Yes, that peaceful religion, which wants to implement sharia law everywhere, wants us to look forward to seeing this happen in America someday:

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Two Sudanese women have been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery after a trial in which they had no lawyer and which used Arabic, not their first language, the rights group Amnesty International said.

Sadia Idriss Fadul was sentenced on February 13 and Amouna Abdallah Daldoum on March 6 and their sentences could be carried out at any time, the London-based group said in a statement released late on Monday.

North Sudan implements Islamic sharia law.

“The women had no lawyer during their trial and were not able to defend themselves, as their first languages are those of their ethnic groups,” Amnesty said.

I think the phrase to use here is: Over my dead and buried bones.

Say what you will about Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, there is NOTHING remotely like this in our religions.

So, did anyone ever put up a sign that says, “We gave peace a chance, and it didn’t work. Now it’s time for war.”

Just wondering.

So, if I needed to raise a few thousand dollars for desks for my synagogue’s religious school, do you think I could manage it here?

My class next year will have fifteen students. I don’t like the whole “round table” idea of teaching to begin with. I think you have more of a classroom experience when you have children in desks. I believe that it’s a large part of the current problem of the students calling public school “real school” (a practice which will get them negatives after a warning from me) when referring to it during religious school. (That’s usually after I tell them to sit down and get away from my desk, and ask them if they’re allowed to get up without permission in public school. “No, in real school we have to–” “WHAT?” “I mean public school!”)

I think that my class would do much better in the kind of learning environment they’re used to in public school. I am tired of telling my students to get their butts back in their chairs. I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem if they’re in a chair-desk.

The thing is, they’re expensive. All of the models I saw run about $75-$100 per desk, and we’d need about 40 of them. I couldn’t find any kind of used school seller online that was much cheaper.

Perhaps some of my readers might know of a source of less expensive desks. I’d need two sizes, the middle and large sizes, for the age range we’re thinking of (third to seventh grade). Not all of the teachers want desks, but I was thinking it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a few extra for when they change their minds.

I can tell you right now that my synagogue board will say no if we ask for the funds. They’re currently going through some kind of financial thing and have been cutting back everywhere. But they can’t say no if I can raise the money elsewhere. And I suspect it would be tax-deductible if paid directly to the synagogue.

Anyway. I’m just wondering if anyone out there has any ideas.

If anyone actually read Salon, I’d care that they pretend this article isn’t about Jews, nor even about the Israel Lobby, but about the Bush policy in the Middle East. Uh-huh.

The touchiest aspect of all is the role played by pro-Israel neoconservatives in laying the groundwork for the Iraq war. Much of the media has been loath to go near this, for obvious and in some ways honorable reasons: It feels a little like “blame the Jews.” But that taboo has faded as it has become clearer that “the Jews” are not the ones being blamed for helping pave the way to war, but a group of powerful neoconservatives, some but not all of them Jewish, who subscribe to the hard-right views of Israel’s Likud Party. This group no more represents “the Jews” than the Shining Path represents “the Peruvians.”

Logic and forthrightness has traditionally taken a back seat to timorous self-censorship when it comes to discussing these matters. But in addition to the war debate, several other watershed events have helped erode the taboo against discussing the power of the Israel lobby. The most important were the publications of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s “The Israel Lobby,” and Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” The overwrought reaction to Mearsheimer and Walt’s piece, ironically, only supported its thesis. Similarly, the opprobrium heaped on Carter only succeeded in making it clear how little room there is for open discussion of these issues in America.

Funny how the article is all about AIPAC and the Israel Lobby, but the second paragraph seems to utterly contradict the first now, doesn’t it? But here we go with the dual loyalty canard:

For all these reasons, a powerful spotlight has been turned on the pro-Israel lobby. And there are signs that increasing numbers of Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, are willing to openly question whether it is in America’s national interest for AIPAC, whose positions are well to the right of those held by most American Jews, to wield such disproportionate power over America’s Mideast policies.

Once again, I point you in the direction of Saudi Arabia, whose princes can be seen hand-in-hand with President Bush on his ranch, and looking like they’re giving him his marching orders in a very badly-staged picture from several years ago. But no, that’s not relevant, because, well, Bush isn’t Jewish, or something.

For our next we have a perfect exhibit of what I now call the “make shit up” school of thought.

Why weren’t more American Jews with moderate views on the Middle East stepping forward to challenge AIPAC and its hawkish policies? I asked Rosenberg. Was it because they were afraid of being morally blackmailed — facing the predictable accusations of being self-hating Jews, disloyal to Israel, collaborationist “kapos,” and so on?

