Then watch this incredibly strange Japanese video that teaches vital English phrases to tourists coming to America.

Spit-monitor warning. Put. Down. The. Drinks.

Thanks to Sarah for the URL.

The IAF blew up a strategic bridge to keep the terrorists from taking Cpl. Shalit out of Gaza, and IDF soldiers are waiting for orders (or may already have gotten them) to go into Gaza.

IAF aircraft blew up a key strategic bridge in the northern Gaza Strip shortly before midnight on Tuesday. The army said that the operation was intended to keep Hamas from taking kidnapped soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit out of the Gaza Strip.

In addition, IDF tanks were amassing around Gaza, and were awaiting orders to begin a ground incursion into the strip. However, the the army denied an Israel Radio report that the armored forces had actually begun a ground incursion into the strip.

Meantime, another attack threat at another crossing:

I think that this is going to end badly for Cpl. Shalit. I don’t believe the terrorists will simply give him back, and Olmert appears to be standing fast on his refusal to negotiate for his release.

Vital Perspectives is liveblogging the operation. Go there for updates.

Update: The tanks rolled into Gaza some time ago, and the IDF is using artillery. The war is on.

Meanwhile, it appears that the 18-year-old boy missing from Itamar may be dead: Report: Israeli body found in Ramallah.

The world media is rushing to proclaim that Hamas has finally recognized Israel as a nation. The AP has changed its headline on the signing of the prisoners’ document from

Hamas-Fatah to Implicitly Recognize Israel

to

New Hamas-Fatah Plan Recognizes Israel

And then they continue the lies in the lead of the story:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip Jun 27, 2006 (AP)— The rival Hamas and Fatah movements agreed on a plan implicitly recognizing Israel, a top Palestinian official said Tuesday after weeks of acrimonious negotiations aiming to lift crippling international aid sanctions.

Moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has been trying to coax his Hamas rivals into endorsing the document, which calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, in effect recognizing the Jewish state. He has endorsed the plan as a way to end sanctions against the Hamas-led Palestinian government and pave the way to reopening peace talks with Israel.

And what has Hamas got to say about the agreement?

GAZA (Reuters) - The governing Hamas movement reached a political agreement on Tuesday with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas but said it would continue to refuse to recognize Israel.

[...] Hamas insisted it was sticking to its “agenda of resistance” against Israel.

“The document included a clear clause referring to the non-recognition of the legitimacy of the Occupation,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said, using the Islamist group’s term for Israel.

Hamas tells the truth, but the media cover it up. The headline on this piece had nothing to say about Hamas’ refusal to acknowledge Israel, which is the point of this story. Instead, it reads “Hamas sticks to hard line despite deal with Abbas.” Even though it includes such quotes as these:

Officials close to the negotiations said Abbas, of Fatah, and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, drafted a platform accepting a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas captured by Israel in a 1967 war.

Such a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be in line with Fatah’s recognition of Israel.

But Hamas legislator Salah al-Bardaweel told Reuters: “We said we accept a state (in territory occupied) in 1967 — but we did not say we accept two states.”

So. What part of “no recognition of Israel” doesn’t the world media understand?

I haven’t found a copy of the revised document online yet, but these quotes mean that it was specifically amended to include language that says the signers do not recognize the existence of Israel. Once again, this was an agreement between two warring factions, signed to prevent all-out civil war. This document has nothing to do with recognizing Israel, calls for nothing peaceful, and will not lead to peace between anyone but Fatah and Hamas, and that only until the factions decide they’re done with the document and start shooting again.

The world’s media are lying to you. They are turning a blind eye to what the document really says, and I cannot for the life of me comprehend how they can all fool themselves so blatantly into thinking that the terrorists are moderating in any way. Of course, once you take away all of the logical reasons, the only thing left is—anti-Semitism. The word we’re not allowed to use when dealing with the anti-Israel bias of much of the world. Because it isn’t anti-Semitism, it’s anti-Zionism. Get it?

Of course, there is another possibility. Reporters and their editors are simply stupid.

Hands up, those who think it’s a combination of both.

