If you’ve been following this site for any length of time, you know that there are a considerable number of calls and movements to boycott Israel, from various countries and sources. One of the things that all of these boycott movements have in common is that if you dig down deeply enough, you will always find a Palestinian group at their core. Sabeel is one of the biggest leaders in the anti-Israel boycott movement. But there has been a concerted move by the Arab and Muslim world, in concert with those who hate Israel, to delegitimize Israel on many fronts.

The news last week that Britain’s largest academic union decided not to boycott Israel on legal grounds (gee, and isn’t that a moral high road? “Let’s not do it, we might get sued.”) was great news. But this is even better:

A tour of Palestinian academic officials arranged by the British University and College Union was canceled following the union’s decision to call off its threat of an academic boycott of Israel.

During the tour, Palestinian academics were meant to visit British campuses and present their side of the conflict and the advantages of imposing an academic boycott on Israel.

Darn. There goes the propaganda mission, down the toilet! And the Palestinians are seething.

Following the cancellation, the British Committee for Universities of Palestine issued a statement condemning the move. The committee claimed the UCU’s decision was based on legal advice that had not been shared with all the union’s members.

Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, one of the committee’s heads, who has also signed a petition organized by Jews for Justice for Palestinians, said it was not rare for government or other bodies to turn to lawyers to receive the legal advice they want to hear.

See, here’s the thing about deciding a legal question. Once a lawyer determines something is going to open an organization up to liability, he and other lawyers get together to make sure that he’s right. Once they determine that could happen, that’s pretty much the end of it in the corporate world. The membership of the union doesn’t get to vote on whether or not the union should take a risk of being sued. If Professor Jonathan Rosenhead had done what his mother wanted him to do, he’d be a lawyer now, instead of an academic, and he’d be able to grasp that simple concept. He might even not have turned against Israel, but hey, he’s a British Jew, so he’s already halfway there.

Dr Amjad Barham, president of the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, sent an open letter to Hunt expressing the federation’s shock and surprise at the cancellation of the tour.

In his letter, Barham wrote hat federation members felt their British colleagues were prevented the right to receive direct information, and expressed disappointment with the union’s leadership for failing to protect the members’ rights to hold an open discussion on the matter of the boycott.

So, here’s the gist of the letter, if I have this right: Even though the legal staff has determined that if the UCU holds the boycott, it will be sued, which could effectively end the UCU, and even though the reason they could be sued is because the boycott against Israel would violate discrimination laws in the U.K., the Palestinians should still be allowed to go on a tour of British university campuses to tell people why they should have a discriminatory, probably-illegal boycott of Israel.

Yep. Makes sense to me. Go on tour, boys, and remember to pack the good CDs for the trip to LaLa Land. “Prevented the right to receive direct information” my ass. All they have to do is head for the BBC website and they’ll have plenty of the same information that the tour was going to give them.

File this one under: Sore Losers.

israel academic boycott.

When you, my poor to moderately well-to-do reader, visit your travel agency to scrounge for a lowest price ticket to Spanish Riviera (if you are a Brit), to Cancun (if you are a US citizen) or to Cyprus (for Israelis), you are probably perusing wistfully the somewhat garishly colored booklets of more expensive resorts, like the ones on the Maldives. Tantalizing indeed.

However, the recent bombing changed the idyllic picture drastically. In many other places on our planet a humble bombing or two wouldn’t create too much noise. It is different in Maldives, this tourist paradise. From Al Jazeera:

The Maldives, with a population of about 350,000, is by far the wealthiest, and most orderly, country in south Asia. About 600,000 tourists visit the country each year, accounting for one-third of its economy.

So what is troubling this singularly blessed corner of the world, you might ask? Unbelievably, the answer comes from the same Al Jazeera article:

Half the population is under 18, reasonably well-educated and with few prospects for good jobs. Some young people have turned to drug use, while others have embraced a conservative strain of Islam that had been virtually unheard of on the islands just a few years ago.

Since the drug addicts rarely, if at all, resort to bombing, being otherwise engaged, we should obviously take a look at the “others” - those who caught that elusive virus called in journalistic lingo “conservative strain of Islam”. It is hardly a coincidence that this malady precedes the first attempt at bombing, addressed at tourists, of all possible targets.

“The Maldives has never had something like this before. We are taking this very seriously because tourism is our life blood,” Shareef said.

Somebody obviously wants to hurt the Maldives’ economy. Destitute people are a much better fodder for extremists of all kinds than well-to-do ones. And the Maldives’ life blood is in danger of being drained, quite quickly if the bombings become a habit.

Just to satisfy my curiosity: does this virulent conservative strain of Islam come with genetically built in know-how on bomb building? It seems so, since according to this, the bomb was quite sophisticated, including a cell-phone operated primer.

This case could bear watching…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

h / t Elder of Ziyon

Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post - daughter of the late Katherine Graham - interviewed Mahmoud Abbas for the paper. The interview is here.

Elder of Ziyon is certainly correct that there’s nothing “moderate” in the positions he espouses.

A comment at the site cites IMRA catching Abbas in a lie. (Or if you prefer to be polite an embellishment.) Abbas boasted that his security forces had captured two rockets aimed at Israel. IMRA thought cited an e-mail from Khaled abu Toameh that those weren’t rockets but empty pipes.

So far the only other commenter on the article is Yaacov Lozowick who observes

So according to the Palestinian president, the 2nd Intifada was launched in response to an unprecedented offer by Israel’s prime minister. It would have been legitimate to continue negotiating so as to achieve more - but that was not what happened.

