So, what do you think the Islamic Caliphate of Palestine would look like? I think it would look something like this:

The Hamas-run Education Ministry has ordered an anthology of Palestinian folk tales pulled from school libraries and destroyed, reportedly over mild sexual innuendo, officials said Monday, in the most direct attempt by the Islamic militants to impose their beliefs on Palestinian society.

[...] The Education Ministry declined immediate comment. A senior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the issue with reporters, confirmed that 1,500 copies of the book had been pulled from school libraries and destroyed.

[...] However, in recent months the Hamas-controlled ministries have begun forcing women to don headscarves to enter. And two years ago, Hamas officials in charge of the West Bank town of Qalqiliya sparked fears of a culture crackdown by banning a local music festival, arguing that the mingling of men and women at such an event was “haram,” or forbidden by Islam.

In a letter sent to the Nablus school district last month, the Education Ministry said ‘Speak Bird, Speak Again’ must be removed within a week, and asked school officials to notify the ministry once they had complied. The letter did not explain why the book was considered objectionable.

So, what is this fearsome book?

The 400-page anthology of folk tales narrated by Palestinian women was first published in English in 1989 by the University of California at Berkeley. It was put together by Sharif Kanaana, a novelist and anthropology professor at the West Bank’s Bir Zeit University, and by Ibrahim Muhawi, a teacher of Arabic literature and the theory of translation.

Just imagine what they’d do with “Heather Has Two Mommies.”

These are the people that the world expects Israel to deal with, ultimately. Shyeah. Because they’re so eminently reasonable, they have to destroy a children’s book because—well, they never did say, did they? But people made an educated guess.

Kanaana said that two of the 45 tales contained what some might consider vague sexual innuendo, referring to body parts in colloquial Arabic. “This is our heritage, this is our life,” he said of the folk tales.

Well, hey. You voted for them, people. You made your bed. Now lie in it. Segregated by sex, of course.

The AP reports that the EU is adopting a wait-and-see approach to the new PA unity government shell game.

The European Union will maintain its wait-and-see policy toward a Palestinian unity government until Hamas and Fatah agree on a division of Cabinet posts and finalize a policy toward Israel, a top official said Monday.

“We have to see results,” External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers. “We have been waiting for so many months to have a national unity government … a few more weeks will also be borne by us.”

Ferrero-Waldner dismissed suggestions from France and others that the EU should move more quickly to offer early encouragement to the new Palestinian Cabinet perhaps even without the condition that the militant Hamas movement fulfill international demands on recognizing Israel.

“We simply cannot decide yet when, or even if, we will be able to re-engage with the new Palestinian government of national unity because we will need to see its program and we will need to see its actions,” she said.

That all sounds very well, but history has shown the world to be all-too-ready to deal with terrorists and murderers whose real aim is the destruction of the Jewish State.

Meantime, the AP editors missed a word, and the resulting paragraph seems to foreshadow the EU’s true intent:

Last month, Abbas toured European capitals asking for Western support of the incoming coalition government. The moderate leader said the government if not Hamas would be committed to rejecting violence, international law and to meeting all previous agreements with Israel.

That bolded phrase? Well, the comma is placed so that it appears to be saying that the PA will reject violence—and international law, and all previous agreements with Israel. The word “respecting” before international law would have been a better way to write it.

So, do you think the American anti-war fringe is going to claim that the Brits are lying about Iranian involvement in Iraq, too?

A missile which brought down an RAF Lynx helicopter and killed five British Service personnel was smuggled into Iraq by Iranian agents, an official inquiry into the attack will reveal.

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that a British Army Board of Inquiry (BOI) into the events surrounding last May’s attack will state that the weapon, a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile known as an SA14 Strella, came from Iran.

The attack, which was also responsible for the death of Flt Lt Sarah Mulvihill, the first British servicewoman to be killed on active service since the Second World War, appears to provide further evidence of Iran’s direct involvement in the deaths of British troops serving in Iraq.

[...] Although the weapon is cheap to produce and easy to assemble, operators need some skill to use it effectively, suggesting that the missile was fired either by an Iranian agent or by someone who had been trained by a skilled soldier.

[...] The Lynx Mark 7 was travelling low over central Basra on a sortie to familiarise Wg Cdr Coxen with the dangers that his pilots might face. Although it was believed at first that the helicopter had been brought down by a “lucky hit” from a rocket-propelled grenade, British troops found discarded missile parts in a nearby building after the incident.

The Iranians are at war with us, and have been since 1979. Time to stop pretending that they’re not.

What a surprise: Given half a chance, Arabs accuse Israelis of another massacre. Only this one is utterly false.

Ben Eliezer provided a detailed explanation to Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram of why the reports were erroneous.

“In the past few days the Arab press, and in particular the Egyptian press, has reported information claimed in a (Israeli) film that the Shaked commando unit under Fuad Ben Eliezer killed 250 Egyptian soldiers in the Six Day War 40 years ago.

“It is true that in one battle in that war, there was a confrontation between soldiers from the Palestinian fedayeen regiment, which operated in the Gaza Strip against Israel, and the unit which I commanded. They were not ‘murdered’, as was claimed, but were killed in battle.

“The order I got was to wage battle against the Palestinian fedayeen regiment that was operating from the Strip, paralyzing southern Israel and causing dozens of casualties among the soldiers in my unit and in the IDF.

“To remove any doubt, an examination of the Southern Command’s intelligence document, dated June 4, 1967, which by my request was transferred from the IDF’s historical archive and details the deployment of enemy forces in the Strip, proves that the forces were the Palestinian Fedayeen battalion and not Egyptian troops.

Ha’aretz has more:

Edelist said in remarks broadcast Monday that the media reports misrepresented the material in the film. He said the dead were not Egyptian POWs, but Palestinian fedayoun fighters, and that they were killed in battle, not executed.

“The Egyptians are speaking of murder, of 250 of their soldiers.” In fact, Edelist told Army Radio, “This was not murder, this was in the course of a battle.”

Edelist said the Shaked commandos were fighting a Palestinian commando battalion, with which the Shaked unit had fought a number of gun battles prior to the war.

“What happened was that there were (Israeli) fighters waging battle against a retreating (Palestinian) commando battalion,” Edelist said. “During this battle, you could say there was excessive use of force, (but) it was all in the context of war: Not prisoners,
not prisoner-of-war camps, not people who put their hands up.”

According to Edelist, hardline opposition elements in Egypt had misrepresented the facts and the message of the film in order to attack Israel’s peace with Egypt.

And one Egyptian lawmaker is calling for war with Israel. Yes, that peace treaty is still working out very well, isn’t it?

On Sunday, Egypt’s deputy foreign minister for legal affairs, Abdel Aziz Seif al-Nasr, said Egypt had summoned Israeli ambassador Shalom Cohen to demand an explanation for the contents of the documentary. Two ruling party lawmakers demanded the ambassador’s expulsion, calling him a dog and an apostate. Another called in a special parliamentary session for a declaration of war on Israel.

Funny how when a terrorist blows himself up in a crowded market, the anti-Israel crowd is quick to leap on the term “resistance.” But when Egyptians and palestinians are killed in battle, those selfsame people are quick to scream “MURDER!”

What time is it, kiddies? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time.