First of all, even George W. Bush’s vision of two states doesn’t specify the boundaries. If the boundaries are unacceptable to them and the Palestinians refuse to make peace, then they’re the ones who are are refusing to abide by the president’s vision. Maybe they think they have a good reason for doing so, but they’d still be the ones preventing an agreement.

Then there’s this:

“The Israeli government is not serious about the peace talks,” said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official closely associated with Abbas. “We don’t believe that we can reach an agreement [with Israel] before the end of this year.”Abed Rabbo accused Israel of “deceiving” the Palestinians by continuing to build settlements while talking about the need to reach a peace deal.

“Israel does not want to change its policy,” he added. “Israel wants to continue settlement expansion and the construction of the separation wall.”

These statements are clearly designed to elicit Amerian pressure on Israel. By mentioning “the end of the year” - President Bush’s goal - Abed Rabbo is effectively asking the Americans to get Israel to agree to the Palestinian demands rather than attempting to compromise.

The Spine observes that in Belfast, it’s the separation wall that is widely credited with keeping the peace. (He also points out that the “cantons” charge is false.) But in the Middle East the “wall” becomes one more brickbat to toss Israel’s way. Israel Matzav contrasts the (strategic) pessimism of the Palestinians with the expressed optimism of the Israelis.

(via memeorandum)

Of course the real problem might be that Israel wants to hold on to anything.

“The PLO is the sole legitimate representative [of the Palestinian people], and it has not changed its platform even one iota. In light of the weakness of the Arab nation and the lack of values, and in light of the American control over the world, the PLO proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine.”

(h/t Daled Amos)

But maybe Israel should at least fight for the life of Imad Sa’ad. I don’t know that he really helped Israel, but that’s what he’s been convicted of. For all I know he looked at someone wrong and got denounced.

However, if Palestinians are executed for helping Israel fight terror, while terrorists are lionized the peace process is a sham. (Another deadly activity for Palestinians is selling land to Jews. Getting killed for real estate transactions is hardly conducive to coexistence.)

Still this is a point Israel ought to pursue. After all the PA considers terrorists worthy of release, Israel should, at least, demand freedom for someone who’s been convicted of helping not harming.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In War of the rockets, Jackson Diehl writes:

For months now, Israel has been mired in an unwinnable war against Hamas and allied militias in Gaza, who fire missiles at civilians in Israel and then hide among their own women and children, ensuring that retaliatory fire will produce innocent victims for the Middle East’s innumerable satellite television networks. A growing number of the militiamen have been to Iran for training, and some of the missiles they launch are Iranian-made. Their objective is obvious: to exhaust Israelis with an endless war of attrition while making it impossible for Israel’s government to reach a political settlement with the more moderate Palestinian administration in the West Bank.

First of all, when Diehl writes “unwinnable” he means “unwinnable using current tactics.” There are those who disagree that it’s unwinnable.

Senior IDF officers serving in Gaza are frustrated over what they describe as the army’s lack of resolve and limited action against terror emanating from the Strip.“This week I returned from another standby shift at the combat helicopter base where I do my reserve duty,” lit.-Col. N told Ynet. “Again we did nothing, despite a Qassam and mortar barrage fired by terrorists at the entire sector.”

N says that he feels obligated to warn that the IDF is not doing enough to counter terrorism from Gaza.

“The Gaza Strip is a narrow area, almost entirely closed off, the terrorist forces are relatively small and their weapons – although they are improving every day as a result of our lack of action – still don’t constitute a significant threat to our forces.

(h/t Meryl)

Also Hamas’s objective isn’t to prevent a peace agreement, it’s objective is to kill as many Israelis as it can.

I don’t think that Hamas opposes a peace agreement with Israel as it will undoubtedly give it more power than it already has. Hamas knows that Israel is anxious to conclude a deal with Abbas, regardless of the rockets. It persists because it knows that Israeli responses generally mean that Israel must defend itself usually to the scorn of the world. So Hamas not only get to kill Israelis, destroy their homes but gets a bonus too.

Given that the explosion in Gaza has now been shown to be the result of a secondary explosion not an Israeli missile, Diehl should have acknowledged as much at the start of his article.