Reading the interview it is impossible to get the feeling that Abbas is capable of much independent thought. He comes across as spoiled. (The world must support our demands, Israel must agree to our terms, Hamas must make nice to us.) He also is living in unreality. These Q & A’s are precious:

Are there any concessions that you’re willing to make in order to reach a deal with the Israelis? Are there any concessions you demand?We will be flexible, but before 1947, we had 95 percent of Palestine. In 1937, the partition plan gave the Israelis only part of Palestine. And they were very happy at that time. [David] Ben-Gurion was very happy with it. It didn’t work. After that [came] the 1947 partition plan — we rejected this, so we lost.

You should have taken it?

Yes, at that time, of course. But it gave us 46 percent of Palestine. . . . Now, we accept [the pre-'67 borders].

So in other words, it is a concession that the PA is willing to forgo the 1947 partition plan. That ship sailed 60 years ago. There’s no sense of shame, that since the Arab world rejected compromise 60 years they missed their chance.

The other part of the problem is “we had 95 percent of Palestine.” Who is “we?” The areas now considered to be part of Palestine were sections of Jordan and Egypt at the time. Yes the untenable 1947 partition divided what was then Palestine into Jewish and Arab enclaves. But Gaza was part of Egypt and Judea and Samaria were parts of (Trans)Jordan - which itself was part of the British Mandate of Palestine. (And was Ben Gurion happy with the partition plan? Or was he willing to tolerate it in order to get a state?) “We” clearly does not refer to what Abbas (and the world) would now call “Palestinians.”

And then there is this:

The Israelis thought they were doing a good thing when they withdrew from Gaza [in July 2005], but now they have been forced to evacuate a town near Gaza [because it has been repeatedly shelled by rockets from Hamas].They did it unilaterally. They didn’t do it bilaterally with us. We asked them many times to make [the Gaza withdrawal] the result of an agreement between us. But [former Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon refused. He didn’t want to talk to us. . . .

OK, so what happened when Israel ceded territory under the terms of of a bilateral agreement? That happened in late 1995, when Israel ceded Tulkarem, Shechem (Nablus), Ramallah, Kalkilya, Bethlehem and Jenin to the Palestinian Authority. Starting in February 1996 Israel was struck with a series of suicide bombings that killed over 60 people and injured hundreds more. This violence didn’t occur because Israel killed Yihye Ayyash or because Hamas was trying to “kill the peace process.” It happened because Israel trusted its security to the PA. The PA, then under Arafat’s leadership, had no interest in preventing terror or Hamas from developing a terror infrastructure. So Hamas took advantage of the opportunity, built its infrastructure while being protected by Arafat and struck at Israel when it could. What happened in Gaza is a repeat of that and of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, which afforded Hezbollah a better platform from which to attack Israel.

The lesson isn’t that unilateral won’t work. The lesson is that giving territory to terrorists (or those committed to your destruction) strengthens them.

Finally there’s this:

Your popularity has increased since you declared yourself independent of Hamas and set up a government in the West Bank. Does this show that when you make a bold move, people like it?Yes, but if I make concessions which are unacceptable to the people, I think that I will not be popular anymore. But it is not a matter of popularity — it’s a matter of fairness.

“Bold?!” Read the whole interview. “Bold” doesn’t describe Abbas. He has chutzpah no doubt. But the best description of him is “passive aggressive.” This is not a man that any sane person would trust to ensure his interests.

And note, even here, he refuses to make “concessions which are unacceptable to the people.” Has he even thought of using his position as leader to persuade the people of the necessity of making concessions? Instead he just pretends that not demanding the 1947 partition plan is a concession.

Abbas is weak. And I’m not just talking about his political position.

Israel Matzav has more thoughts:

I want you to try to understand Abu Mazen’s basic argument, because it’s not something western minds are used to confronting. When we used to play football in the schoolyard and one team scored a touchdown, the ruled always was “suckers walk.” The team that gave up the touchdown had to retreat to the other end of the schoolyard to receive the ensuing kickoff. In Abu Mazen’s world, the winner has to give up all its gains in order to appease the loser.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

mahmoud abbas.

Here’s my Heroes tip of this season: Watch The Bionic Woman. It is superb.

The series is brought to us by the same folks that brought us the update/remake of Battlestar Galactica, which is also pretty damned good. The producers really have a great way of writing strong women characters, and oof—I really like the new Jamie Summers. Plus, she has a doppelganger, played by Katee Sackhoff, Starbuck from BG.

It’s a great match for Heroes fans. And like Battlestar Galactica, there’s obviously a past that we’re going to be filled in on as the season goes along.

And for those of you trying to figure out who the actor is who plays Will’s father, he played Badger in Firefly. (That was driving me nuts until I IMDB’d him.)

If you missed the pilot, it’s on Sci-Fi network sometime, and probably online as well. Really. Watch this one. It was great.

Having a bat mitzvah is a complicated thing.

And I don’t have my parents doing all the work of the party for me.

Well, the invitations are mostly done. Have to email a few people for their addresses. I decided I’m bringing the students’ invitations to school with me tomorrow.

