Folks, I am switching hosts this week, and comments created here after 6 a.m. Monday morning won’t be transferred over to the new site. Some comments may disappear. Something about the DNS settling and all that.

More information later, and there will be a reminder posted Monday morning.

You know, this would be so much easier if only I didn’t procrastinate the big clean-up every time Mom comes to visit.

Well, last time she was here, she washed my kitchen floor because she was unhappy with the job I did.

Fine by me if she does it again.

Blogging will be light today. I’ve still got to finish the living room and the upstairs bathroom, then shower and drive to the airport.

That’s what the Arabs are telling Israel. And this is how it’s being spun.

Reuters:

Arab leaders urge Israel, world to take peace offer
Mar 29, 2007 — RIYADH (Reuters) - Arab leaders endorsed a peace plan to end decades-old conflict with Israel and the Palestinian president warned of more violence if the “hand of peace” was rejected.

Speaking at the end of an Arab summit in Riyadh, Mahmoud Abbas urged Israel not to waste the chance for peace, and called for a committee led by Saudi Arabia to pursue it.

“I reiterate the sincerity of the Palestinian will in extending the hand of peace to the Israeli people … We should not waste more chances in the history of this long and painful cause,” Abbas told the closing ceremony of the two-day meeting.

“The entire region will be under renewed threats of war, explosions, as well as regional and international confrontations, as a result of the absence of a solution or the impossibility of implementing one.”

Please note that in the very first paragraph, Reuters says the Arabs warn of violence if Israel does not accept the “peace” offer unconditionally. And yet, the headline is not “Arabs threaten Israel over summit deal,” it is about the Arabs “urging” Israel to take the “peace” offer. How is it peace if it offers no end to the terrorism? How is it peace when it is used as a threat, a prelude to war?

The AP:

Arab Leaders Agree on Appeal for Israel
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia Mar 29, 2007 (AP)— Arab leaders at their summit Thursday agreed on a call for Israel to accept their land-for-peace offer and open direct negotiations with the Arabs. Unlike past summits that at times saw overt feuds break out, the gathering of Arab kings, emirs and presidents showed unusual public unity as it revived the peace offer, which they first made in 2002 only to meet rejection from Israel.

But still unknown is how the Arabs will persuade Israel to accept the initiative, which the United States and Europe hope can help build momentum for a resumption of the long-stalled peace process. Israel has said it could accept the offer with some changes, but the Arab leaders refused the amend it.

The AP utterly downplays the threat aspect. Well, actually, they leave it out completely from their reporting of the summit. Instead, they push the idea that “working groups” will be able to change the plan after Israel accepts it. Once more, I ask: What kind of negotiation is it when one side says “Accept this agreement as is and then you can negotiate changes”?

That is called “negotiating in bad faith.” That isn’t even a negotiation. It is an ultimatum. And once again, the Israelis will refuse it. The history of Israel is full of agreements made by other people without any Israeli input that she is expected to accept and then live by. Name any other sovereign nation that is expected to go by an agreement it had no input in making. You can’t. There are none. None that are accepted as legal, anyway.

And finally, we have the Israeli point of view, written from AP reports:

Abbas warns of violence if ‘peace’ rejected
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Thursday of violence if Israel rejected a Palestinian “hand of peace”, and called for an international conference on reaching a final peace agreement with the Jewish State.

Speaking at the Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia, Abbas accused Israel of evading peace by demanding that Arab states alter a land-for-peace initiative.

“Demanding that amendments be introduced to the Arab peace initiative, is seeking to avoid the realization of peace,” Abbas said at the summit’s closing ceremony.

Funny how nobody else seems to have captured that last quote from Abbas. By insisting that the Arabs actually negotiate, Israel is “avoiding the realization of peace,” or, in other words, choosing war. Which, in the bad old days of Yasser Arafat, would mean the terrorists are ramping up for Intifada 3. I wonder if that’s what this summit is really all about: Cover for the Arab world when Hamas, Syria, and Hezbullah start launching rockets into Israel as “retaliation” for not agreeing to the Saudi initiative.

After all, they warned us. If Israel doesn’t take “the hand of peace,” she will be under “renewed threats of war.”

Renewed? They’ve never stopped.

So the sum total of what the U.K. is doing to put a halt to current levels of anti-Semitism on U.K. campuses? They’re wagging their fingers and saying “shame.”

Although the government has again said that it “deplores” any attempts to target Jewish students at British universities, it stepped back from recommending any new hardline measures against student or academic activities deemed to be anti-semitic.

Instead ministers, responding to a report on anti-semitism published last year by the all-party parliamentary inquiry, have reiterated that universities should adopt existing guidance from both the government and Universities UK, the organisation that represents vice-chancellors, on how to tackle hate crime and incidents involving extremist groups.

The government also reminded university governing bodies that under race relations legislation they have a statutory duty to produce a race equality policy, which sets out how they intend to prevent racial discrimination and promote good race relations on campus.

That’ll show ‘em.

No wonder Iraq captured 15 British sailors. They knew the Lion of Britain has no teeth.

The report also agreed with the party’s conclusions that while the issue of anti-semitism is taken seriously by universities the “practice is not consistent across the sector.”

But the government failed to endorse the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s (EUMC) definition of anti-semitism on the grounds that it was a “work in progress.”

The EUMC, now the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, defines anti-semitism as the expression of hatred towards Jews, their property and Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. More contentiously, it adds “such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”.

The Union of Jewish Students’ campaign director, Mitch Simmons, said the government report was a “major step and valuable”.

But he was disappointed that the government and MPs had failed to address the issue that some universities fail to take up incidents of anti-semitism raised by the student union because they believe the organisation is separate to the university.

The British police don’t even report all incidents of anti-Semitism.

Time to go, Jews of Britain. The Jews of France are already fleeing by the thousands. (Holy crap! Joe updated his blog!)

The U.K. is telling its universities that they have to actually start clamping down on anti-Semitism on campus. Big job. I wonder if they can.

The government is due today to unveil steps universities must take to stamp out campus anti-semitism.

The communities minister, Phil Woolas, is expected to announce that the police should use existing powers under the Public Order Act 1986 to prosecute Islamic extremists, and others, if they make any speeches on campus which are anti-semitic.

Universities are expected to be told to keep a record of any complaints about anti-semitic behaviour, which would include statements or speeches made by students.

Here’s my favorite part:

The report said it was unreasonable for universities to boycott academics who work in Israel because that was an affront to academic freedom. The MPs added that university vice-chancellors’ response to dealing with the problem was “patchy” and it called on them to tackle the issue “vigorously”.

Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors and has been involved in discussions with the government about campus political extremism, refused to comment on any government proposals ahead of today’s announcement.

And here comes the Islamophobia whine:

But any attempt to recruit lecturers into a “policing” role is likely to be rejected after the University and College Union warned in October its members would not be “sucked into a kind of anti-Muslim McCarthyism”.

We’ll see if anything changes. I’m thinking not.