Okay, folks. I do not own an HDTV. I intend to own an HDTV next year. In fact, I am adding several thousand dollars to the cost of my condo/townhome for the HD widescreen home theater system that I intend to buy at the same time.

I’m going to purchase Heroes on DVD. If I get the HD version now, will it display normally on a normal TV, or will it look funny?

Israel’s return of 48 Sudanese refugees got worldwide notice—because anything the media can spin negatively on Israel gets the widest airplay. Stories like this will not get a second glance outside the Israeli media.

Seventy-six Sudanese refugees, ages four and up, will be integrated into the Israeli school system during the coming academic year, according to an announcement by Education Minister Yuli Tamir Sunday.

The Sudanese children will be enrolled in Israeli grade schools and high schools despite the fact that their parents are in the country under refugee status, and without permanent housing.

According to the child protection law, any child who has been in Israel for over three months must be integrated into the country’s school system, regardless of their parents’ civil status.

[...] The students will be placed in special classes designed for children who have recently arrived in the country. They will spend 29 hours a week studying Hebrew, mathematics, and sciences; classes will be conducted in the children’s’ mother tongue Arabic.

Let’s take a wild guess on how many Sudanese children will be educated in Egyptian schools this year.

The Israeli Double Standard—it works every which way.

Watch for the Hamas Cheerleding Squad to utterly ignore these reports. By “Hamas Cheerleading Squad” I mean “People like Jimmy Carter,” and when they are asked about Hamas’ torture, will doubtless immediately fall into a spittle-flecked rant about Israel and Guantanamo, punctuated by how we forced Hamas to turn to torture by, uh, not giving them a state.

With both legs badly bruised from a vicious beating, Shaher Abu Oda can only move around with a painful shuffle. In the town of Beit Hanoun, on Palestine’s Gaza strip, however, he is just one of many young men bearing limps, plaster casts, and stitches - the black and blue aftermath of an unprecedented crackdown on dissent by the strip’s new rulers, the Islamist group Hamas.

What was Oda’s awful crime?

Singing.

Its officials snatched Mr Abu Oda off the streets two weeks ago as he was trying to find his younger brother Miqbil, himself badly beaten after club-wielding Hamas policemen broke up a wedding party. The revellers’ crime had been to sing a few songs associated with the Fatah party, the rival Palestinian faction which Hamas ousted from the Gaza Strip two months ago. “They threw me in a room,” said Mr Abu Oda. “From 11.30 to 3.30 in the morning, they came in every 15 minutes and beat me with sticks, fists, kicks, and a black leather crop.”

Fatah songs.

As many as 50 people are thought to have been arrested in Gaza’s Beit Hanoun district around the night of the wedding, and similar sweeps have taken place elsewhere in Gaza since then. The detentions and beatings appear to mark the end of a relative honeymoon period for Hamas, which seized control of Gaza after five days of battle in June.

The early days of the group’s reign saw aggressive crackdowns on drug dealers, theft, and violent clans, as well as the freeing of BBC journalist Alan Johnston from the clutches of a criminal faction aligned to al-Qaeda. Such moves led to calls for Britain and Europe to open formal dialogue with Hamas, despite its commitment to the destruction of the state of Israel.

Yes, and it looks like the bloom is off the rose.

Now though, human rights groups and ordinary Gazans say Hamas is committing exactly the same crimes as its Fatah predecessors, whose corruption and brutality were one of the main reasons why support for Hamas grew. “We are receiving reports of political detentions every day,” said Mahmoud Abu Rahma, of the Gaza City-based Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights. “Hamas is conducting wide sweeps and interrogations to collect information. The interrogations include harsh treatment, and in many cases, torture and beatings.”

Yeah, about those human rights groups… not seeing anything on Human Rights Watch’s site currently. There’s this release urging Fatah and Hamas to treat captives humanely. This was when they were throwing each other off buildings in Gaza and executing captives.

And this one should go into Charles Johnson’s random quote generator:

“Fatah arrested and tortured people too,” said a senior official from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an independent political faction. “But during Fatah’s rule we could give our opinions, and say anything we wanted about the Fatah leadership. Today people are afraid of saying anything about Hamas.”

Well, the first part is true. The rest is bullshit. Arafat shut down all opposing viewpoints, by intimidation and murder, and his heirs have followed in his footsteps. Or perhaps he means that they could at least express their opinions verbally. No newspaper attacks were allowed.

Newspapers have been banned, critical television talk shows have been pulled from the air, and a new Hamas decree prohibits demonstrations and even outdoor weddings without approval.

Gee. What a long way from what the writers of the Hamas op-eds told us only a few short weeks ago:

The streets of Gaza are now calm for the first time in a very long time. We have begun disarming some of the drug dealers and the armed gangs and we hope to restore a sense of security and safety to the citizens of Gaza. We want to get children back to school, get basic services functioning again, and provide long-term economic gains for our people.

Our stated aim when we won the election was to effect reform, end corruption and bring economic prosperity to our people. Our sole focus is Palestinian rights and good governance. We now hope to create a climate of peace and tranquillity within our community that will pave the way for an end to internal strife….

So how long do you think it will be before the major newspapers publish yet another lie-filled whitewashing op-ed, describing how Hamas is being slandered by Israel and her supporters, as well as by Fatah?

Hard on the heels of a foiled terror plot, Ynet reports that Hamas is gearing up for a major “heavy casualty” attack in Israel.