Here’s a hint for anyone who thinks that Staples has a good print shop: Nope. Go to Kinko’s. Staples misled me as to how they could print on cards I bought from a paper store. They told me they really could only do it well on 8×11 card stock. Lucky for me, I remembered that literally around the corner is a Kinko’s, where I got the help I need and it cost less than half per copy, and $1.25 vs. $2 per cut. I used my typesetting/desktop publishing skills to fix the type to fit on the cards I had, and the staff helped me do the rest. Nice people. I have to remember to write a nice letter to their manager.

Mind you, I’m two weeks late with the invitations. But the most important people already said they’re coming—my close friends and family, and some blog buddies.

Now all I have to do is, well, almost everything else. But I have the caterer for Saturday night dinner. That’s the hard work, and I’m not doing it. I’m really tempted to cater kiddush lunch, too, but I’ll hold off and save the money. I have some friends at the synagogue who are going to help me prepare and set it up.

Of course, I’m utterly wondering why I chose to do this again… one of my fellow congregants had her adult bat mitzvah last year, and she invited half a dozen friends. That’s MUCH easier. I told her I should have done that. She thinks that I should keep on plugging away with what I’m doing, and that it will be great for my students. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’s not the one who has to do the role of bat mitzvah girl and parent of bat mitzvah girl.

If I ever get married, I’m eloping. The heck with big parties.

It occurs to me that I haven’t done this in ages.

Now I have.

This is what defeat looks like:

Every year, large rallies in the territories and abroad commemorated the anniversary of the Palestinian uprising that broke out in 2000. But this year, there was nothing and Palestinians are asking themselves whether anything at all was gained from the revolt.

Many Palestinians say they are worse off now, increasingly worried about internal fighting and further from statehood than when the uprising erupted on Sept. 28, 2000, after former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon visited a disputed holy shrine in Jerusalem and a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace summit failed.

“It is a silent admission on the part of Palestinians that the uprising has been an unmitigated disaster,” prominent pollster Khalil Shikaki said of the absence of commemorations.

Of course, this is what AP media bias looks like:

For years, Palestinians hit Israel with suicide bombers and rockets, and Israel struck back with aerial attacks, ground incursions and arrest raids.

But the vastly outgunned Palestinians have been exhausted by the armed confrontation. A total of 4,453 Palestinians have been killed, along with 1,114 Israelis. Israel has built a West Bank barrier which it says was designed to keep out attacks. But the enclosure dips into the West Bank at various points, putting 8.5 percent of the territory on the “Israeli” side. In Palestinian eyes, it is a thinly veiled land grab.

But then we get back to the failure talk:

“Everything came to a standstill for seven years. We didn’t move forward but backward,” said Adnan Attari, a 30-year-old merchant from a village near the West Bank town of Ramallah.

But the lack of commemoration reflects more than the uprising’s failures. With the militant Islamic Hamas and Fatah factions locked in a battle for power, Palestinians are more concerned about their internal security than their conflict with Israel, polls show.

And then we get back to the AP media bias:

Fierce infighting began after the Islamists won 2006 parliamentary elections, then came to a head in June, when Hamas violently seized control of Gaza from Fatah. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah immediately expelled Hamas from power and set up his own rival government in the West Bank.

You know what’s missing from that paragraph? The body count. Whenever Palestinians are killed by the IDF, the body count is kept, added up by the day, the week, the month, the year, and the war, and then turned into a boilerplate. Whenever Palestinians are killed by Palestinians, well, it’s turned into “infighting” or “violently seized control”—nice little euphemisms for these actions:

Early Tuesday, three women and a child were killed when Hamas militants attacked the home of a senior Fatah security official with mortars and grenades, security officials said. The gunmen seized Hassan Abu Rabie and killed his 14-year-old son and three other women in the house, hospital officials said.

[...] The fighting took a grisly turn on Sunday, when Hamas militants kidnapped a member of Abbas’ elite presidential guard, took him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building and threw him to his death.

Of course, not a single Palestinian can be found to call those actions “war crimes.” But if the IDF had done anything remotely like them? Sure.

Now, to the numbers. Buried deep within that article is a tally:

Monday’s deaths brought to more than 80 the number of Palestinians killed since the latest round of infighting erupted in May.

You see, the AP editors do have the reference. But they won’t use it in the current article, because that makes the Palestinians look bad. And they never really kept an accurate tally, just as they don’t have an accurate tally of civilian and “militant” casualties in the Lebanon refugee camp bombed over the summer.

Because if the IDF doesn’t kill them, it’s not worth keeping track.

All the same, it’s great news that the Palestinians no longer have the heart to celebrate the intifada. Not that I think they’re internalized their defeat. Not when Abbas can talk about final status issues and a state in six months, while promising absolutely nothing in return.

I’ve got a lot of things to do this weekend, and it’s been a really long time since I’ve put up cat pictures, and it’s Caturday, so here we go:

That’s Janet’s kitty, whose picture I’ve had for a while, but kept forgetting to put up.

This one is a favorite of mine, even though her sisters beat the hell out of her. Poor thing. While I was at Janet and Chris’, I helped them corner their diabetic cat in the kitchen, and then felt bad for laughing because she skidded on the kitchen floor and looked ridiculous. Janet didn’t mind, since I helped catch her quickly, so she didn’t have to be dragged out for her insulin shot. (Of course, all the cats are given Star Trek names, and I can’t remember which is Kira and which is Dax and which is, dammit, now I’ve forgotten half the names and Janet’s going to kill me. Quick, change the subject!)

Say, you know those people who like to give their pets nothing but the best bottled water? Well, take a good look at what Tig’s drinking. That’s right, rainwater in a filthy plastic lid. And he loves it. I can’t keep him away from it. All together now: Eww.

