Tig just came in from a long day of napping outside. Well, he’s been in and out many times, because it was a balmy mid-80s today, no humidity, and his favorite pastime of sun-sleeping took up most of the day. Then there was sleeping in the dark that took up the evening.

But his magic Tig radar said that something good was going on inside, so he came inside, and begged for some of what I’m eating.

I am eating La Choy Chow Mein Noodles. I have a cat who adores them. He stands up on his hind legs and reaches his paw onto the table to beg for them. I have just given him another.

He is a happy kitty.

What weird foods do your cats like?

Update: Guess not this time. They’ve arrested another Israeli in the case. No word on why he killed the man. On the other hand, there have still been multiple anti-Semitic attacks in recent weeks.

A man was murdered in Sydney tonight, apparently for the crime of being Jewish, or, more specifically, Israeli.

AN Israeli has been stabbed to death by a gang of men who jumped out of a car and cornered him outside a general store in Sydney’s east.

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff today said witnesses to the brutal attack in Bondi had told him the 36-year-old victim was an Israeli national.

Police were called to the shop at the intersection of Glenayr Avenue and Beach Road at Bondi Beach about 9.45pm (AEST) yesterday.

Outside the store, a man with multiple stab wounds was slumped on the footpath. He was treated at the scene and taken to St Vincents Hospital for emergency surgery but died several hours later.

Mr Alhadeff said members of the Jewish community called him last night with details of the incident.

“Word came back to us last night from people in the area who saw it and found out that the man was an Israeli,” he told AAP.

“There was a car load of people who stopped and they got out and they assaulted him pretty brutally and some of them were hitting him with a pole or something and there was multiple stabs.”

He said the incident did appear to be related to the conflict in Lebanon.

A spokeswoman for police media said she could not confirm reports the man was from Israel and could not give a description of the gang.

Police are yet to identify the man or to contact with his relatives,” she said.

Detectives have established a crime scene outside the store and specialist forensic police are examining the area for clues.

You’ll know more when I do.

This attack comes less than a week after a synagogue in Sydney was attacked by “men of Middle Eastern appearance”:

Projectiles were hurled at the roof of the Parramatta Synagogue, in Sydney’s west, on Monday night and blocks of concrete were thrown at two cars, smashing windows.

NSW Police have responded by stepping up patrols of Jewish and Islamic sites as the crisis in the Middle East deepens.

Officers are searching for 10 men of Middle Eastern appearance seen laughing and running from the Mason Street synagogue after it was attacked about 9pm (AEST).

Rabbi Yosef Wernick, 32, and his young family were inside a house adjoining the synagogue when it was targeted.

Sydney has a sizeable Lebanese population. And a Muslim group that tried unsuccessfully to get Australia to change Hezbullah’s status as a terror organization.

Yet another terror attack in central Israel was stopped by the Israeli security forces.

The police set up roadblocks at the entrance to the cities of Kfar Saba, Petah Tikva and Rosh Haayin. Another roadblock was set up on
Road 5. In addition, the Israel Defense Forces boosted its operation in the Nablus area.

During the operation in the area, soldiers began chasing two suspicious Palestinian taxis southwest of Nablus, in which the terrorists and four other Palestinians were riding. When the terrorists noticed the soldiers, he tried to get rid of the explosive belt and threw it out of the taxi window.

You know, it’s good to know that the average terrorist is just as stupid as the average teenager caught with pot.

Of course, even better is that the security forces are doing such a phenomenal job in these dangerous times. But get this little fact:

In the past three weeks, since the onset of the fighting in Lebanon, security forces have thwarted seven suicide bombings, most of them directed by Hizbullah.

It’s not bad enough the fuckers are raining down rockets on civilians. They’re trying to blow them up in person as well.

Don’t stop, Olmert. The job is not finished.

Hezbullah got another three Israeli civilians. Arab-Israelis, that is.

Rockets claim heavy price: Three residents of the village of Arab al-Aramshe, a 55-year-old mother and her two daughters, were killed Saturday afternoon after being directly hit by a rocket. The village is located very close to the Lebanon border, east of Shlomi.

You won’t find their identification in this AP story, as usual. Israeli victims—apparently, even Israeli Arab victims—have no names in the world press. They weren’t killed by Israel, you see, so the world doesn’t need to know their names.

Rahamim Sides, a Magen David Adom worker, recounted the rescue efforts: “We didn’t have much to do there. We just determined the death. It was a mother and her two daughters who were sitting in the yard.”

A heavy rocket barrage was fired at the entire north of Israel, hitting Kiryat Shmona, Tiberias, Nahariya, Shlomi, Ma’alot and Akko. Within 90 minutes – between 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. – 120 rockets landed in northern communities.

Sure, these people want peace: Our pals the pals are celebrating every rocket hit on Israel.

The village of Yabed near Jenin overlooks Hadera. Many of its Palestinian residents heard the warning sirens followed by the loud blasts of the rockets. Villagers told Ynet that they hurried to celebrate the rockets that reached deep into Israel’s territory.