“I think the number of people in that group is relatively small,” Rosenberg said. “I think the much larger number are people who are absolutely indifferent. And therefore they’re not susceptible to moral blackmail because they will never hear what AIPAC or the IPF or any of the Israel organizations say. I don’t know what percentage it is, but my guess is that no more than 40 percent of American Jews think about Israel in any way, shape or form. Most of them live their lives, like most people do. So we’re fighting over people who think about it at all, and as I said the single-issue ones tend to be more with AIPAC for now. We’re trying to get the rest. But I do think that as time goes on, with more and more young people, that moral blackmail thing doesn’t work anymore.”

First, make up a statistic. (Interesting fact: 87.9% of all statistics are made up on the spot.) Then, use that made-up statistic as fact, and repeat it often. Soon, the made-up statistic gets bandied about is if you actually conducted a poll of Jews to see if they think about Israel, when, in fact, all you did was make shit up.

Is anyone else getting tired of these “good Jew” articles yet? Because I sure the hell am.

Rosenberg said that long-term demographic trends were working against AIPAC and its fear tactics. The AIPAC leadership, which he described as a “true believer [on Israel] crowd with money,” is “a much older crowd,” he said. “Their children and grandchildren don’t have those views. As we get further from World War II, it’s harder to scare young people into support for Israel. They will support Israel if they believe in Israel and if Israel appeals to them. But those scare tactics, ‘write checks because there’s going to be another Holocaust’ — that’s doesn’t work with the under-60 crowd. The people who demonstrated against the Vietnam war in the ’60s, they’re just not going to buy into the ‘Hitler is coming’ stuff. They’re just too smart for that. I’ve got kids in their 20s — the idea of telling them that America could be a dangerous place for them? They would laugh in my face. That’s ridiculous.”

It isn’t America where the new Hitler is coming, though he will come here if he succeeds in his nuclear goals.

And here, the author’s chilling conclusion. Cue spooky music and shadowy, Jew-shaped silhouette:

We find ourselves in a very strange situation. America’s Mideast policies are in thrall to a powerful Washington lobby that is only able to hold power because it has not been challenged by the people it presumes to speak for. But if enough American Jews were to stand up and say “not in my name,” they could have a decisive impact on America’s disastrous Mideast policies.

Once again, color me especially happy that I cancelled my Salon subscription years ago.

I cannot believe I used to like that rag. Okay, it’s because I started reading it around the time of the Clinton impeachment, and I’m still of the same mind—that he should not have been impeached at all, and that it was an enormous waste of time, money and effort. But I have moved on since then, and it seems that Salon has not.

One last shot: They quote Rosenberg, another of their “good” Jews, on how Israelis think about this whole thing. (It’s from the “make shit up” variety, also the “the plural of anecdote is too data!” school.)

Rosenberg said that one of the best things American Jews can do to educate themselves about Israel is to read the Israeli press, which routinely prints pieces far more harshly critical of Israel than anything found in the American media. “If people who don’t follow the situation closely started to read the Israeli press, started to read Haaretz, they’d realize how much debate there is there, and how many people feel terribly about what’s happened to the Palestinians, and how many people are determined to break out of this situation,” Rosenberg said. “And they’d realize that Israelis in general feel that the rhetoric of American Jewish organizations is about as outdated as the last century. It says nothing to Israelis. They laugh at that kind of rhetoric. If American Jews saw what the debate is like there, that would make Israel more popular.

What Rosenberg fails to admit, and what Salon evidently doesn’t want to know, is that Ha’aretz is one of the smallest, least-read papers in Israel. The largest? The parent company of Ynet, Yedioth Ahronoth, is the largest-circulation newspaper in Israel. Not that circulation is necessarily proof of authority, but if one is lamenting AIPAC as being non-representative of the Jewish point of view on Israel, one might want to point out that Ha’aretz is not representative of the Israeli point of view, either.

But hey. Why let facts get in the way of your argument?

Haaretz reported today on a poll that may be of some interest to inquiring minds.

The poll’s most dramatic finding was that 28 percent of local Arabs did not believe the Holocaust happened, and that among high-school and college graduates the figure was even higher: 33 percent.

I am not sure about the dramatic part: is it re the benefits of higher education?

Asked about Israel’s war in Lebanon last summer, 48 percent of the Israeli Arabs polled said they believe Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on northern Israel during that war were justified, even though numerous Arabs were killed and wounded as well.

