Two hospitals in northwestern England will be offering head-to-toe gowns for Muslim women who request them, officials said Tuesday.

The gown is not as forbidding or restrictive for the women as it could appear from the picture in the article.

Jacob said the gown could be adapted to show a user’s whole face, or to expose only a strip across the eyeline.

So there is plenty of room for self-expression. Only - it is not clear why the designers did not spare a thought to the possibly mandatory attachments to the gown. How about all the infrastructure that has to support, say, an oxygen mask and all the other incoming and outgoing tubes?

On the other hand, the new gown could cause a backlash the designers may have not thought about. According to this article, “One in six people in Britain’s capital have admitted moving seats on public transport to avoid a passenger they think is Muslim, according to a survey published.” One in six is not that horrible yet, but imagine the awkwardness of the situation when your spouse who is going to give birth (for example) starts a terrible fuss instead, unwilling to share the hospital room with a person in such a gown. We can’t have this kind of trouble, can we?

So, instead of singling out the Muslim patients for this garb, I propose to enforce it as a mandatory gown for all the patients - male ones included. The gown looks fairly unisex, and what is good for the goose…

Oh, and one oversight is clear from the picture of the gown - there is a need for a card holder for the patient’s name. Unless there is some privacy law in UK that…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Wow, not only are the civil servants revolting, but even Hamas staff is revolting (yes, in that way, too):

Staff from the Palestinian prime minister’s office went on strike Wednesday, joining a widespread work stoppage by civil servants demanding overdue salaries from the Hamas-led government.

About 30 workers joined dozens of other striking civil servants, holding up banners that said, “We want our salaries, we have a right to feed our children.”

So what will the EU do?

Give them money, of course. Can’t have the “democratically elected” government of terrorists thrown out of office now, can we?

In a vaguely-worded story, evidence that Gilad Shalit is still alive has been relayed.

London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Wednesday that the Egyptian authorities have transferred to Israel eyewitness accounts proving that kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit is still alive.

According to the report, the Egyptian sources who relayed the information refused to disclose details regarding the eyewitness accounts, but did say that Egyptian authorities urged Shalit’s kidnappers not to harm the soldier.

The report said Egypt asked the kidnappers to expedite Shalit’s release and not take an extreme position concerning possible prisoner exchange deals under Egyptian mediation.

According to the sources, there are elements outside the Palestinian territories who ‘are trying to intervene and complicate matters.’ They said a senior Israeli official is scheduled to visit Cairo in the coming days in the framework of the ongoing efforts to end the crisis.

Gee, I wonder who those elements outside the terrortories [sic] could be? Let me think, let me think… ah! Rhymes with “Iran.”

Interesting, though, that Egypt is warning against trying to trade Gilad for too many prisoners. But then, Egypt wants to be seen as the moderate nation that can deal with Israel. Helps keep Mubarak in power.

On the heels of the many proclamations by Iran’s president that the “Zionist regime” should not exist, we have more examples of Israel Derangement Syndrome (as well as Bush Derangement Syndrome) coming from the Nazi wannabes:

Tehran, Iran, Sep. 06 – The Supreme Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the Bush Administration and the Israeli security service Mossad of ordering the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, DC.

“The events of September 11 were ordered by U.S. [officials] and Mossad so that they could carry out their strategy of pre-emption and warmongering and unipolarisation in order to dominate the Middle East”, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told military commanders on Tuesday. His comments were reported by the state-run news agency ISNA.

[...] The IRGC general said that the Lebanese militia Hezbollah had defeated Israel during their recent war. “After many years, the political and military image and hollow might of the Zionist regime was broken and the real power of Hezbollah fighters was proven. Thus, Hezbollah defeated Israel”.

He described Washington and Tel Aviv as two “inter-continental threats” against Tehran. “The U.S. must be livid at Iran because of its disgraceful defeats in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. Regarding [Iran’s] nuclear dossier, it might try to create circumstances so that slowly but surely economic and political pressure is applied against Iran by the [United Nations] Security Council”.

War is coming. Iran is slowly but surely laying the groundwork for another attack on Israel. Remember, the first step is to delegitimize and dehumanize your enemy. Iran has done that quite well. By insisting, over and over again, that the only reason Israel exists is because of the Holocaust, and then insisting, over and over again, that the Holocaust never happened, Iran sets the groundwork for attacking the “illegitimate” state. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words are repeated by most of the Arab and Muslim world, as well as much of the non-Muslim world.

War is coming.