This is wrong on so many levels.

No WAY can Conan take on the Hulk.

Say, Queers for Palestine: Imagine if this event were held in Ramallah. What do you think would happen?

Arab lesbians quietly defied Islamist protesters and a social taboo to gather at a rare public event Wednesday in a northern Israeli city.

Many of the attendees said they were sad that the only place safe enough to hold a conference for gay Arab women was in a Jewish area of Haifa, which has a mixed Arab-Jewish population. Israel’s Jewish majority is generally tolerant of homosexuality.

I’m thinking the women would be arrested, harmed, or killed. Lucky for them, the event was in Israel.

You’re on the wrong side in this battle. Homosexuality is illegal in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and, well, just about every single Arab and Muslim country on the planet (except for Jordan). Gays are executed in some countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran. In Israel, though some religious Jews are against homosexuality, gays are not persecuted, nor arrested, nor murdered—at least not by the state. Can you say the same about the Palestinian Territories?

I think not.

Driven deep underground for the most part, only 10 to 20 Arab lesbians attended the conference, organizers said. Most blended in with Israeli lesbians and heterosexual Arab female supporters without making their presence known.

“We’d like all women to come out of the closet that’s our role. We work for them,” said Samira, 31, a conference organizer who came with her Jewish Israeli girlfriend. Samira agreed to be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals.

Outside the conference hall, 20 women protesters in headscarves and long, loose robes held up signs reading, “God, we ask you to guide these lesbians to the true path.”

Security was tight. Attendance was by invitation only, and reporters were not allowed to take photographs, use tape recorders or identify people.

Even in Israel, they have to hide from their Arab brothers and sisters.

Morcos said her car was vandalized repeatedly and she received threatening phone calls at her family home after her village in northern Israel found out she was a lesbian.

Wrong side, QUIT. You’re on the wrong side. Try looking at the Israelis, who do not murder homosexuals, who do not put them in prison for being homosexuals, and who do not discriminate against them for being homosexual.

But don’t let the facts get in the way of your Israel-hatred.

And New Jersey.

I would very much like to head up to NJ/NY for a visit sometime in early June, after religious school is over, and between busy times in my new job.

I would also very much like to see a show or three. I’m a huge Sondheim fan and would like to see Company. I’ve also never seen The Fantasticks and would like to. I’m also interested in Avenue Q, Wicked, and damn, I’ve seen Les Miz three times already, one more couldn’t hurt… nah. I’d rather see one I’ve never seen. Which is all of the others.

I also want to have lunch or dinner at Katz’s. And maybe spend some time in the Village.

So. Who’s up for dinner and a show sometime in June? I have to check my work schedule, but I really, really, really need to get back north. I have developed far too much of a twang since I moved to Richmond. I don’t say “sale.” I say “say-ull.” I need to be helped out of my twang. I don’t mind talking southern when necessary (and it always comes out when I’m talking to someone older or someone who had a pronounced southern accent), but really. I’ve lived nearly my entire life in the northeast, dammit, I’m going to die with a NJ accent if I have anything to say about it.

I love New York in June… how about you?

Update: And I have a date. My nephew’s concert is June 6. I will be there.

The ultimatums keep getting better and better. So this is what the Saudi princes think are negotiations: Telling Israel that she must accept the 2002 initiative as is, with zero changes, no matter what—and if she doesn’t accept, then obviously, she wants war, not peace.

Prince Saud said Israel should accept or reject this final offer.

“What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done,” he said. “So now it is up to the other side because if you want peace, it is not enough for one side only to want it. Both sides must want it equally.”

Speaking inside his whitewashed palace, surrounded by luxuriant lawns and manicured flower beds resembling a green oasis in the drabness of Riyadh, Prince Saud delivered an unequivocal warning to Israel.

“If Israel refuses, that means it doesn’t want peace and it places everything back into the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers but in the hands of the lords of war,” he said.

Now that’s negotiation! That’s giving Israel a reason to want to agree to the initiative—because if she doesn’t, the Arabs will lob rockets at her, blow up her citizens with nail bombs, shoot them, stab them, and otherwise cause harm to them.

But wait. It gets worse.

Prince Saud dismissed any further diplomatic overtures towards Israel. “It has never been proven that reaching out to Israel achieves anything,” he said.

“Other Arab countries have recognised Israel and what has that achieved?

“The largest Arab country, Egypt, recognised Israel and what was the result? Not one iota of change happened in the attitude of Israel towards peace.”

The Egyptians got the Sinai back, but that isn’t enough. The Egyptians are legally at peace with Israel, but that isn’t enough. Apparently, the Saudis want—well, I don’t exactly know what they want, because nothing that Israel has done has stopped the cross-border rockets, kidnappings, murders, and aid to terrorists from the Arab and Muslim world. But Saud doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with that. He and his family fund the murderers.

This current “peace” initiative is nothing less than another media attack on Israel by the Arabs, with the complicity of the mainstream media.

Saud’s words will not get wide play. Watch. Now imagine if an Israeli leader had said the same thing about, say, the Road Map. There’d have been at least hree thousand screaming headlines: “Israel wants war!”

Update: Forgot to add this earlier:

You and what five armies, Saud?

What do you do if you happen to find yourself knee-deep in sewage in your backyard? I guess you would get to a dry place first and then figure out a way to get rid of the flood and make sure it does not happen.

The recent tragic events in Gaza show that this simple logic is just not applicable in some places.

The earthen wall of a sewage pond in the northern Gaza Strip ruptured Tuesday, flooding a nearby village and killing at least four Palestinians, providing a tragic illustration of Gaza’s crumbling public works after years of neglect and recently curtailed foreign aid to the government.

A brief google shows that complaints about the lack of sewage processing are dated way before the last elections in Palestinian territories that brought about the cutting of foreign aid. No, the problem was known and clear to all. It is just that the powers that be in Gaza could not care less about the well-being of their subjects, when the first and foremost action item on their agenda is to get more and more arms to kill the hated Jooz.

And thus there is a line of business burgeoning in Gaza that has a direct impact on the issue of sewage treatment: the rocket science. You see, to build one Qassam rocket you must have about 2m of pipe. Multiply 1000 (which is roughly the number of Qassams launched on Israel) by 2m and you shall see how the dots connect. Clearly the iron will of the terrorists makes the sewage treatment even more of a pipe dream.

But of course, the Zionists will be blamed for that sewage disaster as well.

In related news:

12:38 IDF sends two pumps to Gaza to help lower level of sewage (AP)

Cross-posted on SimplyJews