While 89 percent said they view Israel’s bombing of Lebanon as a war crime, only 44 percent said they see Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel as such.

Er… so what is the big deal? If I do not like somebody, it makes it easier to say things about him/her… There must be some reason for the people polled to dislike us, obviously. And the following statement, no matter how absurd it may seem, only follows in the steps of the previous ones:

Half of Israeli Arab respondents said Hezbollah’s capture of the two Israeli soldiers, which sparked the fighting, was justified.

Why? I am not sure this question was in the questionnaire. But could the reason why be that the Israeli Arab chieftains are brainwashing them quite relentlessly, like this:

MK Ahmed Tibi said he doubted some of the findings and said he cannot explain the numbers indicating support for Hezbollah, although he noted that usually there is no empathy for the aggressor, which he said was Israel.

So - the learned Dr. Tibi cannot explain the numbers, but he can easily finger the aggressor, you see.

But, after all, it is not that straightforward as it may have looked to you to start with. Here comes the really mind-boggling part:

The poll also found that Israeli Arabs worry about their future: 62 percent worry that Israel could transfer their communities to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state. Sixty percent said they are concerned about a possible mass expulsion.

Among the Arab respondents, 76 percent described Zionism as racist. But more than two-thirds said they would be content to live in the Jewish state, if it existed alongside a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Somebody is mightily confused here. And I suspect it is not me… Yeah.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Either I’m too tired to see the bias, or this one has very little.

Israelis Snub Senior Norwegian Diplomat
Israel’s foreign ministry canceled a planned Tuesday meeting with a top Norwegian diplomat in a sign of displeasure the day after he met with Palestinian government leaders from the Islamic Hamas group, Norwegian and Israeli officials said.

Norway’s deputy foreign minister, Raymond Johansen met Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and other government officials on Monday, becoming the first high-ranking Western official to visit leaders of the violent Islamic movement, which has killed more than 200 Israelis in dozens of suicide bombing attacks.

His spokeswoman, Gry Larsen, said a meeting scheduled at the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem for Tuesday had been called off, but she did not give further details.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev declined to confirm that a meeting had been scheduled but said that no visit would take place, citing a Cabinet decision that followed Hamas’ January 2006 election victory.

“International dignitaries who meet with Hamas officials will not receive meetings with Israeli officials,” Regev said.

That’s what most newspapers will print. Some will print only the first three paragraphs. For once, the AP isn’t making Israel look like the villain of the piece. They even end their story with this:

Underscoring Israeli concerns, Hamas militants shot and wounded an Israeli civilian near the main cargo crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Monday while Johansen was visiting Gaza City.

Ah. There’s the bias. That belonged in the lede. Okay, yes, I must be tired.

On the other hand, Reuters does not disappoint. I’m not even going to go there.

First of all, it’s quite some time since I had my teeth in Guardian’s knee. Secondly, it is a rare case when a Guardian’s (or, rather, The Observer’s, if anyone cares) writer is in this win-win situation, when in one sentence she could both send a kiss the Palestinian way and deliver a kick on the shin (the second most painful kick in the female arsenal) to the Israeli government.

And all I need for illustration is this one sentence from the whole article:

The new, more moderate government installed in Palestine yesterday has not been recognised by Israel.

That’s all, really. See how simple and elegant? On one hand we have a new and more moderate Palestinian government (it is clear to every rational person, isn’t it?). On the other hand, we have these bloodthirsty recalcitrant Jooz who just do not see the hand of peace offered to them.

That “moderate” government is headed by Hamas, powered by Hamas and belongs to Hamas lock, stock and barrel. The honor of negotiating with Israel is left to Fatah people, true, but to what end? Who is going to accept, ratify and carry out any possible agreement between the powerless Fatah with its powerless chief and Israel? The same good old Hamas that does not give a hoot about any agreement and, in fact, continues to refuse even to consider recognising Israel. Demanding recognition for such government is a travesty, and any unbiased person with more than one brain cell can see it clearly. But these are, probably, two extraneous requirements in Guardian’s HR recruitment forms.

