Khaled Mashaal, the man who should have been executed as a terrorist leader but instead is feted in Syria and other Israel-hating nations, has told Noam Shalit, Gilad’s father, that the reason his son is still in the hands of terrorists is because Israel won’t give Hamas enough jailed terrorists as ransom for Gilad.

Yes, really.

Hamas’ politburo Khaled Mashaal on Friday accused Israel of deliberately hindering mediated talks with his group over the release of an Israeli soldier kidnapped near the Gaza Strip last June.

Speaking in Cairo after meetings with Egyptian officials about a possible prisoner exchange deal with Israel, Mashaal called on the soldier’s father, Noam Shalit, to exert pressure on the Israeli government to finalize a prisoner exchange deal.

Corp Gilad Shalit was kidnapped on June 25 last year in a cross border attack by gunmen from Hamas and other factions.

“Exert pressure on the Israeli side that is hindering the finalization of the deal,” he called on Noam Shalit, referring to the release of hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for his son.

I have a better idea. Send a hellfire missile up Mashaal’s ass. And then send another one for Ismail Haniyeh, and pretty much all the rest of Hamas. Then take out Islamic Jihad. And Baby Assad’s summer palace.

Now that would be exerting the right kind of pressure.

Or Bi’ilin, or Be’ilin, or howeverthefrig you spell it.

On the second anniversary of the weekly anti-fence riots, protestors—rioted.

Five protesters where injured on Friday in clashes with security forces near the Palestinian village of Bilin, where villagers and left-wing protesters staged a demonstration to mark the second anniversary of their campaign against the security fence section there.

Hundreds of Israeli and foreign activists joined dozens of Palestinian villagers to mark the passing of two years since their struggle began against the expropriation of Palestinian land to build the fence and expand a Jewish settlement in the area.

Take a look at the phrases in bold. Do you see something interesting?

Shyeah. It’s all ISM and B’tselem tools doing the rioting. You know, those people who insist they’re marching for peace. Looks like they’re not keeping their promise to crack down on ISM tools sneaking into Israel.

Protesters said Israeli army soldiers and Border Guard policemen attacked them when they approached the fence using stun and teargas grenades.

One of the protesters, an Israeli, was injured by a teargas grenade, activists said.

The army said soldiers spotted a number of protesters spraying their comrades with red spray to make it look as if they had been injured by army and police fire.

What? They would lie about being injured? Say it isn’t so! Because it’s not like the military doesn’t warn them that they are trespassing in a closed military zone and order them to stay back. You can see that, in fact, on this video, in which the narrator says the IDF gave them no warning and just started launching stun grenades and firing on them. This is immediately after showing the army telling the protestors that they’re trespassing and must stop.

In LoonyLeftyLaLaLand, that constitutes “no warning.”

It astonishes me that they can make these claims in spite of clear evidence to the contrary, but then, when you live in LoonyLeftyLaLaLand, and you are told that you are trespassing in a closed military zone, it doesn’t matter. Because you have the right to be there. Because your cause is just.

I would also point out that these creeps bring fence-cutters and try to rip down the fence when they get close to it. They’ve also thrown rocks and objects at the military, causing one to lose an eye. But they’re “peaceful.”

The JPost says ten of them got roughed up at this week’s protest. I’m betting they were all “internationals.”

It is an old story, and I don’t know its source:

A professor of anthropology visits a Bedouin camp to investigate this or another habit of the tribe. Feeling thirsty, he looks around for a well and finds it. Near the well he observes (professors usually observe, you know…) a donkey with a bell on its neck walking around a pole and powering a water pump via a system of pulleys, levers and whatnot attached to it. The donkey walks, the bell dingles, the water gurgles - a sweet country idyll, in short.

