I’m not very good at this part, having never been in the service, nor lost any member of my family who served.

But Blackfive’s pretty good at it. Especially here, in this post.

And there’s always this:

And these.

And this.

Got a big Al Aqsa fish in Ramallah today, one who was hiding behind Arafat’s skirts for years.

A senior commander of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades who is responsible for the deaths of several Israelis was arrested in a joint IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Services) operation in Ramallah on Monday.

Officials said that Khaled Shawish, head of the Tanzim in Ramallah, was behind the shooting attack that killed Rabbi Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane, son of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and his wife Talia in December 2002.

Shawish was also responsible for dozens of other attacks, including suicide bombings in Jerusalem as well as other shooting attacks on roads in the area, that left a total of five Israelis dead and dozens wounded.

Officials said that Shawish, 26, has been wanted by the IDF since 2000 and has spent most of his time in hiding near the Mukata. In 2001, Shawish was wounded during clashes with the IDF.

And because there is no death penalty in Israel except for Nazis, this man will be used as a bargaining chip for a prisoner release at some future date. Oh, well. At least he can’t plan any more terrorist attacks.

Did you know that the Labor party is centrist?

The AP sure thinks so.

Polls showed the five-way race being a tossup between former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and political newcomer Ami Ayalon, a dovish former internal security agency head. Both have said they would work to oust the embattled Olmert, who has been discredited by his handling of last summer’s war in Lebanon.

Ayalon has pledged to lead the centrist Labor out of its year-old partnership with Olmert if the prime minister’s Kadima Party doesn’t choose a new leader. Barak says he would serve in an Olmert government, while working within parliament to topple the Israeli leader and call early elections.

They said it here, too, at the end of the article detailing the cabinet okaying a limited ground push into Gaza.

The violence comes as Israel’s Labor Party opened its leadership race Monday. The outcome could impact the stability of Olmert’s government and the embattled prime minister’s future.

The centrist party is the largest of three junior partners in the ruling coalition with Olmert’s Kadima Party. But both front-runners in Monday’s race have said they would work to topple the prime minister.

Three parties: Labor, Kadima, and Likud. If you reframe the debate by calling Labor centrist, you can push Kadima out of the center (where it was born, with members of Labor and Likud joining Ariel Sharon to create it), and to the right, and then you can begin to call Likud the “ultra-rightist” or “far-right” party—which is what will happen next. Bookmark this post and come back to it when you see it. Then send me an email, because you know I’m right.

Wikipedia calls Labor “center-left.” Then Wikipedia says this:

It is a social democratic and Zionist party, a member of the Socialist International and an observer member of the Party of European Socialists. Since 1999 the party has been allied to the small left-wing, religious zionist Meimad, in an agreement whereby Meimad gets the tenth seat on Labor’s list.

Any organization with the word “socialist” in its name is not a centrist organization. It leans left.

Mark my words. You will soon be seeing “the far-right Likud party” in AP news articles, then picked up by everyone else.

This latest news on the new dimension of freedom of speech has made a serious impact on my understanding of Politically Correct evolution of our species. Up till now I have always imagined the political correctness mechanism as a kind of a noose that is getting tighter and tighter around our larynges, reducing our ability to utter certain words and/or sentences.

However, this imagery could not be farther from the glamorous reality. Here comes and eye-opener:

A jury in northeastern Colorado has ruled that a pile of dog doo left in the entrance of the office of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., was protected political speech, acquitting a critic of the congresswoman who admitted dumping the load.

According to a report in the Greeley Tribune, a Weld County jury found Kathy Ensz, a 64-year-old retired university professor, innocent of charges for depositing, the, well, deposit.

I am not going into the political allegiance or, indeed, gender of the two heroes of this saga, both are irrelevant (I am sure) to the main thrust of this post. Main import is that of the new way of freely expressing your political platform in the framework of the PC speech.

By the way, I don’t know whether you have noticed, but the same PC envelope does not include a permission to name that material that was delivered by the professor to the doorstep of the congresswoman.

Which, if my memory of inglorious pre-PC days does not lead me astray, was called just dog shit once…

P.S. I cannot wait for a derivative of this new ruling that will allow slinging the stuff at opponents in the Congress and/or Senate sessions.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Nine Ten Eleven more rockets today. I’m awaiting the UN condemnation of the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, including children, by the Palestinian terrorists. Okay, no, not really, but I like to say that to point out the vast difference in the way Israeli and Palestinian civilians are treated by the world media.

Nine Qassam rockets were fired at the western Negev since early morning Monday. One man was lightly injured and several others suffered from shock.

Additionally, a group of female soldiers suffered shock after one of the rockets landed near them. Magen David Adom paramedics treated the soldiers at the scene and evacuated them. All IDF troops stationed in Sderot are required to wear helmets at all times.

[...] Only 811 out of the 3,000 pupils in Sderot arrived at schools Monday morning, as studies resumed. Some 161 preschoolers out of the 900 children in Sderot’s kindergartens resumed their activities, in sheltered locations.

Every time there is a closure in the West Bank, the wire services are full of quotes from Palestinian children who can’t complete their exams due to Israeli army interference. I don’t expect to see the same from the media, because we all know better than to expect fairness.

This is a man who really loves his cat:

A Negev resident woke up early Monday morning to find a leopard in his bedroom.

The wild animal had been chasing Arthur Damush’s beloved cat around the house, and when the two animals entered his bedroom, Damush did not hesitate, and knew exactly what he had to do.

The Midreshest Ben-Gurion resident instinctively jumped out of his bed and caught the wild creature with his bare hands.

There’s a picture.

He saved his cat.

Wow. He grabbed a leopard by the scruff of the neck. Now that’s either very foolish, or very brave. But he’s alive, and so is his cat, so I’m going to chalk it up to brave.