In both these assertions, Diehl is imposing his own views onto events.

Elder of Ziyon outlined the evidence. Yaacov Lozowick wrote about why it’s important. (The NYT deserves credit for reporting this result too.)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In Honoring Survival, and Gifts to a Nation Isabel Kershner writes about a new exhibit at Yad Vashem devoted to the Holocaust survivors who escaped to Israel.

The gray walls of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial here, have long documented the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis against Europe’s Jews. Now, an oddly vibrant exhibition at the memorial is telling a less known story of the renaissance of the survivors in Israel and the extraordinary role they played in shaping the character of the new state.“My Homeland: Holocaust Survivors in Israel” opened in late April, in time for the 60th anniversary this week of Israel’s founding. Instead of gas chambers and ghettoes, it showcases designer beachwear and boldly colored posters that promoted potent Israeli symbols like the airline El Al.

Though she reports (without documentation)

Of 250,000 survivors in Israel today, 80,000 or more are said to be living on or near the poverty line.

Overall

… experts say the suffering of those left behind in their old age does not negate their immigration success story.“The story of the Holocaust can be told from many different angles,” said Hanna Yablonka, a historical consultant to the exhibition. “To me, one of the most important aspects is the question of where you take such a huge disaster. You can turn to revenge, or to building.”

This was a particularly apt story:

“We came with nothing, without money, with nowhere to live,” Mrs. Gottlieb recalled, after viewing a movie about herself in a corner of the exhibition an hour before the official opening. “The first two or three years were very, very hard,” she said.Petite and manicured, in a black pantsuit and sensible leather shoes, Mrs. Gottlieb recounted in still-halting Hebrew how she and her husband opened a raincoat factory like the one they had left behind in Europe. But for months “we saw no rain, only sunshine,” she said. So they founded Gottex, a swimwear company that quickly grew to become a leading Israeli brand abroad.

Mrs. Gottlieb, the company’s chief designer, would sometimes tell of an ugly memory from the past, said a grandson, Danny Shir, 37, like when she hid herself and her children in a pit behind the house of their gentile host after seeing a Nazi with a pistol outside.

Another remarkable aspect of the story is that of the estimated 500,000 survivors who made it to Israel, half are still alive.

I guess it would be snide to observe that the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are not also called Holocaust survivors.

In related news, Smooth Stone observes that Yad Vashem has put many of its photographic library online.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Israel has released some audio of the Entebbe raid. Ynet provides the audio and a transcript.

The missing passenger was Dora Bloch who had been taken to the hospital. After the rescue she was killed.

(h/t Jack’s Shack)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Update by Meryl: Dora Bloch was murdered on the orders of Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda, after the successful raid that rescued most of the other the hostages.

Now confidential cabinet papers released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the British High Commission in Kampala received a report from a Ugandan civilian that Mrs Bloch had been shot and her body dumped in the boot of a car which had Ugandan intelligence services number plates.

The same informant said that the body of a white woman had been found in a sugar plantation 19 miles from the capital. A further intelligence report says the face had been badly burnt, making identification difficult, but that the legs looked “bad” and that could have been the leg ulcers from which doctors confirmed she was suffering. The policeman guarding Mrs Bloch was also murdered, said the report.

[...] A confidential Foreign Office memo written by James Hennessy, the British High Commissioner to Uganda, says: “She had been seen by a consultant at Mulago Hospital last Sunday long after the Israeli commandos had come and gone. Since then she had been not seen anywhere. Our information was that she had been dragged from her bed at hospital screaming. Though she had been living in Israel, she was a British national and our responsibility. The Prime Minister has decided that I should come out and inquire into her disappearance and then report to him. The parliament, the whole British people, were concerned about her fate. She appeared to be an innocent victim of the Israeli raid.”

A second confidential Foreign Office briefing report sent to No 10 says the most likely scenario was that Mrs Bloch was killed by Ugandan soldiers “bitter and dangerous following their disgrace at Israeli hands”. About 50 Ugandan soldiers were killed by the Israelis during the raid. The report adds: “They may have seized on the only available Jew on whom to extract their revenge.”

