Jodie Foster is defending Mel Gibson.

See, here’s the thing. Jodie Foster’s lifelong ambition is to make a movie about Leni Riefenstahl, the woman who was the Nazi Party’s greatest propagandist.

Is it just me, or am I thinking that a woman who says Leni Riefenstahl got a bad rap is not exactly the kind of person Mel needs to back up his claims that he’s not anti-Semitic?

Oh, wait. It’s Patrick Swayze to the rescue! Sure, let’s use a has-been who flew while drunk and crashed his own plane as a character witness.

With friends like these, Mel….

Lair Simon wants me to make movies of my cats and put them up on Monday, like he does. But my camera doesn’t do sound, and every time I try to take a movie of Tig, he wants me to pet him, and so moves totally out of the shot.

So I made these. You could print out the page, cut them up, and make a flip-movie out of them. Except it wouldn’t really work, and it’d kind of look stupid, but hey—I’m trying.

Besides, Rahel needs some soul balm, so here it is:

(more…)

Sometimes the news are so self-explanatory that there is no need to add anything. So:

The tears

Mr Siniora called for help to seek “an immediate and unconditional ceasefire” and wiped away tears as pleaded for his country not to become an “arena for conflicts and confrontations whatever the justification”.

The Prime Minister of Lebanon was meanwhile forced to withdraw a tearful claim made at a meeting of Arab League ministers that an Israeli air strike had just killed 40 civilians in the border village of Houla.

“One hour ago there was a horrible massacre in the village of Houla, a deliberate massacre, in which there were more than 40 martyrs,” said Fouad Siniora at the emergency meeting of Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian foreign ministers in Beirut.

The deception

Lebanon balked yesterday at a UN plan to call a halt to the fighting without an immediate Israeli withdrawal.

The vehemence of Lebanon’s rejection, reflecting Hezbollah’s hardline stance, took Western officials by surprise and threatened to derail proposals to end the conflict agreed by France and America.

The vermin

United Nations peacekeepers at a post near Houla reported that Hezbollah had fired rockets towards Israeli twice today, from positions near the UN base.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

This is interesting. At the end of an article about Israeli psy-ops against Hezbullah, you find this:

There have also been Lebanese claims of Israelis popping up in tiny, remote villages.

Al-Massira magazine said an Israeli airborne force consisting of dozens of troops landed in the village of Shabrouh near a dam project in the Christian heartland of Kesrouan one recent night. The soldiers, equipped with the latest night-vision technology, spent three hours inspecting tunnels and pipes. The magazine said the troops apparently were looking for Hizbullah rocket launchers.

“The Shabrouh operation has become the talk of town, spreading from house to house,” said Al-Massira.

But neither the government nor Hizbullah has commented on the alleged incident.

First, Hezbullah isn’t commenting on anything that makes them look bad, which is why you won’t get casualty figures from them. Second, the IDF isn’t about to comment on special ops forces showing up anywhere unless it’s as visible as Baalbek. And lastly: Ah. So that’s how they’re finding targets.

Following the lead of Putin’s strange behavior and Mahmoud A.’s uninterrupted stand-up appearances all over the world, Hugo Chavez enters the scene as a competitor.

“Israel has gone mad,” Chavez said. “They are massacring children, and no one knows how many are buried,” he added, accusing Israel of being guilty of a “new Holocaust” and the “terrorist” U.S. government of complicity.

It is not that the text above is startingly original or that the character in question could surprise anyone by his eccentric behavior. The mere fact of Comical Hugo’s sudden interest in Middle Eastern affairs is surprising. But then, the same article explains the background:

Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have pledged to support one another in disputes with Washington. Ahmadinejad has drawn international condemnation with calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Now it is much clearer. After all, tell me who your friends are…
Of course, it is difficult to impossible to top that Mahmoud’s green glow, but one can try, can’t one?

In any case, his act beats our foreign ministry mealy-mouthed diplomatic lingo hands down:

Israel’s Foreign Ministry rebuffed Chavez’s statements on Monday. “Unfortunately, he (Chavez) is not known for his objectivity when it comes to the Middle East conflict,” said ministry spokesman Mark Regev. “He has embraced the regional leaders who have called for the destruction of the Jewish state and I think there is a serious question as to his judgment when it comes to Middle East issues.”

His judgment? My hamster has more judgment in his sleep than Comical Hugo ever dreamed about. And I don’t even have a hamster.

I am almost sure there is a link between having lots of oil and mental instability. These three examples prove that point to my satisfaction.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

I’ve figured out the main culprit in my site slowdowns, and his name is Spam. More precisely, trackback spam.

