Time for your weekly ISM propaganda.

A left-wing activist was hit by a rubber bullet at an anti-separation fence protest in Bil’in on Friday, sustaining moderate-to-serious head wounds.

He was evacuated to Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer for treatment.

A number of activists threw rocks at security forces during the demonstration.

In response, Israel Defense Forces troops and Border Policemen threw stun grenades and fired rubber bullets, wounding one of the demonstrators.

And, as always, the lies from the ISM:

According to the protesters, Border Policemen fired at the demonstrator despite the fact that there were no disturbances in the area.

I wonder if Adam Shapiro will detour back to Israel now, instead of leading a caravan of fools into southern Lebanon.

Those 40,000 soldiers have begun moving across the Lebanese border, even as the UN is trying to stop Israel from finishing the job.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered the IDF on Friday to send ground forces into Lebanon and up to the Litani river, some 30 kilometers from Israel.

The UN is failing to achieve anything remotely approaching the disarmament of Hezbullah. Try not to be too shocked.

The decision to go ahead was reached after it became evident that a UN resolution would not include the disarmament of Hizbullah. In any case, officials stressed that the ground operation could come to a halt at any time if an acceptable cease-fire resolution is put on the table.

Ehud Olmert is extremely unhappy with the proposed UN resolution.

Friday’s diplomatic advances followed Lebanon’s objection on Thursday to a U.S. and French proposal to enlarge a U.N. peacekeeping mission in south Lebanon and give it the authority under a provision of the U.N. Charter, known as Chapter 7, to use force to implement its mandate.

Friday morning, the U.S. and France settled on a compromise that would grant U.N. peacekeepers a somewhat less forceful mandate to restore calm and help thousands of Lebanese soldiers take control of a buffer zone between the two countries.

[...] The breakthrough in negotiations with France came after the United States dropped its demand that Israeli troops be allowed to remain in southern Lebanon until a muscular international force is in place with a tough mandate to ensure that Hezbollah could not mount attacks on Israeli towns. Washington also agreed to scrap a provision that the force be explicitly authorized to disarm Hezbollah.

Gee. Can’t understand why the Israelis would be unhappy with that. No, wait, I really can. That sentence was sarcasm. Just in case you didn’t pick up on it.

Well, it’s going to be a busy weekend for me, so don’t expect hourly updates. I’ve got friends from out of town coming. But I’ll be sneaking in a post or two.

So let’s see. In every major war that Israel has ever fought, as soon as she starts winning, the Arabs get the UN to stop Israel from permanently damaging her foes. It’s in action again, although this time, Israel herself is complicit.

Rockets are still raining on Haifa—major ones, with major payloads. Other towns, too.

Soldiers are still dying in Lebanon (mostly from anti-tank missiles, because the “brave mujahadeen” of Hezbullah are afraid to take on the IDF in a pitched battle).

Hezbullah is declaring victory.

40,000 ground troops are stuck at the Lebanese border, waiting for orders from a government that is waiting on the UN cease-fire proposal—which Lebanon has already rejected—to pass. And by the way, the cease-fire does not call for the disarming of Hezbullah, nor does it call for the return of Israeli prisoners. Nice job, Ehud. No wonder 73% of Israelis think you totally blew it.

And oh yeah—palestinians are now on another stabbing spree. Except this time, they killed one of their proponents. Whoops. Guess he’s just another martyr for the cause, right?

Can’t wait to read the next Caroline Glick column on the cease-fire. This time, I’ll probably be agreeing with everything she writes.

What was it all for, Olmert? What was the point of going in, if you weren’t going to finish the job?

Update: I take it all back. The IDF is on the move. The goal: The Litani River.

One month after the outbreak of the war in Lebanon, during which the Israeli army has established a security zone along the border and reached a depth of 12 kilometers into Lebanese territory, the IDF got a ‘green light’ Friday night to continue north up to the Litani River.

The order was given against the backdrop of a fervor of international diplomatic talks hoping to reach a ceasefire agreement as soon as Friday night.

Let this be a lesson to me: Don’t pay attention to my analysis. I’m not an analyst. Or maybe I shouldn’t gripe first thing in the morning.

Jewish culture has for millennia held the role of a rabbi as a spiritual and practical guide to every aspect of life in high esteem. Even a treif-munching, leftie defeatist atheist Jew like I could respect this phenomenon. I have even come across some truly wise rabbis, that are a pleasure to listen to (from time to time), and no, you do not have to be religious to see the value of carrying some of the accumulated wisdom of a nation forward. Of course, one could easily see the danger of carrying forward some accumulated prejudice and stupidity, but let’s be positive, for a bit…

Of course, we should not obfuscate the sad fact that any randomly selected prominent rabbi rarely agrees with another and that there is quite a lot of rivalry, and that some deeply rooted differences of opinion between religious and other kinds of Jews can cause some friction, which frequently spills into minor calamities. And then you have the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta of course, with their ingenious use of babies’ doodoo, all of which set me up in a mood for some major caca-throwing this morning.