Suddenly professor is struck by a thought. He looks around and finds an old Bedouin resting in the shadow of a palm tree a way off. Approaching the elder, professor asks, after a usual ceremony of introduction and all the mandatory exchange of polite questions: “Tell me, wise elder: that donkey - what would happen if it stops walking around the pole and instead just shakes its head from time to time? After all, no one is watching it.”

“You see,” says the wise Bedouin, “that donkey here is not that clever. If it were clever enough to do what you say, it would be already a professor in a university”.

And the reason I was reminded of that story is a new “investigative report” on the human rights abuses in the occupied territories by Israel. The report is issued by one John Dugard, a South African law professor who is the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories. The report is quite long, some of it is true, some of it is based on the say so of the people the learned professor interviewed, nothing of it is new.

No, Israel is not lily white, I am not even trying to hint at this possibility.

But the report, besides not contributing a iota of new information, continues the line of endless “Israeli apartheid” sound bites. It is especially poignant coming from a white South African (some kind of guilt transfer or what?). And the way our professor, not even being an anthropologist, comes to the “apartheid” label is:

After describing the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, with closed zones, demolitions and preference given to settlers on roads, with building rights and by the army, he said: “Can it seriously be denied that the purpose of such action is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them?

How exactly Jews and Arabs are split into two racial groups is up to professor to explain. Probably a short course in anthropology will not go amiss in his case. There is another pearl of wisdom, this time squarely in professor’s professional bailiwick:

Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report.

Interesting what would happen if professor Dugard were trying a case in a court of law and attempting to prove someone guilt (or innocence) by inference? I am afraid that both the case and the professor’s law diploma will be thrown out into the nearest garbage bin.

And what would you say about the objectiveness of an “investigator” that dismisses the arguments of the other side off hand in the following manner:

He dismissed Israel’s argument that the sole purpose of the vast concrete and steel West Bank barrier is for security. “It has become abundantly clear that the wall and the checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers,” he said.

In fact, it is not only the manner of the dismissal, but the language in the quote above, that stink to high heaven. It is proved beyond doubt that the (yet unfinished) border fence has already drastically reduced the terrorist acts inside the Green Line. And not a week passes without a wannabe martyr or two being caught at a checkpoint. So whom exactly our professor is calling “settlers”? Isn’t he adopting the Hezbollah lexicon that refers to all 6 million Israelis as “settlers”, by any chance?

Israel is certainly heavy-handed in its behavior and there is much to be improved in our treatment of Palestinians. To call what Israeli does “apartheid” and to ignore the basic right of the Israeli citizens to be safe is just another link in the endless UN-manufactured chain of sounds that serve no positive goal. Aside of providing our worthy professor with a useful occupation - albeit a monotonous one, somewhat similart to the one described in the donkey’s story above.

So - shake your neck again, professor…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

The Gallup Organization polled Americans on which countries they like and dislike, and which most greatly affect U.S. interests directly. Israel scored the big one, being declared both favorable and a “vital friend.”

WASHINGTON - A Gallup poll surveying US opinion on geopolitics singles out Israel as only foreign nation Americans feel favorably toward and also say that what happens there is vitally important to the US.

Americans remain most favorable towards English-speaking countries – Canada (92 percent view it as mostly favorable), Australia (89 percent) and Great Britain (also 89 percent). Additional countries the majority of Americans view favorably are Japan (82), India (69), Israel (63), Mexico (60), Egypt (60), Russia (53) percent and Jordan (51).

Among the least favorable? Look at who’s number four.

The country viewed as least-favorable by Americans is Iran (9 percent), followed by North Korea (12), Iraq (15), Palestinian Authority (16), Syria (21), Afghanistan (23), Cuba (25), Pakistan (28), Saudi Arabia (35), Venezuela (41) and China (48).

Can we have a Nelson here please?

And here’s where Israel scores the lone high value:

The five countries deemed by Americans as the world’s ‘hot spots’ - nations that a majority of Americans view unfavorably and say that what happens in each is “vitally important” to US interests - are Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, and China.

