It is not looking good for the Dorktator and Gorilla Boy:

German Judge Detlev Mehlis, head of UN investigating team into Hariri assassination, convinced Syria knew beforehand of Hizbullah plot against Israel. ‘Hizbullah would certainly not risk taking the kind of action it has without Syria’s approval’
Ynet

German Judge Detlev Mehlis, who was appointed by the UN to head the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, is convinced that Iran and Syria are responsible for aggravating the situation in Lebanon.

Mehlis told the international German network Deutsche Welle that Hizbullah would not act without Syrian approval, especially when the
terror group’s arms are supplied by Syria. “Syria stands by Hizbullah and vice versa. Hizbullah would certainly not risk taking the kind of action it did without Syria’s approval,” Mehlis said.

I am becoming more and more convinced that although half the world shrieked “Disproportionate force!” from the second Israel entered Southern Lebanon, the rest of the world was saying, “About damned time.”

It appears that Israel may be good for one more thing: Giving the world an excuse to sanction Iran and Syria.

Despite redeploying most of its forces from Lebanon, Syria is still determined to maintian control over its neighbor country, believes Mehlis, an expert on the dynamics and power politics of the region. This became apparent during the investigation into Hariri’s murder, Mehlis said, when undercover Syrian agents interfered with the investigation.

“The Syrian Justice Ministry interfered and frightened witnesses,” he revealed.

According to Mehlis, Syria’s attitude towards Lebanon has not changed in the slightest since it was forced to withdraw its forces under international pressure.

Is it time to open up a “Syria” category on the blog?

The spam blogs are getting more and more clever, and I’m still impressed by these really cool names. The latest one to ping here is called Cornelius Crispo. If you read it, it almost—but not quite—makes sense.

But I really like that name. It’d make a great nom de plume.

I don’t see how Technorati is ever going to be able to catch up to spam blogs. You have to be a human reading it to see that it’s bogus.

I’m going on a job interview tomorrow. It’s a pretty important one. It will be a permanent position with a Large Company in Richmond, great benefits, interesting job, and it’s another writing position.

I will be in interviews most of the afternoon. I’ll post a little in the morning, probably. But there will be a long stretch of silence from me while I’m trying to convince Large Company to hire me.

I’ve done about all I can to make myself as ready for this interview as possible, down to getting my hair and nails done this afternoon. You can’t underestimate the effect of your appearance in an interview, and I really want this job. I’ve got my writing samples all printed out, presented nicely in my Lucent portfolio (the gift from the finance dept. when I worked on their website years ago), and everything is on my jump drive in case they need more.

Now, all I have to do is convince Large Company that they need me, not anyone else they’ve interviewed.

Good thoughts will not be turned down.

The IDF says Hezbullah is preventing civilians from fleeing the battle.

The IDF has found that Hizbullah is preventing civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon. Roadblocks have been set up outside some of the villages to prevent residents from leaving, while in other villages Hizbullah is preventing UN representatives from entering, who are trying to help residents leave. In two villages, exchanges of fire between residents and Hizbullah have broken out. (Hanan Greenberg)

Words fail me.

Obviously, the work is not nearly finished. Hezbullah doesn’t appear to be lying about the number of rockets left, as it shot more than 100 at Israel today.

Massive rocket barrage hits northern Israel after several hours of calm: One person was killed Tuesday evening while running to a bomb shelter, raising the death toll of Israelis killed in rocket attacks since the fighting in the north began to 13.

About 60 people were injured in Tuesday evening’s rocket attack and were evacuated to hospitals in Safed and Nahariya.

Some 130 rockets were fired at the north by Tuesday evening, 100 of them fired in a heavy barrage within one hour and a half, Northern District Police Commander Major-General Dan Ronen told Ynet.