AFP, our pals in France, for this gem:

Israel gears up for Gaza blitz as US urges restraint

And get a load of this breathless text:

KEREM SHALOM, Israel — Thousands of Israeli troops were massed on the Gaza border on Tuesday poised for an offensive after the kidnapping of a teenage soldier but the United States appealed for restraint.

Palestinian armed groups insisted that they would not release the captive unless Israel frees all Palestinian women and children from its jails - conditions already ruled out by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The 19-year-old Israeli corporal, who also holds French nationality, was snatched on Sunday in a brazen raid on an army post on the Gaza Strip border in which two other Israeli servicemen and two Palestinian fighters were killed.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel to give diplomacy a chance, saying that there was a “concerted international effort” underway for the release of Gilad Shalit.

She called for an effort to “calm the situation, not to let the situation escalate and give diplomacy a chance to work and try to budget this release.”

Although Israel has said that it will first exhaust diplomatic efforts to free Shalit, Palestinians have abandoned border homes fearing a large-scale assault, while militants fearing assassination have gone to ground.

Ohmigod! End of the world! Medic! Medic! Prozac, Valium, Zoloft, stat!

Here’s a fun thing to do. After every sentence (or menacing phrase, your choice), say, “Dum da DUM!” in the menacing way that kids use it to suggest danger ahead. (Mind you, they use it to mock each other, their parents, and the world, and I have cheerfully lifted their use of it and am teaching it to my fourth graders.)

An editorial in today’s Boston Globe almost gets the Israeli situation right, except, well, it’s wrong.

In political terms, such a return to armed conflict would likely spell the end of any hope for power-sharing between Abbas and Hamas, and perhaps the end of the Hamas experiment with governing — or even the demise of the Palestinian Authority. On the Israeli side, the effect would be to reinforce the argument of hawks who have been saying that the withdrawal from Gaza was a mistake that has left Israel more vulnerable to terrorism. Even worse, the value of the precedent set when Israeli settlements were dismantled in Gaza may be put in doubt. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will find it politically difficult to withdraw from more settlements in the West Bank, as he planned to do, if the Gaza withdrawal can be construed as having made Israelis less, rather than more, secure.

In human terms, a failure to resolve the immediate crisis will inevitably mean greater suffering for Palestinians and Israelis alike. At the moment, Egyptian diplomats and intelligence officers are trying to persuade the Iranian-backed Meshal in Damascus to release Corporal Shalit. They represent the voice of reason. If unreason prevails, a tsunami of unnecessary suffering will break upon the peoples of the region

How many ways is this editorial wrong? Let’s think.

It’s a good thing if the Hamas government goes down. The hawks were right about the Gaza withdrawal, and it has been proven by the thousands of kassam rockets and hundreds of other attacks on Israel from the Gaza border since the withdrawal. And if the PA died too, that would be a wonderful thing. Maybe then the true palestinian moderates—and there are precious few of them—could get a foothold. Not that I believe that will happen.

Have you noticed that in spite of the dire warnings of a grave “humanitarian crisis,” there is no grave humanitarian crisis? Why is that, do you think? Could it be that Mahmoud Abbas has tapped more of the Arafat Swiss bank accounts and is using that money to pay his people? Hamas is using millions of smuggled dollars to pay their people. A few weeks ago, there was a cute little “reconciliation” between Abbas and Suha Arafat that went under the mainstream radar. Which one, do you think, is the keeper of the codes to the Swiss bank accounts? I’m guessing the makeup was coverup for another agreement between the two thugs over who gets how much of the stolen billions.

The pals don’t need European and American money for food and necessities. They have the money to pay their people’s salaries. They need European and American money to wage war against Israel. Fungibility is a concept that the EU and America are blind to when it comes to supplying “humanitarian aid” to terrorists, just as the fiction of the “political wing” and “military wing” is maintained by all and sundry.

You know, I have a political wing, a business wing, and a homemaker wing in my own organization. The money that I make via the business wing (that would be my job) goes to pay the bills that support my political wing (my weblog) and my homemaker wing (rent, food, etc.). My political wing brings in a tiny bit of income that also pays for my homemaker wing. If you didn’t understand what “fungible” means before now, that should help you figure it out. In the end, the money goes to fund terrorism and attacks on Israel.

