Elder of Zion has been tracking the death of Palestinians—killed by other Palestinians. The number is now 500 501. This post is a must-read, and a must-link. (That means you, blogosphere.)

We have reached the “grim milestone” of 500 PalArabs that we have been able to document violently killed by each other this year.

Since we started the self-death count 13 months ago, we have documented 705 violent deaths of Palestinian Arabs due to infighting, honor killings, “work accidents,” shootings during funerals and weddings, children picking up bombs being built by their parents, and similar self-inflicted incidents.

Calling all reporters: Here’s a different death count you can use as a reference.

This is why Iran wants the bomb:

Iran yesterday showed off for the first time a new fighter jet said to be modelled on the American F-5 but built using domestic technology, state media reported.

The Azarakhsh (Lightning) jet-one of the first to be home-produced by Iran-made a successful flight in the central city of Isfahan in a ceremony attended by Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and other officials.

[...] The development of the plane was first announced in September last year, when military officials said that it was “comparable” to the US F-5 fighter jet.

From the Daily Alert editors:

The F-5 is a 1960s-vintage jet. Prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran’s air force possessed some 160 F-5 fighters.

Welcome to the 1960s, Iran.

All sarcasm aside, this is why Iran wants nukes. Because they’re not able to build their own cutting-edge jets, and we won’t sell them any (though Russia has no such compunction; however, Russian jets always seem to lose when confronted with American jets piloted by Americans or Israelis).

Actually, not all music. But you can no longer play the violin, the piano, or the flute.

I lead a group of 26 musicians - we play traditional Palestinian music. But for the last two months we haven’t been able to work.

This group, Hamas, believe they are the leaders of Islam. The violin, piano, flute, all these instruments are banned. Only the drum is allowed. They say any other instrument is not mentioned in the Koran.

[...] Hamas have already beaten one of my singers for singing for Fatah. He was attacked at the wedding where he went to perform.

We had to send him to Israel for hospital treatment.

We have to keep our traditional music because it is Palestinian. People without traditions are not civilised, they are nothing.

But hey, the other two Palestinians on the BBC website say that life in Hamas is okay. It’s the evil Israelis who are behind all the misery.

The Western media try to paint Hamas as the source of all evil. But Hamas are Palestinians as well. They are not strangers from another planet.

A friend of mine had his wedding party a few days ago. It was mixed male and female, not a traditional wedding. It went ahead as normal, so our way of life has not changed.

However, since the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped [last year] we have had less electricity. We only get between 12 and 14 hours a day.

We get it from an Israeli company and Israel decrees how much electricity we need - they want to make us suffer.

Uh-huh. They want to make you suffer. That’s why they supply electricity at all. The cognitive dissonance of the eternal Palestinian victimhood survives.

Update: Ha’aretz says it was a rocket fired at Israel that fell on a house in Beit Lahiya. Looks like the AP was played.

A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing an eight-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister, and injuring five other children.

The rocket, fired at Israel, fell short and hit the children’s house in the village of Beit Lahiya. No group claimed responsibility.

See if you can spot the missing elements of this AP story:

Explosion in Gaza Kills Child

Headline is vague regarding what caused the explosion. A gas line break? A propane tank? Or perhaps a “crude, homemade rocket”? You know it wasn’t an IDF missile, because then the headline would be “Israel Kills Child in Gaza.”

A large explosion in northern Gaza on Tuesday killed an 8-year-old boy and his 6-year-old sister and injured five other children, Palestinian health officials said.

Witnesses said a group of children stumbled upon a homemade rocket or a mortar shell and began playing with it. The device exploded, injuring all seven children, two of whom died later of their wounds.

Moaiya Hassanain, a Palestinian health official, said the explosion occurred in the village of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, and the wounded were evacuated to hospital.

We are now three paragraphs in, and have no idea where that “homemade rocket” or mortar could possibly have come from. You know it can’t be from the IDF, because if it was from the IDF, the sentence would read “stumbled upon an unexploded missile or mortar shell left by the IDF during an incursion into Gaza” followed by “The IDF makes regular incursions into Gaza in pursuit of militants.”

The explosion is in Beit Lahiya. Hm. Why is that village name so familiar? Let’s think. Think, think, think.

The Kamal Adwan hospital identified the dead children as Wesam Abed Allah and his sister Hala.

The area is a frequent launching pad for militants who fire rockets toward Israel.

