The first episode is online now, for those of you who missed it.

Time to catch up, and start talking about the show in the comments.

My first question: Anyone out there think that Ando is going to wind up having powers too?

Once again, there are signs that the EU and the US are ready to ignore a terrorist organization’s outright admission that it will not stop terror until the state of Israel is destroyed. Once again, the world utterly ignores that terrorist organization’s leaders own words that explicitly state their goal is to destroy Israel. And once again, the EU and the US decide it’s okay to negotiate with these terrorists, because the Arab-Israeli conflict is what drives ALL the world’s problems. Just ask the Baker Commission. That’s right, every last damned one of them. Global warming, too, no doubt.

Hamas can direct an intifada even if it sits in power, Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Mashaal cautioned on Tuesday, adding that that the hudna (calm), like violence, was a Palestinian tactic in the conflict with Israel.

Even the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank will not move Hamas to recognize Israel, as Palestinian lands would still remain “occupied,” Mashaal told the Lebanese newspaper Al Safir.

According to Israel Radio, Mashaal reiterated threats that if the international community failed to set up a framework for a Palestinian state defined by the 1967 borders within six months and assure refugees’ right of return, the Palestinians would resume their course of “resistance” against Israel.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Mashaal’s words were backed up by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who asserted that in all the time he had served as prime minister, he had never taken steps against Palestinian armed groups or prevented them from carrying out operations.

Speaking at a rally the al-Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, Haniyeh said his government did not condemn resistance but embraced it.

He emphasized that the Palestinian people would not give up a “single grain of the land of Palestine, nor would it relinquish the right of return for Palestinian refugees.”

Haniyeh added that Syrian President Bashar Assad had promised him that all Palestinian security prisoners would be released from Israeli jails.

The reason they want to negotiate? Because of the “humanitarian crisis” going on in Gaza right now. What humanitarian crisis? Why, this one:

Palestinian Authority Planning Minister Samir Abu Aisheh of Hamas said the cash that was brought by Hamas officials was handed over to the PA Finance Ministry. He also revealed that the Hamas-led government has managed to pay 69% of the salaries to the PA’s 160,000 civil servants during the same period.

That’s right, they’re at near-capacity, and the EU is filling in the blanks, but there’s such a humanitarian crisis that the Gazans are perfectly able to smuggle tons of weapons and explosives from Egypt.

This is the most worrisome detail, though:

Meanwhile, sources close to the Hamas-led government claimed that Hamas representatives recently held talks with officials from the US Democratic Party at a secret location.

The sources told the Bethlehem-based Maan News Agency that Hamas representatives have also been holding secret talks with European government officials, including Britain and France.

If true, I want to know which Democrat is conducting foreign affairs with a terrorist group. I wonder how many different laws s/he broke while doing so?

According to the report, Hamas has succeeded in convincing European officials to accept the Islamist movement’s plan for a long-term hudna [truce] with Israel as a substitute for recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

The report quoted sources close to Hamas as saying that the Europeans have bought the idea of solving the Israeli-Arab conflict on the basis of a hudna rather than the principle of land for peace.

The sources claimed that many European governments have shown interest in “flexible” statements by some Hamas leaders lately, including remarks by Syria-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to the effect that his movement was prepared to offer Israel a hudna in return for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

And again, let me repeat from the quotes above:

Even the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank will not move Hamas to recognize Israel, as Palestinian lands would still remain “occupied,” Mashaal told the Lebanese newspaper Al Safir.

[...] Speaking at a rally the al-Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, Haniyeh said his government did not condemn resistance but embraced it.

He emphasized that the Palestinian people would not give up a “single grain of the land of Palestine, nor would it relinquish the right of return for Palestinian refugees.”

Haniyeh added that Syrian President Bashar Assad had promised him that all Palestinian security prisoners would be released from Israeli jails.

The Baker Study Group wants Israel to negotiate with the man who is supplying Hamas and Hezbullah with weapons to murder Israelis. The study group wants Israel to accept a “hudna.” The study group thinks that something has changed in the way that palestininians regard Israel.

It has not.

Unless you count their delusion that they can now win a war with Israel, and drive out the Jews.

War is coming. A big one, a bad one, an ugly one in which there will be many casualties on both sides. But it is not going to be a war the palestinians will win.

Not unless the world acts physically to restrain Israel from defending herself.

Which, unfortunately, is a distinct possibility.

I await the coming spring with extreme trepidation. Armies move in the spring. Watch the events of the winter carefully, because I think the spring of 2007 is going to be far bloodier than the spring of 2002, when Israel suffered as many as three suicide bombings in one day. This time, the terrorists have rockets. And Israel’s leaders don’t seem to have the will to stop it before it happens.

Besides the fact that Amy Sherman-Palladino is no longer in charge of it, that is.

Last night’s episode contained Emily Gilmore using the word “snarkiness” when describing Lorelai’s sense of humor.

