I was thinking.

Today is a good day for a blogwar.

Gee, I hope one of my old playmates decides to do something stupid.

This week’s interview is a great catch: Professor and author Deborah Lipstadt, the woman who beat Jew-hater and Holocaust denier David Irving’s libel case in British courts.

I haven’t heard the rest, but hey, we rock, so I’m sure it’s great.

Hamas would rather see Palestinians starve than eat Israeli food.

Sixty trucks full of fresh produce bound for Gaza markets made their way to southern Gaza’s Kerem Shalom Crossing during the early morning hours, following an assurance by the Hamas agriculture minister that his group would allow the crossing to remain open.

However, when the trucks arrived, Hamas Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek decided to close the crossing. The trucks turned around not wanting to endure the mortar attack Hamas threatened last week if Israel opened the crossing to displaced Palestinian trapped in the Egyptian Sinai.

I await the UN condemnation.

Syria is getting closer and closer to attacking both Israel and Lebanon, it appears. Michael Totten reports that Syria invaded Lebanon two days ago. The world has not reacted. Syria has also recalled its citizens from Lebanon.

Lebanese sources told a Nazareth newspaper that Syria is planning to evacuate its citizens from Lebanon and close the border by mid-month, Israel Radio reported Saturday.

Syria had advised students in Lebanon that it would facilitate their return to Syria, and the continuation of their studies there.

And now we have a date.

Syria has called on its citizens to leave Lebanon ahead of an expected “eruption” in that country, Arab and Iranian press reports have said.

The media reports were translated and made available by MEMRI in a special dispatch on Sunday.

“In the past few days, Arab and Iranian media reports have pointed to the possibility that Lebanon’s current political crisis may become a violent conflict after July 15, 2007,” the MEMRI dispatch said.

July 15 comes one day before a special UN Security Council meeting which is expected to discuss the possibility of stationing international experts on the Syria-Lebanon border, in order monitor the ongoing illegal cross border arms traffic to Hizbullah, thought to be originating from Iran and Syria.

And a Syrian threat to Israel as well.

If Israel doesn’t vacate the strategic Golan Heights b y August- September, Syrian fighters will immediately launch “resistance operations” against Jewish communities in the Golan Heights , a top official from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Baath party told WND.

The Baath official, who spoke on condition his name be withheld, said Damascus was preparing for anticipated Israeli retaliation following these attacks and for a larger war with the Jewish state in August or September. He said Syria ha d the capabilit y of firing “hundreds” of missiles at Tel Aviv.

“Syria passed repeated messages to the US that we demand the return of the Golan either through negotiations or through war. If the Golan is not in our hands by August or September, we will be poised to launch resistance, including raids and attacks against Jewish positions (in the Golan Heights),” the Baath official said from Damascus.

The Baath official said a new group called the Committees for the Liberation of the Golan Heights ha d been training and was ready to mount attacks against Jewish communities in the Golan in August or September.

He said Syria was preparing for a war.

“More and more of our units have undergone intensive trainings starting at 6 a.m. and finishing late into the evening. If the need arises, we are ready for a war,” said the official.

And why shouldn’t Syria threaten Israel? They have been allowed to transfer arms and materiel to Hizbullah with impunity. They have murdered UN peacekeepers without retaliation, or the fear of retaliation. United States Congressional leaders have sat down and posed for pictures with the Dorktator, leaving him to believe that the U.S. will also do nothing no matter what Syria does—and so, there will be war. Unless the UN and the U.S. move quickly to stop this threat before it goes anywhere.

Of course, the chances of that happening are close to zero. Michael Totten beat me to the posting with these thoughts:

If Israel sent the IDF three kilometers into Lebanon and started digging trenches and building bunkers it would make news all over the world. But Syria does it and everyone shrugs. Hardly anyone even knows it happened at all.

Syria can, apparently, get away with just about anything. I could hardly blame Assad at this point if he believes, after such an astonishing non-response, that he can reconquer Beirut. So far he can kill and terrorize and invade and destroy with impunity, at least up to a point. What is that point? Has anyone in the U.S., Israel, the Arab League, the European Union, or the United Nations even considered the question?

Yes. Just imagine if the IDF moved three kilometers into Lebanon. Imagine the UN resolutions, the world reaction, the thousand of news articles, and the world approbation. Meantime, Syria does exactly that, and no one outside of the area even notices.

Double standard? Says who?

The delegitimization of Israel in Britain pushes on, led by the labor unions that seem to think only Israel, of all the nations of the world, deserves to be singled out and boycotted for its policies. Not Sudan. Not Iran. Not North Korea. Not China, which uses slave laborers. Not the Asian countries that ply the child sex trade. No, only Israel, for its treatment of the Palestinians.