Countries viewed as ‘less relevant enemies’ – unfavorable but not important – are Pakistan (47 percent), Syria (42), Cuba (31) and Venezuela (29).

Of the countries viewed both favorably and important, only Israel was named, with 55 percent of Americans deeming it a ‘vital friend.’

Countries viewed as ‘low-pertinence friends’, favorable but unimportant, are Great Britain (43 percent), Mexico (42), Japan (40), Russia (40), Canada (36) and India (28).

That makes sense. Britain is important to us, but unless it’s taken over by a megalomaniac madman, nothing that happens inside the country will directly affect us. I think that what happens in India is a lot more important than the Gallup respondents do, but they didn’t ask me.

I think this poll is extremely heartening, especially now when so many are trying to delegitimize Israel. And I love that Americans can see through the bullshit they get from the media every day. Israel is training our boys in urban warfare. Israel is helping us defeat the enemy in Iraq. Israel constantly shares information with America on every enemy, from the Soviet Union (the nation that sold the Arab armies advaned weaponry in their vain attempts to defeat Israel) to today’s Islamic terrorists. And Israel will be there if the U.S. needs aid and cover for Iran.

The percentages on that poll also indicate that it is neither the “Jewish lobby” nor the evangelicals in America who are supporting Israel. It’s the majority of the nation. Unless someone out there would like to prove to me that Jews and evangelicals make up 63% of this nation.

A retired military man and eleven other senior citizens fought off three would-be robbers, killing one of them. These folks were all off a Carnival cruise tour in Costa Rica. They got back on their cruise and sailed away, doubtless the hit of the senior circuit.

A tour bus of U.S. senior citizens defended themselves against a group of alleged muggers, sending two of them fleeing and killing a third in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said on Thursday.

One of the tourists _ a retired member of the U.S. military aged about 70 _ put assailant Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose.

The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves. The tourists then drove Segura to the Red Cross where the man was declared dead. The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said.

The tourists left on their Carnival cruise after the incident and Hernandez said authorities do not plan to press any charges against them, saying they acted in self defense.

“They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez said Segura had previous charges against him for assaults.

All it takes is one courageous person to start the pebble rolling down the hill.

What time is it, kids? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time. From an editorial in The Gulf News:

As the international community ponders ways to revive the Middle East peace process, Israel responds by launching its biggest war games in five years on the occupied Golan Heights and threatening to launch another war against Lebanon.

During the past three years, the Israeli government has rejected peace overtures made by Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. Israel occupied the Golan in 1967 and unilaterally annexed it in 1981. More than 15,000 Jewish colonists now live in the area.

Instead of working towards peace, the Israelis embark on provocative exercises, increasing tension in the region. The war games, a naked infringement on Syrian sovereignty, coincide with the Quartet meeting in Berlin. They do not help the efforts exerted to find a way out of the current impasse.

Now, for the cognitive dissonance. Hey! Asshats! Take a look down the Gulf and what do you see?

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards on Tuesday staged a war game simulating an enemy air strike as a second nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier arrived in regional waters in an apparent warning to Teheran.

The Revolutionary Guards land forces fought back the hypothetical air strike from enemy helicopters, planes and missiles with 620 anti-aircraft cannon and shoulder missiles, state television said.

“Today, we are fighting back at all kinds of planes at low and average altitudes,” said Brigader General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the commander of the Guards’ land forces.

“The manoeuvre is exceptional in terms of the number and types of the weapons used. We have used anti-helicopter weapons with a range of more than 10 kilometres (six miles),” he said.

It was the second of the three-day “Power Manoeuvre” exercises involving 3,000 units of the elite force in 16 of Iran’s 30 provinces, the second war games staged by the Guards this month.

Lest you think the Gulf News didn’t notice the Iranian war games, they did. Buried at the end of an article about the U.S. adding more carriers to the Gulf.

All together now: What time is it?

That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time. All’s right with the world.