Hizbullah suffered a harsh blow , but still managed to fire a heavy barrage of rockets at the entire northern area. Five or six rockets hit open areas near Haifa. Other rockets hit the Kiryat Haim area, Nahariya, Carmiel, Maalot, Tiberias, Safed, Hatzor Haglilit and Rosh Pina.

The buildings in Nahariya were seriously damaged. Moshe, who was at the scene of the rocket attack in Nahariya, told Ynet: “I was five meters (16.4 feet) away from the man killed. He ran to the bomb shelter, and the rocket reached him and hit him right next to the shelter.”

Once again, I should like to point out that Hezbullah is directly targeting civilians, a fact that is utterly lost on most of the world. But not on us.

Time to head for Damascus. The IAF caught the Syrians trying to re-arm Hezbullah.

Although Hizbullah has suffered a harsh blow from Israeli air force strikes which took out a good percentage of their available weapons, Syria was continuing to smuggle arms into Lebanon to rearm the group, IDF Operations Branch Head Major General Gadi Eisenkot said during a press briefing Tuesday.

Thus far, the IAF managed to intercept a number of trucks transporting rockets from Syria to Hizbullah, including trucks laden with the 20mm-diameter rockets with warheads like the one that hit the Haifa train depot Monday, claiming eight lives. Maj.-Gen. Eisenkot said he would be very surprised if official elements in Syria were unaware of these transports.

“These are rockets that belong to the Syrian army. You can’t find them in the Damascus market, and the Syrian government is responsible for this smuggling,” Eisenkot said, but stressed, “We are not operating against Syria or the Lebanese army.”

Carl from Jerusalem has the best response to Richard Cohen’s execrable “Israel is a mistake” column. Here is his conclusion:

Israel is neither a mistake nor a crime. It is the beginning of the culmination of more than 2000 years of Jewish yearning to return to our homeland. The manner in which the Jewish people has chosen to govern the Land of Israel has its faults. But being a ‘mistake’ created in ‘Arab land’ - let alone being a ‘crime’ - is not among those faults. We Jews have to learn to stop listening to liberals like Cohen and to start fighting - with God’s help - for our existence. Hopefully, the current battle marks a turning point.

Read it in full.

President Bush is about to do something he hasn’t done in his five and a half years in office.
Is it:

A) Visit Israel?

or

B) Veto legislation?

Put your guesses in the comments.

Abbagav (my hat’s off for this line, bravo!):

Better Israel should submit to the missiles and rockets of enemies Mr. Cohen acknowledges to be fetid, anti-Semitic zealots whose guiding principle is a hatred of Israel. But at least we’ll get positive PR for our funerals, and Mr. Cohen won’t be embarrassed about his last name at swanky cocktail parties anymore.

Judith Weiss:

I just wanted to put this up before I went to bed tonight, because I hate this shit. It never ends, and I’m used to hearing it from DU and Indy habitues, but a WaPo pundit reciting it is just a bit too much. I’ll add links to some of the historical stuff tomorrow. I wrote this off the top of my head and I know enough history to know I got the broad outline right and the approximate dates.

Dave Bender:

No doubt Mr. Co-hen, and his editors would like to hear from you. You can also contact them here.

Please do give him my warmest regards in your closely-reasoned, brief, and cool-headed discussion of what’s what.

Okay,now I’m going to get lazy. Soccer Dad already did a great roundup. Go there.

And Ehud Olmert met with him.

Remember that UN delegation that Kofi was sending to stop the war? They’re hee–eere.

The three UN representatives – Kofi Annan’s special political advisor Vijay Nambiar, special envoy to Syria and Lebanon Terje Roed-Larsen,
and UN Mideast envoy Alvaro de Soto – met Tuesday morning with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and at the end of the meeting Terje Roed-Larsen said that they will be meeting with the prime minister’s representatives.

However, they surprisingly met with Olmert himself, who made it clear during the meeting that “Israel will continue fighting against Hizbullah until it returns the kidnapped soldiers and until the security of Israeli citizens is guaranteed.”