Using a very lively imagery by a superb Russian author, the whole act of creation of this “moderate government” is akin to covering a pile of shit by some autumn leaves. Not that the leaves in this case are just some mere innocent leaves. At this point I just must pass the microphone to Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin of The Passing Parade:

So let me get this straight: people are annoyed that the party that wants to destroy Israel won the elections against the other party that wants to destroy Israel, but won’t actually come out and say so at the moment. Since everyone knew that the governing party that wants to destroy Israel but wont come out and say so really does want to destroy Israel whether they say so or not, why is everyone so concerned that the party that wants to destroy Israel won the election, since by definition both of the parties involved want to destroy Israel, except that the second party that wants to destroy Israel finds it politic at the moment not to mention that they want to destroy Israel just as much as the other party that wants to destroy Israel but has no qualms about bringing up the fact that they want to destroy Israel, unlike the party that wants to destroy Israel but doesnt want to come out and say that they want to destroy Israel. There is a theme here, isnt there, or have I missed something along the way?

This quote is still as true and vibrant as it was at the moment of its writing. And I promise to repeat it again and again in the hope that some of it (at least the “So let me get this straight ” part) will register with some of the Guardian scribes.

Or is it too much to hope for?

P.S. Hamas has already done their best to provide some substance to the claim that the new government is more moderate:

Initial reports indicated that the man, identified as an Israel Electric Corporation worker about 40 years of age, sustained moderate injuries to his thigh and that his wounds were not life-threatening.

Indeed, Hamas is mellowing. In other times they would have killed him…

Just a reminder: most of electricity in Gaza is provided by the Israeli Electric Corporation.

And:

The 21-year-old Palestinian student was interrogated by Egyptian police and confessed he belonged to Hamas that intended to provide him with an explosive belt and instructions to cross into Israel…

In the olden times the student would have blown himself and the Egyptian policemen to smithereens. Now it is all moderate, moderate, moderate…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

I wonder what W. did to get Russia to agree to this.

Russia has informed Iran that it will withhold nuclear fuel for Iran’s nearly completed Bushehr power plant unless Iran suspends its uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations Security Council, European, American and Iranian officials said.

The ultimatum was delivered in Moscow last week by Igor Ivanov, Russia’s Security Council Secretary, to Ali Hosseini Tash, Iran’s deputy chief nuclear negotiator, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because a confidential diplomatic exchange between two governments was involved.

[...] “We’re not sure what mix of commercial and political motives are at play here,” one senior Bush administration official said in Washington. “But clearly the Russians and the Iranians are getting on each other’s nerves — and that’s not all bad.”

Look at that! For a change, we know exactly as much as a “senior Bush Administration official”! Who knew we were that smart?

Any way you look at it, this is excellent news. Without Russian help, the I-bomb is years and years away.

Just in case you thought they were moderating—like the morons in Norway, for instance—Hamas wants you to know, NFW will they ever recognize Israel or give up their attempt to destroy the Jewish state.

Hamas faction member Mushir al-Masri however insisted that there were no disagreements or fissures within the party. He said Hamas’ principles had not changed in any way.

The government’s platform, he explained, constitutes common basic principles that are meant to unite all the Palestinian factions but do not necessarily express all aspects of Hamas’ stance.

“There isn’t a chance any Hamas leader will ever recognize Israel,” said outgoing Interior Minister Said Siam. “We will not betray our values and we will not betray our land. We will leave this world as shahids (martyrs) without recognizing Israel.”

Siam further noted that if any Hamas member dared recognize Israel, he would be swiftly ejected from the movement. Siam did not deny, however, that considering Hamas’ values the current unity government was not ideal. However, the deadly intra-Palestinian conflicts necessitated certain concessions, he noted.

Hamas spokesperson Dr. Ismail Radwan also declared that Hamas’ values had not changed. Hamas considers resistance operations to be a strategic option to respond to the enemy’s crimes, Radwan declared.

They’ve already begun resuming “resistance” operations openly. They’ve been working with PIJ and other groups all along, just not taking credit. But now, since they have what they think they want, and the world is showing signs of caving, they can be openly genocidal again.

Hamas militants on Monday claimed responsibility for a shooting that wounded an Israeli civilian near the border with the Gaza Strip the first serious violence after formation of the new Palestinian unity government.

Uh-huh. And don’t you love this next graf?

The shooting dealt an embarrassing blow to Hamas political leaders, who have been trying to persuade the international community to recognize their coalition with the rival Fatah movement and lift a year-old economic boycott against the Palestinian government. It also exposed divisions within the Islamic militant group.

The only embarrassment Hamas would think about this shooting is that it didn’t kill the Israeli civilian. The AP is projecting, as they say in the psych biz.

But no, it’s not biased. Not at all.