I have turned off trackbacks until the latest attack goes away.

I like trackbacks, though I don’t get a whole lot of legitimate ones, and they frankly don’t amount to a lot of extra traffic for me. So they’re really not worth the aggravation of the site slowdowns. I mistakenly attributed them to my hosting service. Nope.

It was spammers.

So if you want to link to me, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: Just link.

A YouTube video of IDF troops celebrating Shabbat with song. Hm. I’m not noticing a problem with morale at all.

Aaron finds a funny real-life Pac-Man video. (Yes, really.)

Short and sweet: The war in Lebanon, explained via South Park animation style.

A news report on the Six-Day War, from 1967.
Yes, today, we have goofy graphics in news reports. In those days, they had goofy music.

The reason why I say Bibi Netanyahu should be Israel’s voice to the world. Give up your political aspirations, Bibi. Your talent is PR. Israel needs you there.

Put down your beverages for these:

From happier days, an ad from Israel: Why they didn’t make it to the 2006 World Cup. Made me laugh out loud.

It’s the Jewish Eveready Bunny. Seriously.

Typical Israeli shoppers.

Make love, not terror. Rated R.

Enjoy.

Ze’ev Schiff, an analyst for Ha’aretz, thinks Olmert needs to send in the IDF in major force on the ground in order to stop the rockets and finish off most of Hezbullah’s ability to hurt Israel.

There is no way to stop the ceaseless barrage of rockets which are being launched at the north without the Israel Defense Forces undertaking a prompt, more extensive aerial and ground operation designed to neutralize Hezbollah rockets situated south of the Litani River, perhaps even beyond.

Otherwise, the war of attrition will continue, even drag on, and the number of civilian casualties will rise from day to day.

He also says the IDF and the Israeli cabinet are blaming each other for not mounting a large-scale ground offensive.

Something unusual can be discerned in the handling of this campaign. The IDF Northern Command says it has prepared quality attack plans that are ready to be carried out, but they have been delayed. Who has delayed the plans? It remains unclear.

The Prime Minister’s Office argues that the IDF has yet to submit an operational plan for expanding its ground assault beyond “cleansing” a narrow strip along the border of Hezbollah positions. If the IDF does not have a proposal, why should government ministers, most of whom have no military experience or background, offer up such a plan?

As per usual, Sunday’s cabinet meeting resembled a debate club in that not one vote was taken. On Saturday night, the prime minister finally convened his “forum of seven,” which also did not resolve to undertake a clear, operative plan.

I’ve got news for you, folks. The middle of the war is not a good time to be squabbling like high schoolers.

As of now, Hezbollah’s war of attrition continues at full steam. It has been slowed somewhat for a week vis-à-vis Haifa, only to be reignited Sunday. The impression is that the IDF’s potency is not being exploited. In such a scenario, even if we win, it would be a squeaker decided by a few points.

Judging by how events are unfolding, it appears that the residents of the north who have remained in their homes have become cannon fodder. This must not continue. We are talking about a difficult war of attrition, part of which we succeeded in hampering as a result of the IDF’s destruction of medium and long-range missiles at the start of the campaign.

The air force and IDF intelligence did it, but the fighting did not end. It is clear that the air force is incapable of taking out Hezbollah’s arsenal of short-range rockets. In the meantime, the Syrians continue to smuggle more rocket launchers into Lebanon, a move tantamount to an act of war against Israel.

If Ze’ev Schiff says Israel is going to lose this war without a ground offensive, then things are looking very, very dark indeed. I was wrong. Ehud Olmert’s Harry Truman moment didn’t arrive when Ariel Sharon lapsed into a coma. It is now.

He needs to prove that he is capable of leading Israel out of this war—by winning it. Your soldiers are ready and waiting for the call.

Capt. Tzahi commands an artillery battery that has been hammering south Lebanon non-stop for over a week. He is a reservist, but only officially.

“I finished my regular army service on Sunday and got mobilized for the reserves on Friday,” he says with a smile. “I didn’t know army mail could move that fast.”

Although he had to cancel a post-army trip to Ireland with his girlfriend - “which was already delayed because of the fighting in Gaza” - he was happy about the call-up.

“We will do this until they tell us to stop. Everyone here understands this fight completely. That’s what’s great about reservists,” he confides happily. “They get an order, they know it’s for real. So they’re more serious.”