Oh, look. Five paragraphs in—which is too late for many “World News” sections of newspapers, which stop at paragraph three, the AP article identifies Beit Lahiya as one of the favorite places “militants” like to fire “crude, homemade rockets” into Israel. (Note the AP use of the word “toward” Israel, as if the “militants” are only just joshin’. They don’t really want to try to kill Israeli children. The correct word would be “into,” but then, the AP can weasel-word its way out of this because some rockets actually fall on Gazans (and have killed them before).

And last, the final paragraph of the piece:

No Palestinian group accused the army of the explosion. The army often targets militants in air strikes in the region.

Which army? The Hamas army? The PA army? Oh, wait. The Israeli army. Of course. Interesting how the article doesn’t even mention which army isn’t accused. Now, that may be an editing slip. I’ve seen it more than a few times, making me wonder if the AP even has copy editors. Or if perhaps they’ve just decided that everyone knows they mean the Israeli army, and they aren’t even bothering to hide the bias anymore.

Other notes on the article: The children have names and ages, where Israeli victims of Arab terrorist attacks are rarely named, only identified by gender and whether they’re an adult or a child (and not even that, sometimes). And surprisingly, no terrorist representative is blaming this one on Israel. Perhaps even they know when the media won’t bite on a clear lie. Or perhaps they’re catching on to the fact that the blogosphere is now on the lookout for fauxtography and false stories.

Talk about the power of associative (or simply lazy) processing of random information: I was slightly incensed lately about the article in the British Medical Journal by the incomparable Tom Hickey, one of the chief promoters of the “boycott Israel” initiatives. And this headline in CNN fits very well into that slightly incensed stream of semi-consciousness:

Of course, it doesn’t have a lot to do with Tom Hickey, aside of possibility that the price of steaks he will have to pay will be slightly higher for some time. And I do wish British farmers well, so let’s leave them out of this post.

Let’s take a look at the foot-in-mouth outbreak in the British academic circles. And I am not going to dissect the whole article, it is too full of malarkey and was already dissected by many a superior mind. So I shall concern myself with something simple that even I can enjoy:

We are accused of unfairly singling out Israel—the Jewish state—and hence of being anti-semites. We are asked why we do not propose a boycott of other states whose policies are barbaric and inhuman, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Zimbabwe.

But whether a boycott is appropriate in such places depends on the merits of each individual case. In the case of Israel, we are speaking about a society whose dominant self image is one of a bastion of civilisation in a sea of medieval reaction. And we are speaking of a culture, both in Israel and in the long history of the Jewish diaspora, in which education and scholarship are held in high regard. That is why an academic boycott might have a desirable political effect in Israel, an effect that might not be expected elsewhere.

So - you see how it goes - simple and practical. The real big and bad ones, like China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. - they are so big, so bad and so evil that there is no sense in even mentioning them. Let’s leave them alone - after all, they do not threaten our delicate academic backsides right now.

Argh… What can one say about this perverted “logic”? Nothing, really. So here comes a picture of Mr Hickey from the shoulders up. The only reason I have posted it is that in the next picture, the one that reflects his intellectual achievements, you will not be able to see his face.

But hey, the tie is in place!

P.S. To the nitpickers - dontcha love a mixed metaphor here and there?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Ace points to a conversation between Ross Douthat and Jonathan Chait about the Scott Beauchamp affair. Ross talks about the excellence of the Atlantic’s fact-checking process, and Ace mentions that Jonathan Chait seems rather surprised that the fact-checkers actuallly call up article sources and ask if they are being quoted accurately.

I find it shocking that a senior editor at TNR would seem so unversed in the process of fact-checking. I spent a fair amount of time in magazine publishing during my typesetting/desktop publishing career. One of my stints was as a typesetter at New Woman, a monthly women’s magazine owned by K-III Magazines, which was one of the biggest cheapskate corporations in the publishing world back then. Most people aspired to get enough experience on a K-III magazine to go work for Conde Nast or some other publisher that paid much better. But even this cheapskate monthly women’s magazine had a fact-checker, and his fact-checking was superb. I often heard him on the phone during the workday. He called every author’s interview subject to make sure that the subject said what the author quoted them as saying. He checked the accuracy of the facts of each story, either with reference books or by calling agencies referred to in articles. Nothing got into the magazine without being thoroughly fact-checked. And this was all for a women’s magazine that ran articles on fashion, diet, exercise, and women’s issues.

To find that neither Slate nor TNR has fact-checking as thorough as the underpaid twentysomething assistant editors I worked with at New Woman is a very sad reflection on the state of Slate and TNR—not on the state of fact-checking.