Iran’s Madman-In-Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be speaking at the United Nations shortly.

The United Nations streams the annual “debates” at http://www.un.org/webcast/ in RealPlayer format.

The text of his speech along with a video clip of his speech will probably be posted at http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/61/index.shtml sometime afterwards.

He might think of it as a speech, but I think of it as a confession (PDF format)

On one side, supporters of Israel feel it is harshly judged, by standards that are not applied to its enemies, and too often this is true, particularly in some UN bodies.

And then he goes on to harshly judge Israel by standards that are not applied to its enemies by whining about disproportionate force.

No, really. Check the document. And then when the streaming video is up, get out a stopwatch and see how long it takes for him to reveal that he is one of those “some UN bodies.”

What is disproportionate force, Kofi? Have you looked outside and seen what your police escorts and bodyguards and motorcades are doing to Manhattan traffic? Is that considered disproportionate, too, or is that just “necessary precautions” against potential attacks by those wishing to see you wiped off the map and scattered like dust?

Just to show where the leash trails back to, he also sneaks in an the Arabist/Islamist reference to “occupied and confiscated land” where he hopes the apologists will think “Gaza, West Bank, and Golan” when we all know he’s thinking “Every square inch.”

He babbles about the horrors in Darfur, but he could just as well be talking about Rwanda. Or Kosovo. Or East Timor. Or other places where his reign as head of Peacekeeping Operations caused millions of innocents to die.

Rotten to the core, rotten to the top.

You know what? UN Representative John Bolton was wrong about one thing… taking out just the top floors.

It’s time to knock down all the floors of the HQ building. Every damn one of them, down to the sub-basement levels and garages.

No more League Of Nations 1.1. It’s time for a League of Democratic and Civilized Nations.

Get your tissues ready. (This time, the Ha’aretz story is nowhere near as well-written as the AP’s. It’s usually the other way around.)

JERUSALEM (AP) - Hilda Shlick thought she lost nearly all her family in the Holocaust - until her Internet-savvy grandsons located her 81-year-old brother in Canada.

“After 65 years, I have found the sister who I love,” Simon Glasberg said Monday in heavily accented English, his eyes filling with tears. “I can’t stop kissing her.”

Using the database of Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, two of Shlick’s grandchildren, Benny and David, began unearthing a mystery spanning six decades and three continents.

While improved technology in recent years has made the task of tracking Holocaust survivors easier, fewer and fewer survivors remain as each year passes.

Scanning the database, the grandsons, both in their 20s, discovered an entry erroneously stating their grandmother had perished half a century earlier. That entry led them to other surviving relatives, who eventually brought about the siblings’ emotional reunion Friday.

When Glasberg, who lives near Ottawa, Canada, saw his gray-haired little sister for the first time, he recognized her immediately, he said.

“I felt I couldn’t talk. I just cried,” he said. “You don’t understand, 65 years …” His voice trailed off.

Shlick, 75, said she too was overwhelmed by the discovery.

“For 65 years, I lived thinking I had no family besides one sister,” she said.

Since Friday’s reunion, the family bond has clearly been re-established, with the two elderly siblings playfully joking and reminiscing in a hearty mixture of Russian and Yiddish. Their large families have quickly become close.

The family bond never goes away. Once a sibling, always a sibling, even if you deny it.

The last time the two saw each other was in 1941, when the Glasberg family of Chernowitz, Romania, was separated after the Nazis invaded.

Hilda, then 10, escaped to Uzbekistan with her older sister Bertha. The rest of the family - parents Henia and Benzion, and brothers Simon, Mark, Karol and Eddie - stayed in Romania, finding refuge in a basement. The fate of one sister, Pepi, remains unknown. She disappeared and is presumed to have been killed by the Nazis.

If I knew the right blessing to say over this reunion, I’d say it. Perhaps I’ll have my students ask the rabbi this afternoon.

No, this is not the title of a mediocre movie. This is a battle cry issued by a character known as Anjem Choudary, who lives in UK and enjoys to the hilt the freedom of expression granted by this most liberal and enlightened monarchy. Mr Choudary holds very strong opinions regarding people who should or should not waste the oxygen supply on our planet. Here he is, in the center of the picture, using a microphone to make some of his opinions known to the public.

Oh, and lest I forget, Mr. Choudary is a lawyer in addition to his other talents, so his opinion is especially weighty.

Yesterday he said: “The Muslims take their religion very seriously and non-Muslims must appreciate that and that must also understand that there may be serious consequences if you insult Islam and the prophet.

“Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment.”

He added: “I am here have a peaceful demonstration. But there may be people in Italy or other parts of the world who would carry that out.

Being a lawyer, he obviously tried to sound as if sending a general message, but the quote above is quite damning. I am sure, though, that in a British court of law he will find enough loopholes to walk out free. And, in any case, nobody is even trying to bring him before a judge. The response of police is amazing:

A Scotland Yard spokesman said of his comments: “We have had no complaints about this. There were around 100 people at the demonstration. It passed off peacefully and there were no arrests.”

Obviously it must take a stronger bite in somebody’s arse to wake somebody up. On the other hand, the man is right: there were no complaints, so it seems that the citizens of UK are comfortable with Mr. Choudary’s hate speech.

I am not in the habit of recommending capital punishment*, unlike our learned lawyer. However, a few years in the nick should do wonders to Mr. Choudary’s disposition. And better soon, so his blood pressure could get back to normal quicker.

(*) Unless the Elders’ duties proscribe administering such, of course…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any sillier in Gaza, now the thugs with guns are beating up the thugs with cameras:

Gunmen stormed an office of a Palestinian news service under the control of President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, beating up one reporter and vandalizing equipment, witnesses and the news agency said.

The attack in Gaza coincided with rising tension between Abbas’s Fatah movement and Hamas over the killing last week of a senior intelligence official loyal to the president, a shooting that has further complicated efforts to form a unity government.

Witnesses said unidentified gunmen smashed a computer and destroyed other equipment at the official WAFA news agency office in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis.

The agency said one reporter was attacked and taken to hospital for treatment.

While there was no claim of responsibility, the gunmen accused WAFA of biased media coverage. Wafa has not blamed the attack on any faction.

WAFA not biased? What - are they saying that WAFA isn’t calling for Israel’s destruction and promoting jihad enough?

Hey, this isn’t fair. The Pope insulted Jews and nobody is writing outraged editorials in the New York Times about it.

HAVING just stirred up a global storm by quoting from a text fiercely critical of Islam, it might have been expected that Pope Benedict would avoid anything alluding to another religion that could be open to misinterpretation.

Yet minutes after saying he was “deeply sorry” about the reaction to his earlier remarks, he cited a passage from the New Testament highlighting the gulf between Christian and Jewish attitudes to Jesus’ crucifixion.

The pontiff appeared to risk causing fresh controversy during his speech on Sunday when he cited a passage from St Paul that risked being interpreted as hostile — not by Muslims, but by Jews. It described the crucifixion of Jesus as a “scandal for the Jews”.

Where are the cries of outrage? Where are the calls of death to the Pope? Why aren’t the Jews burning down churches and murdering Christians?

He said he wanted to comment on two recent Roman Catholic festivals relating to the crucifixion. What, the Pope asked, was the point of exalting the cross, a tool of execution?

In reply to his rhetorical question, he quoted a verse from St Paul, the New Testament author most often accused of anti-Semitism. In the Italian translation, used by the Pope, it runs as follows: “We preach the crucified Christ — a scandal for the Jews, a folly for the pagans.”

See? How insulting can he get? He called the crucifixion a scandal for the Jews! Everyone knows the Romans crucified Christ; crucifixion was never a method of Jewish execution.

Wait, wait: Here’s the Jewish outrage. It’s buried at the very end of the article. Hold on to your hats, it’s really vicious.

Jewish representatives expressed surprise at the latest incursion into sensitive territory. One said: “It does seem strange to come up with that particular quote at this particular time.”

No, really, it gets worse!

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, member of the Council of Christians and Jews, which was set up to oppose prejudice, said: “He’s really talking about veneration, not about the Jews. We can’t alter the sayings of the past. But we can be careful about how we use them, especially in view of the religious offence that can be taken, even if never intended.”

Take that, Pope! Betcha you’ll never insult Jews ever again.

But wait! The Australian newspaper cut the Guardian’s original last paragraphs, which are even more strident!

“We can’t alter the sayings of the past. But we can be careful about how we use them, especially in view of the religious offence that can be taken, even if never intended. The Pope has every right to quote his own holy texts, but it may be unwise in the current climate to choose those which relate to other faiths.

“However, it is especially important that anyone who does protest does so verbally, not physically, otherwise they put themselves even more at fault.”

There. You see what happens when you mess with the Jews? We anxiously await your many apologies, Pope.

I intend to write a simply vicious letter to the editor.