And last, but not least, Miss Gracie, looking very, very regal:

She has stopped licking her belly fur again. I’m starting to think that it’s a sign of IBD. She stopped shortly after I remembered to give her the Prednosone again, and hasn’t bothered her belly since. If this keeps up, she may actually have a fully white belly again. Little Miss Silky all over. And Tig is afraid of the Bed Monster again. I can’t tell you why. He was sleeping under the blanket quite happily one day, and the next, he refuses to stay in my bedroom. Oh, well. I get a better night’s sleep without Tig yowling in my ear at 6 a.m. Unless he’s downstairs, yowling for me to wake up, at 6 a.m.

Shoes mysteriously fly down the stairs when that happens.

Works, too.

Hamas is targeting Israel every which way it can.

Hamas targets the border crossings, thus making sure that Israel keeps them closed—because it’s been proven time and time again that Palestinians don’t care if civilians die as a result of their actions.

Only nine days ago, the government declared the Gaza Strip “hostile territory” in an attempt to up the pressure on Hamas to end the rocket attacks. But Hamas’ response has been the opposite; the shooting has only intensified.

Terrorist groups in Gaza, including Hamas’ military wing, have also increased efforts to carry out attacks inside Israel.

Most of the 54 mortars fired Wednesday landed near the Sufa crossing terminal. The mortars fired Thursday by Hamas militants targeted crossing points at Eretz and Kerem Shalom. There has also been a great deal of intelligence on Hamas’ plans to target the crossing points into Gaza.

As such, a paradox has emerged in which the Israeli government, the U.S. and Fatah believe that by exerting greater pressure on the Gaza Strip’s residents, the people will overthrow the Hamas regime there, while the Islamic group is doing its best to shut down the crossings - perhaps assuming that if the civilians suffer more, they will side with Hamas.

Senior Hamas officials deny that they intend this. Ismail Haniyeh says Hamas is interested in opening the crossings, but he was hard-pressed to explain the obvious attempt by Hamas militants to destroy the crossings.

“The military wing decides its targets in an effort to bring an end to the siege over the Strip,” he told Haaretz.

Hamas is also trying to conduct mass murder via suicide bomber as well, and only the intensity and luck of the IDF is stopping them. And oh yeah—those “humiliating” checkpoints:

IDF soldiers arrested two Palestinians at the Bir Zayit checkpoint on Thursday night after finding two explosive devices in their car during a routine check.

These are the same checkpoints the world demands Israel dismantle.

And of course, the near-daily rocket barrages continue.

A Qassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a house in the Shaar Hanegev Kibbutz on Wednesday, causing no injuries.

In light of all these events, every Arab nation is demanding that Israel make “good-will gestures” by releasing prisoners and easing checkpoints. Not a single one of them has demanded that the Palestinians stop trying to murder Israelis. The conclusion is obvious: They don’t want the violence to end.

This upcoming peace conference is a bigger sham than Michael Jackson’s marriages.

The Jerusalem Post says the IDF received intel on the subject of the Syrian raid from the Iranian minister who defected earlier this year.

Iranian former deputy defense minister Ali Rheze Asgari supplied intelligence sources in the West with information regarding the sites that Israeli jets allegedly attacked on September 6, the Kuweiti Al Jareeda reported Friday.

Asgari defected from Iran several months ago and moved to an undisclosed location in the West.

And here’s the even bigger news: USAF jets shadowed the IAF on the Syrian border, to help if there was a need.

In related news, the Saudi paper Al Watan reported Friday that American jets were hovering in Iraqi airspace close to the Syrian border during the raid. Reportedly, the USAF jets were meant to give aerial backup to Israel in case IAF warplanes would come to any harm.

Now, I’m still of the opinion that there’s a lot more smoke than fire in many of these stories. So take the above information with another helping of salt. Especially since the raid came after Israel launched a newer, better spy satellite early this summer.

But if both these facts are true, that raid was a major, major coup.

Check out this statement by AFP:

GAZA CITY (AFP) — The Israeli military killed three Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, bringing to 12 the death toll in one of the bloodiest 24 hours in the Hamas-run territory in recent months.

The rest of the article is an example of the constant anti-Israel bias of the French version of the AP. But they seem to have forgotten that a very short time ago—June, in fact—even more Palestinians were killed in a single day.

By Palestinians.

Hamas officials reported that a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the house of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, causing damage but no injuries. That attack came just hours after Monday’s brutal infighting that killed 17 Palestinians.

Which makes their lead a bit, well, inaccurate. And the killings? They’d be called atrocities if the IDF did them.

After sundown Monday, gunmen, apparently from Hamas, laid siege to the house of Jamal Abu al-Jediyan, the senior Fatah official in northern Gaza. They then dragged him outside and killed him, security officials said. Medics said he was hit by 45 bullets.

[...] The bloodiest clashes of the day took place in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Fatah and Hamas gunmen exchanged fire near Beit Hanoun Hospital, killing a Hamas supporter. The battle then moved to the hospital, where three men from a Fatah-allied clan were shot dead.

At Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa, combatants fired mortars, grenades and assault rifles.

But by all means, AFP, fire up those anti-Israel engines and forget about the death toll of the summer’s “infighting” between Hamas and Fatah. How many died? Dozens? Hundreds? Does it really matter, when they weren’t killed by Israelis?

Huh. I just thought of the new Israeli Double Standard Time koan: If a Palestinian isn’t killed by the IDF, did he really die?