As a result, Israel’s largest trade union is cutting all ties with the British union that is boycotting Israel. And let me take a moment here to remind you that Israel was founded on socialism and run by labor unions, which still bear enormous clout in Israel. Not that facts should get in the way of making a political statement.

What, exactly, could be the cause of this boycott? Can it be yet another honest attempt by people to make their voices heard?

Naaaaah.

Doreen Gerson, executive vice chairwoman of Trade Union Friends of Israel, said: “The vote was extremely rushed, as time had run over and there was not enough time for discussion, and the many delegates who wanted to speak against the motion were denied the opportunity.”

Ahead of the vote, Eric McDonald, secretary of TGWU’s Birmingham branch, which proposed the boycott motion, compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

The pattern is exactly the same as it was in the vote by the British teacher’s union last year. Rush the vote through, don’t allow members to discuss it, and refuse speaking time to its opponents. The Palestinian propaganda machine marches on. Dig deeply enough on every British boycott vote, and you will find the same group of Palestinians working the strings, behind the scenes, pushing votes through exactly like this one. It doesn’t matter that some votes have been overruled later. The damage is being done, and Israel is being delegitimized by inches. The inches add up, and if this trend is not reversed, you will begin to see more binding resolutions, more groups, and more countries calling for an end not to Israel’s policies, but to Israel itself.

This is why survivors of the Holocaust are saying it’s 1938 all over again. That’s the similarity to Nazi Germany, McDonald. You have it exactly backward. It is the Palestinians who are using the Nazi-like tactics, from the propaganda, to the demonization of Jews, to the destruction of any and all who would support Israel. They learned at the feet of their Soviet masters in the 1970s, and have perfected the routine ever since. And as always, there are many in the West who fall for it utterly.

I suppose the only good news about this is that the average person doesn’t even know the British unions are doing this.

Yet.

Usually, the comments on anti-Israel articles on CiF are disgustingly anti-Semitic, and overwhelmingly so. But a representative of the despicable Hizb ut-Tahrir, the organization that “peacefully” calls for a worldwide Islamic caliphate, spreads his lies on the Guardian and gets slammed for it. But even more suprising, the comments are notable because the anti-Semites are being called anti-Semites, and the commenters are both calling out the lies of Hizb ut-Tahrir, and also calling out commenters on their anti-Semitism.

Color me shocked. Here’s an example of a typical response:

It is VERY generous of you to offer to, ahem, “tolerate” me in your islamic state.

As a bloke, I’m sure I wouldn’t suffer too much.

However, if I can lift from the nearest approximations we have to islamic states, there are a few concerns for my fellow citizens that I’d like your comments on.

1. Anybody who drinks. (cf Saudi Arabia)
2. Anybody who’s gay (cf current Iranian government executing people based upon their sexuality)
3. Anybody who commits adultery (cf Saudi Arabia)
4. er, anybody who is a woman (cf practically all predominantly islamic states plus any islamic community anywhere in the world)

As Yesterday comments, if we are all to be equal under the law, why does it need to be an islamic state? My understanding of Shariah law may be incomplete but I believe that as a non-muslim, my word carries little (or certainly) less weight than somebody who bows down a lot five times a time, and that a woman’s word carries no weight at all.

UNRWA is finally waking up to the terrorism that is the Palestinians. Not that they’re calling it terrorism, of course. But they’re finally starting to place the blame for the closure of Gaza where it belongs: On Hamas and its ilk.

Hamas’s failure to secure the passages into the Gaza Strip drew criticism from an unlikely source on Thursday, John Ging, who heads the United Nation’s Relief and Works Agency’s operations in the Strip.

“It is very clear the responsibility lies with the Palestinians,” Ging told The Jerusalem Post by telephone from Gaza, on a day when Palestinians fired mortar shells at two of the three open passages into Gaza.

Such activity, he said, “directly impacts on the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians living in Gaza.”

[...]The focus has been on Kerem Shalom and Sufa, because they are easier to secure than Karni, and even there the Palestinians have continued to fire mortar shells, said Shlomo Dror, the spokesman for the coordinator of government activities in the territories.

On Thursday, 156 trucks with basic foods and animal feed passed through Sufa and Kerem Shalom, Dror said. It was an increase of some 50 trucks from the previous Thursday.

More trucks could have gone through Kerem Shalom on Thursday if it hadn’t been for the mortar attack, Dror said.

Ging said he was grateful that goods were able to go through Kerem Shalom and Sufa. “But it is not a sustainable solution,” he said. While the two passages have worked as a stopgap measure to ward off hunger, in the long run they would not suffice, he said.

To prevent a deepening humanitarian and economic crisis, Hamas must secure the Karni crossing, Ging said.

“The focus has to be on the Palestinian side, and the Palestinian officials have to meet the security requirements,” he said.

Someone check the sky for pigs. He didn’t blame Israel at all for this one.