Check out this from today’s Times regarding Hamas’ stated attempts to destroy Israel:

“Our fate is to combine resistance and politics, but resistance remains the basis and politics only a branch,” said Mr. Meshal. “Being in power is only a means to an end for Hamas. Power is not our ultimate goal. If it becomes one, let power go to hell. It will not hold us back from our targets which we hold dear.”

Mr. Meshal, who is based in Damascus, was speaking at a memorial gathering on Thursday night. “We and the Zionists have a date with destiny,” he said. “If they want a fight, we are ready for it. If they want a war, we are the sons of war. If they want a struggle, we are for it to the end. We have more stamina than Israel and will defeat it, God willing.”

Mr. Abbas was a key negotiator for the P.L.O., but Mr. Meshal criticized its agreements with Israel creating the interim Palestinian Authority. “Those who talked about setting up a state before liberation lost both country and land,” he said. “A country can only exist on liberated land.”

Mr. Meshal’s comments did not suggest that Hamas would agree any time soon to the international community’s demands that a new Palestinian government recognize Israel, forswear violence and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Yeah, I know what you mean. If you’re talking about destroying a country and only forming a state out of “liberated” land, it isn’t exactly suggesting that you’d like to have peace with that country.

So that’s a great big “Tsk, tsk” from the Times regarding Hamas’ genocidal aims towards Israel.

Go. Read. Laugh.

This week gives us the new Denny’s advertising campaign for southern California: Eat at Denny’s. Get shot.

Pass.

Here’s an article that says Iran’s sudden willingness to discuss Iraq is another cover for their nuclear ambitions.

London, Mar. 17 – It’s been feted by some in the West as a major turnaround in Iran’s policy, but sources close to the Iranian government say Tehran’s unexpected announcement on Thursday that it intended to hold direct talks with the United States on the subject of Iraq is primarily aimed at giving a push to the country’s nuclear diplomacy.

“This is a quintessential example of the old Chinese proverb, ‘one bed, two dreams’, with the Americans dreaming of a pacified Iraq and the Iranians dreaming of making their nukes without being sanctioned or bombed on the way”, said Simon Bailey, an Iran analyst at the London-based Gulf Intelligence Monitor.

“Expectations that this is the first opening that would lead to the ‘grand bargain’ are misplaced”, he said.

Bailey believes that the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad found itself in a diplomatic quagmire over the nuclear issue after the U.S. successfully coaxed the dossier to the United Nations Security Council. Now, he says, the ruling clerics are in “crisis mode” and want to try a number of tactics to get out of the imbroglio and avoid military attacks or sanctions.

“Hence the belated response to U.S. offers of talks on Iraq”, he said.

[...] “The Iranians are not looking for any long-term result out of these talks”, said Akbar Khoshnevis, a Persian Gulf analyst based in Dubai. “For them, it’s the immediate effect of the announcement of talks between the U.S. and Iran that matters. This, in their view, will have a marked effect on the political line-up in the Security Council, pushing the Russians and the Chinese more to their side and making the Europeans more cautious in their support for a tough U.S. line on Iran. They’ll all be thinking, if the Americans are going to have talks with these guys, why should we stick our necks out? Where would our interests lie?”

Remember, this is the nation that promised to set Israel on fire.

I don’t think this tack is going to work with the Bush Administration. It’s 2006. His time is running out, and he wants to be able to leave office with a win. Stopping Iran from getting nukes would be a very big win.

It’s been confirmed: the bird flu found in Israeli coops is the deadly H5 strain:

The Health Ministry confirmed on Friday that the virus responsible for the recent deaths of approximately 11,000 turkeys at the southern kibbutzim of Holit and Ein Hashlosha was indeed the H5 strain. The same strain was identified at Kibbutz Nachshon near Beit Shemesh, following an unusual amount of poultry deaths.

Three people from Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, who worked at the chicken coops, were sent to Soroka Hospital under suspicion that they contracted the deadly bird flu strain. One of them, a Thai worker was held in isolation.

The Health Ministry ordered the flocks of turkeys on all three kibbutzim be destroyed, and the carcasses buried underground. The poultry were to be killed by consumption of poisoned water. The poultry killed may reach hundreds of thousands of birds.

Just as the Palestinians danced as Saddam’s Scuds passed overhead, I’m sure they’ll be cutting a prayer rug in Ramallah over this news of the Jews now on the front lines in the War On Viruses.

Hrm… you know, with the closing of the Karni crossing and dwindling food supplies in Gaza, my Inner World Zionist Conspriacy Voice considers the deadly strains of bird flu showing up in the food supply a golden opportunity for…

Nah. Better to just spread the rumor that the food coming through Karni is contaminated. Let ‘em go nuts like the Nigerians did, lopping the arms off of their kids vaccinated with “Zionist And American Imperialist Crusader Poisons” under the guise of polio prevention.

When I get home tonight, I’m adding all the medical spam terms to the comments “kill list.” That means if you use the words cialis, viagra, or any of the other drugs du jour in a comment, it will get immediately deleted and I won’t have to mark it as spam in the moderation queue.

Feel free to joke around and test it, but realize that we will never have a comment discussion on viagra, and whether or not it should be covered by medical plans.

By the way, my new medical coverage does not include birth control pills. Good to know that the HMOs of the nation are concerned about women not having unwanted children. Which raise the costs of health coverage, come to think of it.

It’s so annoying to have to deal with spambots. I wish Congress would just pass those anti-spam laws and be done with it.

Israel21c is a publication that’s doing wonderful PR for Israel. They’re where I get many of my posts about the good things happening in Israel — the things that the MSM tends to ignore.

They need contributions, and I’ve got readers with money. Go. Give tzedakah (charity). It’s a mitzvah.

And pass along the news, especially if you’re a blogger.

The Forward has a great essay on Ariel Sharon by his biographer.

The second thing that made him anathema to many of his fellow countrymen was Israel’s settlement policy, which was his initiative. To truly understand Sharon’s strategy, one had to see the West Bank through his eyes — literally.

For years, he took every visitor who would go, up onto the West Bank’s hills and ridges. Looking eastward, you could see the sparse line of Israeli kibbutzim that guarded the Jordan River, on whose far side lay the confrontational states of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. “You see,” he’d tell his guests, “without control of the high ground, those places down there are defenseless.”

Looking westward, visitors got an even starker lesson. Before their eyes lay Israel’s narrow coastal plain, with its concentration of population and industry. There was Israel’s one international airport. And there were the country’s three power plants, two in plain sight, one visible from the smoke issuing out of its tall stack.

“Would we ever,” Sharon would ask, “allow enemy forces to look down on us like this?”

This one carries a read-in-full endorsement.

Israel has lost a giant.