Dora Bloch was a 74-year-old grandmother, whose only “crime” was being Jewish. Idi Amin lived peacefully in exile in Saudi Arabia, protected by the Wahabbi oil ticks from the justice he so richly deserved, for the next 24 years.

I have a couple of pictures of Tig3 for you.

This first one will probably get more attention in another month or so, when the new Hulk movie comes out. I couldn’t resist seeing if Tig would play with the Hulk toy that’s been on my camera since, oh, the year the first Hulk movie came out. He did.

Next, Tig’s favorite toy: Me.

I discovered, via pictures of Tig, that his ears are in horrendous shape. Filthy. I thought he wasn’t washing them, but Sarah told me he’s showing classic signs of being allergic to his food. He’s due for a vet’s appointment tomorrow, so I’ll double-check with them and then dump the Science Diet and buy something else. I’m leaning towards Nutro. Sarah says go for something that’s low on the corn and wheat gluten. She says it also explains Tig’s (sigh) flatulence. I have never had a cat that farts. I have to tell you, it’s extremely unpleasant, particularly because after he eats, his favorite thing in the whole world is to snuggle with me. The closer to my face, the better. And then, well, he farts. Sitting in my lap. Or on my shoulder. Or in my arms. Yep. Kitty flatulence. Something that I never really knew existed, until Tig3.0. Here’s hoping Sarah is right, and a change in diet changes the nuisance.

Tig also has strange litterbox habits. He feels the need to announce to the world that he is about to use the litterbox. He runs inside and yowls. He did this from the first day I had him, and I called the vet, worried there was something wrong with him. “Sounds like you have yourself a talker,” the vet’s assistant said, and told me not to mind. She kindly did not laugh at me (at least until she put the phone down). I’m very much looking forward to bringing Tig to the vet’s tomorrow. They had to put up with a sad, sad time with Tig the Second and his renal failure. It’s going to be nice for all of us to have Tig3 in for a checkup and shots. Well, except for him. I expect he’s not going to like the car ride any better than the one when I took him home. (That picture of him biting the carrier cracks me up every time I look at it.)

And last, we have Miss Gracie, looking mighty smug.

That’s because Tig is still confined to my office. I won’t be letting him out until I’m no longer allergic to him. I realized a day or two ago that if he sleeps in my bed, I’m going to wake up in bad shape. And of course, he will want to sleep in my bed. Gracie has all but abandoned the second floor of my townhouse. I wonder what she’s going to do when Tig comes downstairs.

This morning, she deigned to come into my room and leap onto the bed. So I got Tig and stood in the doorway holding him. Gracie stared at Tig. Tig stared at Gracie. No sound was made. Then, suddenly, low, unmistakeable, and getting louder: Gracie growled at Tig. We went into the office and she beat it downstairs.

Her loss. Tig would be a ton of fun for her if she would just get over that stupid territorial imperative. Damned biology. Damned instinct.

Well, there will doubtless be stories to tell when Tig finally is given the run of the house. But until then, Gracie is the reigning princess.

You know, I get most of the spam products. Blahblahblah, enlarge your youknowhat. Blahblahblah, cheap meds. Blahblahblah, credit!

But you know what I don’t get? What’s with the watches? I mean, you can get cheap watches anywhere. You can get expensive watches anywhere. You can get cheap watches pretending to be expensive ones anywhere. Why on earth would spammers think this is a lucrative market? Is it a lucrative market? Because if it is, wow, people are even dumber than I thought.

A British MP who experienced a kassam rocket attack first-hand took away a lesson that makes me wonder if his wife dons leather boots and whips:

An MP who last month came under Kassam rocket fire has said he believes the Israeli government needs such attacks on its citizens in order to justify its “ruthless” retaliation on Palestinian territories.

Tom Levitt, Labour MP for High Peak, was on a fact-finding mission to Israel and the Palestinian territories, organised by Caabu, the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, when a rocket landed around 50 metres away from him and three other MPs.

[...] “The experience has given me some idea of how people feel when they come under rocket attack.