Emily would not use “snarkiness.”

I will not be buying season 7. As far as I’m concerned, the Gilmore Girls ended last year.

Jackie Mason sued the FauxJews for using his likeness in their conversion literature. He agreed to a settlement. Too bad. He should have taken them to the cleaners.

Mr. Mason, the stand-up comedian whose act often includes pithy observations about Jewish life in America, sued Jews for Jesus, an evangelical Christian group, last August over a pamphlet that showed a caricature of him on its cover and the message: “Jackie Mason … A Jew for Jesus?”

“We would have liked to get some money for Israel out of this,” Mr. Mason’s lawyer, Raoul Felder, said yesterday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, minutes after both sides announced a settlement.

“I would’ve taken some money for Japan, just to teach them a lesson,” Mr. Mason chimed in. “I would’ve settled for a couple of shirts, a malted.”

Mr. Mason, an ordained rabbi, said in the lawsuit that the pamphlet “risks alienating his admirers and his audience and additionally damaging his act.” He had sought millions of dollars in damages, which Mr. Felder said would have been for Israel, not for Mr. Mason’s personal use. Instead, he settled for a three-paragraph letter from David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus, offering “sincere apologies for any distress” the pamphlet had caused.

Even their letter of settlement is offensive.

“We are willing in the interest of ahavat yisrael and shalom to retire this particular evangelistic tract,” the letter said, using the Hebrew words for “love of Israel” and “peace.”

But Jackie gets ‘em good:

Still, Mr. Mason, seemingly unable to speak without the pacing and punch lines of a stand-up comedy act, said the apology was recognition that “you can’t be a table and a chair.”

“You’re either a Jew or a Gentile,” he said. “As far as I know, I never converted. How come they know something about me that I don’t know? It’s like saying you’re a black man for the Ku Klux Klan.”

And then he gets them some more.

At which point Mr. Brickner, who had been straining at the bit in the courthouse hallway while listening to Mr. Mason opine about the case, could not restrain himself any longer.

“We wanted you to think about it, because it’s the best Jew that ever lived,” he said.

Retorted Mr. Mason: “Jesus didn’t believe in Judaism; that’s the reason he became a Christian.”

Heh. Not really the point, but I’d have paid money to see that exchange. On the other hand, the Times writer was shocked, shocked, that Jackie took offense.

Sounding irked by the interruption, Mr. Mason added: “I don’t remember asking him to debate with me. That means we settled that case, but we didn’t settle this one.”

It wasn’t the interruption, Anemona Hartocollis. (Yes, that’s the writer’s name.) It’s the religion, stupid. What part about “ordained as a rabbi” don’t you get?

Love this last bit, where, although the FauxJews insist they would have won on Constitutional grounds, they explained why they caved:

In a preliminary order last month, Judge Berman said that Mr. Mason’s lawsuit did not seem likely to succeed on the merits because he is a public figure and noncommercial religious evangelism is constitutionally protected.

But the organization’s lawyer, Paul A. Winick, said Jews for Jesus settled to avoid the cost of more litigation, including a possible jury trial. Mr. Felder contended that it was the specter of a jury trial that scared Jews for Jesus into settling. “Jackie would say it very well in front of a New York jury,” Mr. Felder said.

I’d have paid money to see that trial, too. But score one for Jackie Mason, who bitchslapped the FauxJews once in the lawsuit, and again face to face. Kol hakavod, Jackie.

Hezbullah has refused point-blank to offer any details over the health of the kidnapped soldiers. It seems they have good reason: They may very well be dead.

During the war in Lebanon this summer, the army had prepared a report about the kidnapping on Israel’s border. Sources said that according to the report, Regev and Goldwasser were severely wounded in the course of the kidnapping, and were in a state that warranted immediate medical attention.

The report’s findings were brought to the attention of the captives’ family. Shlomo Goldwasser, Ehud’s father, told the PM that if it turns out that the sons had been killed, there was no point in negotiating over the return of their bodies.

“Israel should not pay for receiving the bodies,” Goldwasser said. “If the sons aren’t alive, there shouldn’t be any deal at all.”

Ehud Olmert has said recently that Israel will not pay an “excessive price” for the two soldiers.

At this point, I’m inclined to believe they are dead. Israel has already traded live palestinian terrorists for dead soldiers’ bodies, so Hezbullah evidently thought they could get away with it again. Apparently, not this time.

Kenneth Stein, a Carter Center Fellow of 23 years, has resigned from the Center due to Jimmy Carter’s just-published anti-Israel screed, “Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.”

President Carter’s book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook. Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making. The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary. In due course, I shall detail these points and reflect on their origins.