A sukkah may have saved a baby’s life.

A 14-month-old baby from Bnei Brak was lightly injured Thursday when he fell from a third floor apartment window onto a sukkah, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

The sukkah that broke the baby’s fall was located in the building’s courtyard and was empty at the time of the incident. At around 5 pm the baby’s parents heard screaming and rushed downstairs after realizing that their infant son was not in the apartment.

After finding their baby lying inside the sukkah, fully conscious with only a slight bruise on his head, the parents summoned a Magen David Adom emergency team, which transferred the baby to the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer for further treatment.

The mother said the baby had apparently climbed onto a small bench located near the window and then fell.

Mind you, the parents shouldn’t have had an open window in that situation, but still—the baby’s just fine today, thanks to the command to build a sukkah on Sukkot.

A positive story for a change. Delightful.

Well, I’ve watched a few of the new shows this week, and have some opinions.

Grey’s Anatomy: So glad it’s back. Just as funny and fun and sad and surprising as ever. Really like bringing in Meredith’s half-sister. Really hate the George/Izzy plotline.

Private Practice: Addison, you should have stayed in Seattle. Everyone in Private Practice is boring. Their lives are boring. Their patients are boring. The hospital scenes is what makes Grey’s Anatomy more than just another nighttime soap. The conflict on Private Practice? Boo-ring. Won’t be wasting my time on that one.

Ugly Betty: Huh. I’ve generally only caught the last few minutes of it, but I caught the season finale last year, and decided to watch the opener this year, and y’know, it’s a lot funnier than it used to be, and still fairly dramatic. I may have to start watching.

Big Shots: Gee, a show about man-sluts. Just what this country needed, a show about man-sluts. Great cast. Some hot guys. And it’s a show about—man-sluts. Plus, it’s a badly-written show about man-sluts. Sorry. That clip you see with the guys talking about how they’re the new women in town? They are. And they’re not nearly as interesting as the ladies of Wisteria Lane (who are going to be joined by two of my favorite soap stars this year, so waiting for Sunday to arrive).

Reaper: Kevin Smith’s new show about Jay and Silent Bob, excuse me, two other guys who merely resemble Jay and Silent Bob, working for the devil to capture souls that have escaped from Hell. It was funny and interesting. I’ll keep watching.

Men in Trees: This was a charming, sweet show that I fell in love with last year. Looking forward to seeing the rest of last year’s episodes, plus the new ones. It isn’t Gilmore Girls, but it’s a good substitute. I need my TV show/chick flick every year. Before there was Gilmore Girls, there was Sisters, and now there is Men in Trees. Now if only Joss Whedon would get another show on a network somewhere.

Shows not yet seen: Bionic Woman (have it on tape) and Pushing Daisies. And what the hell happened to Lost? When is Jericho back on?

Overall, though, not much good on TV these days. There’s Heroes, of course. And the above shows. That’s about it for me, unless you’re watching something good that I’m missing. Oh. Scrubs isn’t back yet.

No, I will not be watching the new Cavemen show. I’ve read enough about it to know it’s going to suck. There hasn’t been a decent new comedy in ages.

One step closer to home ownership. I have been officially pre-approved for a mortgage. By a big bank, not by one of those doofus mortgage brokers who lent subprime lenders money and then were surprised when they started defaulting on their loans. So now things can move forward in my search for a place to settle down.

Y’know, this is a true milestone year for me. A milestone birthday in November (all will be revealed on the 15th), a great new job, and quite probably, my name on the dotted line for home ownership.

I’m starting to feel so much less depressed about that milestone. In fact, things are downright turning around.

Yep. 5768 is my year.

Score another propaganda victory for Mad Mahmoud. He sat down with a group of religious leaders—minus, I’m proud to say, a single Jewish religious leader—and lied, denied, and redirected the questions asked of him. But now he gets to brag about how great he is for sitting down with Quakers and Mennonites and various other Christian leaders. (By the way, he refuses to come if there are any members of the Bahai faith, which is persecuted in Iran.)

After two days of prickly confrontations with critics at Columbia University and the United Nations, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran held a friendly, even warm, exchange yesterday with Christian leaders from the United States and Canada convinced that dialogue is the only way to prevent war.

The session, held under tight security at a chapel across the street from the United Nations, was a reminder that Mr. Ahmadinejad is a religious president of a religious nation who relishes speaking on a religious plane. He spent his 20 allotted minutes at the start of the two-hour meeting recounting the chain of prophets central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the commonality of their messages.

He took questions from a panel that included a Quaker, a Catholic, an Anglican, a Baptist and a representative of the interfaith World Council of Churches, some of whom separately said they had been criticized by other religious leaders for sitting down with the Iranian president. Given the furor over Mr. Ahmadinejad’s earlier appearances, there was no advance publicity.

Imagine that. No publicity. Were they afraid their congregations would get upset?

The gathering, which included an audience of about 140 other religious leaders, was organized by the Mennonites and Quakers, churches known for their commitment to pacifism.

The organizers said that they had pressed hard to find a Jewish leader to join the panel of questioners, but that those invited declined because they could not win support from Jewish organizations.

Or perhaps they didn’t want to sit down with the man who organized the Iranian Holocaust Denial Conference, and who threatens the massacre of another six million Jews. Or maybe our rabbis were smarter than this woman:

“My heart was broken that there was so little support from other religions to be here,” said Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that helped sponsor the event. “If we don’t walk down this path of dialogue, we’re going to end up in conflagration.”