Hamas may carry out a mega-terror attack, the Deputy Shin Bet Chief, known only as Y, told cabinet members Sunday. “There were clear orders from the Hamas headquarters abroad to Hamas here to carry out a mass casualty attack in Israel,” he said.

According to Y, the Hamas leadership in Gaza is experiencing “deep strategic complications.” The organization is frustrated by its lack of success in gaining legitimacy in the international arena, particularly in Europe.

They’re probing the borders, and gathering information.

IDF forces arrested six Palestinian youths trying to cross the border fence from the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday. The youths were taken in for questioning and IDF sources believe the six were sent to gather information for terror organizations.

The incident occurred just one day after two gunmen carrying an explosive device managed to infiltrate into Israel.

A military source said on Sunday, “Yesterday’s infiltration would not have been possible if information had not been collected in advance. The Palestinians know that the border fence is military territory and that anyone hanging around there is taking a huge risk. It is well-known that terror organizations use boys (to collect information), this is part of the way they operate.”

Yet another example of terrorists using children that the media either overlooks, or refutes by the tactic of posting denials by terrorist spokesliars that the children were involved in terror. The BBC is so biased they’re actually quoting terrorists describing “martyrdom operations” without explaining what that term means—and of course, this is the same BBC that refused to delete anti-Semitic comments on their news sites.

The terrorists are being actively aided and abetted by Egyptian soldiers turning a blind eye to the arming of Hamas.

Arms smuggling has not only continued, it has increased, Y reported. In the few months since Hamas’ took over Gaza in June of this year, 40 tons of weapons have been smuggled into the Strip – approximately one half of the total amount of armaments smuggled into the area since Israel’s July 2005 disengagement.

Since August, the defense establishment recorded five major incidents of arms smuggling through Egypt, during which 13 tons of explosives and 150 RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) carriers were brought in. Simultaneously, there has been an observable decrease in Egypt’s measures to combat the trend.

Not surprisingly, the deputy chief stated that armed attacks against Israeli communities and forces had increased. There were 20 Qassam attacks last week, a high number relative to the average of 70 rockets per month.

The number of shooting attacks from Gaza (gun or mortar fire towards the border fence or into Israel) also increased in the past week – up to 56, in comparison to 43 attacks the week before. The heightened mortar fire, specifically, was a response to the IDF’s operations within Gaza, Y explained.

The wire services ignore the continuous fire into Israel. They tend to only notice things like thwarted Palestinian infiltrations, Palestinians killed by IDF missile fire, and the all-important (to them) civilians caught in the crossfire.

Correction. They do manage to score interviews with the murderer-in-chief. Who then pretends that Hamas doesn’t want the complete destruction of Israel, which is duly echoed by the reporters. And by the way—if Gilad Shalit is alive and well, as Mashaal says, prove it. Supply a video. Because without that, Mashaal is just blowing smoke.

Roaming the CiF (The Guardian’s Comment is Free forum) jungle, I have stumbled on an interesting page - one that shows the frequency of main subjects broached on CiF. It is not clear what period of time is represented, but in any case the statistics are amazing (yes, I know - lies, damn lies and statistics…). Take a look (click to enlarge).

United States seems to lead the list as the most popular subject with 776 articles. Well, you may say, it is only natural that the most powerful nation on Earth would be of the highest interest to The Guardian in its choice of topics. Even if we are talking about a British newspaper.

And you will be dead wrong, as I have been - after the first glance. While Israel looks quite high on the charts, trailing Iraq (the third horse in the race) by 49 points, the charts do not do it full “justice”.

After the second glance, I have decided to mark by green the subjects directly or indirectly related to Israel. Then I have applied some conservative percentages to those bearing a question mark (e.g. 10% of all Iran-related articles will carry some Israel-related tunes, 60% of all terror-related etc…). I have left out on purpose several subjects that are definitely carrying some Israel-related pieces, again - to be on a conservative side.

The result - roughly 1300 points - is rather staggering.

I don’t want to go into further analysis of the statistics, just compare the above number with that of China (137) Britain (130 - it is supposed to be a British newspaper, FFS!), Russia(106).

No matter how the results are turned around, looked upon and dissected, the picture shows a dark and unhealthy obsession. If you take into account that the majority (I would say, more than 90%) of the articles are bashing Israel for this or other, real or imaginary, offense, deservedly or not… well, I don’t have to spell it, do I?

Or do I?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Funny. Christiane Amanpour’s moral equivalence-fest, the so-called “God’s Warriors” shows, were repeated both nights this weekend. And both times, the show that’s on first is “God’s Jewish Warriors.” It’s on at 9 p.m. Since it’s a two-hour show, next up, at bedtime is—the segment on Christians one night, and Muslims the other. But both nights, and indeed, when it was first run, “God’s Jewish Warriors”—a show that slants, cherry-picks, and plays up ridiculously the non-threat that are religious Jews—is on first.

Funny, that. The only show that’s been on consistently when everyone is awake enough to watch isn’t, say, the show on the religion that is actually going around murdering people by the thousands every year. Nope. Let’s concentrate on lying about Jews and Christians—because that’s where the danger really lies. Yeah. The Jerry Falwells of this world (and you know I loathed the man), they’re the ones you have to worry about hijacking planes, or strapping on bombs, or chopping off heads.

No, there’s no anti-Israel bias. Not at all.