Saudi Arabia, having presented a so-called peace plan and insisted there will not be any changes made to the five-year-old plan that was rejected in 2002, then tells Israel she must be flexible. Yes, it truly is Israeli Double Standard Time all of the time.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that Israel should accept a broad land-for-peace offer that Arab leaders plan to revive at a summit here this week, expressing frustration at Israel’s hesitation over the initiative.

Saudi Arabia and other U.S. Arab allies hope the peace plan can build momentum for a resumption of the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal took a tough stance, suggesting Israel must also show more flexibility.

Watch the juxtaposition here. The Arabs are being shown as utterly inflexible, and yet, Israel is the nation that needs to “show more flexibility.” Find the flexibility in the following:

Israel rejected the Arab initiative when it was first made in 2002, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said last week his country was willing to accept it with some changes, particularly if demands on Palestinian refugees were watered down.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal hinted on Monday that Arab leaders could consider amendments, saying they had to “take notice of new developments.”

But in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, al-Faisal appeared to back off, saying, “What has changed in order for the proposal to change?”

An Arab diplomat said Saudi Arabia had been hoping Olmert would show a stronger willingness to restart peace talks on the Arab proposal in order to give the Arabs leeway to show flexibility. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the diplomatic maneuvering.

Still haven’t found it? Okay. Let’s see if we can find any more flexibility.

Al-Faisal appeared disappointed with the Israel stance, saying Israel had to change its “fortress” mentality “that force will achieve what they need in terms of security.” He said the Arabs were serious and unanimous in their offer, and “now it depends on the other side to do the rest.”

“We want to have peace. That is the best solution for the problem,” he said.

“If Israel reaches an agreement on redeployment from Arab lands,” he said, “then there will be peace signed between all the Arab countries. But not before.”

Once again, let me interpret for you: “Israel, do everything we tell you to do, and then we will sign peace agreements with you.” Of course, never in the past have the Arab nations ever lied to Israel. Nope. Nuh-uh. Never. Not at all.

Now, you have all the text needed. Let’s start a pool on the first headline that blames Israeli inflexibility (or stubbornness, or intransigence, or refusal to budge, or any synomym of inflexibility), and watch for the Arab spokesmen to all blame Israel. And then watch for the terror attacks launched after “Israel refuses to have peace.”

And last, but not least, the AP buries this waaaaay down:

A draft of the final resolution to be approved by the summit relaunches the peace initiative without changes. But it also creates working groups that will meet with the United Nations, United States, Europe and Russia in an attempt to push the plan forward.

Nothing has changed, but the AP perpetuates the myth that the Arabs will “consider” making the changes necessary.

This is the history of all dealings between Israel and the Arab nations since Camp David. In the past sixty years, only Anwar Sadat dealt honestly with Israel. Every other Arab leader has played the same old bullshit: Do as we say, or no deal.

Which is why there has been one, and only one true peace agreement—and it was land for peace, the big deal to the Arabs—since 1948.

You would think they’d get a clue by now.

This is, of course, in reference to the inane headline So how dangerous is skunk? byIndy.

You would think that this dubious rag that for years propagated its own version of truth regarding cannabis (among other similar “truths”) will recognize its guilt and its complicity in the suffering of thousands of deluded youngsters and just quietly shut up. But what really tickles Indy’s fancy?

If you can see any sign of repentance in the above quote, please let me know. I shall visit my optician shortly. Meanwhile, there are all the necessary symptoms of unrepentant “in your face” idiocy in this quote, since the danger of skunk were widely known way before and are not restricted to schizophrenia alone.

Think about this:

Cannabis remains the most commonly-used drug in the UK with one in 10 people using it in the last year, according to the British Crime Survey.

How many of these (roughly) 7 million deluded dorks were influenced by the raving of Indy?

Imagine the stink Indy would have raised were cannabis marketed and advertised by a private company (well, the drug cartels, growers and dealers are somewhat private, but at least they have the decency not to advertise via the usual channels). In fact, the above mentioned supply chain owns Indy a great deal of appreciation, if not a hefty commission.

And to add insult to injury:

Alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than many illegal drugs including the hallucinogen LSD and the dance drug ecstasy, according to a new scale for assessing the dangers posed by recreational substances.

Please reassure me that this is not an attempt to start a new campaign in the name of social progress on the general lines of “a good trip is better than a bad hangover”. Please?

I hope some crafty lawyer is already drawing the lawsuit that will ruin this cesspool of a newspaper. In the name of all the people who were blindly led into the abyss by the relentless and self-assured idiocy.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Brian of London just sent me live photos of baby David via Skype. And it didn’t cost either of us a dime in transatlantic telephony.

That’s why the internet rules.

Plus, David is really cute.

Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas, the organization that has murdered or wounded thousands of Israelis, is in Algeria for something called the 5th International Conference on Qods. Qods is Jerusalem; I expect this conference is yet another gathering of Arab and Muslim forces arrayed against Israel to discuss “regaining” Jerusalem—known as the City of David, I should point out—to Muslim control. Besides threatening terror attacks on any nation that attacks Iran, the exiled leader of Hamas, who runs the terrorist organization from Damascus because he knows a Hellfire missile would find him if he returned to Gaza, also said this:

Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal said that the group had not abandoned its armed struggle against Israel, and that operatives in the field were already waiting to begin another intifada, Israel Radio reported on Tuesday.

Speaking at a conference in Algeria on Monday, Mashaal called on Arab leaders to take advantage of the momentum in the region to push Israel into a corner and to develop a new strategy for retaking Jerusalem.

I guarantee you will not find that quote in any other non-Israeli publication, and you will especially not find it in the AP.

You will also not find these statements in the AP and Reuters pieces. They prefer to use phrase like “Saudia Arabia suggested it would consider changes” to the peace plan, even when they know those phrases are lies from teh Saudis. And yes, the wire service writers know it. They must, because the Arab press was chock-full of stories like this:

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal reaffirmed yesterday that the 2002 Arab peace plan which offers Israel normal ties with all Arab states in return for full withdrawal from Arab land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

“There will be no amendment to the Arab peace initiative. We have said this 20 times before in the past and this is the last time I will say this,” Prince Saud told reporters in Riyadh.

And here is the reasoning behind the sudden push for “momentum”: To force Israel into a bad agreement, and when Israel refuses, to get world opinion—already there, frankly—against Israel for refusing to agree to the “peace” plan.

The Saudi Foreign Minister also said on Monday that an Arab summit in Riyadh this week must produce a united stance on an Arab initiative for peace with Israel.

“If the Arabs have a clear and strong position on the initiative, the more the chance of it being adopted internationally and serious peace negotiations entered,” Prince Saud told the opening session of Arab foreign ministers meeting to prepare for the March 28-29 summit.

There will not be negotiations after an agreement has been accepted. There will only be the Arab and Muslim side insisting that Israel live up to its side of the agreement, just as they did with the Road Map, while providing excuse after excuse on why the Palestinians could not live up to theirs. One more time: There will be no change to the agreement. Mashaal is in Saudi Arabia to make sure of it.

”Meshaal called on Arab leaders meeting in Riyadh to adopt a strategy based on the right to self-defence,” the official Saudi news agency SPA said.

It added: “he said that conceding legitimate rights such as the right of return and the Palestinian people’s right to protection was unacceptable”.

And Mashaal is calling for more murders armed struggle:

Meshaal however said Monday that “Hamas will not renounce its armed resistance. Things are evolving in the favour of Arabs and Muslims, who should take advantage of the (current) situation” in the Middle East. The situation is not good neither for the Israelis nor for the Americans. The former are facing a profound domestic crisis of confidence while the United States is suffering one failure after another.”

You see, I can find these news pieces. There are reporters at these conferences, and you can be sure there are AP and Reuters reporters or stringers at this conference—but these quotes never make it into the main AP and Reuters pieces. Why not? It’s that anti-Israel bias. As long as you water down the threats from Hamas, you can make Israel look like the bad guy. If Hamas leaders were quoted regularly in the wire services as saying the things that they actually say, Hamas would no longer be the “reformed” terrorist group that the media is trying to make them out to be.

And last, we have the wire services, finally acknowledging the refusal to change the 2002 initiative, but still pushing it as something good for Israel.

Arab leaders arriving in Riyadh were expected to relaunch a peace initiative that offers Israel normal ties with all Arab states in return for full withdrawal from land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel rejected the plan in 2002, but along with the United States has recently shown more interest.

[...] Draft resolutions for the March 28-29 summit, hammered out in only a few hours on Monday, are dominated by the Arab-Israeli conflict and appear designed to entice Israel into talks without altering the text of the 2002 peace initiative.

Israel has made clear its objections to some parts, including the proposed full return to 1967 borders, inclusion of East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel, in a Palestinian state and demands over the return of Palestinian refugees.

[...] The final draft also avoids any mention of the phrase “right of return” for Palestinian refugees, which Israel has strongly argued against. The Arab peace initiative only talks of a just solution to the refugee question.

And there you have it: Reuters is using weasel words, because the reporter knows damned well that what the Saudi initiative means by a “just solution” is the return of all UN-declared Palestinian refugees to their former homes in the former Palestinian Mandate, much of which is now Israel proper.

And as we have now entered upon material that needs a whole other post to discuss, we will leave you with one more Reuters quote:

Summit must not give refugee concessions: Meshaal
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called on Arab leaders at this week’s Arab summit not to make concessions on Palestinian refugees and the Palestinians right to defend themselves, Saudi media said on Tuesday.

Does Reuters never tire of lying to its readers?