You know when dialogue works? When you’re actually having one. Asking Ahmadinejad questions and getting the same evasions and non-answers and outright lies as everyone else has gotten isn’t a dialogue. It’s yet another photo op, yet another propaganda moment, and yet another publicity coup for the Iranian president.

Though Mr. Ahmadinejad’s answers differed little, the tone of the session was a marked contrast to the verbal pummeling he received at Columbia University on Monday, when the university’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, called the Iranian president either “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated” for his stance on the Holocaust.

At the clerics’ meeting, Albert Lobe, executive director of the Mennonite Central Committee, said pointedly, “We mean to extend to you the hospitality which a head of state deserves.”

And it made such a difference, didn’t it?

Well, no, of course not. But Mad Mahmoud gets to go home with a full set of trophies: The UN, Academia, and now a group of Christian leaders. Watch for the Iranian spin to call American Jews Zionists for not sitting down with him. Of course, he already does that, but still—let’s see what IRNA has to say.

Barbarians.

Israeli military forces killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded 25 in an airstrike and a tank-led ground operation Wednesday, the bloodiest day in the Gaza Strip since Israel declared it a “hostile territory.”

[...] The bodies in the jeep were badly disfigured, prompting different death tolls. Hospital officials said four people died, while the Army of Islam said five of its members were killed.

Dozens of Palestinians surrounded the wrecked jeep, some dipping their hands into the blood of the victims, to underscore their demand for revenge. “God is great,” the crowd chanted.

Disgusting. Tell me again how it is the Israelis who are the brutes. I won’t believe you.

Speaking of dipping hands in blood, the last of the men responsible for the hideous lynching of two Israeli reservists—whose only crime was losing their way seven years ago—was caught.

Nurzhitz and Avrahami entered Ramallah by mistake while driving to an IDF base in the area. They were stopped by Palestinian officers and taken to the local police station, where they were beaten and stabbed to death by an angry mob that stormed the station while hundreds of locals cheered the killers on.

Seven years later, and the good news is that this time, it wasn’t Iraeli blood on their hands. Still—there’s no way a people who daub themselves with the blood of slain terrorists and chant “Allahu Akbar” are going to make peace with Israel. The upcoming conference is yet another waste of time.

Well, maybe not imminent, but it does appear to be in the works.

The army said Palestinians also lobbed at least 20 mortar shells into Israel from the southern part of the strip, but no casualties were reported. The Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Earlier Wednesday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel was moving closer to carrying out a large-scale military operation in Gaza in order to put a stop to cross-border rocket and mortar barrages into Israel.

It was his first public hint of plans to combat the fire coming from the Hamas-ruled coastal strip, which Israel last week declared “hostile territory” as a prelude to possible punitive cuts of utilities.

Barak told Army Radio that a large-scale military operation would not be a simple undertaking.

“We are moving closer to a broad and complex operation in Gaza,” Barak said.

“It (such an operation) hasn’t happened in recent weeks for many reasons …. We’re getting closer to this and it should be realized that such an operation is not simple, not from the point of view of the forces taking part, not from the aspect of the length of time we’ll have to spend there and not from the aspect of the operational challenges the forces will meet.”

And, oh yeah—more dead terrorists today.

A group of four Hamas-affiliated terrorists were killed late Wednesday afternoon in an IAF missile strike on their jeep in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, Hamas reported.

The army confirmed the strike and said that the vehicle’s occupants numbered five, not four, and had been on their way to launch Kassam rockets at Israel. According to the army, all five were killed.

I could write the AP article before the Gaza operation even happens… maybe I’ll do that over the weekend, as an exercise in predictability.

Arafat’s boyfriend is dying of AIDS. Of course, they’re insisting that he’s dying from “Israeli poison.” Uh-huh.

Arafat aide A top advisor of former PA chairman Yasser Arafat is suffering from similar symptoms to those diagnosed in the deceased Palestinian leader before his death, a Palestinian Web site reported Wednesday.

Doctors at a London hospital treating Nabil Abu Rudeineh had to remove one of his kidneys and implant instead a kidney donated by his sister, the Web site said.

They’re just too funny for words. I guess this is the Fatah version of “There are no homosexuals in Iran.”

Ten months after Arafat’s death, his personal doctor claimed that French doctors who treated Arafat in the last days of his life had found he was infected with HIV.

The doctor also claimed that the HIV virus was inserted into Arafat’s blood to camouflage the poisoning.

Uh-huh. And if you believe that one….

Michelle Malkin and others have posted about Shiri Negari, the terror victim who was featured in a sign protesting Mahmoud Ahmadenijad’s invitation to speak at Columbia. The name brought back memories. While the terror war against Israel was going strong, I kept on reading new names of those killed, but there was something about her story that stuck with me: the white butterfly. The emergency physician who treated her, Dr. Avraham Rivkind wrote

Several weeks ago, I kneeled over a beautiful young woman named Shiri Nagari in the hospital parking lot. I asked her how she was feeling, and she answered that she was okay. But I felt that something was wrong.