One of the residents said, “We wished for the rocket to hit the two big smokestacks (Ed.: of the Hadera power station), God willing it will still happen soon.”

Say, moron—if the rockets hit the power station, your power goes out. Yeah, these people want peace with Israel. Not.

By the way, those were long-range Iranian rockets that fell on Hadera. The ones that can’t be fired without Iranian permission.

Meryl’s prediction: Rockets will be fired at Tel Aviv. I do believe that Gorilla Boy is mad enough to create an all-out regional war.

It’s a pinch-me moment: Three weeks into the war, Human Rights Watch has discovered that Hezbullah is targeting Israeli civilians.

(New York, August 5, 2006) – Hezbollah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel, Human Rights Watch said today. Entering the fourth week of attacks, such rockets have claimed 30 civilian lives, including six children, and wounded hundreds more.

“Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. ”Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war.”

Okay, so they noticed it a while ago, but I’ve not seen anywhere near the volume level that is always reached when Israel defends herself against terrorists. HRW has known for weeks that the rockets are filled with ball bearings to deliberately kill more civilians.

Some of the rockets, such as those that killed eight rail workers in Haifa on July 16 and two young brothers in Nazareth on July 19, have warheads packed with thousands of metal ball bearings that spray out from the blast. Launched on civilian areas, the ball bearings are intended to inflict maximum harm.

Under international humanitarian law – also known as the laws of war – parties to an armed conflict must not make the civilian population the object of attack, or fire indiscriminately into civilian areas. Nor can they launch attacks that they know will cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects that exceeds the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Such attacks constitute war crimes.

The problem there is that you are assuming Hezbullah are human.

Accident or deliberate? Hezbullah mortar shells are landing in Syria. Have their Syrian masters told them to try to kill Syrians to give the Dorktator a reason to send his troops to the Golan Heights?

Six mortar shells that were fired from Lebanon on Saturday cleared the Golan Heights and landed in Syrian territory.

The IDF assessed that the launch, the second that landed in Syria in the past 24 hours, was meant to encourage Damascus to join the fight against Israel.

And that’s enough for now. Time to go write my podcast. I think this one may be a doozy.

Israeli commandos carried out a mission in Tyre last night. On the way out, the Lebanese army engaged the IDF commandos.

It was reported that the Lebanese army fired antiaircraft missiles at the Israel helicopters, which responded fire, hitting a Lebanese army tank and causing casualties. Lebanese sources reported a soldier and civilian were killed.

This is the army that Siniora would have you believe is going to replace—and disarm—Hezbullah.

Ten soldiers were wounded during the operation, with two of them sustaining serious wounds although they were reported to be in stable condition. “The wounded received initial medical attention on the scene, then the other soldiers carried them on out stretchers, and through perimeter fighting managed to open a route out,” the official related. “One of the seriously wounded soldiers suffered a bullet wound to the midsection when he was in the house, and the second was wounded in the upper body outside the house.”

The operation was to destroy a cell that launched rockets at Hadera.

“The 13th Flotilla (Naval Commando Unit) set out during the night in an operation against those responsible for the firing of strategic weapons from a vehicle inside a built-up neighborhood. This was a daring and intricate operation carried out inside a developed area with courage and determination. Forces reached the building inside the city. They approached the five-storey, 16-flat building and went up to the second floor,” he said.

“The fighting area very crowded, inside of a small apartment building,” he continued. “Forces quietly entered the apartment, where three terrorists were hiding out with Kalashnikovs and grenades. When contact was made, the three Hizbullah men were hit by our forces, who suffered bullet and shrapnel wounds. The terrorists are linked to the launching of strategic rockets. The movements leading up to contact with the terrorists were carried out with utmost stealth.”

According to the official, when soldiers were exiting the building, gunbattles erupted against a number of Hizbullah cells outside the apartment. Israeli commandos killed ten of the operatives, the official said, adding that the Hizbullah casualties were central figures linked to the firing of long-range rockets at Israel. He noted that the Air Force covered the ground operations throughout the raid. By five in the morning, the forces were out of Lebanese territory.

Say, Mitch Prothero, I thought you said that Hezbullah doesn’t hide among civilians. In fact, you spent three pages calling the IDF a bunch of liars. Can you say, “Mitch was totally pwned by Hezbullah?” I knew you could.)

Trying to understand the disagreements between US and France on the forthcoming UNSC resolution is not that simple. Besides that special diplomatic lingo that the sides (especially the politically astute French folks) are generating, there is a scarcity of details on the ongoing negotiations between France and US. I have chosen three sources: Guardian, AFP and Ynet in order to understand the outstanding issues.

According to a brief reference by AFP, the differences are so subtle it is only a question of wording:

UN chief Kofi Annan spoke by telephone with both US President George W. Bush and French President Jacques Chirac as the two governments remained at odds over how to phrase a first resolution on the conflict.

