Every time this dipshit publishes a piece about Israel’s war plans, the blogosphere and the media are abuzz with the rumors of war. Joe’s Dartblog put paid to this man’s reputation in a well-researched post months ago.

From Mr. Mahnaimi especially, this flavor of reportage should not be cause for surprise. Such august organizations as The Institute for Historical Review—yes, review of that—count themselves fans of his work. In 1998, before the West awakened to the specter of Islamism, Mr. Mahnaimi was issuing other wild-eyed news bits about the evils of Israel. “Israel Planning ‘Ethnic’ Bomb,” one headline read. Mr. Mahnaimi claimed in his article that Israel was trying to isolate Arab-only genes so that a biological weapon could be developed to destroy them all. These were published in the International Herald Tribune, Uzi’s ravings were, and fell about as flat as this latest news that Israel is going to turn the deserts of Iran into ones even more barren than they are at present.

Israel Matzav has also been keeping an eye on the creep who wrote the long-discredited article that Israel was developing a “gene bomb” that would target only Arabs (an absolutely impossible weapon, by the way), and I am writing this post so that my readers will know to pretty much ignore this idiot’s accusations.

Allison Kaplan Summer also outed the motivations of our man Uzi:

First and foremost - one must consider the source of this story. The Sunday Times journalist in question Uzi Mahnaimi, is a controversial figure, who co-authored a book with Bassam Abu Sharif, former senior adviser to Yasser Arafat and PLO press officer.

While some may believe he has actual military sources in Israel who use him to leak stories that won’t make it past censors, others think he is used by foreign agents to push stories that embarrass Israel. Still others go farther, calling him unprintable names and charging that that despite the fact he works for a mainstream British newspaper, his sources makes Jamil Hussein look like the White House press secretary.

One thing is clear: Mahnaimi makes a regular habit of reporting that Israel is about to attack Iran. If his reporting was accurate, Iranian nuclear facilities would already be a smoking ruin – not once, but multiple times.

And now he says that Ehud Barak’s first move will be to turn Gaza into a war zone, citing, of course, unnamed sources.

So when Uzi Mahnaimi claims that Ehud Barak is going to send 20,000 troops into Gaza to clean out Hamas, you can pretty much discount, well, every word. Except the fact that the IDF has troops. And that Ehud Barak is the new Defense Minister. Uzi’s record is one of, well, let’s see—wrong, wrong, and wrong—yeah, that’s about it. He gets it wrong, every time.

And yet, the Times of London continues to publish his crap and, indeed, was the paper of record where Uzi’s “ethnic bomb” lie was first printed. What does that tell us about them?

UPDATE: Hello, Lizards. Actually, I like this post a little better, as it delineates how many times Mahnaimi has been wrong on invasions of Iran, Israel, and Gaza.

Ted Belman thinks so. He says the US and Israel urged Abbas to let Hamas have Gaza so it can sink under its own weight.

I’m not buying it. An Islamic theocracy funded and backed by Iran and Syria, on Egypt and Israel’s borders, is not a desired neighbor, and Hamas has proven itself adept at surviving everything but IAF Hellfire missiles.

Occam’s razor, Ted. Fatah Khaled Abu Toameh thinks Fatah’s loss was inevitable.

The writing was on the wall because Hamas had already inflicted heavy casualties on Fatah in previous rounds of fighting over the past year. In addition, it was clear that Hamas was eventually going to take over the entire Gaza Strip, because of the anarchy and disunity among the Fatah-controlled Palestinian security forces and their commanders. It was obvious that Fatah was going to lose, because the masses were not going to take to the streets to defend leaders living in villas and driving luxury cars.

There is also the fact that Fatah may have had numerical superiority, but numerical superiority has never amounted to anything if the soldiers have neither the training nor the will to fight. The Arab armies have had the numerical superiority in all of Israel’s wars, and yet, Israel remains.

Hamas had the will. Fatah did not. Abbas didn’t even order his soldiers to fight back until it was too late. That alone speaks volumes.