It seems that Olmert is holding fast to his requirements: Free the hostages, stop the rockets, disarm Hezbullah and remove it from Israel’s border.

All of which works for me.

Zombie has a pictorial account of the amazingly high (for San Francisco) turnout of counter-protesters to the usual idiots of International ANSWER and palestinian poseurs. (H/T: BE.)

Some of them got arrested:

Seventeen people protesting Israel’s ongoing military action in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip were arrested today in front of the offices of the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco, according to San Francisco police.

The arrests, for blocking traffic, were made after a group of people linked arms and sat down in the street in front of the consulate, at 456 Montgomery St.

All together now: Awwwwww.

The WaPo’s blog aggregator uses the text from your link.

My link is “crap like this.”

I am a happy camper this morning. People clicking on the “Read all blogs” link get the words “…crap like this…”

I truly hope Mr. Cohen clicks on that link to see what people are saying.

Happy to talk to you about your column, Mr. Cohen, and straighten you out. Hey, we can do lunch. I’m only two hours south.

I’m not sure I believe this:

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was sent to Damascus to urge Hizbullah to curb rocket attacks against Israel and to release two Israel Defense Forces soldiers captured a week ago in order to avoid further escalations, a London-based Arabic daily reported.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that a European country warned Iran that Israel is ready for a confrontation with Syria, which recently signed a defense alliance with Iran.

[...] The report, which was based on leaks by an Iranian presidential aide, said Iran is worried by criticism waged against Hizbullah by an array of Lebanese politicians like Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Saad Hariri, son of slain former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The trio outspokenly attacked Hizbullah for being Iran’s proxy and condemned as “irresponsible” the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers.

I think this is the real reason for that report:

Forty to fifty percent of Hizbullah’s military capability has been destroyed in the six days of the IDF counter-attack following last Wednesday’s Hizbullah raid in northern Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The IDF, it is understood, believes it needs another week or so minimum to achieve its military goals in terms of alleviating Hizbullah’s capacity to threaten Israel.

Iran knows exactly how much damage Hizbullah has taken. I think this would be Iran’s attempt to rescue the organization from being smashed utterly.

I vote for smashing utterly. Anyone else?

Six rockets fell on Haifa last night:

“Overall, knock on wood, there have been less rockets lately,” Udi Adam, head of Israel’s northern command, told Channel 1 Television.

“We have hit a large part of their weapons arsenal, their anti-aircraft missiles and their rockets. [The operation] will take time, even three to four weeks.”

On Monday night, Hezbollah fired more than 50 rockets, including a barrage which landed after 10 P.M. in the northern towns of Safed, Rosh Pina, Tzivon, Sakhnin, Hatzur Haglilit and Peki’in.

Nine people were wounded in the rocket barrage, including eight hurt when a rocket hit a hospital in Safed.

But their capacity has definitely been diminished. They were firing hundreds of rockets per day, and now it’s down to double-digit figures. Give the IDF another week, and Hezbullah will be mostly destroyed—or at least, their rocket supply will be gone. And a major condition of any cease-fire will be the guarantee that Hezbullah remains rocketless. Dickless can’t be put in the treaty, but their behavior—running into their little ratholes and hiding—has shown us that we don’t need to see it in writing.

Whoops. Did that slip out again? Evil Meryl, stop writing these posts!

Terrorists are killing each other again.

Dozens of Hamas militants Tuesday fired at the Gaza city home of Nabil Tammous, infiltrated it, and blew it up.

Tammous is a senior member of Fatah’s Preventive Security Services and a former commander of the “death squads” - an elite PSS unit.

At least five of his bodyguards were wounded in the attack, one of them critically.

[...] On Sunday, Hamas militants shot dead Mohammed Zachi Dahlan - a Khan Yunis PSS officer and a relative of former head of the PSS Mohammed Dahlan.

Good.