The decade I spent at the Carter Center (1983-1993) as the first permanent Executive Director and as the first Fellow were intellectually enriching for Emory as an institution, the general public, the interns who learned with us, and for me professionally. Setting standards for rigorous interchange and careful analyses spilled out to the other programs that shaped the Center’s early years. There was mutual respect for all views; we carefully avoided polemics or special pleading. This book does not hold to those standards. My continued association with the Center leaves the impression that I am sanctioning a series of egregious errors and polemical conclusions which appeared in President Carter’s book. I can not allow that impression to stand.

Via Glenn.

Once again, the world media is passing along Iran’s message of Jew-hatred to the world. The anti-Semites of the world are currently in ecstasy seeing a so-called “scientific” process—that doesn’t seem to include any evidence that is already in existence—about whether or not the Holocaust happened.

Iran, whose president has described the Holocaust as a “myth,” said Tuesday it will hold a conference to discuss the evidence of the World War II genocide.

The two-day conference scheduled for next week was initiated by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi said.

“The president simply asked whether an event called the Holocaust has actually taken place … No rational response was ever given to Ahmadinejad’s questions,” Mohammadi said, explaining the reason for the conference.

The conference is yet another step in Ahmadinejad’s public campaign against Israel. He has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

The Guardian goes even farther than the AP and delves more deeply into the bogus conference:

Participants will consider documentary, pictorial, physical and demographic evidence in what Iranian officials depict as an academic investigation to establish the Holocaust’s authenticity and whether the reported number of victims was exaggerated. Organisers say it will include submissions for and against. It will also focus on the plight of the Palestinians.

The conference will have six panel discussions and an open forum. It will discuss the capacity of Nazi death camps and the impact of the second world war on other national and ethnic groups. Iranian officials say Jewish suffering is played up at the expense of other victims. Manouchehr Mohammadi, the foreign ministry’s research and education officer, said the conference was intended as a platform for open discussion of the Holocaust, which Iran claims is denied in the west.

“Our aim is to scientifically study the Holocaust and listen to both sides before reaching a conclusion,” Mr Mohammadi said. “This issue has a crucial role regarding the west’s policies towards the countries of the Middle East, especially the Palestinians. Iran isn’t against or for. We weren’t involved in this event so we can be a neutral judge. It is important for us to know the answer so that we can process our stances to issues in this region. If we conclude that the Holocaust happened, we will admit it but we are still going to ask why Palestinians have to pay.” He said it would not be a forum for anti-semites or neo-Nazis, and rabbis would attend. “Our policy doesn’t mean we want to defend the crimes of Hitler.”

Yeah, that’s the ticket: A scientific forum about the Holocaust that focuses on the plight of the palestinians. Yep. That won’t be an excuse for Israel-bashing at all.

Tell me, why is this so important that the AP seems to think it’s worth covering? It’s crap. The conference is crap. It’s naked Jew-hatred. It is helping to spread Iranian anti-Semitism farther than it would be able to go if the world stopped listening to the raving lunatic who is currently in Iran’s presidency.

David Duke and Pat Buchanan couldn’t be happier about stories like these. And the news media plays right into Ahmadinejad’s hands, giving him far more publicity than these disgusting shows of Jew-hatred deserve.

I am SO glad I changed my mind about going into journalism as a career.

You’ve all heard the phrase, right? “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

Israel’s leaders are living it.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that she detected “signs of change” in the attitude of the Hamas-led Palestinian leadership thanks to pressure from foreign powers.

“Almost a year after the arrival of Hamas, we are starting to see signs of change, attributable in part to pressure from the international community,” Livni told reporters at the start of a two-day visit to Paris.

Livni urged the international community to remain “firm” in order to “reinforce” Mahmud Abbas, the moderate president of the Palestinian Authority.

Let’s see what kind of change in behavior we can see.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh held talks in Doha, Qatar on Friday.

The Islamic Republic News Agency reported Saturday Ahmadinejad saying, “As everybody knows, the Zionist regime was created to establish dominion of arrogant states over the region and to enable the enemy to penetrate the heart Muslim land.”

Saying the Israeli regime was inherently a “threat,” and was “on the verge of disappearing”
Haniyeh praised the support of the Iranian government and nation for the cause of the Palestinian nation. “The Iranian nation’s brilliant stand in the rightful battles of the Palestinians encourages them and signifies their deep understanding of Islamic principles,” Iran’s official state-run news agency reported.

“The Intifada (uprising) of the Palestinian nation will continue until the cause of the Palestinians is materialized and Al-Quds Al-Sharif (Jerusalem) is liberated,” added Haniyeh.

And oh yeah—that was from a news article three days ago—in the Jerusalem Post.

Olmert wants to offer the palestinians a state, even as rockets continue to rain down on Sderot, on the insistence that palestinians want to live in peace with Israel. Peretz did everything he could to sabotage the war in Lebanon, which wasn’t hard, as the man is as unqualified to be Minister of Defense as I am to be the president’s Press Secretary.

Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil. That appears to be the policy of the Israeli leadership when it comes to her enemies these days.

There is something very, very wrong with the world right now.