It started upon reading the article Israeli force can stop the rockets, but for how long? by Rabbi Dr David J Goldberg, who’s the emeritus rabbi for the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London. Of course, due to my ingrained respect and stuff (see above), I was eager to absorb some age old wisdom, and a few golden nuggets.

Indeed, the relatively short article contains several pearls of wisdom on a variety of subjects:

• Talmud
• Geneva convention and its applicability to the current Lebanon situation
• History of Zionism
• Asymmetric warfare between regular armies and guerrilla forces
• Legal issues behind the said conflict
• Definition of a “total war”
• Ideas on proper strategic thinking

The above list is incomplete, but enough for now. Suffice to say that my initial feeling of coming revelation before that fountain of wisdom, slowly (nah, I am joking here) but surely transformed into a realization that somebody is trying to feed me a lot of crapola.

He starts with a clever but irrelevant quote from Talmud, the applicability of which to the Lebanon crisis is nil. It is all of us that are protecting all of us now, and the emeritus rabbi is kindly and humbly asked to keep this in mind.

The indiscriminate and slogan-like use “doctrine of proportionality” is as inapplicable as it is incomprehensible. Every (minor or major) war started with a minor calamity. We are in a war now. For a good analysis of the situation in the regard see here.

On asymmetric warfare: the lack of symmetry in this case is not expressed in the available armory. Hezbollah accumulated enough arms to exceed some regional armies’ capacity. The lack of symmetry is in the fact that Israel is fighting an army that, when it suits, switches to guerrilla tactics, mainly by doffing civilian clothes and hiding between the innocent population. This of course serves a dual purpose of when the aforementioned guerilla is killed he is counted as an innocent civilian murdered by a brutal Army. Lack of symmetry also means that Hezbollah can conceal its armory in civilian homes, and then whine about home and destruction of infrastructure. Why don’t you take a close look at what the Geneva convention has to say about this, dear Rabbi.

And re this statement:

Asymmetric warfare, as it is currently fashionable to call the contest between regular armies and guerrilla forces, inevitably results in asymmetric casualties, at least 10 times higher in Lebanon than in Israel.

We are all tired of MSM repeating this as if it were a gospel (Talmud for you) truth. When a sane person looks at the Lebanese (and Palestinian, by the way) body counting method, whereby every person killed by IDF is automatically a “civilian”, the use of that “10 times higher” cliche becomes somewhat doubtful. So let’s go easy with the number two, please.

However, it should be borne in mind that - intolerable though it is for a large section of the population to be forced into bomb shelters and some of them killed - Hizbullah’s arsenal of Katyushas, rifles, machine guns, grenades and mortars represents a negligible military threat to the survival of Israel.

It’s a sign of stupidity, when a statement like the one above comes from a brainless journalist. It is a crime when it is uttered by a leader of Jewish community. Listen carefully, Rabbi: if our life is to be spent in bomb shelters, there will be no Israel. It shouldn’t take a lot of honorifics to one’s name to understand it - so ask yourself why it’s a problem for you?

This is not a total war between two countries that involves both armed forces and civilians, making Israel’s response to Hizbullah rockets analogous to the American response against Japan after Pearl Harbor or Britain’s against Germany, as some of Israel’s defenders have grotesquely tried to claim.

And how, pray, is the current situation different from a total war? Doesn’t it involve armed forces on both sides? Doesn’t it involve civilians on both sides? And re “grotesque claims” and mention of WWII - was leveling Dresden (a purely civilian target) anything but an act of “disproportional” revenge, without going into the rights or wrongs of this case?

Dear rabbi: in slaughterhouses there is a practice to keep a “pilot” animal that welcomes the newly arrived herds, calming them down and leading them to be “processed”. It is not an appetizing image for sure, but it is not a very appetizing job you do, being a trained pet Guardian rabbi. You see, even from the comments to your pitiful opus it is clear that Jew-haters do not accept you, no matter how good and faithful you have been to your Guardian sponsors:

littleroy

August 9, 2006 02:15 AM

Being a Rabbi and a man of God, it is shokcing to see that Goldberg has failed to condemn Israeli tactics of killing civilians and targetting Lebanese infrustructure. Is it fair that Israel is carrying out collective punishment for the crimes of a few? And our Rabbi cannot see the injustice in this. Shame on the religious garb. No wonder Israel is such a mess. If these are the teachers, we weep for the congregation.

Shokcing, ain’t it? Take it and weep. Or just try harder. Whatever floats your pitiful boat.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews