If this is not a casus belli, then nothing is:

Iran: We supplied Zelzal 2 missiles to Hizbullah

Iran admitted for the first time on Friday that it did indeed supply long-range Zelzal-2 missiles to Hizbullah.

Secretary-general of the “Intifada conference” Mohtashami Pur told an Iranian newspaper that Iran transferred the missiles so that they could be used to defend Lebanon.

Take action against them, at the very least, in the UN.

Several times in the past few weeks, people have said to me, “You might have sleep apnea.” I’m not exactly sure how this relates to my attack of numbness that scared me into the hospital two weeks ago, but it seems to be a recurring diagnosis by both non-experts and experts. In my follow-up visit with my GP today, he said to me, “You might have sleep apnea.” Something to do with that affecting the nerves. I said no, I have cat apnea.

I do not sleep with my bedroom door closed. I will not sleep with it closed. Ever. Because I have two cats that think it is their God-given right to sleep in my bed, whether or not I am in it. Gracie will stand next to my bed at 5 a.m. and yowl for me to wake up and pet her. Tig goes her one better by jumping into bed and yowling into my ear for me to wake up and pet him.

This morning, I was unwilling to get out of bed, and Tig wanted me to pet him. He stood on the left side of the bed and yowled. I ignored him. He jumped into bed and yowled in my left ear. I ignored him. He jumped over me and yowled—literally, I am not kidding—in my right ear. I ignored him. He started pawing at my shoulder. I ignored him. Finally, he settled himself down by wrapping himself around my head on the pillow, sighing and waiting for me to get up.

I keep a collection of shoes beside my bed for the express purpose of tossing in Tig’s general direction when he yowls at me in the middle of the night. I have learned to wake up enough to push Gracie out of the bed (she stands right on the edge on my left) when she wakes me at five. Usually. Sometimes I’m so tired and out of it that she gets what she wants—I pet her until I fall back asleep.

When I stay over Heidi’s, I have the most restful sleep of the year. And that’s including letting Sparty, her miniature poodle, sleep in the bed with me. He is the best damned bedpet I’ve ever had. He falls asleep in one spot and doesn’t move until you wake up the next morning. My biggest problem with him is that he thinks my pillow is his spot, so I often have to move him before going to sleep. But that’s it. We’re done. No noise, no motions, nothing. Blissful quiet at night.

I don’t have sleep apnea. I have cat apnea.

There is no doubt that the modern means of transportation and communications reduced the size of our globe into something easily manageable for a tourist. Our unquenchable thirst to know, while living in a point A, what it is exactly that they eat, drink and listen to at the point B, made the globe even smaller. Albeit much more polluted and dirty.

In the majority of the cases, though, we rarely learn anything from our intrepid traveling to all these foreign points. We prefer to eat at the same junk food eateries we frequent at home, get drunk on the same beer/wine/vodka we prefer to anything else and listen to the good old iPod that is faithfully stuck in the same pocket.

So, the only thing that is really different in our overseas jaunts is the variety of local hazards. Instead of being mugged in Central Park (NYC) or boinked on a head by a blunt object held by a footie hooligan in London or crashed into by an irate driver on an Israeli highway, you get eaten by a Bengali tiger or bitten by an African green mamba or just catch HIV after a romantic evening in Thailand. Whatever.

Not so with our Persian friends. Instead of sharing the fate of other garden variety tourists, they prefer hazards of a different type:

IRAN’S involvement in the Middle East crisis emerged last night after four of its soldiers were killed fighting Israel in Lebanon.

The elite Revolutionary Guards’ bodies were ferried in secret from the frontline.

It was damning evidence Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is deeply involved in pulling the strings in Hezbollah’s war with Israel.

And did I mention that most of tourists do not learn much from our travails? It is definitely not so with this special brand of tourists from Iran: they do learn. Lately they have decided to move from the, how to say it, reactive death in Lebanon as described above, to a proactive version:

Iranian news agency claims expeditionary force of suicide bombers sent from Tehran via Syria to Lebanon. Its goal: To wreak havoc near military, civilian targets, trigger civil war in Lebanon.

Is Tehran stepping up its involvement in the Israeli-Lebanese confrontation? Iran is set to send the first group of suicide bombers to Lebanon on Wednesday, the Iranian news agency ILNA reported.

The expeditionary force, dubbed by the Iranian regime as “Loyalists of Islamic Justice,” will be the first ever to be sent to Lebanon. According to the report, the force is compiled of seekers of the Shahadah (death for the sake of heaven), who are set to depart from Tehran after the noontime prayer on Wednesday.

It is really laudable, how Iran is contributing to the well-being of their Shia Muslim brethren all over the world, solving the population explosion (no pun intended) problem at the same time.

Maybe, just to streamline the problem and save all that back and forth shipping expenses, these “Loyalists of Islamic Justice” could blow themselves up where they are? More efficient all around, I think.