“I now know the moment of horror when you hear that sound and the emotion that that brings,” Mr Levitt said. “But there is a great deal of difference between the pathetic and amateur way in which certain individuals lob Kassams over the border into Israel, and the ruthless disregard for human life in how Israel retaliates.

“I got the impression that Israel needs these mortar bombs to fall on it, in order to be able to retaliate.”

Get it? Israel is being bombarded by “pathetic and amateur” terrorists on a near-daily basis, but really, it’s Israel’s fault because Israel wants to then go out and retaliate for rockets murdering its people and terrorizing its border towns.

That’s how warped the thinking has become. The victim wants to be the victim, so it can then go out and murder civilians with impunity. That’s some twisted logic, Mr. Levitt. But wait: He has the answer to ending the rocket attacks.

He said that if Israel spent “a fraction of the money” currently being spent on the border crossing, on humanitarian issues instead, “there would not be the level of conflict that there is now”.

It all comes down to feeding the poor. Uh-huh. Not an army of terrorists who work every day towards Israel’s destruction, and openly say so, time and time again. The Palestinians are poor, therefore they send rockets into Israel. (No mention of how poor people keep managing to afford all these weapons if they’re so poor, but then, don’t confuse the issue with all those pesky facts.)

Disgusting man. I don’t know squat about where he’s from, but really—disgusting man.

The IDF is starting to pressure the Israeli government, or at least, that’s what I’m concluding after reading this:

Senior IDF officers serving in Gaza are frustrated over what they describe as the army’s lack of resolve and limited action against terror emanating from the Strip.

“This week I returned from another standby shift at the combat helicopter base where I do my reserve duty,” lit.-Col. N told Ynet. “Again we did nothing, despite a Qassam and mortar barrage fired by terrorists at the entire sector.”

N says that he feels obligated to warn that the IDF is not doing enough to counter terrorism from Gaza.

“The Gaza Strip is a narrow area, almost entirely closed off, the terrorist forces are relatively small and their weapons – although they are improving every day as a result of our lack of action – still don’t constitute a significant threat to our forces.

And he’s not alone.

Many other officers share N’s views and feel that a lot more could be done if only the political echelon gave the army more leeway. “Our activity carries no deterrence, and the enemy understands he can launch rockets non-stop without suffering a response,” an officer familiar with the area said.

One of the officers pointed to the fact that the IDF’s operations are mainly defensive in nature. “We don’t initiate enough, and this hurts us. Every Qassam that lands in Israel prompts frustration among the soldiers,” he stressed.

Israel’s Independence Day celebrations are almost upon us. Analysts wrote that nothing will happen until after the dignitaries have come and gone. Meantime, kassam rockets are again fired with impunity.

Residents of the western Negev communities awoke, yet again, to the sound of the Color Red alert on Sunday, as 10 Qassam rockets fired from northern Gaza landed throughout the area.

One person was lightly wounded and treated by Magen David Adom paramedics on the scene. Two teenaged girls suffered shock.

There are no news articles from the mainstream media reporting the upswing in rocket barrages. There was almost no mention of yesterday’s attack on the Nahal Oz fuel transfer station. Because if violence occurs in Israel, it is only violence initiated by Israel, which is then described as “retaliating” for rocket or terror attacks. I am unsurprised, as, I’m sure, are all of you.

Why does it seem that when “peace” finally gets closer, events tend to become more chaotic.Even as Secretary Rice goes to the Middle East to attempt to get a “peace deal” between Israel and the Palestinians, there is a lot that is out of her hands. Of course she can try to ignore what’s going on, so that she still gets a piece of paper in the end. Unfortunately for that result, it’s not supposed to be a “piece” deal but a “peace” deal, the latter being a lot more difficult to achieve (though the former is actually more common).

Right now the investigation surrounding Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert politically endangers the Israeli leader currently necessary for the deal.

via memeorandum

The NYT reports Political crisis overshadows Rice’s trip

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a series of talks on Israeli-Palestinian peace here on Sunday, saying she believed an accord was attainable by year’s end. But the process was overshadowed by an intensifying police investigation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel.Ms. Rice, who arrived here from a conference in London that focused on international donations to the Palestinian Authority, has held meetings with Mr. Olmert; the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas; and other top officials from both sides. In brief statements so far, all have been tight-lipped.

