Talk about blindness:

The UN-declared cease-fire in Lebanon, if fully implemented, would be a strategic setback for Iran and Syria because it strengthens democracy in Lebanon and stabilizes the border with Israel, the State Department said Monday.

“You will not have Hizbullah roaming freely in the south of Lebanon,” spokesman Sean McCormack said. “Iran and Syria will not have had the ability to rearm Hizbullah.”

And that’s totally gonna happen. Because, gee, the UN resolution has teeth, the world really wants to see Hezbullah disarmed, and Iran and Syria aren’t going to do everything they can to screw it up so that Hezbullah is right back where they started.

Shyeah. And I’m the Easter Bunny.

I don’t even have a category for this. Lunacy? Stupidity?

Wow. Just—wow.

Haveil Havalim, the Carnival of the Jews, is home at Soccer Dad.

Carnival of the Cats is at Blog d’Ellison.

No, really, some people do not know when it is time to stop in their righteous anger, to take a deep breath and to weigh their words and actions. Some people are ready to jump, as a tiger on a fresh leg of mutton, on anything that appears to them to be overly politically correct. Even when that breather and a second look could show a completely different picture.

Especially when the whole hullabaloo is about a picture.

A five-year-old girl’s passport application was rejected because her photograph showed her bare shoulders. Hannah Edwards’s mother, Jane, was told that the exposed skin might be considered offensive in a Muslim country.

This is only for starters. And then the reporter and (obviously egged on by him) Hannah’s mother go to the end of the earth to fight the system.

Mrs Edwards, a Sheffield GP, said: “I was incensed. I went back home and checked the form. Nowhere did it say anything about covering up shoulders. If it had, I would have done so, but it all seems so unnecessary.
“This is quite ridiculous, I followed the instructions on the passport form to the letter and it was still rejected. It is just officialdom pandering to political correctness.
“It is a total over-reaction. How can the shoulders of a five-year-old girl offend anyone?

Now, Ms Edwards (and not Mrs Edwards, to be completely politically correct): in some areas of the world, that happen to be mostly of Muslim persuasion, a tip of female’s nose could send a pious local man into a fit of what you, as a GP, are familiar with as “masturbation”. And we cannot have it, can we? So there is quite a grain of truth in the advice given to you by the valiant Post Office employee.

And before you start again claiming that there is no written instruction started with “Bare shoulders: rejection of“, you must give your government some credit. Not everything could be put on paper, especially in a delicate case like this. After all, both you and the righteous Telegraph reporter missed the point. Here it goes, and I shall stoop to putting the relevant parts of the article in bold:

1. Hannah Edwards’s mother, Jane, was told that the exposed skin might be considered offensive in a Muslim country.
2. The photograph was taken at a photo-booth at a local post office for a family trip to the south of France.

Due to the special delicacy of situation (that is really close to explosive, he he), I shall put the following into a form of a questionnaire, where the relevant questions are mixed with irrelevant ones:

1. Is the sky blue?
2. Do bare shoulders excite Muslim men?
3. Is Lance Armstrong a man?
4. Is France becoming a Muslim country?
5. Does the Pope excrete in the Vatican?

After you answer all the questions (hint - all answers are “yes”), you shall see why the Post Office is a darling. And why I stand by the Post Office. And you should too…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

I had a great first day. This was my best first day on a job in, oh, five or ten years.

If this keeps up, I run the danger of being happy seven days a week.

Charles has a news article that quotes the UN Ambassador to Lebanon as saying that his state will be the last one to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Lebanon’s UN ambassador bitterly slammed Israel’s month-long bombardment of his country ahead of a hard-won truce, and vowed that the treaty would be Israel’s last with any Middle East country.

“Lebanon will be, I think, the last state to sign a peace treaty with Israel,” UN ambassador Nouhad Mahmoud told CNN television’s “Late Edition” program, without explaining the remark. He called the agreement a “crucial” test for all the parties involved.

“Now it is the moment of truth for everyone, and we’ll see who will abide by the Security Council resolutions and who will not, so (what) we have this week is very crucial,” Mahmoud said.

The diplomat added that the 15,000 Lebanese soldiers to be dispatched to south Lebanon to help keep the peace alongside a similarly-sized international UN force “are not going to use force” to disarm the Hezbollah militia which has been battling Israel.

“Hezbollah will just leave the area as armed elements as I understand it, and the Lebanese army will take over the whole region along with the United Nations forces,” he said.

I think it’s pretty easy to interpret. They’re sure they have the upper hand and are about to destroy Israel.

I’m starting my new job today, so by the time you read this (I’m scheduling it to run later while writing it during breakfast), I’ll be busy at work. There will be no blogging from work. I have a real job, unlike so many other bloggers who have jobs that allow them to spend hours a day posting.

Ooh, that was snarky. Okay, this one goes under Evil Meryl.

But stick around. I wrote another post and scheduled it to publish during lunch.

Will it hold? Hezbullah is already firing at IDF troops, and the AP is already spinning it as if Israel is firing on Hezbullah for no reason.

BINT JBAIL, Lebanon Aug 14, 2006 (AP)— Lebanese, Israeli and U.N. officers met on the border Monday to discuss the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army in the region after a U.N.-imposed cease-fire halted fighting in the monthlong conflict.

Meanwhile, Lebanese civilians defied an Israeli travel ban and streamed back to their homes in war-ravaged areas. Israeli forces fired on two Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon just hours after the guns fell silent, highlighting the tensions that could unravel the peace plan.

But for the first time in a month, no Hezbollah rockets were fired into northern Israel.

The impetus for the war—the kidnapped soldiers—were not part of the agreement. Now Olmert is appointiong an ex-Mossad chief to “oversee the return” of the three missing for a month now.

Hezbullah is claiming victory. And why shouldn’t they? Olmert said no cease-fire without several conditions: The unconditional return of the soldiers, the disarmament of Hezbullah, and the withdrawal of Hezbullah forces from southern Lebanon. None of these aims were achieved.

Seymour Hersh is claiming it was all a Bush plot to invade Iran, with his usual anonymous sources. His credibility has long been shot. Not that this will stop the Israel-haters and conspiracy nuts from saying, “AHA! WE TOLD YOU SO!”

Caroline Glick says Hezbullah won.

There is a good reason that Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah has accepted UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which sets the terms for a cease-fire between his jihad army and the State of Israel.

The resolution represents a near-total victory for Hizbullah and its state sponsors Iran and Syria, and an unprecedented defeat for Israel and its ally the United States. This fact is evident both in the text of the resolution and in the very fact that the US decided to sponsor a cease-fire resolution before Israel had dismantled or seriously degraded Hizbullah’s military capabilities.

While the resolution was not passed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter and so does not have the authority of law, in practice it makes it all but impossible for Israel to defend itself against Hizbullah aggression without being exposed to international condemnation on an unprecedented scale.

I find her to be too pessimistic for my tastes, but there’s no denying she’s telling the truth in much of her article.

This was not a win for Israel, no matter how Michael Oren spins it to Michael Totten. Hezbullah still exists, is still armed, and is still in southern Lebanon. Hezbullah dictated the Lebanese cease-fire terms. And its sponsors, Iran and Syria, are untouched.

My take on things: The cease-fire is a fragile, temporary thing. War will break out again, and soon.