Is it so? The Guardian more or less agrees, reducing the whole business to a definition of the point where the future international peace force will get to the peacekeeping:

The split on the UN security council between France and the United States hinges on exactly what would happen in the immediate aftermath of a halt to the fighting. France wants the violence to stop before the details of any peacekeeping force are discussed, not least because such a force would probably be French-led, and Paris does not want its soldiers caught in crossfire between Israel and Hizbullah.

The US has little international support for its contrasting view, that a cessation of hostilities must be immediately followed by steps towards a multinational force, except Israel.

So, the issue here is the timing of the peacekeeping force getting onto the ground. Nothing more. Oh, and of course, since this is what US (and Israel) want, it must look bad, according to Guardian. But this is to be expected, coming where it comes from .

But even this problem seems to be in no way unsolvable. So what is it that keeps the UNSC from issuing that first resolution? Ynet is more forthcoming. It appears that, in addition to the issue of timing of the international force getting in, there are three major issues so far unresolved.

Issue 1

The United States also wants monitoring of Lebanon’s border with Syria to make sure Hizbullah is not supplied with new arms, diplomats close to the talks said.

Must be clear to anyone (with the possible exception of France, it seems) that if the replacement rockets and other arms keep flowing down the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah food chain, there will never be any disarming of that murderous gang.

Issue 2

France’s draft resolution calls for existing UN peacekeepers and Lebanon’s army to monitor the truce, while the United States favors the Israeli army staying in southern Lebanon until the arrival of an international force, which France may lead.

In other words, France wants IDF to be out of south Lebanon even before the international force starts organizing, leaving the area in the hands of totally impotent (and unwilling to be anything but impotent) UNIFIL observers and non-existing Lebanon’s army. Which effectively means getting Hezbollah back a few hours after IDF is out. Who is kidding whom?

In fact, it appears that the French stance on this issue echoes that of Hezbollah:

The militia’s chief spokesman said on Thursday Hizbullah would not approve a cessation of hostilities until Israeli troops are out of Lebanon.

Strange, eh?

Issue 3

Also unclear is when and by whom Hizbullah would be disarmed.

Of course, vagueness is the most potent ammunition of a diplomat. However, without a clearly defined path to Hezbollah’s disarmament it takes hardly a genius to understand that France is paving a way for a truce that will in effect be just a postponement of a new war, to exceed anything we have seen up till now.

One could wonder at the seemingly strange behavior of the French diplomats. There is not need, though, when AFP courteously provides a first clue to this behavior:

France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, commands the existing UN peacekeeping force deployed in the border area and is widely expected to lead a beefed up international force being advocated by Israel and its US ally.

Clearly, Frenchies do not give a flying donut about Israeli lives that will continue to be lost if they get their wishes. What they care about is to get the status-quo back. And to come out of the bloodshed smelling like a rose, with some additional brownie points from their Lebanese and other Arab friends.

The only thing they ignore is the transparent nature of their pathetic maneuvering.

And one more quote from AFP:

Israeli troops were engaged in deadly clashes with Hezbollah guerrillas as world powers bickered over the wording of a UN Security Council call for an end to a conflict now in its 25th day.

World powers? Plural? Time for that universal confusion sign.

Somebody should explain to Jacques the basic facts of life…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

The self-proclaimed angry Muslim who wanted to kill Jews missed one—sort of.

He got a Christian. She was the receptionist at the Seattle Jewish Federation.

Which is not unusual, because Jewish organizations aren’t in the habit of being against hiring non-Jewish employees.

Layla Bush, who moved here from Florida two years ago with her college boyfriend, really wanted to work at a charity and loved working for the Jewish Federation, although she wasn’t Jewish, her parents said.

“She was learning all about the Jewish tradition,” her mother said. She had worked at the office for about six months.

[...] Though she is somewhat shy, she loves people, her parents said.

“And she reads everything,” her mother said. “If anything, she’s almost too conscientious about social injustices.”

Kathryn Bush, who is active in an evangelical Southern Baptist church in her hometown of Panama City, Fla., said she is taking this a “step at a time” and that her faith has helped her stay strong. Her own mother, Judy Topping, flew in from Waverly, Ohio, to support the family as well.

In the article, the parents don’t blame the shooter.

“It would take somebody who was mentally ill to do this,” her father said. “But the world situation probably pushed him (the suspect) over the edge.”

“I don’t feel any blame or anger toward him (the shooter,)” her mother said. Both parents called for tolerance.

Yeah. Someone on another blog pointed out that it’s funny how every time a Muslim in America attacks Jews, everyone always blames it on his being mentally unstable. And yet, he is always stable enough to pick Jewish targets. Every single time. Amazing, that singular mental disability that causes Muslims to kill Jews.

In any case, Layla Bush is still in critical condition, and may not survive. Because this “lone gunman” who was “mentally unstable” wanted to kill Jews.

Somehow, the whys and wherefores of it don’t seem to make much difference to Layla, who has a bullet in her spine, lost her pancreas, spleen, and part of her liver, and has to breathe with the help of a ventilator.

But it’s because Naveed Haq was nuts, you see. Not because he had a visceral hatred of Jews.