What was wrong was

… her chest X-ray confirmed my hunch: a white butterfly on the black background. Shiri’s lungs had exploded. The same loud wave of air that smashes your eardrums can compress the air in your lungs and send it to destroy the organs in your abdominal cavity. Three concussive waves do lethal damage when a bomb explodes in an enclosed area. We rushed Shiri to our trauma operating room, always left empty for emergencies, and opened her up: blood in her chest and abdomen, a liver torn apart. No matter how much blood we pumped in, she couldn’t survive. I’m 52, and like most Israelis I serve in the army too. I have seen my share of tank injuries, unrelenting cancers and traffic accidents. Shiri’s death was the first time I ever cried at losing a patient.

All of her internal organs were crushed by the force of the blast. There was nothing the doctors could do. I know it’s a terrible way to remember someone, but when the terrorists were striking with regularity, it’s how I reacted. I could name too many of the victims of the Arab terror during the so called “Aqsa intifada.” Hopefully we’ve seen an end to those terrible times. But when some brilliant academic, politician, journalist or diplomat comes up with another idea how to empower the purveyors of terror they increase the risk that they could recur. With the Holiday of Sukkos on its way, I don’t want to end on such a negative note. Fortunately, Dr. Rivkind tells of some of his successes too.

Adi Hudja, only 14, had more than 40 metal objects in her legs from the suicide bombings on Ben Yehuda Street last December. She was bleeding uncontrollably from her wounds. On the spot, we came up with the idea of trying a coagulant for hemophiliacs still not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, certainly not approved for trauma. It costs $10,000 for a small bottle, but it worked. Six months later, she’s coming for therapy three times a week in Hadassah’s Mt. Scopus Rehab Center, and she’s learning to walk. Next year, maybe she’ll be able to go back to school too. She’s the same age as one of my daughters.

and …

In October 2000, Shimon Ohana, an 18-year-old border police officer, was declared dead in the field. But I asked the ambulance driver to bring him to the hospital. Some decisions are hard to make in the field. I uncovered him, we opened his chest cavity and began to work. He came back to life but remained in a coma for 17 days. At last, he woke up. Shimon is my continued reminder that we can’t give up hope. Today, he is a fully functioning young man who trains dogs and loves computers.

No we can’t give up hope. Even when seemingly every defensive action inspires questions of those who rarely question Israel’s enemies.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

white butterfly, Shiri Negari.

Karnit Goldwasser gives more details of her meeting with Mad Mahmoud:

“During the questions we made eye contact, we looked at each other more than once. The look on his face changed the moment he realized who was facing him and what I wanted from him,” Karnit Goldwasser, wife of kidnapped soldier Ehud Goldwasser, said after her meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York.

Goldwasser managed to enter Ahmadinejad’s press conference at the United Nations building in New York on Tuesday, and told Ynet that the she was surprised by the treatment the Iranian leader received upon his arrival.

“He came in and started to smile at everyone. The reporters gave him great respect… As he walked by me he said hi to me, because he still didn’t know who I was. He thought I was one of the supporting journalists, and that he was walking into a place where everyone loved him. He seemed very pleased,” Goldwasser recounted.

Goldwasser said she was not afraid to present the president with her question, and asked him, “Hello, my name is Karnit, the wife of Ehud Goldwasser, the soldier who has been held captive for over a year. Since you are the man that is behind the kidnapping due to the aid you grant Hizbullah, why don’t you allow the Red Cross to visit the two soldiers?” she asked.

The president ignored the question.

What was that about freedom of speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad? What was that about the free exchange of information? And what was that about loving all people, including the people who live in Israel?

Israel is not a nation. Well, we like the people, yes, because they are victims as well. … We are friends with all people, Jewish people, Christians, different people of different faiths. We are, well, we’re in contact with them. Here in Iran there are Jewish communities; there are Christian communities; we’re all friends. Also, non-Muslim countries, we help them when a natural, let’s say, calamity breaks. We love all people.

Except, of course, when you don’t.

The night of the Iranian president’s speech at Columbia, 18 acts of anti-Semitic vandalism occurred in Brooklyn Heights.

Police were out in full force in Brooklyn Heights Tuesday after an overnight wave of anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered in the tony neighborhood.

The words “Kill Jews” and a 4-foot swastika defaced an apartment building on Columbia Place. Similar-sized swastikas were painted at two houses of worship on Remsen Street, Congregation B’Nai Avraham and the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue.

The graffiti, which also included swastikas spray-painted on two cars, was discovered Monday night, and by Tuesday morning the tally had grown, with at least several more cars found defaced with swastikas, and two cars papered with fliers declaring “Kill All Jews,” police said. All told, police said, there were 18 acts of vandalism.

Looks like the Mahdi Army was out in force, going after “Zionists.”

I’m sure there are many out there who will insist the two events are not related.

They would be idiots.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who says he is for peace, against war, and loves all people, deliberately snubbed Karnit Goldwasser, whose husband Ehud was kidnapped last year by Hezbollah.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused to address an Israeli woman who asked him at a news conference on Tuesday about her husband, one of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah last year.

As he has done at previous appearances at the United Nations, where he addressed the General Assembly earlier on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad also ignored a question asked by an Israeli journalist, saying only, “next question.”

[...] Karnit Goldwasser accused Ahmadinejad at the news conference of being behind the kidnapping and urged him to at least provide some proof of life. “How come you’re not allowing the Red Cross to visit them,” she asked from the front row.

Ahmadinejad ignored the question. He later sparred with a journalist from Fox News who asked whether Iran’s goal was the destruction of the Jewish state.

And this was right after he told the United Nations the following:

Family is the most sacred and valuable human institution that serves as the center of the purest mutual love and affection amongst mothers, fathers and children, and as a safe environment for the nurturing of human generations and a fertile ground for the blossoming of talents and compassion.