Richard Cohen, if I had the power to remove you from the Tribe, you would be gone this instant. Ignorant, unbelievably wrong crap like this is why:

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

Ignorant man: Read your Torah. Read your history. A nation of Jews existed millennia before Islam was invented.

Ignorant man: Read your ancient history. You ignore it, and you grant legitimacy to a racist, anti-Semitic worldview by insisting that Jews have no right to live in the land of their origin—in the land which was usurped by the Arabs after the Jews were forcibly removed from it.

Ignorant man: Read your modern history. Half of all Israelis are now Sephardic Jews, refugees from Arab lands that expelled their Jews or drove them out through pogroms. Israel took them in, gave them homes and lives, and their children are now running the country.

Ignorant man: No wonder you quote Tony Judt, another Jew who thinks Israel should be destroyed. You have both turned your backs on yourselves, and on what you stand for, and on the survival of your people.

It is also true, as some critics warned, that Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon was seen by its enemies — and claimed by Hezbollah — as a defeat for the mighty Jewish state. Hezbollah took credit for this, as well it should. Its persistent attacks bled Israel. In the end, Israel got out and the United Nations promised it a secure border. The Lebanese army would see to that. (And the check is in the mail.)

Ignorant man: Read your own words. Israel should simply despair, because the UN isn’t doing its job? Israel should simply turn and walk away because Lebanon isn’t doing its job? Israel should simply cease doing her job, which is to exist, and continue to exist?

Ignorant man: Read the history of your scholars, particularly the Jew who was born in Babylonia and returned to Jerusalem—because Jerusalem is where he belonged:

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”

Ladies and gentlemen, a perfect example of a self-hating, anti-Semitic Jew. To write a column like this, which justifies Arab anti-Semitism and ignores the history of the Land of Israel, and the people of Israel, is beyond reprehensible.

Next up from Richard: A whiny column complaining about all the hate mail this one engendered. Count on it.

Ignorant man: You are a defeatist, and a blind defeatist at that. Your ignorance is appalling. You shame your heritage and your name.

Israel is not the mistake. Your column is.

I have finally met my match in anecdotes, and it is Treppenwitz.

You simply must read this anecdote of his, which stands as an analogy of the situation in Lebanon right now.

Lair Simon caught the creepazoids protesting in front of Houston’s Israeli Consulate. Funny, I thought they were protesting about Lebanon. What’s with all the “Free palestine” signs?

Andy’s got photos of the rally in NY yesterday. He has a picture of my boyfriend, too. Thanks, Andy. More photos and video over at Atlas Shrugs and Kesher Talk.

Imshin has been blogging up a storm lately. It’s almost impossible to choose a post. Let’s see. This one? This one? How about this one? Oh, wait—this one slams the French. Definitely that one. Never mind, just go to the site, scroll down, and read them all. Imshin, tell Eldest that Shoosha will be able to take care of herself. That’s what cats do.

Once again, if you don’t use the clickable graphic on the left (the one that says “Israel at war”), you can click here to go to the same place and get a list of bloggers, news sites, and where to send money.

Looks like diplomacy is going to get a foothold.

When the current conflict in the north ends, Israel will demand disarmament arrangements in Lebanon that will prevent Hezbollah from renewing its military capabilities.

According to political sources in Jerusalem, Israel will not agree to a return to the security situation that existed on the eve of the outbreak of the fighting. Nor would Israel agree to a cease-fire in the area as this would be tantamount to a Hezbollah victory, the sources said.

The sources in Jerusalem believe the fighting in the north will cease toward the end of the current week on Thursday or Friday.

Israels principal concern is that after the fighting, Hezbollah will take advantage of the cease-fire to restore its military capabilities to purchase rockets and other arms, to retrain its forces and renew its threat to the Israeli home front.

A return to the status quo is unacceptable, and I think that was the message of the past week’s bombing missions.

Then again, Israel called up three reserve units to free up soldiers for work in Lebanon. Don’t count on this week being the end of hostilities.