As for me - put to a choice between an encounter with a pissed off Golani soldier and a green mamba, I would go for a green mamba, thank you all the same.

Why have I put a picture of a green mamba here? Don’t rightly know - I guess I just like the critter.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Yes, but there is no Arab ummmah: (And besides, I thought it was the Muslim umma.) A group of Egyptian judges are showing their true colors and demanding that Egypt dissolve its peace agreement with Israel. Why? Not because Israel has broken any of it, nor even because Egypt has broken the agreement more than once (how many times has Mubarak recalled his ambassadors to Israel?). No, it’s because they can’t possibly have peace with a neighbor who is at war with anothe Arab country. Say, how’d all that pan-Arab nationalism work for you back in the day, folks? You know, the Nasser stuff? After he was finished dropping mustard gas on his fellow Arabs in Yemen?

Hezbullah killed another Arab Israeli, whoops, sorry, “martyr to the cause.” They also got another Jewish Israeli. Both were civilians.

If this is true, Olmert is a bigger idiot than ever: Hamas says they’re near agreement for a prisoner swap for Cpl. Shalit.

Muhammad Nazal, Hamas media consultant and a member of its political bureau, said that there has been contact between Israel and Egypt regarding the possibility of securing the return of kidnapped IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit , through a prisoner exchange.

The factions that kidnapped the soldier are demanding the release of some thousand Palestinian prisoners, but the final number and the specific identity of those released still needs to be determined, stated Lebanese newspaper al-Nahar, Friday morning, reporting on an interview with Nazal.

The EU and the Dorktator: You know, that could be a great movie. But the EU has “enlisted” Baby Assad’s help. I believe the equivalent to that would be enlisting the aid of the fox to guard the henhouse. And no, the EU doesn’t see the irony in this at all.

The European Union has enlisted Syria’s help to end the fighting in Lebanon as Damascus pledged support to the Lebanese government’s plan for a settlement.

EU envoy and Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said following talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad Thursday, Damascus agreed to play a constructive role in settling the conflict by pressing Hizbullah to accept a ceasefire.

“We also agreed on backing the Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora as time is ripe for intensifying diplomatic efforts by all parties,” Moratinos said.

Syrian-made missiles are raining down on northern Israel and killing her civilians. Syria is part and parcel with Hezbullah in this war. I say Israel send a few missiles at the Dorktator’s favorite summer home and see how fast he calls off his dogs.

Siniora’s plan called for a ceasefire; the return of refugees; the exchange of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners; the need to settle the issue of the disputed Shebaa Farms region; extending the state’s control over all national territory; limiting arms possession to state institutions; boosting UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon; and reviving the 1949 armistice agreement between Lebanon and Israel.

I think I’ll have to go look up the 1949 armistice agreement and see what I can snark into it. Er, read into it.

You have got to be kidding me: The effing morons in the ISM are still organizing their weekly Friday protests against the security fence. And of course, it was as peaceful as always, since it’s a “peace” protest:

Some protestors were throwing rocks at security forces.

This is how they get their PR photos. They throw rocks at the police and the IDF, the IDF set off tear gas and use rubber bullets, the ISM peace creeps have bruises and blood to show the “brutality” of the “occupation.”

Schmucks.

By the way, the “brave mujahadeen” scored another hit with an anti-tank missile on IDF soldiers, killing two and wounding two more. Yet more evidence that Hezbullah is not the fearful fighting force that many would have you believe. I repeat: I can take out IDF soldiers with a missile launcher, too. Does that make me a great soldier? No.

I’ll leave you with a positive note for the day, from Ha’aretz:

This is not only a just war, but also a smart and successful one. There is no need to go on at length about its justness, but there is a dispute over its success and whether it was managed wisely. Most of the political and military commentators have few good things to say about this aspect. They are critical of the wisdom of the political echelon and point to the supposed foolishness of the military. Thus there is a vast gulf between the majority of the public and the media.

Hey, you may not agree with everything it says, but it’s a positive article on the war, from Ha’aretz—the nearest thing to an anti-war press Israel has got.

Shabbat Shalom. There may not be much more posting by me today. I have my doctor’s appointment at 1:30, and the rabbi is back from his vacation and we have normal services tonight.

When the Israelis laid siege to the Jericho prison that contained the killer of the Tourism Minister, did they go in and massacre the inmates?

No, but they were accused of genocide, murder, and war crimes by the usual suspects (Saeb Erekat, Mahmoud Abbas, etc.) Never mind that the PFLP head honcho and his henchmen were taken alive from their posh accomodations set up as a war room for coordinating PFLP operations.

Today, Palestinians broke into a Jericho prison and slaughtered six inmates…

Five of the six dead Palestinians had been accused of killing two officials with President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction in the West Bank city of Nablus last year.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack at the Jericho prison run by Abbas’s intelligence service.

In the MSM’s mind, it’s only terrorism and barbarism when Jews pursue murderers and bring them to justice.