As for the response to the call-up, the main problem has been “sending people home. Some people who are medically unfit for combat showed up last week just to hang out with the guys and to help with logistics,” Capt. Tzahi says.

Sitting in a tent in which artillerymen have eaten and slept for days without the luxury of a shower, napping fitfully between bone-jarring booms from nearby batteries, Ran and Kobi, both residents of the North, seem to confirm their commander’s words.

“We understand the goal,” says Ran. “My family is in Karmiel, and we’re not running away, no matter what.” Besides, he says, smiling, “it’s a good feeling, the reserves experience. Just look at that,” he says, pointing at what has become a regular feature of IDF bases in the North: a huge stack of care packages sent by families, locals and assorted nonprofit organizations.

Kobi is less relaxed. A resident of Haifa’s bayside suburbs, his father and a brother are also serving in the army, while his mother and another brother are holed up in a bomb shelter back home. “I kept going to work when the rockets started falling,” he says defiantly. “They can’t stop me.”

“I’ve got no problem with the call-up, just as long as we win,” he declares, adding vehemently, “That’s what everyone here thinks.”

No, this is not this Peacemaker, unfortunately.

It is this one, according to CNN:

The caption under the picture is mind-boggling, to say the least:

Former President Jimmy Carter says that Bush has encouraged Israel and Hezbollah to attack.

And the follow-up in the article is also exciting enough:

Former President Carter, who helped broker the historic Camp David peace accord, said President Bush has pursued an “erroneous policy” that has fostered violence in the Middle East.

“It depends on whether world opinion is strong enough to get the administration to change its erroneous policy, which has been to encourage the continuation of attacks on both sides,” Carter, a Democrat, told The Grand Rapids Press in an interview Friday.

Not being a great fan of the current Washington administration, I am still amazed at the picture of GWB calling Nasrallah and egging him on:

“Hey, Hassan, how about raising some hell on the border with them Zionists? Why dontcha kidnap a few soldiers, blow up a jeep or two? Then I shall call whatishisname in Jerusalem, and we’ll have us some war. Are you game, man?”

I think that another visit of North Korea is quite overdue, Jimbo. Time to exchange some spit with the young Kim and explain to him how his peaceful little country contributes to the world stability. And do not forget to call on Mahmoud the Mad on the way home. His peaceful nuclear program is in dire need of additional encouragement.

Duh.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Their real names should be “Anti-Israel marches.”

MONTREAL — A demonstration billed as a protest for peace assumed a distinctly anti-Israeli flavour Sunday as protesters denounced the Jewish state for killing hundreds of Lebanese.

Children carrying two large Lebanese flags and adults who trailed behind accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of being an accomplice to Israeli murder.

“Israel terrorist, Harper accomplice,” members of the crowd shouted in unison as marchers left a downtown park on their journey through city streets.

Wow, sounds really peaceful to me. Got more?

While many participants claimed they weren’t singling out either side in the bloody conflict, some carried placards that linked Israel to Nazi atrocities during the Second World War.

“Israel learned from Hitler and the student has surpassed the master,” read one sign.

Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of thought one expects to find from a peacenik at a peace rally. Not.

And yet, although the lead, and indeed the angle, of the story is that the “peace” march wasn’t very peaceful, the headline is all about the peace.

What anti-Israel media bias?

From the Jerusalem Post, as of Ausgust 6, 5 p.m. Israel time.

Since hostilities broke out in northern Israel and Lebanon 26 days ago,

89 Israelis have been killed including:

46 soldiers and

43 civilians

497 civilians were killed in Lebanon, according to authorities.

400 Hizbullah guerillas were killed, according to the IDF.

2,100 rockets fired at Israel

220 was the highest daily toll of rockets fired at Israel

90 kilometers was the deepest point Hizbullah’s rockets reached, landing near Hadera.

Tens of thousands of tiny metal balls inside Syrian made 302 mm rockets.

8,700 sorties were flown by the IAF over Lebanon

4,600 targets were attacked by the IAF including:

260 headquarters and buildings belonging to Hizbullah

60 bunkers

70 weapons warehouses

30 Hizbullah infrastructure targets

90 Rocket launchers

100 suspicious vehicles believed to be carrying rockets or guerillas

50 bridges

1,200 launch sites and roads leading to launch sites

10,000 soldiers are operating in southern Lebanon

8 brigades are operating in southern Lebanon

20 special covert IDF operations in Lebanon

10,000 short range rockets still believed to be in the possession of HIzbullah.

100 long range rockets still believed to be in the possession of Hizbullah.

Some of the figures represent estimates or had been rounded up.