Abbas reportedly was happy about his meeting with Sec. Rice.

And the other event that’s beyond the scope of what can be achieved in term of peace: Hamas attacked the Nachal Oz fuel terminal again. For all the complaints of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Hamas seems so unconcerned that they’ll cut off their gas to spite their constituents. I guess they figure they can count on the world’s outrage if Israel (reasonably) halts further shipments. (Hamas knows that they can count on the UNRWA.)

Still as Israel Matzav points out, PM Olmert has proved pretty resilient in the past:

For those of you who think this is the end of Olmert’s government, please don’t be overconfident. First, we have thought several times over the last two years that the end was nigh and unfortunately, it was not. Second, even if the Knesset disbands and elections are called, Olmert will remain in power as a caretaker unless he is forced to remove himself due to the criminal indictments (in which case Livni would take over, which might even be worse). During that interim period Olmert and Livni may continue to negotiate our future away. Ehud Barak tried doing that eight years ago at Taba while he was facing a special election. We’re still suffering the consequences.

Martin Peretz writes:

But everybody understood and really understands that Israel would retain a few large settlement blocks and the land between Jerusalem and the 40,000-plus people in Ma’aleh Adumin. A “return to the 1967 borders” is a slogan. It is not a peace map. First of all, those are not borders. They were never recognized as borders by any of the Arabs; they were fragile cease-fire lines. Second of all, history doesn’t stop for the convenience of the Palestinians. They have to deal with history as it was made, mostly because these Palestinians hope against all the odds that Israel would disappear by itself.

All in all, the United States wants peace, but events don’t seem to be accommodating those wishes.

Heck, Fatah and Hamas can’t even agree on television programming, how likely is it that either could agree with Israel on terms for peace?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

via memeorandum

The Australian reports:

THE cheque from the Saudi Government for $360,000 was enclosed in an envelope.It was a donation, a gift, a part payment to subsidise the construction of a building that would become Sydney’s Muslim heartbeat: Lakemba mosque. More than 35 years after Sydney cleric Khalil Shami received the cheque, he insists it came with no strings attached. But while the cheque had no tangible conditions in the form of written instructions or binding contracts, the cleric received a message from his donors several months after depositing it.

“They said: ‘Please, can you mention the tragedy of the Palestinian people and what’s happened to them in your sermon?”‘ Shami tells Inquirer. “Which is really a very noble cause, a very noble cause, I couldn’t see a negative in their request.”

The message Shami received from Riyadh brings into question the influence petro-dollars can have on their recipients, whether the money is bankrolling a religious centre, a clerical allowance or Queensland’s Griffith University, which was exposed by The Australian last month for seeking a $1.37million Saudi grant, of which $100,000 was received, and offering to keep elements of the deal a secret.

See-Dubya (at Michelle Malkin) observes that this behavior isn’t new or unique to Australia but:

To be clear, this aspect isn’t mentioned in the article, but I once heard Daniel Pipes discuss it in a lecture and I thought it was worth a mention.

Well here’s one of the articles Pipes has written on the topic.

A range of public figures—former ambassadors, university professors, think tank experts – routinely opine in America about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia while quietly taking Saudi funds. They learnedly discuss Arabian affairs on television, radio, in public lectures, and university classrooms. Having no visible connection to Saudi money, they speak with the authority of disinterested U.S. experts, enjoying more credibility than, say, another billionaire prince from the royal family.Saudi funding for opinion makers has been known but not its exact specifics. I can for the first time expose how the Saudis manage their covert publicity campaign in America thanks to a Saudi-employed public relations firm having incautiously contacted a senior professor at a major research institution. Although the professor did not accept the offer of the speakers, he showed enough interest to document the proposed transaction and then made the details available to me.

An employee at a leading public relations firm in Washington offered the professor Saudi-funded speakers for the lecture program he runs, doing so as part of a program to provide ongoing education to communities around the country about “the importance and value of strong U.S.-Saudi relations. … One of our campaign components is to implement a speaker’s bureau program on behalf of the Kingdom that reaches into target markets across the nation. I think there is a wonderful opportunity,” she gushed, “to develop a very stimulating event with [your speakers' series].”