[...] Friends, ladies, and gentlemen, the only sustainable way to the betterment of mankind is the return to the teachings of the divine prophets, monotheism, respect for the dignity of humans, and the flow of love and affection in all relationships, ties, and regulations, and to reform the present structures on this basis.

To fulfill this objective, I invite everyone — everybody to form a front of fraternity, amity, and sustainable peace, based on monotheism and justice, under the name of “Coalition for Peace,” (ph) to prevent incursions and arrogance and to promote the culture of affection and justice.

I hereby announce that, with the help of all independent, justice-seeking and peace-loving nations, the Islamic Republic of Iran will be heading down this path.

Monotheism, justice, and compassion for humans should dominate all the pillars of the U.N. And this organization should be a forum for justice, and every member should enjoy equal spiritual and legal support.

Apparently, when it comes to the sanctity of the Israeli family, and peace with the Israeli nation, Ahmadinejad figures that all bets are off. Of course, we already knew this. But you have to hold his blatant hypocrisy up to the world—even if nobody is really listening. Because we are.

Back in 1996, the New York Times had some surprisingly kind words for President Assad of Syria. In Closing Ranks against Terror the editors of the Times fretted that the senior Assad wouldn’t attend the “Summit of the Peacemakers” but that he was still on the right side of history.

President Hafez al-Assad of Syria was conspicuously absent, as he was last fall at the funeral for the slain Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. But as Prime Minister Shimon Peres noted on Wednesday, at least Syria is engaged in the Middle East peace effort, unlike Iran, Israel’s implacable foe.

“Peace effort?” Please. Assad went to his grave after rejecting 98% of the territory he demanded of Israel, when President Clinton went to Geneva in 2000. As William Safire remembered the elder Assad in “The Rejectionist.’

Wisely, Bill Clinton decided to bypass this chance at wearing his inimitable lip-biting mournful look, and won’t dispatch Vice President Al Gore, his normal substitute, to Damascus. Why? Because three months ago, at a much-touted meeting in Geneva, Clinton presented Assad with the Golan Heights on a silver platter. The Syrian then humiliated the supplicating American by refusing to take yes for an answer, making fresh demands for control of Galilee that embarrassed not only Clinton but even the most appeasement-prone doves in Jerusalem. Assad scuttled negotiations in the most dramatic way possible.

It’s important to remember this bit of history as the editors of the NY Times applaud the inclusion of Syria in …. peace talks.

We welcome President Bush’s decision to include Syria on the list of countries invited to a November Middle East peace meeting. The president’s distaste for such efforts — aides still balk at the term “peace conference” — is only slightly less visceral than his distaste for Syria. We hope this means that Mr. Bush and his aides are finally ready to push all sides to make the compromises essential for moving toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace. If Damascus chooses not to attend the meeting, it would again confirm its role as one of the region’s dangerous spoilers. If it chooses to come, the chances for peace may increase. The invitation will certainly make it easier for Egypt and Saudi Arabia — whose political and economic support for any Israel-Palestinian agreement is crucial — to be there. Mr. Bush will still probably have to twist the arms of the risk-averse Saudis to show up.

“…confirm its role…” How many times does reality have to smack you upside the head before you realize that it’s telling you something? These games have been going on with Syria for more than a decade. It’s the dream of every peace processor to make a comprehensive peace in the Middle East including Syria. But come on, how many times has an Assad rejected importunings to make peace with Israel? How many times has an Assad launched a war against Israel via its proxies? Now that there’s apparent evidence that Syria is up to some greater mischief is not the time to engage the younger Assad (can I call him Dorktator or is that copyrighted?) but to at least consider taking diplomatic action against him. Additionally as Mere Rhetoric points out

When we were taught Israeli-Arab Peace Process 101, it was an ironclad principle that Israel pushes for bilateral talks with each individual Arab enemy and the Arabs push for multilateral talks with Israel. Why? Because when the Arab states combine their negotiating strength they can make demands in unison: “hey Israel, you want this concession from the Palestinians? Well then you’re also going to have to give back the Golan to Syria.” Israel has to give something to every Arab state in order to get anything that it wants. That’s why the Saudis are already setting preconditions for their participation (nice to see major media outlets helping them out with that - teamwork). They understand that the State Department has maneuvered Olmert into an impossible situation, and they’re ready to exploit it after three decades of Israel successfully resisting multilateral talks.

The editorial continues:

As for why this sudden flexibility from the White House? The conventional wisdom is that Mr. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, wants to try and salvage the president’s legacy — and her own — with a peace deal that could help stabilize the region that Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq has so destructively roiled. It will take a lot more creative diplomacy to make that happen. Indeed, six trips into a too-little, too-late peace effort, Ms. Rice is having as much trouble making progress with Israel, America’s close ally, as with Palestinians.

And how successful was the non-stop peace processing of the Clinton administration? Well, not very. As the editors of the New York Times noted at the time:

Mr. Arafat, regrettably, showed no interest in this proposal, holding out for full control of all areas of the city formerly under Jordanian rule. Talks on Jerusalem cannot usefully resume until Mr. Arafat shows a greater willingness to compromise. Mr. Arafat seems to feel he cannot do so. His rigidity reflects his failure to prepare Palestinian opinion for anything less than full sovereignty over East Jerusalem. But it also reflects the vocal opposition of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia to recognizing any Israeli sovereignty there. This