The world’s blindness when it comes to Israel is appalling. Not unexpected, but appalling.

This video gives another glimpse into the state of mind of the Hamas leaders. Apparently, after repeating the slogans several thousands times, the sloganeer himself gets hypnotized by the sound of his voice and starts to believe his own drivel.

PMW has a few words to say about the speech:

The video is a collection of statements by Hamas terrorist leader, Yasser Ghalban, killed last week by Palestinians, in the ongoing internal fighting.

The following is the transcript of selections from the Hamas video:

“We will rule the nations, by Allah’s will, the USA will be conquered, Israel will be conquered, Rome and Britain will be conquered…

The Jihad for Allah… is the way of Truth and the way for Salvation and the way which will lead us to crush the Jews and expel them from our country Palestine. Just as the Jews ran from Gaza, the Americans will run from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians will run from Chechnya, and the Indian will run from Kashmir, and our children will be released from Guantanamo. The prisoners will be released by Allah’s will, not by peaceful means and not by agreements, but they will be released by the sword, they will be released by the gun”.

It looks like some other Palestinians believed Yasser too and decided that he does not deserve the whole world to himself. Thus the sudden demise.

Regarding the Jews running away from Gaza: rest assured, Yasser, your colleagues that remain at large for now are doing everything in their power to persuade the Jews to run back to Gaza. Unfortunately.

And a belated advice: do not attempt to bite off more than you can swallow.

Otherwise, RIP (Rot In Pain).

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

As Israel masses men and materiel on the Gaza border, Gazans erect roadblocks.

Members of Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and other organizations placed large piles of rubble and sand in the midst of roads
in a bid to impede army forces’ advancement. A Jabalya resident told Ynet that the operatives used tractors to carry stones that were scattered on the roads. In other places in the Strip, similar activities have been carried out.

Yeah, good luck with that, guys. I think the Merkavas will make their way through.

Meantime, the IDF says they know where Cpl. Shalit is being held:

A senior military intelligence officer, addressing the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that the IDF has information pointing to the area where the kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit, is apparently being held.

The senior officer said the kidnappers had planned the operation for over two months.

According to the officer, Shalit sustained light injuries to his shoulder and abdomen during the raid.

He also noted that Hamas’ politburo chief Khaled Mashaal, who is currently in Damascus, was holding contacts with the kidnappers
and with the head of the organization’s military wing, Ahmed Jaabari, who is considered to be the man behind the abduction.

Doubtful that a rescue operation will be launched. The terrorists will just kill Shalit.

You know, since Beit Hanoun is being evacuated, the IDF ought to rain hell down on the kassam launchers. No civilians in the way to get hurt.

Terrorists fired more rockets at Sderot. These actually injured people, not that the mainstream media will notice.

Palestinians fired three Qassam rockets into Israel Monday evening, with one rocket falling in Sderot wounding four people.

Four residents were lightly injured from shattered glass, 11 were treated for shock, two of which suffered from heart conditions. The rocket caused an electrical blackout in a large section of the city.

One of two rockets fired earlier Monday landed south of the Nir Am junction, while the other landed near Kerem Shalom.

The injured resident was said to have suffered shrapnel wounds to his leg and was taken to the Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.

The Electricity Company said the rocket cut off supply wires and engineers were working to reconnect the blacked out area.

Imagine that Mexico was firing rockets on San Diego every day. Imagine that this happened in San Diego. Now imagine what the reaction from the government would be, and tell me why Israel is not allowed to do what any other sovereign nation would do.

Olmert needs to send the troops into Gaza. Olmert needs to tell Hamas that if the rockets don’t stop, no member of Hamas will be able to sleep in the same bed two nights in a row.

Funny how Kofi Annan doesn’t seem to think that daily rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel is worthy of a condemnation statement.

Well, no, not really. What time is it? Why, every time that question is asked, no matter what time it is, it’s Israeli Double Standard Time.