(There is a follow up here too.)

Fausta adds her thoughts.

The Saudis get the best mouthpieces money can buy. I suspect that a disproportionate number of their interlocutors subscribe to the idea that Israel somehow unfairly skews the debate in America. (Though as far as I know neither Walt nor Mearsheimer receive Saudi funds. If they weren’t so biased against Israel, Saudi influence would be the avenue they would pursue.)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Why Gaza has no fuel:

A Kassam rocked fired from the northern Gaza Strip hit a mini-market in central Sderot Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, the rocket did not break through the roof of the building, though five people at the scene suffered shock.

A second rocket slammed into a Sderot home and another hit a cemetery in the western Negev town, damaging a number of gravestones.

Throughout Sunday, seven rockets were fired by Palestinian terrorists into Israel. The remaining four rockets hit open areas in the Sha’ar Hanegev and Sdot Negev regions.

Why Gaza is low on supplies:

Also Sunday, the IDF was forced to close the Karni border crossing and the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, as vehicles came under Palestinian mortar shell fire whilst attempting to transfer food and fuel to Gazans.

Police said that approximately 50 trucks of supplies were forced to turn back as a result of the barrage.

What the AP doesn’t tell you:

However, one Gaza resident, a 33-year-old man who gave his name only as Jamal, refused the offer, saying it was a publicity stunt. He blamed Hamas for the fuel shortages.

“They want to fool the people,” he said, declining to give his last name for fear of reprisals from the terrorist group. “They are trying make the people forget who is behind our suffering.”

Who the UN blames:

The UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees is to suspend its food aid distribution in Gaza on Monday because of a lack of fuel caused by the Israeli blockade, a spokesman said on Sunday.

“We have exhausted our stocks of fuel, and are therefore forced to stop our food distributions to 1.5 million inhabitants in the Gaza Strip from Monday morning,” UNWRA spokesman Chris Gunness said.

And what the wire services won’t say:

But Israel has said Gaza’s fuel tanks are full and attributed to alleged shortage to the striking Palestinian fuel distributors, who refuse to empty the tanks. The Gaza fuel association said it went on strike to protest over Israel’s supply limits.

What time is it, kiddies? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time, the time that only occurs on days that end with a “y.”

How’s this for an objective news source?

Rice pushes for peace progress; Israel denies hidden agenda

No bias there. Nope. None at all.

Nor is there any bias in this article, about Hamas offering free rides to fuel-starved Gazans. Here are the first three grafs that will show up in your local paper’s World News section:

The ruling Hamas party started using police cars on Sunday to ferry Palestinians around the Gaza Strip because of severe fuel shortages.

Orange stickers reading, “We are ready to drive you for free,” were affixed to blue units of the Hamas-run police force.

Israel has restricted fuel supplies to Gaza in an attempt to pressure Palestinian militants to halt their rocket barrages at nearby Israeli communities.

And here’s graf four, that gets cut out of most of them:

Although Hamas complains bitterly about fuel shortages, the militant group is widely believed that it has hoarded supplies for its own use — especially now that it is offering its vehicles to ferry people for free.

Funny how if something were “widely believed” about Israel, it’d be pushed in screaming headlines. But when Palestinian and Israeli sources point out that Hamas is confiscating fuel from hospitals for its own use, it’s not a story in the AP.

This article is practically a press release for Hamas.

Many residents, hit by lack of other transport, were just grateful for the service.

Suzan Salman, a 48, used one of the police cars to take her to a downtown hospital, where her daughter had just given birth. “It’s good that we have somebody who cares about us,” the grandmother said.

“We are here to serve our people,” said Mohammed Hamza, a 25-year-old Hamas policeman.

Transport has come to a near halt in Gaza since Israel reduced supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel.

Way to go, AP. I see you also mentioned that Gaza fuel distributors are refusing to deliver fuel, or that Hamas is stealing it. Boilerplates are apparently only for Israeli actions (xxxx Palestinians have been killed since yyyy date). Negative facts about Palestinians? Down the memory hole.